other legal matters for the Fortune Corporation. Kristina was the product of Nate’s second marriage to warm, down-to-earth Barbara, the polar opposite of Sheila.
Julia didn’t care for Sheila Fortune, who had been sharp and condescending whenever she swept into the office. But being Michael’s employee, Julia certainly wasn’t about to join in trashing his mother.
Kristina didn’t expect her to. She was perfectly content to trash her father’s first wife on her own. “Truly, I don’t know how my sister and brothers stood living with Sheila when they were growing up, even part of the time. My dad said Sheila deliberately got pregnant with Mike and Kyle and Jane to insure herself eternal child support, not to mention a cushy lifetime of alimony that—”
To Julia’s immense relief, the telephone rang, cutting Kristina off in midtirade. While Julia answered the call, Kristina grabbed the magazine and left the office with a quick wave.
The rest of the morning was exceptionally busy, and Julia was in the midst of compiling copies of several targeted marketing surveys conducted by the company when Lynn, Margaret and Diana, assistants to other Fortune executives, arrived in her office.
“Time for lunch,” Lynn announced. “We’re debating between the Loon Café, where we can watch the yuppies eat while they talk on their cellular phones, or the mall. What’s your pleasure?”
Julia visibly started. “I had no idea it was this late!”
“No wonder. You’re buried under a ton of paperwork,” Diana observed. “But even slaves have to eat, so climb out from under it and come with us.”
The women made a point of lunching together at least once or twice a week, and Julia was always included. She hated to forgo their lunch date today, but these surveys were so time-consuming….
Michael chose that moment to enter her office. His expression could be interpreted as either questioning or accusing.
Julia chose to interpret it as questioning. “I was just thinking about going to lunch,” she explained.
“Lunch?” Michael echoed, as if the concept were unfamiliar to him.
Julia saw her friends exchange glances. “I’ll finish these surveys when I get back,” she said, her decision made. She was not a slave and intended to prove it.
“Then I suppose I’ll have to wait until after you get back to ask you to download these files.” Michael placed a stack of diskettes on her desk. Without another word, he turned and went back into his office.
“Brr! The temperature always drops at least twenty-five degrees when he’s in a room.” Margaret pretended to shiver. “The man is an emotional refrigerator.”
“Think of the career he could have in the frozen-food industry!” Diana said with a chuckle.
“He’s sort of in a bad mood today.” Julia came to Michael’s defense. Having seen that eligible-bachelor list and guessing the uproar it was going to generate, she figured he was entitled to one. “He has a lot on his mind.”
The four women left the office and started down the corridor toward the elevators.
“How do you tell his bad moods from his good ones?” Lynn queried. “Have you ever actually seen the man smile?”
“He is very reserved,” Julia explained. “But when you get to know him well, he is really a nice guy.” She was certain that was true, though she had yet to get to know him well.
“If you say so,” Margaret said doubtfully. “Hey, I’m casting my vote for the mall. There’s a fifty-percent-off sale at Lindstroms’ starting today….”
It wasn’t until later, when Julia was on her way home at the end of the day, that she had time to think about Kristina’s uncensored comments on Sheila Fortune, the woman who’d married and bitterly divorced Michael’s father.
Julia rode the bus to and from work because her job status did not include a parking place in the Fortune Building and the cost of all-day parking in town was prohibitive. But she didn’t mind the bus rides. If she didn’t have a book to read, she sat and gazed out the window, absorbed in thought. Today she did have a book—a thriller about a crime-solving coroner—but she laid it on her lap and let her mind drift to Michael Fortune.
Hearing those few basic facts about Sheila and Nate Fortune’s rancorous marriage and divorce did explain Michael’s uncompromising view of marriage, Julia mused.
He was adamantly against it. Julia had never heard anybody express such strong antimarriage views. And he certainly hadn’t altered his perspective this past year, during which three members of his family had decided to marry.
He had distanced himself as much as possible from the events. Each time—when his cousin Caroline married Nick Valkov, when his brother Kyle married Samantha Rawlings and when Caroline’s sister Allison married Rafe Stone—Michael had sent Julia to select a wedding gift.
“Buy whatever you think is appropriate. I certainly have no ideas and no interest in anything pertaining to marriage,” he’d said, giving her carte blanche with his credit cards. He did not want to see or hear about what she’d bought for the happy couples.
Julia had hoped her selections were acceptable. The nice thank-you notes written to Michael by the brides had given her a warm glow. She sincerely hoped that all three couples would live the proverbial “happily ever after.”
Michael did not share her optimism. Each time, before signing his name to the wedding cards she’d purchased with the gifts, he’d made a sound that was something between a sarcastic laugh and a growl.
“I guess if this is what they really want to do…” he’d said all three times, his tone disapproving. Julia had once heard someone make a similar statement in a similar tone when commenting on a family of acrobats who insisted on working without a safety net.
“Personally, I’d rather be dead than married,” Michael had added all three times, while handing the cards back to her.
“Do you really believe it’s better to be dead than wed?” Julia had paraphrased wryly the third time he’d expressed the sentiment.
“Better dead than wed,” Michael repeated glibly. “Hmm, not bad. I think it has potential as a slogan. Maybe I’ll run it by my cousin Caroline in marketing.”
“Caroline would rather be wed,” Julia murmured. “You bought her a pair of lovely, antique silver candlesticks and signed a wedding card for her a few months ago, remember?”
“I remember signing the card. I have no knowledge of the candlesticks, nor do I care to.”
“Well, Caroline said that she loves them.”
“Good. Since you’re in sync with her tastes, I’ll put you in charge of buying Baby Valkov its welcome-to-the-world gift when the time comes.”
“I’d heard that Caroline was expecting a baby,” Julia murmured.
Everyone in the company knew, because Caroline Fortune Valkov was visibly pregnant. From what Julia heard through the company grapevine, Fortune’s vice president of marketing and her research-chemist husband were as blissfully happy as the card Michael had signed wished them to be.
“That seems to be the way it goes.” Michael looked grim. “Get married and then have a kid, for all the wrong reasons. Of course, some people do it backward—get pregnant and then get married—but the part about the kid being conceived for all the wrong reasons still applies. Doubly so in the shotgun-wedding cases.”
Julia was nonplussed. They’d never had a discussion like this one. And while she had been uncomfortable discussing his family members, she was even more unsettled by his starkly pessimistic views regarding their future. “You don’t believe your cousin and her husband are having a child because they love each other and want to create a family together?”
He’d given