Allison Leigh - Fortune's Proposal

“I’ve seen that same look in your eyes ever since your father didn’t show up at the church. That’s why I didn’t quit on you before. And that’s why I’m not quitting on you now. I am not leaving.”

Drew’s eyes narrowed. His hands tightened around Deanna’s shoulders, drawing her closer to him, until there was not an inch of breath to be had between her body and his. “And what if I kissed you again now?”

He was trying to make her run.

She knew it as surely as she knew her own name.

And even though she felt weak in the knees and shivers were slipping down her spine, she lifted her chin.

Her gaze met his. “What if you did?”

Dear Reader,

I’ve always believed that family is the most important thing one can have in their life. Personally, I have been deeply blessed to know that strong foundation in my life, with parents and extended family who have always shown their love and support, and I hope that this is the same foundation that I’ve passed on to my children as they find and make their places in the world.

Not everyone is so lucky to be raised with unswerving support. Not every family is so lucky to be able to pull together in a time of crisis—whether great or small. For anyone who is in that situation, my wish for you is to create a family that does just that for you. Find it with your friends. Find it with your community. But, like Deanna Gurney, keep your heart open to it. Because, in the end, family is what we make of it, no matter who those members turn out to be or from where we find them.

Family.

It’s what Deanna finds with Drew and the remarkable Fortune clan, and it’s with deep pleasure that I get to welcome you to their family fold, too.

Allison

There is a saying that you can never be too rich or too thin. ALLISON LEIGHdoesn’t believe that, but she does believe that you can never have enough books! When her stories find a way into the hearts—and bookshelves—of others, Allison says she feels she’s done something right. Making her home in Arizona with her husband, she enjoys hearing from her readers at Allison@allisonleigh.com or PO Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772, USA.

Fortune’s

Proposal

Allison Leigh

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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In loving memory of Larry

“Happy New Year, Deanna. Hope you have fun tonight.”

The farewell was echoed three times over as Deanna Gurney watched the last of her coworkers at Fortune Forecasting head out the office door.

She sighed faintly and looked at the round watch on her wrist.

It was nearly eight. Four more hours, and she could put the close on another year.

She sighed again and slowly tapped the end of her red pen on the surface of her desk as she stared blindly at the article she was supposed to be proofreading.

The tapping might as well have been a clock ticking.

A new year was supposed to be the start of new things, wasn’t it?

Unfortunately, she couldn’t help but think that the “new” was likely to turn out worse than the “old.”

Depressed by her own thoughts, she shook her head and focused again on the article that her boss had decided just had to be completed before the office took their brief New Year break.

Trust Andrew Fortune not to realize that his latest burst of creative, financial genius was inconveniently timed when it came to the rest of his staff.

She corrected a spelling error and felt her gaze drifting upward to the opened doorway of her boss’s office.

Drew wasn’t sitting at his desk. If he had been, she would have had a straight-on view of him. Instead, she only caught the occasional glimpse of him as he paced around his spacious office, passing behind his desk occasionally to stop and look out the windows that offered a near-panoramic view of San Diego. During the day, she knew he’d be able to see all the way to the coastline.

Now the only thing he’d see out those windows was the night sky and city lights.

Even as she watched, he paced past the doorway, completely oblivious—as he had been for most of the day, since he’d spread the word that he wanted this last project done before they shut down for the long weekend—to anything that was transpiring beyond his office doorway.

He wore a Padres ball cap on his brown head, the bill pulled down low over his brow. A sure sign that his mood was just as dark as the grim set of his angular jaw suggested. When he was feeling particularly good-natured, that hat would have been turned backward with the bill scooting down his neck and there would have been a cocky half twist to his lips, a faint dimple in his right cheek and a wicked glint in his dark brown eyes. He’d have been holding a golf club in his hand, practicing his putting across the smooth, thick, beige carpet that lined his office instead of clenching the end of a baseball bat in his hand.

The faint buzzing of her cell phone drew her attention and she picked it up off the desk, looking at the display.

Gigi.

She sighed again and set the phone down, unanswered.

Her mother had already called her a half dozen times that day. Deanna had no desire to talk to her, yet again. Hard as it had been, she had already said what she’d had to say.

But the vibrating phone reminded her that she did have work to do that didn’t involve lollygagging around, worrying about her boss’s state of mind.

She had plenty of reason not to feel particularly celebratory. But Drew Fortune had the world by the tail. He was thirty-four years old—eight years older than she—and handsome as sin, plus he was poised to take the helm of the hugely successful trend analysis firm his father had founded decades earlier. And if not for the fact that she knew what his plans for that day were supposed to have been—flying to Texas—she was certain that he would have been heading out with one of his leggy, buxom blondes on his arm who’d have undoubtedly ensured that she rang in his new year in a major way.

Deanna made a face and scratched her red pen through a redundant phrase.

“Hell, Dee. That page looks like it’s bleeding.”

She didn’t look up at her boss. “It’s one of the things you pay me for, remember?” She corrected another misspelling.

Brilliant, he was. But a good speller?

Not exactly.

“Seems to me I’m also paying some other folks who ought to still be around.” Drew sat on the corner of her desk and picked up her cell phone as if he had every right to do so. He tapped the end of his baseball bat against the toe of his leather shoe.

“We didn’t need the rest of the staff here to finish up the article.” Everyone had pulled together the data that he’d needed. The only thing left now was for her to finish proofing it, send it via email to their bazillion clients and then to the newspaper that was printing it in Saturday’s New Year’s Day edition.