“You want to see me?” Wendy asked the older pair brightly.
María decided to impress Marcos’s position upon Wendy’s young soul. “Marcos has decided to start you out as a waitress, dear.”
The idea terrified her. She hadn’t a clue how to wait tables. Were they pulling her leg?
“A waitress,” Wendy repeated, looking from one face to the next and then back again.
They had to be kidding, right? She wasn’t cut out for that kind of job. And it looked like Marcos Mendoza thought the same thing.
Well, she’d be damned if she let herself prove him right.
Unable to hold it in any longer, Marcos threw up his hands in complete exasperation. He leaned in closer to his aunt, whispering into her ear, “I told you this wasn’t going to work.”
But rather than finally agree, as he’d fully expected, María Mendoza patted his arm reassuringly with a look brimming with complete trust.
“And I told you, you just have to give it enough time, Marcos.”
Marcos frowned and shook his head. “I doubt there’s that much time in the universe,” he informed his aunt.
“Think of it as a challenge, then,” María coaxed softly. And firmly.
The look in the older woman’s eyes told him that his aunt wasn’t about to change her mind. He was stuck with this. Stuck with Little Miss The-World-Owes-Me-a-Living and there was no getting out of it, short of quitting. And he wasn’t about to cut off his nose to spite his face.
Marcos studied Wendy for a long moment. The young woman probably had no idea what it was like to be hungry, or to want something so badly you put aside every penny you earned in order to save up for it. Looking at her, he figured it was safe to say that she probably hadn’t known anything but instant gratification all her life. The word gratification shimmered in his mind’s eye, suggesting other things, things that had nothing to do with Red. Gratification of a completely different variety.
Marcos shook off the thought and silently ordered himself to get back on track.
When he was at Red, nothing existed beyond its doors. And there was nothing more important than keeping the place running well and its patrons happy.
And if he had to bend Miss Rich-and-Doesn’t-Give-a-Damn into a pretzel to keep accomplishing that, then Marcos sincerely hoped for her sake that she was flexible because he intended to do just that.
“Come with me,” Marcos said crisply. “I’ll show you where your locker is and then we’ll see about getting you a uniform.”
Although, glancing at her up close and personal, he doubted whether a uniform that would fit the particular requirements of her figure was anywhere on the premises. He was going to have to put in a special order.
It was starting already.
Wendy fell into place beside him. “So I’m definitely going to be a waitress?”
“Yes,” he answered tersely, “You’re still going to be a waitress.”
But, with any luck, you won’t be one for long, he added silently, for once tapping into his rather limited supply of optimism.
Chapter Two
April
“Hell of a mess, isn’t it?” Andrew Fortune commented to his older brother, Jeremy, who was throwing a travel bag with a few essentials into the back of the car they were taking on their rather abbreviated road trip. It was a trip born of necessity, not pleasure.
Drew, Jeremy knew, was referring to the situation their entire family found themselves in. He laughed shortly, getting into the passenger seat.
“Hey, just because our last name’s Fortune doesn’t necessarily mean that the kind of fortune we’re going to run into is always going to be good.”
“I’d settle for half-good,” his newlywed brother said. “As a matter of fact, thinking back on things, I don’t know about you, but I’d settle for just some peace and quiet for a change.”
Drew was anxious to get started—and even more anxious to get back. He was also afraid that this trip might not turn out the way they hoped that it would.
“If that happened, you’d probably go stir crazy in a week,” Jeremy predicted with a short laugh. And then he grew serious. Their father was seventy-five. When last seen, he’d been in great shape. Maybe he still was. In any event, it wasn’t going to take two of them to bring him back. If that was their father the sheriff in Haggerty had found. “Listen, I can make this trip alone. You can stay behind and keep your blushing new bride company. You’ve only been married for a couple of months. These are the good times, or so they tell me. For all we know, this trip might just be a wild-goose chase. No need to drag you away.”
Drew wasn’t about to be swayed. “Deanna understands,” he assured Jeremy, referring to his wife. “She wants to see the old man back where he belongs as much as I do. As much as we all do,” he amended.
“You’ve got a good woman there,” Jeremy commended, then murmured under his breath, “And with any luck, so will I. Soon.”
Drew knew that Jeremy was referring to Kirsten Allen, the woman who had managed to wedge herself into his physician brother’s heart. They had recently gotten engaged. “Maybe you should be the one to stay here,” he suggested.
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Jeremy told him. If this man they were going to check out turned out to be their missing father, they would most likely need a doctor, and that would be him.
“You ready?” Drew asked, his hand poised to turn the key in the ignition.
“Let’s go,” Jeremy gestured toward the open road.
The sheriff had responded to the missing person bulletin they had posted and said that he might have found their father in town. They’d almost given up hope when they’d found their father’s sedan, abandoned and smashed, so this was definitely a turn for the better.
“Think that homeless man really is Dad?” Jeremy did his best not to sound as nervous as he felt.
Drew hated getting his hopes up, but at the same time, he needed to be optimistic. “Sure looked like it might be from that photo the sheriff emailed. A lot less dapper and pretty disheveled, but that definitely looked like Dad’s face to me. Anyway, Lily’s sure it’s him,” he added, referring to the woman his father was supposed to have married the day he disappeared, leaving a churchful of confused and concerned people in his wake.
Formerly married to Ryan Fortune, their father’s cousin, the still exceedingly attractive Lily Cassidy Fortune had turned to William in her grief when her husband died of a brain tumor six years ago. Their friendship slowly blossomed into something more. But now the wedding was on hold—indefinitely.
Drew glanced at his older brother, looking for some insight. The sheriff had said that the homeless man was distraught, saying over and over again that he needed to find his baby. “What do you think all that talk about looking for his baby might mean?”
Jeremy hadn’t a clue, although, he reasoned, it might have something to do with his amnesia. Maybe the last thing William Fortune had seen before he lost his memory was the baby they had since discovered. A baby whose origins was shrouded in as much mystery as their father’s sudden disappearance.
“The only baby we’ve seen recently is the one that was found by the groundskeeper at the church around the same time Dad disappeared,” Jeremy commented. Currently, he and his fiancée, Kirsten, had temporary custody until the baby’s parents could be located. There was talk that one of the Fortune men might have fathered the child, but he couldn’t see how that actually connected to his father. Right now, there were far more questions floating around than answers.
Shaking his head, Jeremy laughed shortly. “Wouldn’t it be something if the baby turned out to be Dad’s?”
Drew frowned. “Don’t be an idiot, Jer. Dad’s a one-woman man and he picked Lily. There’s no way he would have fathered another woman’s baby.”
Jeremy inclined his head, conceding the point. But there was still a glaring question left. “So why did he disappear?”
“Hell if I know.” O
ut of town now, he stepped down on the accelerator, picking up speed. “When he gets his memory back, we’ll ask him.”
“If he gets him memory back,” Jeremy cautiously qualified.
Trust Jeremy to ground him in reality. “Yeah, there’s that, too,” Drew conceded. “For Lily’s sake, I hope this guy does turn out to be Dad and that his memory loss is just temporary.”
Amnesia was a tricky condition, and if William was in fact suffering from it, there was no knowing how long it would last—or if it would ever clear up.
“Amen to that.”
Drew gave him a long glance, surprised. “You turning religious on me, Jeremy?”
Jeremy’s shoulders rose and fell in a dismissive shrug. “Everyone needs a little help every now and then,” he allowed. “In our family’s case, I think we could stand to use an extra dose of it.”
This is more like it. Wendy wove her way around the tables, heading toward the ones that comprised her station. Working at Red had turned out to be a far better fit for her than she’d initially expected.
Her parents had first sent her to work at the Fortune Foundation, located right here in Red Rock. It had taken her only a couple of weeks to discover that she was psychologically allergic to claustrophobic-size offices. She felt too confined, too hemmed in. She just didn’t belong in a nine-to-five job inside a building whose windows didn’t open.
Granted, out here in the spacious dining area there weren’t any windows to speak of, either, but the windows in the front of the restaurant kept the space bright and airy as did the ones in Marcos’s office.
That room was actually smaller than her office at the Foundation, but somehow, it still felt a lot more airy.
That probably had something to do with the man in it.
If the word gorgeous in the dictionary had a photo next to it, she had no doubts that it would be Marcos’s.
Especially if he was smiling.
She’d seen Marcos smiling—not at her, of course. For some reason, she only seemed to elicit frowns from the man whenever he turned his attention to her. But when he was mingling with Red’s patrons, he always had a wide, sexier-than-sin smile on his lips.
Despite the hectic pace during business hours, she’d managed to observe him with the customers—in particular the female patrons—and Marcos was nothing if not charismatic. He even smiled at the kitchen help and some of the other staff.
Smiled, she thought, at everyone but her.
Boss or not, she was determined to find out what it was about her that seemed to coax those dour looks from him.
Wendy wasn’t used to a man deliberately scowling at her instead of going out of his way to curry her favor and approval. All of her life she’d been the recipient of admiring looks, wide grins, broad winks and a great deal of fawning.
A lot more fawning than she actually cared for. But that was predominantly because she was her father’s daughter and the fawning person usually thought that he could flatter her into getting an audience with the famous Fortune.
As if, she thought with a toss of her head that managed to loosen her bound-up hair a little.
Wendy paused and sighed. That was the part she didn’t care for. She liked having her hair loose, flowing. But those were the rules. Customers, Marcos had told her when he’d handed her a barrette, didn’t like finding hair in their meals.
When she’d asked, “Even if it’s mine?” it had been meant as a joke, but Marcos had snapped no at her, and the look in his eyes told her that he thought she was genuinely a few cards short of an actual deck.
Obviously when God had given the man an extra dose of sexiness, He had subtracted any and all fragments of humor. From their interactions, she’d come away with the feeling that Marcos Mendoza was born without a funny bone.
Too bad, because, aside from that, the man was practically perfect in every way. But he fell short of the mark to ever have a serious chance at entering her daydreams.
A man without a sense of humor was like a day without sunshine. Not really too pleasant.
Reaching her station, Wendy smiled warmly at the people the hostess had just seated. After working here for a little more than a month, she was beginning to recognize familiar faces and learn their names.
This particular table seated six and each chair was filled by a virile, rugged-looking wrangler who appeared as if he’d ridden up to the restaurant’s doors on a horse rather the extra-wide truck that was now parked in the front lot.
Her brown eyes traveled from one member of the group to another, silently greeting them even before she said, “Hi, boys, what’ll it be?”
The tallest of the men held his unopened menu before him, his eyes slowly drifting over the length of her torso. “Dunno about my friends, but I’m suddenly in the mood for a little Georgia peach,” he told her.
Word must have gotten around that she was from Atlanta. Either that, she thought, or her accent gave her away. In any case, this certainly wasn’t the first time she’d been hit on, although it was the first time she’d been hit on at Red.
Unfazed, Wendy’s eyes sparkled as she laughed. “Sorry, but that’s not on the menu.”
“Wasn’t thinking of having it here,” the wrangler answered. His grin grew wider. “What are you doing later, after you get off?”
“Not being with you,” Wendy answered, her smile just as wide, her tone just as friendly as it had been before. But there was no mistaking the fact that she had no intention of getting together with the insistent patron.
“Looks like the little lady’s got your number, Dave,” one of his friends hooted, tickled. “She’s a feisty one, this one.” There was admiration in the other man’s voice.
Dave, apparently, wasn’t quite ready to give up just yet.
“You sure?” he asked, catching Wendy by the wrist to draw her attention away from the others at the table and back to him. “You really don’t know what you’re missing out on.”
“Guess that’ll just have to be my loss,” Wendy replied, fisting her hand as she began to yank her wrist free.
“C’mon, Dave, settle down,” another one of his tablemates urged.
Before anyone else could chime in, Wendy suddenly found herself being physically moved aside and manually separated from the overzealous cowboy. To her surprise, Marcos had placed himself between them, facing the amorous customer. His rigid posture told her he was none too happy about this situation, even before she heard his voice.
“Is there some kind of problem here?” Marcos asked the man, keeping his voice even and the edge of his anger visible but under wraps.
“No, no problem,” the cowboy assured him, raising his hands up in the universal symbol indicating complete surrender.
“Good,” Marcos replied with a quick nod. Turning to see who was in the immediate vicinity, he called out to the closest waitress. “Eva.”
Recording an order, the woman looked up and raised a single quizzical eyebrow when she saw who had called her name.
Marcos indicated the people at the table. “When you’re done over there, take this table’s orders, please.”
Okay, hold it, Wendy thought, growing annoyed. If he thought he could just shoo her away like an inconsequential fly just because a customer had got ten a little grabby, Mr. Marcos Mendoza was in for a big surprise. She wasn’t about to be dismissed that easily—especially not since she had the impression that the restaurant manager would back her up.
“There’s no need to call in anyone else,” she told him cheerfully, her smile never wavering. “This is my station, I can take their order.”
Marcos felt his temper flaring. He was not nearly as laid-back as he had to pretend to be when he was at Red. But exploding in front of a roomful of diners wasn’t something he wanted to do. Aside from it being bad for business, it was guaranteed to get back to his aunt and uncle within five minutes. He didn’t want them regretting having hired him.
The way he grossly regretted that they had hired this Fortune woman
, favor or no favor.
“Then do it,” he instructed tersely. Before leaving, Marcos paused for a moment to issue her a silent warning that he didn’t want any more trouble from her or because of her.
The moment Marcos was out of earshot, the man who had started the dust-up gave her a sheepish grin. “Sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble with your boss.”
Readying the electronic board she’d been given to note down the various orders, Wendy glanced over her shoulder at Marcos’s broad, disappearing back.
“You didn’t.” She turned back to face the men at the table. “He’s had it in for me ever since I started working here.”
“Anything we can do?” another one of the patrons at the table asked seriously.
“Yes,” she answered cheerfully. “You can order. Now, what’ll it be, gentlemen?”
This time, they gave her their orders without any further incident.
Wendy Fortune was trouble.
Marcos had known in his gut she would be. Knew it the very first time he laid eyes on her. The patrons, his uncle had pointed out after observing her on the floor the second day she was on duty, liked her.
But that, Marcos thought, was part of the problem. Some of the male patrons seemed to like her too much.
He supposed, if he were an impartial observer, he couldn’t exactly blame them. She had a supple figure that caught a man’s attention, even hidden beneath the wide, colorful skirt and white, off-the-shoulder peasant blouse that the female waitstaff wore. Couple that with her soft laugh and that Southern accent of hers and the men were drawn in like hapless fish in an overstocked lake.
When word of mouth about the new “knockout of a waitress” spread, business at Red started booming even more than usual.
He wouldn’t have minded what was happening if—
If?
What if?
Was it because he was annoyed that business had picked up, not dropped off the way he’d feared when he’d predicted that the Fortune girl would be bad for Red?
Fortune's Just Desserts Page 2
