Fortune's Legacy (3 page)

And to be honest, it was Kyra who'd had to do the most reaching. As the youngest of the four, she'd been the most removed from everyone's lives. And thanks to Vincent running interference between her and her father, she had never really suffered the man's rages as her brothers and sister had.

In the last few months, things had really changed for Leonard Fortune's kids, too. Susan, Daniel and even Vincent had found love and happiness. They all felt a sense of peace they'd never had before.

God knew, they'd all earned it. Growing up as the children of Leonard Fortune hadn't exactly been a game plan for success.

As the youngest, Kyra had been spoiled by her mother and protected from her father's drunken rages by Vincent's stubborn determination. Kyra'd been spared most of the misery her siblings had survived. But they were all grown up now. Succeeding on their own terms. Making lives for themselves, despite their father. Despite everything.

And Kyra was determined to do no less than her brothers and sister had done. She had every intention of making a success of her career and then somehow finding the love she'd always dreamed about.

Garrett continued to assess the photo. “Big family.”

“Four kids is a lot, I guess.”

“I'm an only child,” he said, and set the frame gingerly down on her desk, turning it back toward her with the tip of one finger.

“Must have been…quiet,” she said, not sure what he was getting at. Not sure why he was still here, in her office, talking to her as if they were old friends. Or lovers.

Her brain fizzled at the thought and she was forced to remind herself again that noticing Garrett Wolff as anything other than her boss was a one-way ticket to trouble.

He shoved both hands into his pockets. “Too quiet, sometimes.”

Now what did that mean?

As if suddenly realizing he'd said too much, he pulled his hands from his pockets, checked his watch and said, “I'm going home. I suggest you do the same, Ms. Fortune. The work will still be here tomorrow.”

Unable to help herself, she said, “Yes. But will I?”

He studied her for a long minute and shook his head. “Your review's not till next week, remember? And besides, why are you so sure you're going to be fired?”

She swallowed hard. “Because I know what you think of me.”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “You can't possibly know everything, Ms. Fortune. But the fact that you always act as if you do can be irritating.”

Instinctively, she tried to argue that point. “I don't—”

“Who knows?” he added. “Maybe this time you really have irritated the wrong people.”

Kyra felt cold right down to the bone. Gone was the Mr. Nice Guy, chitchatting at night with one of the lesser beings. And in his place was the boss she'd come to know so well. Mr. Ice.

“I won't make it easy on you,” she said, feeling it was only fair to warn the man that she wouldn't give up without a fight.

“Ms. Fortune,” he said, “you never do anything the easy way.”

T
wo days later, Garrett was beginning to see what Kyra was talking about.

Walking through the expansion division—hell,
his
division, he'd already noticed people staring at him as if he were an apparition. Some looked nervous, as if he were there to lop off heads or personally hand out pink slips. Others were simply too stunned to return a simple greeting when he smiled and said good morning. And a couple of people paid no attention to him at all, leaving him to wonder if they even knew who the hell he was.

Irritation bubbled inside him. Damn it, he hated to admit that Kyra Fortune was right. But now that he was
actually noticing what was going on outside the walls of his own office, he was forced to. Carol had always been so efficient, so on top of everything, he'd never really noticed how much of his world she ran.

Garrett was annoyed to have to acknowledge that Kyra Fortune had seen something he'd missed.

Muted sunlight streamed through the tinted windows surrounding the busy floor. At tiny cubicles and paper-cluttered desks, people hunched over their work or answered the ringing phones. Piped-in music battled for precedence over the sounds of people talking and typing.

And as he walked through it all, he realized he was just another distraction.

Damn it, he
had
been locked away too long. He'd lost touch with his team.

Oh, he met with a select few once a week, but the men and women who manned the glass cubicles sprawled across the steel-gray carpet were strangers to him. And he couldn't understand how he'd let that happen.

He hadn't set out to be alone in an ivory tower. But that was exactly where he was.

Now all he had to do was figure out how to change things.

 

“C'mon, Kyra, let it go for awhile. Relax. Have a drink. Dance.”

Kyra sighed, picked up her margarita and looked over the rim of the glass at her friend, Isabella Sanchez. Isa's long, dark hair was a riot of curls around her pretty
face. Her dark brown eyes were big and expressive, and her full mouth was turned up in a teasing smile.

But tonight not even her best friend could wangle an answering smile out of Kyra. “I'm just not in the mood, Isa. I shouldn't have come out tonight. I'm only going to be a supreme downer.” She shook her head, set her glass on the scarred tabletop and leaned back in her chair.

“Girl, you're letting him win.”

“He's going to win anyway,” Kyra muttered, straightening up at the mere reference to Garrett Wolff. She'd already told Isa about the confrontation with her boss two days ago. And because she was a great friend, she'd promptly insisted on taking Kyra out to unwind.

Too bad it wasn't working.

Not even the atmosphere of Rio's, an upscale bar and restaurant, was enough to lift Kyra's black mood. All around them people sat at round tables dotting the gleaming wood floor. Iron wall sconces shone with soft light, as did the cream-colored glass balls that hung on silver chains draped from beams in the ceiling.

Cocktail waitresses in black shorts and yellow T-shirts dipped and swayed as they moved through the crowd, carrying loaded trays of drinks and nachos. In the far corner a country and western band swung into a fast-tempo tune that had couples streaming toward the large square dance floor.

Against one wall a long, intricately carved mahogany bar was manned by three bartenders hustling to keep up with demand. A wall of mirrors backed the bar and reflected the room, so that it seemed to go on forever.

Isa reached across the table and patted Kyra's hand. “Don't let him get to you like this.”

“Can't help it,” she admitted, and dragged one fingernail through the circle of water left by her glass on the tabletop. Staring blindly at the path of her scarlet nail, she muttered, “He's going to fire me.”

“You don't know that.”

She laughed shortly, despite the sinking sensation inside. “Sure I do.” Reaching out, she snagged a tortilla chip, then sat back in her chair and nibbled it. “He's hated me since day one.”

“You don't know that, either.”

“Please. He ignores me in meetings and practically runs the other way if he happens to see me in a hallway.”

“Hmm…” Isa smiled, took a sip of her drink and set it down again.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

Her best friend shrugged and smiled. “Just hmm…”

“There's more.”

“I'm only thinking that maybe he's not avoiding you because he hates you, but because he's attracted to you.”

Kyra choked on a piece of chip. Coughing wildly, she held up one hand, grabbed her margarita and took a gulp. Still choking, eyes watering, she stared at the other woman. “Are you nuts?”

Laughing now, Isa shook her head and winked at a nearby man when he turned to look at her. Then, focusing on Kyra again, she said, “Sexual tension can erupt in the weirdest places.”

Kyra felt a rush shoot straight through her. Her
friend's words echoed over and over in her mind, and Kyra tried, desperately, to think about them objectively. But there was just no way.

“This isn't about sexual tension,” she snapped, then winced and lowered her voice as she leaned across the table. “Trust me when I say neither one of us is feeling anything like that.”

“Uh-huh.”

Disbelief rang in Isa's tone, and Kyra didn't know how to convince her friend. Especially when there was a slim, fragile, wispy, almost nonexistent thread of worry unspooling inside her. Fine. Garrett was gorgeous. And just maybe, under other, very different circumstances, there might have been something between them.

In a different life.

On a different planet.

In another universe.

Oh, boy.

“I see that look,” Isa said with an air of triumph.

“What look?”

“The look that says, ‘I might be interested.'”

“I'm not.”

“Sure.”

“And even if I were,” Kyra hedged, “he isn't.”

“Okay.”

“Stop agreeing with me.”

“Whatever you say.”

Kyra's eyes narrowed. “You're doing this deliberately.”

“Yeah,” Isa said, laughing. “But it got your mind off everything else, didn't it?”

Yes, it had. However, her mind was probably safer worrying about being fired than it was thinking about Garrett Wolff in a sexual way. She'd spent the last two days waiting for the other shoe to drop. She'd half expected to be called into his office for the review he'd promised her and then be given a hearty handshake and a severance check.

Her nerves were stretched tight and every breath felt like an Olympic event. She couldn't take much more of this. Plus, Garrett had been acting differently the last couple of days, too. He'd come out of his office and strolled through the division often enough to start making
other
people nervous. All of a sudden he was paying attention. Talking to people. Listening to people.

And none of that could be good.

There was something else going on here. Something he was planning.

She just wished she knew what it was.

“You're thinking again,” Isa said, reaching across the table to slap Kyra's shoulder. “Cut it out.”

“Okay, okay.” Shaking her head, she took a deep breath, blew it out and said, “You're right. No more thinking about Garrett Wolff. No more thinking about work. What's the point, right?”

“Right.”

“I mean, if I'm going to be fired, thinking about it won't change anything, right?”

“Right.” Isa nodded and gave her an encouraging grin.

“And if I'm living out of a shopping cart by this time next month, I'll survive, right?”

Isa laughed outright. “You really should have gone for a drama degree instead of business.”

“Fine, fine.” She picked up her margarita for another sip, then smiled as she set it down. “No drama. No thinking.”

“Atta girl.”

Across the room, the band launched into a fast-paced song with a pounding, staccato rhythm that had even Kyra's toes tapping.

“Come on,” Isa said, standing up and grinning. “It's a line dance. Let's go.”

She thought about it for a second or two. She hadn't been in the mood for company tonight. Hadn't wanted to come out and join the world. She'd wanted nothing more than to curl up in the dark quiet of her condo and concentrate on the misery being heaped on her.

But now that she was here, the world was looking a little friendlier. She wasn't sure if it was Isa's influence or the margarita, but whatever it was, it beat the heck out of sitting home alone, brooding.

Jumping to her feet, Kyra said, “Good idea.” If she was dancing, she wouldn't be thinking. And right now that sounded like a plan.

She followed Isa through the crowd and took her place in the long line of dancers already moving through an intricate ten-step routine. Kyra swung her hair out of her eyes, laughed aloud and slid into the moves with practiced ease, letting go of everything in the sheer enjoyment of the music washing over her.

Boots stomped against the floor, hands clapped,
dancers shouted and the band played faster, challenging them all to increase the pace.

 

Garrett stood at the edge of the dance floor and watched Kyra move. And damn, the woman had some great moves.

She wore a long-sleeved, red silk blouse, dark blue jeans that clung to her shapely legs like a lover's hands, and shiny black boots. Her hips swayed with the beat and her feet flew, keeping up with the complicated steps of the dance. He watched her toss her head back and laugh, and he was caught by the way her eyes shone and her whole face lit up with pleasure.

He'd never seen Kyra like this.

Always, at the office, she was the career-committed female, on the way up. She was good at her job and concentrated on the work. She was usually pleasant, always efficient and completely annoying. And still he'd noticed her.

Hadn't wanted to, but how could he have helped it? Any man would have been drawn to the scent of her. The look of her, softly feminine in slacks and jackets that looked as if they'd been designed especially for her.

At Voltage, she was an irritant who touched him in ways he didn't like to think about.

But here at Rio's she was someone else entirely. And something inside him tightened into a knot of hunger so raw, so strong, it surprised even him.

He'd only dropped by the club to see the owner, an old friend from college. But he'd been trapped there the moment he saw Kyra headed for the dance floor.

As the song ended, the band jumped quickly into another, not wanting to lose the crowd up dancing. Kyra and the dark-haired woman she was talking to automatically started moving again, keeping their places in the long line of dancers.

And almost before Garrett knew it, he was stepping up beside the tall blonde with the beautiful eyes.

She laughed, spun, kicked her right heel, then looked up at him, and all semblance of joy drained from her face. Her shining eyes went flat and cool and suspicious.

He was surprised to realize he didn't like the fact she was so upset at running into him.

“Ms. Fortune,” he said, speaking loud enough to be heard over the band.

“Mr. Wolff,” she muttered, then started backing off the floor.

Damn it. She couldn't get away fast enough. He never should have talked to her. Should have just left. But how the hell could he have done that after seeing her smile? Laugh? Dance? “Going somewhere?” he asked.

“I'm tired.”

“You don't look tired.” Just eager to escape.

She blew out a disgusted breath that ruffled the fringe of bangs on her forehead. “You know, we're not at the office. I don't
have
to talk to you.”

That stung. And that fact, too, surprised the hell out of him. He scrubbed the back of his neck. “We're not at the office, so why don't you drop the attitude?”

Her head snapped back and her blue-green eyes shot
sparks. “If you don't like my attitude, why are you talking to me?”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” he muttered, though at the moment he was having a hard time remembering just why he'd followed his instinct to approach her. Then his gaze dropped, and he looked her up and down slowly, and he remembered.

This was a different Kyra from the one he knew, and damned if she didn't appeal to him on all sorts of levels.

Another dancer bumped into her, and Garrett reached out to steady her. At the slight contact, heat swept up his arm and ricocheted around his chest. She sucked in a breath and shook herself loose from his grasp. But her eyes glistened and her face was flushed.

“Kyra,” the pretty brunette shouted from close by. “Everything okay?”

“Fine.” She waved a hand at her friend, then shifted her gaze back to Garrett. “If you'll excuse me—”

She was leaving, and suddenly he didn't want her to go. “Not afraid, are you?”

She stiffened and he could almost see her temper spike.

“Of you?”

“That's the question.”

She snorted. “Hardly.”

“Then stay,” he said, holding out one hand. “Dance.”

She looked from his eyes to his hand and back again. “Why should I?”

He shrugged. “Music's too good to waste?”

Her lips twitched and she looked at him with something a little closer to curiosity than animosity.

“Good point.”

“And hey,” he said, pushing the small advantage he seemed to have, “there's always the chance that you'll dance me into the ground.”

“There is that.”

“A
small
chance.”

“We'll see about that.” She grabbed his hand and let him pull her back onto the dance floor. Then she took her place in line and fell into the steps of the dance as if it was instinctive.