Bronwyn Jameson - Fortune's Mergers

Though she knew Zoie was referring to Case, Gina gave her a blank look. “About what?”

Zoie tossed up her hands. “About him! Case Fortune. I saw his Escalade parked out front when I got home from Sully’s. Sully sends his love, by the way,” she added.

“Sully’s such a sweetie,” she said fondly, then narrowed an eye at Zoie. “And how you do you know that was Case’s Escalade? Did you pick the lock and go through his glove compartment?”

“Didn’t have to. He has one of those Dakota Fortune parking passes hanging from his rearview mirror. Kinda hard to miss.”

“Oh.”

“No apology? Just, oh?” Chuckling, she flapped a hand. “Forget it. Now tell me where you’ve been all day. I’ve been climbing the walls, waiting for you to get home.”

Gina turned back to her desk and picked up her portfolio. “Here and there,” she replied vaguely.

“Uh-uh,” Zoie warned, trailing after her. “That’s not good enough.” She flopped down on the sofa and folded her arms across her chest. “I want to know every gory detail, starting with how you hooked up, all the way to the kiss I saw him plant on you in the hallway, and I’m not leaving until you tell all.”

Knowing her friend would make good her threat, Gina crossed to the sofa and sat down. “He was waiting for me when I got home last night.” She shot Zoie a frown. “Thanks to a nosy neighbor who can’t keep her mouth shut.”

Unfazed, Zoie tucked her feet beneath her, her expression expectant. “So? Did he spend the night?”

“Heavens, no!” Gina cried, shocked by the suggestion. “He carried my luggage to the door and asked me out. Period.”

Zoie’s face fell in disappointment. “Bummer. So what did you do today?”

“We went to Falls Park, took in the exhibit at the Horse Barn Art Center, and had dinner at that new Italian restaurant on Phillips Street.”

“Ah, come on,” Zoie groused. “That’s tour guide stuff. I want the juice. Physical contact. Whispered words of endearment. That kind of thing.”

“He held my hand. Does that count?”

“Stiff or foreplay?”

Gina looked at her askance. “What the heck does that mean?”

“Stiff is like dead fingers. No movement. Foreplay is playful, sensual. Thumb strokes on the palm. Little squeezes of the fingers. Which was it?”

Gina frowned a moment thinking. “Foreplay,” she decided.

Zoie rubbed her hands together in glee. “Oh, man. That’s good. Real good. What else?”

“While we were walking, he put his arm around my shoulders a couple of times. And he snuggled me up inside his coat when we were standing by the Falls.”

“Back to front or front to front?”

“Back to front.”

“Did you feel anything? Like a hard-on, I mean.”

“Zoie!” Gina cried.

Zoie held up her hands. “Okay, okay. Just trying to get a bead on his level of attraction.”

“It was one date,” Gina reminded her drolly. “It’s a little early to start thinking about sex.”

Zoie opened her hands. “Hey. Sex knows no time-line. When the time’s right, it’s right. You’ve got to learn to open up a little bit. Go with the flow.”

Gina winced. “I don’t know how.”

“Relax, you mean?”

Gina nodded.

“Alcohol,” Zoie said without hesitation. “Nothing loosens up a person’s inhibitions quicker than a stiff drink or two.”

Shaking her head, Gina pushed to her feet. “I’m not much of a drinker.”

“Good. That means it would take less to get you going.”

Sputtering a laugh, Gina planted her hands on her hips. “You are a real case, you know it? Here you are telling me to get drunk and have sex with a man I hardly know.”

“Do you want to remain a virgin the rest of your life?”

Gina winced, then shook her head. “No.”

“Does Case ring your bell?”

Gina rolled her eyes. “If you’re asking if I’m attracted to him, yes.”

Zoie shrugged. “Well, there you have it. Case Fortune is your frog-prince, the guy who’s going to introduce you to the wild side of life, teach you the old bump and grind.”

Gina clapped her hands over her cheeks, her face flaming. “I can’t believe we’re even having this discussion.”

Zoie unfolded her legs and rose. Slinging an arm around Gina’s shoulders, she drew her with her as she walked to the door. “Sister, it’s time. Past time, if you ask me. You’ve been wearing that chastity belt long enough.”

At the moment, Gina felt more like a voodoo priestess than she did an author of children’s books.

Candles surrounded her work table, filling the loft with flickering light and the calming scent of lavender. Sounds of the ocean, specifically chosen for its soothing qualities, played from her stereo speakers. A bowl of cheese—flavored crackers mixed with chocolate candies—both known for having produced restorative powers in the past—was in easy reach of her hand. Her good luck toad sat on his perch on the crooked arm of her task light, overseeing her work. She’d even changed into her oldest and most ragged sweat suit. The one with the hole in the left sleeve and the streak of hot pink fingernail polish on the thigh. The same one she’d been wearing when she’d received the call from the publishing company, telling her they wanted to buy her first book.

She’d tried every trick in the book to jump-start her creative muse, but so far not a one of them had worked.

And it was all Case’s fault.

Or, rather, Zoie’s, she corrected with a frown.

Zoie was the one who had put the idea of sleeping with Case in her mind. And now that was all she could think about. Besides the would-he, could-she, should-she worries that would plague any virgin considering making the fall, she kept imagining what kind of lover Case would be.

And when she wasn’t worrying about the act itself, she was stressing over the man she was considering giving herself to.

Prior to Sunday and her outing with Case, she hadn’t known him personally, and what she had known, she hadn’t particularly liked. As far as she was concerned, he was cut from the same pin-stripe-cloth as her father, which was reason enough to dislike him—or, at the very least, distrust him. Businessmen like Case and her father were incapable of maintaining personal relationships. Not the kind of relationship Gina wanted and needed from a man. Men like them devoted all their time, energy and emotions to the companies they ran. Company first, family somewhere way down the line. That was the motto they lived by.

Hadn’t Gina witnessed enough of her own mother’s frustrations and disappointments married to a man obsessed with his business to know she wanted no part of that life? Hadn’t she purposely chosen a career on the opposite end of the spectrum from her father’s for that same reason? Hadn’t she shut her father out of her life because he’d always chosen business over family? It hadn’t been a decision she’d made rashly or without proper justification.

It had been a means of survival.

As a young girl, troubled by the tension and unhappiness in her home, she’d created a fairy tale world to retreat to, a safe and happy place filled with the characters she created in her mind. After her mother’s suicide, when her father had packed her up and shipped her off to boarding school, she’d taken those fairy tale characters with her, relying on them for the emotional support and comfort her father was incapable of supplying. As an adult, she’d taken those same characters and the stories she’d made up about them and spun them into a cash cow that currently paid the bills, which had given her the ability to sever her financial dependence on her father and, in a sense, thumb her nose at him and his way of life.