Fortune's Just Desserts

“Because if I’d known, I would have seen to it that you were assigned to the smaller tables. Pregnant women shouldn’t have to struggle with overloaded trays,” he told her.

She’d always been proud of the fact that she pulled her own weight. Now was no exception.

“I don’t want any special treatment, Mr. Mendoza,” Eva protested.

“It’s not special, it’s just common sense. If you wind up overdoing it, carrying trays that are too heavy for you, you might wind up hurting the baby—or worse. You could wind up in the hospital—and Red would be out one damn good waitress. So it’s settled,” he said with finality. “You take over waiting on the smaller tables, starting now.” Marcos looked at her pointedly. “Anything else I should know?”

Eva allowed a little sigh of relief to escape her lips. “No, sir.”

“You need any extra time?” he asked her. “Maybe some time off to go see your doctor?” When Eva flushed and hesitated before answering him, Marcos arrived at his own conclusion: she wasn’t going to a doctor. “You need to see a doctor on a regular basis, Eva. It’s important for your baby—and you.”

Opening the double drawer on the right side of his desk, Marcos thumbed through several folders until he found what he was looking for: insurance information. He pulled out a thick booklet and handed it to her.

“You have health coverage. Pregnancy is a covered expense. Go see your doctor. And if you don’t have a doctor and find that you have trouble picking one out—”

“I have a name,” Eva assured him. “My sister gave me the name of the one she uses. Dr. Sonia Ortiz.”

He hoped she was a good doctor. “All right. Call Dr. Ortiz and see if she can squeeze you in this afternoon or tomorrow morning. I don’t want you having any problems because you haven’t been taking care of yourself, Eva.”

“Thank you, Mr. Mendoza,” Eva cried, tears of relief shimmering in her eyes.

Marcos flushed at her words. He didn’t want her gratitude, that just embarrassed him. What he did want was for the woman to take care of herself—and the child she was carrying.

“I’m glad we talked,” he told her, turning his chair so that he was facing his computer. “Why don’t we both get back to work.” Marcos smiled, then touched the keyboard and activated the monitor on his computer. Abandoning its sleep mode, the screen instantly grew bright.

Focused on his timesheets, Marcos barely heard Eva leave his office. There was a slight pause before he heard the door being closed again, making him think that perhaps Eva had wanted to ask him something else.

“That was very nice of you.”

The soft, melodic Southern drawl made him look up sharply from his screen. There was only one way to construe the woman’s words, since not enough time had passed for Eva to have filled his personal albatross in on the conversation they had just had.

“You were eavesdropping,” he accused.

“Yes,” Wendy said simply. “I was.”

Marcos stared at her, momentarily speechless. The Fortune girl made absolutely no attempt to deny her transgression. If anything, he thought he heard a hint of pride in her voice.

She was brazen, he’d give her that. In another setting, that might have even intrigued him a little. He liked a woman who didn’t act like a shrinking violet. Usually. But not in this case.

“I had to,” she told him before he could demand to know what the hell she thought she was doing, listening in on his private conversation with an employee. “I was afraid you were going to rake her over the coals about being pregnant. There was fire in your eyes when you walked away and called her into your office,” Wendy explained. “I figured you were either mad at her—or at me. If it was her, I wanted to be there for her when you finished reading her the riot act.”

His eyes narrowed as he pinned her in place. “And if it was you?”

He expected her to cower, or at least pretend to. Instead, Wendy smiled in response. That same bright, disarming smile he’d seen her aim at the customers, both male and female, when she walked up to their tables.

The same smile that somehow seemed to brighten up a room.

It was official, he thought. He was losing his mind. Because of her.

“If it was me, I thought I’d spare you having to come and fetch me. I figured that would make you even angrier.”

To his further surprise, Wendy slid into the seat that Eva had just vacated and then, without so much as blinking or building up to it, she asked, “You don’t like me much, do you?”

She definitely wasn’t the kind of employee he was used to. Or the kind of woman he was used to, for that matter, either.

“Whether I do or not doesn’t matter—”

Again she didn’t give him a chance to finish—why didn’t that surprise him? “It does to me,” she told him. “I’m not used to people not liking me,” she said with genuine sincerity. “Now what have I done to rub you the wrong way?”

Her choice of words was unfortunate because it unexpectedly conjured up a scenario in his head that had absolutely nothing to do with their work relationship, but it did have a great deal to do with him as a man and her as a woman.

A very sensually attractive woman.

The next second Marcos upbraided himself for allowing his mind to veer off the path so drastically. It wasn’t like him. Not when he was at work.

Something else to hold against the woman, he thought grudgingly.

Ordinarily, he had a great deal more control over his thoughts and his reactions, both inside Red and outside, when he socialized. He was a man who liked to party in his off hours, but not so much that he ever carelessly ignored the consequences that any of his actions might generate.

But there was just something about the Fortune girl—beyond being saddled with her—that pushed all of his buttons at the worst possible moments.

Since she’d asked a legitimate question—and he wasn’t the type to shy away because he’d lost his nerve—Marcos gave her an answer.

“I don’t like people who have had everything handed to them and expect that to continue for the rest of their lives.” He looked her straight in the eye. And was mildly impressed when she didn’t look away. She was either very gutsy, or too dumb to know what he was talking about. And he was beginning to suspect, from what he’d witnessed, that she wasn’t dumb. “I also don’t like people who don’t know what it means to work.”

Wendy nodded, waiting for him to be done. So that she could begin. “Anything else?”

“Oh, there’s a lot more,” he assured her, even though he hadn’t phrased it properly in his mind yet. “But that’ll do for now.”

Wendy nodded, seeming to accept his response. But rather than get up and leave in a huff the way he’d expected, she slid forward in her chair, fixed him with an unabashed, penetrating stare and asked, “Has anyone complained about me? Has anyone told you I was doing a bad job, or not carrying my weight?”

Because he couldn’t in all honesty say yes to any part of her question, he tried to approach it in a different way. “Half the kitchen staff is tripping over their feet, rushing to help you.”

So now he was going to blame her for that? He had to know that was completely unfair.

“I can’t help it if you hired a bunch of polite people. I never asked one of them to do anything for me. I don’t palm off my work or expect anyone to carry my load,” she told him pointedly.

But there had been more to his dissatisfaction with her, so while she was at it Wendy decided to address that, as well.

“And as for what you said about having everything handed to me, yes, I was born a Fortune and, yes, my parents are rich. And yes, I don’t really know exactly what it is I want to do with my life right now,” she threw in, even though he hadn’t said anything about that. She assumed that one of her parents had probably complained about her lack of direction to the Mendozas, who in turn might have told Marcos.

“But I know that whatever I do decide I want out of life, I’m going to have to get it on my own, because otherwise it doesn’t really count. And I also realize that the only person I know I can count on is me,” she said with feeling.

Channing had taught her that one and she had learned her lesson the hard way. She’d put all her faith in him, expecting Channing to provide her happily-ever-after for her. When he’d pulled the rug out from under her and told her that he no longer loved her, that he was in love with someone else, she definitely hadn’t been prepared to land on her butt in full view of her so-called friends. None of whom offered her any real sympathy.

While the whole humiliating experience hadn’t turned her into a bitter person, it certainly had taught her not to be so trustingly naive.

It also taught her to keep her eyes open so that she didn’t run the risk of being mowed down like that ever again. One supremely humiliating experience in a lifetime was more than enough.