Fortune's Just Desserts (16 page)

That, at least, he could answer, Marcos thought. “Being trapped.”

“That,” Rafe said, “is just a cop-out. You can be just as ‘trapped' being alone as you can in a relationship. More, actually. And if it's the right relationship,” Rafe told him, “you're not trapped at all. You're sheltered.”

Marcos was shaken by his brother's words. He'd been so busy trying to escape, he hadn't thought of it that way.

“Is that how you feel about Melina?” he asked.

“That's how I feel,” Rafe replied. “That, plus I feel damn lucky. I could have gone my whole life, drifting from one meaningless encounter to another, never feeling as if I'd made any real contact at all. Instead, with Melina I find that we can talk for hours and never even come close to reaching an end. There's so much more to explore, to learn about each other, even though we've known one another for years.”

Rising, he drew closer to Marcos and put an arm around his younger brother's shoulders. “Hey, I know. Love's a scary proposition. But do you know the only thing that's scarier?”

Marcos shook his head. “What?”

“
Not
having love,” Rafe said with feeling. His eyes searched Marcos's face. “Do you understand what I'm saying?”

Marcos's sigh was more of a cleansing breath. “Yeah, I think I do.”

Rafe's eyes probed deeper into his. “And?” he asked, waiting.

Marcos reflected and laughed shortly. “And I guess I'm an idiot,” he admitted. “An idiot for choosing to run away instead of taking advantage of what's right there in front of me.”

Rafe grinned broadly, satisfied. “Okay, as long as you know.” He gestured toward the door. “Now, get out of here. Some of us have work to do.”

“Yeah, we do,” Marcos agreed. And he'd let
both his work—and Wendy—slide for too long. “Thanks.”

With a nod, Marcos turned to cross to the door and let himself out.

“And, Marcos,” Rafe called after him. Marcos paused, looking over his shoulder. Rafe grinned broadly. “Welcome to the club.”

Marcos flashed the same grin back at him. “Yeah. Thanks.”

 

Now that he'd made up his mind and finally had his head on straight, Marcos couldn't wait to get back to Red. Back to Wendy.

But an uneasiness gnawed away at his gut. He was afraid that it might already be too late. He knew Wendy, knew the way she reacted. His brush-off might have just made her decide to walk out on this latest venture in her life. After all, she'd certainly done it before.

Hell, she'd already offered to quit because she'd perceived their working together as an obstacle to their
coming
together. But he'd left her bed as if he was abandoning her. There was no telling what was going on in her head. If for some reason she decided that he'd just used her for his own pleasure, then dumped her, she would think nothing of walking away for good.

And whose fault is that?
he silently demanded.

Didn't matter whose fault it was, it had to be undone. If she walked out on Red—and him—he
was just going to have to work harder at getting her back. Because, now that he thought about it,
really
thought about it, the idea of spending the rest of his life without Wendy left him with an incredibly hollow feeling.

A man couldn't live with that kind of emptiness inside him.

With one eye in the rearview mirror, watching for any sign of the police, Marcos flew through yellow lights and busy intersections, bobbing and weaving from one lane to another, switching as if his car was a bouncing ball, until he finally reached Red.

Feeling suddenly breathless, despite the fact that he hadn't run so much as an inch, Marcos bolted from his sedan and entered the restaurant through the rear double doors.

When he walked into the kitchen, he felt his stomach lurch, then fall.

Wendy wasn't there.

Okay, now what?

Exiting the medical building, Cooper Fortune frowned as he looked at the DNA report in his hand. He'd picked it up less than five minutes ago at the laboratory that had been steadily ruling out one by one, the various male members of the Fortune family as being baby Anthony's biological father.

Until him.

“We have a winner,” Cooper murmured under his breath, still stunned at this newest twist in his life.

He was Anthony's father.

It wasn't that he was too young to be a father. Hell, at forty-one, if anything, he would have said he was too old to be responsible for a four-month-old infant
and all that entailed. Besides, he wasn't exactly a pillar of the community. Until Ross had tracked him down, he'd been drifting from state to state, picking up work and women as each came his way. And nothing permanent had ever come of either.

Until now.

Standing outside in the street, Cooper was still having trouble believing it. It all just felt too surreal.

He was a father.

What did he know about being a father? For two cents—less—he could just turn around and disappear again, the way he had for so much of his life.

But there was the kid to think of. Anthony hadn't asked to be born.

Hell,
he
hadn't asked to be a father, either, but the kid really had absolutely no responsibility for being born. And he had already received one blow. He'd been abandoned by his mother. Having his father run out on him as well just didn't seem right.

No matter how much he wanted to put this behind him. Cooper folded the report twice over and stuffed it into his back pocket.

The single word throbbed over and over again in his brain.

Father.

How could such a small word feel so damn heavy? And the label came with strings. He'd never been one for strings, had lived most of his life avoiding them and entanglements in general.

Looks like that's going to have to change, Coop,
he told himself.

A lot of things were going to have to change, he thought. Namely his lifestyle. He was going to have to clean up his act, settle down. Find some kind of steady work. It wasn't just him anymore.

Even without a clue about all the things that being a parent involved, he figured he'd have to do a better job than his mother had with the four of them. For all intents and purposes, he, Ross, Flint and Frannie had raised themselves. They'd had to. Their flirt of a mother was too busy charming the pants off whatever man had caught her fancy at the time. Everyone in the family said that Cynthia Fortune had a hell of a track record: four husbands, one of whom at least had had the good sense to die. The others she'd divorced.

He thought of his only sister, the so-called baby of the family. Frannie had a couple of kids of her own. Maybe she could give him a few pointers and help out a little until he got the hang of all this.

Cooper shook his head as he started walking toward his car. He wasn't one to look into the future. Hell, he hardly even thought beyond the end of the week, a paycheck and being free until Monday. And never once in all that time had he
ever
thought of himself as being someone's father.

Well, he was now.

 

“Marcos,” Enrique exclaimed as he came out of the walk-in refrigerator, “when did you get back?”

The chef had his hands full, carrying a fresh rack of lamb in a large, well-used shallow pan. He set it on the stainless-steel counter and crossed over to Red's manager. Enrique looked genuinely pleased to see him.

But there was only one person's reaction that Marcos cared about.

Rather than explain to the chef that he'd actually never left town, Marcos merely shrugged and murmured a vague, “Just a while ago.”

Nodding, Enrique's smile was broad as the man's eyes met his. “Good trip?”

“You might say that.”

At least, in the sense that Rafe had made him see things clearly for perhaps the first time in his adult life. But he didn't want to continue talking about the trip that wasn't. There was something far more important that needed his attention.

“Is Wendy here?” Marcos wanted to know, cutting through any more chitchat.

“Right behind you, Marcos.”

The second he heard just the first syllable of the melodic Southern drawl, Marcos could feel his heart accelerating. It seemed almost inconceivable to him that the same voice had annoyed him so much just a short while ago.

He swung around to face her only to see that Wendy had already walked over to the table that had become her workstation since she'd taken on the role of pastry chef.

For a moment he just stared at her, drinking in the sight of her. Absorbing every last nuance. She hadn't quit and left town the way he'd been afraid she would. He'd acted like an idiot but she was still here.

Somebody up there had to like him, Marcos thought, as wave after wave of relief washed over him.

“I need to talk to you,” he finally said.

She slanted a glance at him as she continued to measure out the ingredients she'd decided she was going to need in concocting today's dessert. Cups and measuring spoons began lining up like tiny confectionary soldiers.

“Talk fast, then,” she instructed matter-of-factly. “I've got a lot of things to do.”

He glanced toward Enrique. So far, because of the early hour, the chef was still the only other occupant in the kitchen.

“I need to talk to you alone,” Marcos qualified.

Part of her just wanted to throw her arms around him, to hold on to him and that exhilaration she'd felt when she'd walked in and seen the back of his head. When she knew he'd come back and was asking for her, instead of stretching out his vanishing act.

The other part of her wanted to hit him upside his head and demand to know why he'd left her bed like that to begin with. Why he'd made her feel as if she didn't matter.

She compromised. Didn't hug, didn't hit. Instead, she stood her ground and continued working.

“Then I'm afraid it's going to have to wait,” she answered, pouring powdered sugar, all but lighter than air, into a glass measuring cup. She made a judgment call and used a little more than three quarters of a cup. “The lunch crowd is going to be coming soon and I'm still not sure what I'm putting on the dessert menu.”

“I would stay out of her way if I were you,” Enrique advised. “She's been a little dynamo since you ‘left on business.'”

His tone caught Marcos's attention. Did Enrique know, or just suspect, that he hadn't gone anywhere? Or was he just being paranoid?

Either way, he needed the man to absent himself for a few minutes. “Can you give us a minute, Enrique?” he requested.

“I can give you five,” Enrique countered. “But after that, I need to get started myself. This rack of lamb is not going to prepare itself.”

A minute later, the door leading to the main dining area closed again.

He and Wendy were alone.

Marcos had no idea where to begin. He'd never been at a loss for words before. But Wendy had changed a lot of things in his life. And now he realized that he wanted her to continue changing them. Wanted her to stay in his life.

So he pushed forward, saying the first thing that came to his mind. He needed to apologize, to accept blame where blame was due.

“You're angry, I get that.”

You don't know the half of it,
Wendy thought. But to admit that would be to give him more control over her than she was willing to relinquish.

So instead she said, “What I am, Marcos, is busy. You might have left Enrique in charge when you went off on your little trip to L.A., but I'm the one who's been picking up the slack, doing double duty in the kitchen and out there in the dining area. If what you have to say is
really
important, I'd appreciate you holding your tongue until after we close, when I can give you my full attention.”

With that, Wendy moved past him to the refrigerator. She was going to need chilled heavy cream for this one.

She'd just reached the stainless-steel door when Marcos spoke again, addressing the words to her back. “I love you.”

Wendy froze. She couldn't have heard him right. That had to be her ears playing tricks on her.

Still, she couldn't just continue walking away from him, doing what she was doing, without verifying what she'd just
thought
she'd heard.

Very slowly, she turned around to look at him, telling her heart it had no business lodging itself in her throat.

“What did you say?” The words came out in a hoarse whisper.

He wanted to take a step closer to her, but he re
mained where he was. For now it was enough that she wasn't walking away from him.

“I said I love you.”

Okay, what kind of a game
was
he playing? “Just like that?”

He didn't want her thinking that he'd said that to every woman who'd come into his life. Because he hadn't. Not even once. She needed to understand that.

“No, not just like that,” Marcos told her. “Those words don't come easy to me. Hell, they don't come at all.”

Disbelief fought with a new surge of joy. She knew she should just contradict him. After all, so many men used that line to soften up the women who caught their momentary fancy. Used those words to get what they wanted from a woman.

But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that Marcos was telling her the truth. Never once had he said or even murmured that term of endearment. Or any other term of endearment, for that matter.

She was the one who had almost blurted it out that first night, but she'd managed to stop herself just in time.

“So why are those words coming now?” she asked Marcos quietly.

This wasn't going to be easy, he thought. But then, something real, something lasting, normally wasn't easy. Because “easy” didn't count.

“Because I wanted you to know what I was feeling,” he told her honestly. “Wanted you to know that I left because of that feeling.”

He had just lost her. Wendy shook her head. “That doesn't make sense.”

“It does to me.” Feeling on slightly safer ground, very slowly, he crossed to her, cutting the distance an inch at a time. Letting what was happening, what he was saying, sink in for her as well as himself. “I left because you scared the hell out of me. I'd never felt that for any woman before and it made me feel vulnerable. Exposed. Naked.”

She smiled and her eyes lit up with the warmth that she was suddenly feeling. “I like that image. Naked,” she qualified, “not vulnerable or exposed.” She didn't want him to feel either.

Now Marcos could feel himself smiling, as well. “I can do naked.”

“Not here you can't,” she cautioned with a straight face. “I'd wind up being killed in the stampede.”

He laughed. “I was thinking more along the lines of at home, in our bedroom.”

The description hit her a moment after he'd said it. This time she
knew
she had to be hearing things.

“Back up,” she instructed him. He raised a quizzical eyebrow, waiting for her to elaborate. “
Our
bedroom?” she questioned, emphasizing the first word.

“That's what I said,” he agreed. Did she have a problem with that? He was making plans for them,
but what if they weren't
her
plans? “Something wrong?”

“Not wrong, exactly, but did I miss something?” she asked. “Just when did we go from ‘yours' to ‘ours'?”

He'd gotten ahead of himself, he realized.

“We didn't,” Marcos admitted, slipping his arms around her and drawing her closer to him. “Yet. But I'm hoping we will. Once you say yes.”

Ordinarily she was the speedy one, but this was going way too fast for her to keep up. She had deliberately refrained from spinning the same kind of dreams about Marcos that she had once had about Channing. Refrained because she was afraid of having her hopes dashed and her heart broken.

The heartbreak would be her first—she realized now that she had never really loved Channing. And, since she hadn't loved him, then he hadn't broken her heart when he'd suddenly announced he was leaving her.

All he'd done was injure her pride. Pride had a way of recovering.

She was trying to make sense of what Marcos was saying, to prevent suddenly finding that she had walked off a cliff like some cartoon character.

“Are you asking me to move in with you?”

Marcos inclined his head. Not wanting to be disappointed, he was still feeling her out. “In a way, yes.”

Now she was confused. Maybe she was reading
more into this than he'd meant. “In what way?” she wanted to know.

Okay, here goes everything,
he thought, taking a breath and plunging into the deep end of the pool. No more net.

His eyes never left her face as he said, “Well, I was raised to believe that husbands and wives were supposed to live together.”

She was still confused. “What does that have to do with— Wait!” she cried, suddenly stunned more than she thought possible. “Wait,” she repeated, pressing her hand against his chest as if to physically keep any more words from coming out until she succeeded in untangling the ones already spoken. “Are you saying what I think you're saying?”

But even as she began to ask, Wendy knew she had to be making a mistake. A mistake she desperately wanted to be true.

“Are you asking me to marry you, Marcos?”

He nodded his head. “Yes.”

Wendy surprised him by swinging and cuffing him on the back of the head. “Ow!” he cried in protest.

But before he could ask her what that had been for, she said, “Well, then, do it. Ask me already, don't just go through the motions.”

She wasn't going to say no, he thought, relieved. He felt as if he could leap up and touch the moon. “Wendy Fortune, will you marry me?”