Fortune's Legacy (17 page)

R
eese ran through the lobby of the inn, intent on finding Daisy and why…why… Why it had been so damn easy for her to leave him following their unexpected reunion. On his way out the front door, he slammed into someone coming inside. Muttering a “pardon me,” he tried shifting by.

“Reese?”

He halted, staring at the woman. “Megan?” His older sister. “What are you doing here?”

She frowned. “I'm here to see you! The Red Rock grapevine says you were carjacked by Jason Jamison today as he was escaping with two million dollars in ransom.”

Today? Reese blinked. That happened today? It seemed ages ago and insignificant when compared to what came afterward. When he'd touched Daisy, kissed her, made love to her… Lost her. Damn.

“Gotta go, Megs.” He started moving past her again.

She latched on to him. “Not so fast! I don't know why you came to Red Rock in the first place.”

“To…” An image of him driving the Lexus popped into Reese's mind. In the seat beside him, the items he'd brought to remind Megan her life was in L.A. The Pacific sand, the swizzle stick, the sale flyer from her favorite shoe boutique in Beverly Hills. He'd told himself he'd come to Red Rock to tell her that love was a sham and that the magic never lasted.

But the truth was, he hadn't been taking the direct route to his sister. When he'd come across Jason Jamison and Daisy's car accident, he'd been wandering down Memory Lane—specifically, the back roads that would have led him to Daisy's father's farm.

He'd been hoping to see Daisy.

“Why haven't you come home?” he asked Megan abruptly.

“I've been telling you over the phone for six months. I'm in love. Nash Ridley is the man I've been looking for all my life.”

“It's magic.”

“Yes.”

Closing his eyes, Reese threw back his head. “Daisy,” he murmured. “How could I have been so dense?”

Other women hadn't held his attention, because the one, his one, had been Daisy. It was his misfor
tune to have met her when he was eighteen and too full of himself and his future plans to realize how special, how wonderful, how magical the two of them were together.

It wasn't that there was no such thing as love. It had been here in Red Rock.

“Are you mumbling about Daisy Frances?”

Reese opened his eyes and looked at his sister. “Yeah. I guess both of us should have spent more time in Texas all these years.” But he'd find a way to change that. The things that had made him and Daisy so different before, her rural to his urban, her Texan to his Californian, didn't matter now that they were all grown up.

“Daisy hasn't been living in Texas.”

“Huh? What are you talking about, Megs?”

“It's the Red Rock grapevine that's been talking. Your Daisy has been living in Los Angeles. She's only back on the farm to help while her father has hip surgery.”

“She's been in L.A.?”

“Yep. She's a corporate attorney, with offices in a high-rise just a couple blocks from yours.”

And she'd never contacted him? She had to know he was in the area. She had known, he realized, thinking of that article she'd mentioned she'd seen about him in
L.A. Business Monthly.

Apparently, Daisy had been as certain as he that the magic never lasted.

“Well, too damn bad,” he said aloud. He'd just have to change her mind. After all, he was trained in the art of the hostile takeover.

 

Daisy had borrowed a car to drive back to the farm. Unfortunately, she'd borrowed it from a contemporary of her father's, and the classic VW Bug was suffering pangs of middle age. As she'd been sputtering down the road, one wheel had fallen off, leaving her half in and half out of a shallow gulley.

With a sigh, she shut the driver's door and patted the rusted metal. In her other hand she gripped a flashlight she'd found on the floor. “You did your best,” she told the car. “That's all anyone can expect.”

It was how she'd been able to walk away from Reese without sadness. By not expecting more than a brief reprise of what they'd once shared, she'd not been hurt.

In the past fifteen years she'd had lousy luck with men, so there'd been no reason to hope a reunion with Reese would prove different.

“Maaw!”

The unexpected moan had her jumping out of her skin.

“Maaw!”

Daisy flicked on the flashlight, and waved it through the dark. “You!” she said, spotlighting what looked like the same cow that had wandered across
her path earlier that day. “Haven't you caused enough trouble?”

The creature ambled nearer. “Maaw! Maaw!”

The plaintive sound pulled at Daisy's heart. “Maaw maaw back at ya,” she said. The cow stood in the middle of the road as it had that morning, and for a moment Daisy felt as lost as it looked. “Okay, I miss him,” she whispered. “Don't tell, but I already miss him.”

The sound of a car speeding down the road had Daisy glancing over her shoulder. She sidled closer to the VW. “Come on, cow, get out of the way.”

“Maaw!”

Anxiety thinned Daisy's voice as headlights came around a curve. “Watch out!” Her eyes squeezed shut as brakes screamed.

Then there was silence, the sound of a car door opening, a litany of swear words in a male voice.

Daisy opened her eyes and played the flashlight beam toward the road. The cow was fine. The car was fine. The man—Reese—appeared fine, too, but spitting mad.

“You scared the hell out of me!” he yelled, stomping over to grab her arm. “For the second, no, make that the third time today.”

“It was the cow's fault,” Daisy protested. “The first time and this time and…what other time?”

His expression was grim. “When I woke up and
found myself alone in bed. I thought I might have lost you for good.”

Daisy froze. “And that—”

“Scared the hell out of me. I'm not losing you again, do you understand? Not to a carjacker, a car accident or my own inability to recognize magic—the love of a lifetime—when it's staring me in the face.”

She swallowed. “‘The love of a lifetime'?”

“What else would you call it, Ms. Corporate Attorney?”

So he knew then. What she was. Where she'd been living. “I didn't contact you because I was afraid it would tarnish the memory of what we'd had.”

“What we'd had is what everyone else looks for all their lives. What I've been looking for since but had given up on.”

“Reese.” The flashlight dropped as she wound her free arm around his neck. “I had, too. But I love you. I always have.”

“Good answer.” His mouth was warm and sure on hers.

But even over the sensations of the luxuriant kiss she heard a sticky rip and felt pressure on her wrist. She broke away to stare down at her arm in the darkness. “Wha—?”

“Thank my sister. She keeps an emergency kit in her car, which includes a handy dandy roll of duct
tape. Until I can get a ring on your finger, I'm not taking any chances.”

Reese had taped their wrists together. Again. Nothing was going to part them now.

And to ever-practical Daisy Frances, that seemed like a very sensible idea.

 

THE END

Here's a sneak peek…

The Reckoning
by
Christie Ridgway

 

You won't want to miss the conclusion of
THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS: REUNION.
Enjoy this excerpt of Christie Ridgway's

The Reckoning,
the twelfth book in the series

I
nside the rambling Texas ranch house was a profusion of flowers, tables groaning with food and two bars stocked with plenty of liquor. All the makings of one hell of a great party, Emmett Jamison thought from the shadowed corner where he stood. That is, if the guest of honor hadn't been dead.

“I can't believe he's gone,” he overheard a tiny, gray-haired lady by a punch bowl say to her companion. “I just can't believe that Ryan Fortune is gone.”

Emmett's eyes closed. He wished he couldn't believe it. But the older man had been diagnosed with a brain tumor several months before and despite his big, vital personality and all the family and friends who cared about him, just that morning Ryan Fortune's ashes had been spread across the lands of his beloved Double Crown Ranch.

The tragedy of it didn't surprise Emmett. All hope and optimism had been swept out of him months
ago. He expected no happy endings. He was becoming accustomed to funerals.

“Trying out for the undertaker's job?” a new voice murmured in his ear. “You've got the morose expression for it.”

“I don't take offense at your ugly mug,” he answered automatically, “so you shouldn't take offense at my unsmiling one.”

The “ugly” insult didn't have much meat to it though, not when the man who had come up beside him was his cousin, Collin Jamison, and not when all agreed that Collin was a slightly older version of Emmett himself. They were both six feet tall and had the solid build of men whose fitness and training kept them employed—and alive. They wore their dark hair in no-nonsense military cuts and Collin's hazel eyes were only a touch lighter than Emmett's green ones.

“You're not offending me,” Collin replied. “You're worrying me. You've got that let-me-escape-to-the-mountains look about you.”

Emmett shoved his hands in the pockets of his dark trousers. He'd holed himself up in the Sandia Mountains of New Mexico after his brother Christopher's funeral last September. There, he'd tried deadening himself to that latest pain and all the others that had come before, with cheap tequila and stubborn solitude. Neither had lasted long enough. When his father had brought the news that his other brother,
Jason, who had been implicated in Chris's murder, had escaped from jail, Emmett had sobered up and returned to Texas. “When Dad found me in New Mexico, he confiscated the keys to the cabin and threatened to burn the place down.” Though keys wouldn't stop anyone from getting into that shack. “I won't be going back there.”

“Good,” Collin said, then surveyed the crowded room. “I haven't seen Uncle Blake and Aunt Darcy, but it's wall-to-wall people. Are they here?”

Emmett shook his head. “I'm the sole representative of our branch of the Jamisons. Mom and Dad didn't feel comfortable attending, considering their son was the one who kidnapped Ryan's widow just a couple of months back.” Jason's kidnapping of Lily Fortune was what had brought his cousin Collin to Red Rock, Texas. Emmett had called him, looking for help in recovering the woman and in stopping Jason. Only half the job was done.

Collin seemed to read his mind. “We're going to get him, Emmett.”

“
I'm
going to get him,” Emmett corrected, though he and the authorities on the case were fresh out of leads and they both knew it. Though Lily had been recovered, Jason had taken off with the ransom money, killing an FBI agent in the process. There hadn't been a sign of him since.

“You have Lucy to focus on now, Collin. But come hell or high water, I'm not going to let my brother
make a victim of anyone else.” Jason's ugly criminal tally also included the death of his own girlfriend, Melissa, and that of a prison transport guard. Emmett's voice lowered. “If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to make him pay for all the pain he's caused.”

“You're going grim on me again, buddy,” Collin warned softly. “By all means, let's get Jason safely behind bars, but not at the cost of your heart.”

Emmett had to shake his head at that. Falling in love with Lucy had done a number on his tough-natured cousin. “Romance has made you soft. You know I don't have a heart.”

And Emmett didn't feel like talking about it anymore, either. Without bothering to make an excuse, he wandered away from his cousin, avoiding the eyes of those around him. Turning a corner, he almost knocked over an easel that held a poster-sized photo. He reached out a hand to steady the smiling image of Ryan Fortune. “Husband, father, friend,” was printed on the cardboard beneath it. “Loved by all.”

Emmett's fingers lingered on the edge of the poster. Ryan's eyes seemed to glitter as they had in life, and then Emmett felt a warm weight on his shoulder, as if the man was holding him there with a ghostly hand. To tell him something? To remind him of something?

Struck by a new, vague disquiet, Emmett hurried off, heading for the ranch house's foyer. He pushed open the heavy front door, undeterred by a blast of
chilly April wind. The sky was as dark as his mood and it smelled like rain, but he needed fresh air. More, he needed to be alone. He didn't need a reminder of what he owed Ryan.

Loved by all.
That phrase flitted into Emmett's mind as he stepped outside. His brother Chris's headstone read Beloved. Jessica Chandler's family had carved In Loving Memory onto hers.

The last few years had taught that those stock phrases didn't solve one damn thing, though. They didn't make it any easier for the living to carry on. Love didn't make it any easier for the living to carry on. And love certainly didn't wake the dead.

Oblivious to the cool temperature, he leaned against one wall of the covered entryway, staring at the terra-cotta pots filled with flowers that lined the stone walkway in front of him. A few brave blooms were already showing their faces, but in May the April showers would really pay off. Emmett wondered if he'd still be in Red Rock to see it—and then admitted to himself he more than likely wouldn't notice if he was. It had been winter inside him for what seemed like eons now.

From around the corner of the entryway, a soft, rhythmic
thup thup thup
caught his attention. Curious, he shoved his hands deeper in his pockets and drifted down the steps to take a look at what was making the noise.

It was a kid, medium-sized, in an expensive navy
blazer and a pair of khakis with a streak of mud on one knee. Between his shiny loafers was a fist-sized black-and-white ball that the boy tossed upward with one foot three times,
thup thup thup,
before it fell to the stone pathway and he had to start all over again, lifting it with his toe, juggling it for a few moments, then losing it again.

A gust of wind tossed the kid's blond bangs around his forehead and shook a few raindrops out of the low clouds above. The kid looked up, shivered, but went back to his game. The next blast of cold wind started the rain in earnest. Emmett stepped back toward the front door, almost calling to the boy to come inside, but then he shrugged. Hell, the kid wasn't his concern.

He had other priorities.

Behind him, he heard the door open. “Richard?” a female voice called. “Richard, are you out there?”

The kid ducked his head and kept juggling the ball, despite the rain and despite the person obviously seeking him out. Shrugging again, Emmett turned toward the entryway. He'd wanted fresh air, not a fresh soaking. It was time to go back inside, find Lily and mumble some more condolences, then leave.

“Richard?” The voice floated closer.

And then, from around the corner of the house, a woman came into view.

And brought out the sun.

It was just the capricious spring weather, Emmett knew that, but it halted him mid-stride anyway, as a warm beam of light broke through the clouds to spotlight the woman's long blond hair, her soft white dress, her slender, delicate body.

He blinked. She was an angel, a candle, a…

A sign that he needed to get more than three hours sleep a night, he thought, disgusted. Her gaze bounced off Emmett and then zeroed in on the boy.

“Richard—”

“Ricky, I keep telling you,” the kid muttered. “Ricky, Ricky, Ricky.”

The woman's forehead wrinkled and Emmett wondered if she might actually cry. He took a step toward her, driven by the sudden thought that he should comfort her, care for her, something, but then she squared her shoulders and her mouth turned up in a little half smile.

“Well, Ricky-Ricky-Ricky, you shouldn't be outside in the rain.”

“It's not raining anymore.”

Emmett said that. He couldn't believe he'd insinuated himself into the strangers' conversation, but then again he couldn't believe that odd compulsion he'd had to take the woman into his arms, either. More sleep was definitely a necessity.

The woman shot him a puzzled glance, then tipped her face to the sky, like one of those flowers he'd been looking at before. Light bathed her fea
tures, illuminating her clear pale skin, her small nose and her pretty mouth.

He thought of springtime again, actually
remembered
springtime, with its warmth and sweet scents and green newness. His feet took another step closer to her before he stopped them.

“I guess you're right. It isn't raining anymore,” she said, closing her eyes. She swayed a bit, as if slightly unbalanced. “Doesn't the sunshine feel good?”

Emmett refused to answer the question. Instead, he asked, “Who are you?” and was immediately aware he sounded abrupt and hostile—quite a feat for someone as naturally abrupt and hostile as himself. But the woman unsettled him, ruffled him somehow, and he wanted to figure out what it was, exactly, she did to him. And why.

To his surprise, it was the truculent kid who answered. While he had seemed peeved at the woman himself, now he moved to stand between her and Emmett, a purely protective stance. “She's Linda Faraday,” the boy said. “I'm Ricky. Who are
you?
”

Linda Faraday. Her son, Ricky. Emmett's gut tightened. He'd forgotten about them, in the days since Ryan's death. Perhaps it explained the disquiet he'd felt when looking at the older man's photo. And perhaps it was why he'd reacted so strongly to the woman a few minutes before—his subconscious had recognized her and remembered his promise. Not the
one he'd made
for
Ryan, about capturing Jason, but that promise he'd made
to
Ryan.

“Well?” the kid said. “Who are you?”

Emmett took in a long breath, then gazed into Linda Faraday's wide eyes.
Springtime.
He had to shove the thought away before it derailed him. “I'm the man who's going to be looking after you,” he told her.

 

…NOT THE END…