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

He supposed Gloria was to be commended for trying to cut corners and save money. That made her a decent businesswoman. It was in keeping with what he’d already found out about her.

And he’d lied to her. He had painted before. He’d helped one of his roommates paint their dorm room while he was in college. They’d painted one wall stark black, the other three walls a virgin white. It had been very dramatic at the time. Now he had a feeling it would have driven him crazy.

He found the coveralls hanging on the inside of the back room door. Shedding his jacket and tie, he pulled the garment over his slacks and shirt.

“You’re right.” He snapped shut the row of snaps that ran along his chest. The coveralls felt a little tight, but not as bad as they could have. He could still move his arm. “Your brother and I are just about the same size…”

His voice trailed off as he came out of the back room and saw her balancing herself on the next-to-the-topmost rung on the ladder. Was she crazy? “What the hell are you doing up there?”

She turned around slowly to look down at him from the top of the ladder. Humor curved the corners of her mouth. “Am I going to have to explain this all over to you again? I’m painting.”

“No, you’re not,” he corrected, really angry. “You’re risking breaking your neck.”

He wasn’t just a type A personality, she thought, he was a worrier. She bristled against his implication that she was too clumsy to be careful.

“I’m standing on a ladder—A does not exactly equal B here.”

He wasn’t going to debate this with her. “Get down,” he ordered.

Humor vanished. Her eyes narrowed into slits. He should have picked up on the warning, but he could almost see her flying off the ladder. “You’re not in charge of me, Fortune.”

He had a different opinion. “I am when you don’t make an effort to use your brains and right now, they appear to be taking a break.”

“For your information, I’ve climbed ladders before, Fortune.” Open space had never been a problem for her. She had absolutely no fear of heights.

“Only means your luck is that much closer to running out.” Crossing the floor, he came up to the ladder and stood right beneath her. “Now get down.”

Anger surged through her. She stubbornly refused to budge. “Damn it, Jack, why do you insist on always seeing the glass as half empty?”

“Because it usually is. Now get down,” he ordered again.

Gloria was sorely tempted to give him a piece of her mind, but she didn’t want to alienate his father and most fathers didn’t relish hearing that their sons compared to jackasses.

She blew out a breath. “All right, I’m coming down, but only because I need to refill my roller.”

“Whatever.” He held the ladder braced as she made her way down. In his opinion, she was moving awfully fast.

She was moving faster than that when she hit the next-to-the-last rung. Missing it, she slipped and went sailing off.

Right into his arms.

Chapter Eight

Sheer instinct had guided his movements. Jack caught her without thinking. One second he was standing below Gloria, the next she’d somehow twisted around and was airborne.

The ladder she’d involuntarily vacated wobbled dangerously for a second, but mercifully remained standing upright. Jack hardly noticed. He was too busy assessing the immediate situation. That he was holding a stunningly gorgeous woman in his arms.

And that he was reacting to her.

Gloria’s eyes widened and for a second he thought she’d suddenly become aware that she had hurt something. But when she blurted a heartfelt, “I’m so sorry,” followed by possibly the sexiest giggle he could ever recall hearing, Jack knew that there was nothing broken, bruised or injured.

At least where she was concerned. The jury was still out in regard to him.

Her eyes weren’t on his face. Looking somewhat chagrined, she was staring at his chest. Jack looked down to see what she was looking at. The roller she’d been wielding was still clutched in her hand. He realized that Gloria must have accidentally hit him with it when she’d come sailing off the ladder. He was now sporting the same color across his chest that was on the freshly painted wall. Periwinkle blue.

He frowned. It didn’t take much imagination to realize how narrowly she’d missed hitting his face. “I thought the idea was to paint the wall, not me.”

“I’m so sorry,” she repeated.

Looking closer, he could see that Gloria was obviously battling facial muscles, trying to keep them in line so that she could at least look somewhat contrite. But the grin was winning. Why he found that endearing rather than annoying he had no idea.

She blew out a breath, still tugging the corners of her mouth down. “Lucky thing I had you put on those coveralls.”

“I think it was luckier that I was here to catch you.”

“It was only one rung,” she pointed out. “And I wouldn’t have slipped if you hadn’t made me so nervous.”

Other than the incident with the air bag, Gloria Mendoza struck him as someone who possessed nerves of steel. And, he had to admit, he also found it a little intriguing.

His face still inches away from hers, Jack searched her expression for the telltale signs of humor. But this time, there was none. She was serious. His interest heightened.

“I make you nervous?”

Okay, so maybe she shouldn’t have said that, Gloria upbraided herself. But it wasn’t as if she were giving away some kind of deep, dark state secret. The man had to know that his looking over her shoulder was making her second-guess herself. That kind of thing would make anyone nervous.

Gloria looked at him pointedly. She decided not to backtrack. Honesty was usually the best policy, anyway. Lies were far harder to keep straight. “Yes, you do. By the way—” amusement played across her lips “—when do you think you’ll be putting me down?”

He’d gotten so caught up in his reaction to her, he’d completely forgotten that he was still holding her. Feeling a little like an idiot, Jack set her on the floor. As he did so, it felt as if he was doing it in slow motion. He was utterly aware of every movement, every part of her body that came in contact with his as he released her.

Moreover, he could feel a reluctance humming in his body, an annoying reluctance he was entirely unfamiliar with.

Well, perhaps not entirely, he amended silently, but it had been a long, long time since he’d felt the stirrings of genuine desire awakening his body.

It was just a male reaction to a beautiful woman, he insisted, nothing more.

Except that he generally wasn’t laid siege to by those kinds of feelings. He kept himself so busy that physical reactions were things that, for the most part, did not enter into his life. Even on those rare occasions when he had to take someone to a business function, he was more interested in working the room, in securing professional alliances for the bank, than he was with being attentive to his date of the evening.

He might be a brilliant strategist in the corporate world, but in the social realm, he knew that he was woefully out of step.

And he intended to remain that way no matter what the hell was going on here.

“How…” His throat felt strangely tight and he cleared it to not sacrifice his normal deep pitch. “How exactly do I make you nervous?”

When she raised her eyes to his, he felt something turn over in his belly then tighten into a knot. “Just knowing you’re watching does it.”

Jack fell back on sarcasm, his weapon of choice around someone like Gloria. “Can’t very well walk around with a blindfold when I’m around you, can I?”

“No.” Her mouth curved and he had the oddest desire to taste her lips. To see if they were as velvety smooth as they appeared.