Fortune's Heirs: Reunion: Her Good Fortune / A Tycoon in Texas / In a Texas Minute

Patrick’s fingers ceased flying over the keyboard as he looked up at his son and shook his head. “You move too fast, Jack. Stop a minute, catch your breath.”

Jack looked at his father over his shoulder. He was irritable because he was standing still, not moving fast. “I’m not out of breath.”

His words had absolutely no effect on his father. “Denial’s a sure sign that you’re even worse off than you thought you were.”

Abandoning the next painting, Jack crossed to his father’s desk and leaned over it, digging his knuckles in on the blotter. “Dad, I like work.”

Patrick’s expression softened, lessening the lines around his eyes. “I know you do, and I appreciate that. There’s nothing more satisfying than earning a living at what you like and what you’re good at.”

“But?” The word literally seemed to be throbbing in the space between them.

Jack was a workaholic of the first water, but that just meant Patrick had to work harder to get through to him. Now that his own soul had been saved, thanks to his wife, he refused to abandon Jack. “But you can’t take it home with you at night.”

Jack laughed shortly. There, he had his father, he thought. “Sure you can. Between laptops, PDAs and the Internet—”

Patrick raised a warning brow. “You know what I mean. You need a family.”

Jack threw up his hands. This was getting annoying. He thought only women had to listen to this kind of thing from their mothers. He would have bet anything that his father was above this kind of nonsense. Obviously he would have lost that bet.

“I have a family, Dad. I’ve got you and Mom and those annoying people you keep telling me are my siblings.” He allowed himself a grin. He cared a great deal for his brothers and baby sister, he just wasn’t about to try to duplicate them by creating children. “I’d say that’s family enough for anyone.”

Patrick’s eyes locked with his son’s. “A family of your own, Jack.”

Jack gave his father an innocent look. “Were you and Mom on loan?”

“A wife, Jack. A wife,” his father emphasized. Before Jack could say anything, Patrick added, “And kids. Lots of kids.”

Restless, Jack moved to the window. The rain that had been threatening since yesterday had finally arrived. Sheets of water were lashing against the window. The world outside looked dreary. The world inside wasn’t much better, he thought.

“I don’t know if I’d be any good at that,” he said, addressing his words to his father’s reflection in the window.

“Well, you certainly won’t find out by hiding behind corporate reports.”

Jack whirled around. No one had ever even hinted that he was a coward. He felt a sharp flare of temper and managed to bank it down. “Not hiding, Dad, analyzing. It’s what I do. What you pay me to do, remember?”

Patrick used the opportunity to swing the conversation back onto its original track. “Speaking of which, how’s that venture with Gloria Mendoza going?”

He noticed that his father had conveniently dropped the woman’s married name. Had Gloria gone through legal channels to do that, or was his father just trying to set something in motion here, make him think of her as a single woman?

No, that couldn’t be right. He and his father had an open, honest relationship. His mother might attempt a little manipulation with romance as the goal, but not his father. They were too alike, he and his father, even though the man seemed to have temporarily taken leave of his senses.

He told his father what was foremost in his mind. “I still think you should have handed this little assignment off to someone else.” He didn’t even have to think about who he’d get in place of himself. “Like Derek. He’s got more patience than I do.”

For a moment Patrick said nothing. Instead he thought of how he’d arranged to have his one-time protégé hire Gloria’s sister to act as his business analyst. It would have been a lie to say that he didn’t feel quite proud of himself. With a little bit of luck, things should be percolating there, as well.

His answer to Jack was vague. “Derek’s got his hands full with other projects.”

Did his father view him as a spoiled, pampered, rich offspring? Hadn’t he proven himself over and over again to be invaluable? “And I don’t?”

“I told you before, Jack, this needs your touch.” And, if I don’t miss my guess, so does Gloria. Almost as much as you need hers.

Jack scrutinized his father’s face. He could almost see the words marching through his brain. See them, but not quite make them out.

Or maybe he didn’t want to, because that would be giving credence to something he felt shouldn’t be going on. “What are you thinking?”

Patrick leaned back in his chair, studying his firstborn. Jack had never given him one moment’s trouble. Maybe there was such a thing as being too perfect, Patrick decided.

“That you’re a chip off the old block. That at your age, I was determined not to slow down, either. But I discovered that I was competing against myself. You can’t win if you have yourself as your opponent.”

Jack laughed shortly. That was true enough. But so was something else. “You also can’t lose.”

Doing nothing but work extracted a toll on a person’s life. And work, Patrick had come to realize, was a cold mistress. “Depends on your definition of losing.”

“I don’t have a definition of losing,” Jack told his father glibly. “Because I never intend to lose.”

Patrick looked at his son for a long moment. Anyone else would have said the man was too cocky, that he needed to be taken down a peg. But Patrick knew that Jack was as good as his word. And failure was not an option with Jack.

Maybe not, but a little humility was in order.

“I hope not, Jack,” he said softly. “I sincerely hope not.”

There was something going on, Jack thought, but he wasn’t exactly sure just what. The old man was acting funny these days. It was more than just his laid-back attitude about the company. Granted, if there was a crisis, the way there had been many times in the past, his father would be right there in the thick of it, leading the charge, rallying his subordinates. Jack smiled to himself. No one did it better than the old man.

But when everything was going relatively smoothly, his father tended to, for lack of a better term, slack off. Maybe age was finally catching up with him. Jack couldn’t help wondering if it was time for his father to step down.

The very thought saddened him. No matter what his father said, Fortune-Rockwell represented the sum total of his life’s work. The senior Fortune would go out of his mind if he retired. No, better to have him where he was and, if necessary, he could pick up the slack for his father. After all, it wasn’t as if there was anything more important to Patrick than the company.

Unexpectedly, a strange, hollow feeling made itself evident for just a split second.

Is that all there is? At the end of the day, is that all there is?

He’d been paying too much attention to his father, Jack thought. Not everyone was cut out for a wife and kids, no matter what his father thought. The one love of his life was dead, and he damn well had no intentions of looking for a substitute.

Glancing at his father, he saw that the latter looked as if he was gearing up again. Jack moved to leave. “I guess I’ll go see how your project is doing.”

Jack saw his father’s mouth pull into a satisfied smile. He doubted if it had to do with the speech he was supposed to be writing. But he isn’t about to ask.

“Good idea,” was all he said to Jack’s departing back.

The sooner he was done, Jack told himself as he parked on the far side of the mall, the sooner he could get out of Dodge, or San Antonio as it were, and back to the fast-paced life he thrived on in New York.

Maybe that was what his father needed, as well, he mused. To get out of here and get back into the mainstream, back to New York where business was business and everything else came in second.

He walked in through one of the four department stores that made up the quadrangle that defined the mall. His mind elsewhere, he made his way to the inner core of the mall without noticing any of the displays.

But as he hurried along the second floor of the mall, his surroundings sank in despite his preoccupation. He realized that Gloria had been right. There were a lot of people frequenting the mall. It was a weekday. The stores had only been open for about an hour and yet there were a great many people milling around, shopping, socializing, on their way to one place or another. Since it was neither lunchtime nor a holiday, he figured this had to represent an average day.

Blind luck?