Once a Rebel (17 page)

FATE AND FORTUNE

by Christie Ridgway

A brand-new Fortunes of Texas story

(Part 1 of a 3–part serial)

D
riving along a deserted Hill Country back road, Reese Fortune Lavery was a man on a mission. To achieve his purpose, he'd thought to stock important provisions—the weather page from the
Los Angeles Times,
a plastic baggy filled with soft, grayish-gold Pacific sand and a swizzle stick from the Urbanite Bar & Grill. He'd have bottled a lungful of SoCal smog if he could have figured out a way to do it.

Most important, though, he had with him a flyer advertising an upcoming sale at his sister Megan's favorite shoe-tique on Rodeo Drive.

He glanced over at the stack of lure, bait, tangible logic—call it what you will—sitting on the passenger seat of the Lexus he'd rented. Surely, he and his Golden State souvenirs could convince his sister to forget the Texas ranch hand she claimed to have fallen for.

One look at that 30% Off All Stilettos And San
dals sign, and her so-called “love” would die the sure, swift death of all so-called “loves.” Reese himself hadn't had one last from a hotel penthouse Friday night to an hour beyond a room-service Sunday brunch. He always let the calendar feature on his PalmPilot take the blame for the end of those brief affairs.

Oh, sorry, honey, but I've got to get back to prepare for an early Monday morning meeting.

Since his sister had apparently dumped her PDA at the same time as her L.A. job, it was now up to Reese to be her metaphorical Monday morning meeting.

“The magic doesn't last, Megs,” he said out loud.

Reese was what they called a corporate raider, and he'd often thought of telling those very words to the board members he ousted during hostile takeovers. It was a life philosophy that reminded him not to hold on to things and people too tightly. The magic doesn't last.

Not even in the Lone Star State.

Reese unrolled his window and took a breath of Texas air. It smelled fresh and green, a smell that took him back fifteen years. This part of the state was Fortune—his family on his mother's side—country, and he'd been introduced to it and the combustible reaction of hay and hormones the summer before college.

That's why these surroundings, while a world
away from the steel, sand and starlets of L.A., weren't wholly unfamiliar. The hilly, rural landscape was dotted with cedars, oaks and scrub brush. He'd passed a herd of longhorns a curve-and-a-half back, along with those silly looking mini-donkeys he'd gaped at fifteen years ago.

Mini-donkeys. Daisy had gaped at him when he'd used the description, then laughed so hard he'd thought she'd split the seams of the skimpy halter top she'd been wearing. Burros, she'd finally managed to get out, and their job was to protect the herds from coyotes.

Reese knew of coyotes, even after growing up in a mansions-aplenty neighborhood in Bel Air. There, coyotes ate garbage and left-out dog food and the occasional stray cat. Apparently, in Texas they grew big enough to take down an entire day's servings of Big Macs.

The things one could learn from a farmer's daughter…

Reese was grinning to himself as he rounded yet another curve. Then his mouth slammed down on the smile as his right foot slammed down on the brakes.

Brake pad on metal screeched. Tires gave up a layer of skin to the road. The odor of burning rubber joined the eerie quiet as Reese's car halted just short of a mangle of sedan and rusty Ford pickup. Nose-to-crumpled-nose, the vehicles were stretched
across the narrow lane, blocking passage in both directions.

The sound of Reese's door popping open was loud in the ominous silence. From the side of the road, a placid brown-and-white beast—Heifer? Steer? Mare? Reese could never keep that livestock lingo straight—turned its head to stare at him as he sprinted toward the tangle of bumpers and fenders.

A woman was in the driver's seat of the Ford. Long ripples of sun-streaked brown hair covered her face. A river of hair that reminded him of the cool creek he'd stuck his eighteen-year-old feet in, when a warm Daisy sat in the curve of his arm and all things seemed possible. This woman's wrists were crossed on the steering wheel, her forehead resting against them.

Reese's gut lurched. “Are you all right?” he said through the half-open window.

She lifted her head and shook it, as if puzzled by the urgency in his voice. Her hair still partially covered her face. “Okay. Okay, I think. The cow crossed the road…” Her hand gestured to the nondescript sedan that appeared to be fatally wounded by her truck and vice versa.

Through the cracked windshield of the car, Reese could see another figure slumped over another steering wheel. Since the truck's driver seemed to be functioning, he hurried toward the sedan, pulling his cell phone from the pocket of his slacks.

Still no service, he realized. He'd already tried to use it earlier. Shoving the phone back in his pocket, he peered through the passenger-side window at the unmoving man in the driver's seat. “You okay?” he called, knocking on the glass.

The guy didn't move. Reese hurried around the back bumper to the other side, aware that the woman in the truck had opened her door and was climbing out.

“Hey, you!” Reese called again, trying to open the driver's door. It was locked and the man didn't stir.

“Is something the matter with him?” It was her voice; it was anxious-sounding and husky, as if she'd swallowed her fear from the accident and it hadn't gone down easy.

“I don't—” Glancing over his shoulder, Reese froze.

Now it was his turn to shake his head. He had to jar the imaginary vision loose somehow. He'd been thinking of farmer's daughter Daisy just moments before; that had to be why he thought he was seeing her now. He'd been thinking of her halter tops and her rippling hair and her cutoff blue jeans—

But he hadn't gotten as far as envisioning those blue jean short-shorts she used to wear. He was looking at them now, though, and the long golden legs they revealed. No. It had to be someone else, he thought, as his gaze traveled upward again, past
shapely thighs and curved hips and tiny waist and not-so-tiny breasts. His farmer's daughter couldn't still be—

His gaze jumped to the side of the old truck and the fading logo that had been stenciled there: The Egg Man, Organic Eggs, Fresh To You.

The old hippie, Daisy's dad, Edward “The Egg Man” Frances, must still be in business.

Reese finally looked into the woman's face again. Daisy's face. Daisy. Those blue eyes, that short nose, that ripe mouth. The magic of his eighteenth summer when he'd learned that magic never lasts.

“I—” What the hell do you say to the first woman who ever took you into her body and then cast a spell that sent you hurtling from earth? Were there words?

She seemed to think so. “Hello, Reese.” Daisy gave a shrug and a half smile. “I never expected to see you again.”

Thup.
The sound of a door lock popping free. They both turned their heads as the sedan door swung open. The man who climbed out was Reese's age, early thirties, with dark hair and almost pretty features.

The gun he pointed at them was butt ugly.

“Hands up,” he ordered.

A
man was holding a gun on them. Reese's mind worked hard to grasp that fact.

Minutes ago he had happened upon a two-vehicle accident in the middle of a deserted Texas road. Out of one vehicle had climbed his very first lover, whom he hadn't seen in fifteen years. Out of the other had climbed the man with the gun.

There wasn't time to make sense of it. Instead, Reese shoved Daisy behind him and held her there, his hands wrapped around her forearms.

“Hey, hey, hey,” he said to the man, using his calm, hostile takeover voice. He'd faced chairmen of boards who were mad as hell at him, though none had ever pulled a weapon. “No need for the gun. It was just an accident. If you want to shoot some thing, the one to blame is the cow.”

The man's gaze shifted to the cud-chewer still standing a few feet away. Daisy made a muffled
sound, an instinctive protest, Reese guessed, to his suggestion.

“What did you say?” the man asked, but then he swayed and stumbled back against the side of the car. His gun hand sagged.

Dropping Daisy's arms, Reese surged forward.

The gun jerked back up. “Stay where you are.”

“Okay, okay.” Reese lifted his palms. “I was just trying to help.”

“Don't need help.” The guy with the gun grimaced as if in pain. A bump was rising above one eyebrow.

“You hit your head.” Reese shuffled back, crowding Daisy so she edged farther away from the guy, too.

The man blinked a few times, as if he might have double vision, but his gun hand remained steady. “I'll be all right in a minute.”

“Sure you will,” Reese said, again in his soothing-the-ousted-CEO voice. “But maybe you should lie down.” In the back seat of the sedan. So that he and Daisy could then jump into the Lexus and speed away like the proverbial bats out of hell.

“I said, don't move.”

Reese, who had been continuing to inch back, stilled. At the small of his back, he felt Daisy's fingers clutching the fabric of his dress shirt. “It will be okay, honey,” he murmured.

Her grasp on the cotton tightened, so he reached
behind him again to find her hand with one of his. Their fingers meshed without awkwardness. It felt right to hold her hand. Again.

Reese didn't dare take his gaze off the guy with the gun, however. Though the man appeared more than a little woozy from the knock he'd taken to the head, he still seemed intent on holding that weapon on them.

“We're not the enemy,” Reese said. “You don't need the gun.”

“Yeah?” the man replied. “Well, you don't know me and I don't know you.”

“I'm Reese Lavery.” Thinking about all the extended family he had in the Red Rock area, he added his middle name, hoping to reassure. “Reese Fortune Lavery.” Anyone who had been around this part of Texas for any length of time would be certain to make the connection.

“Fortune?” The guy's gaze sharpened. “As in Ryan Fortune?”

“He's my mother's cousin.” Ryan Fortune was part of the reason Reese had traveled to Texas. Yes, he wanted to rescue his sister, Megan, from her ridiculous belief in fairy tales and a man in pointy-toed boots and John Wayne headgear, but also because Ryan's wife, Lily, had recently been kidnapped. And word had come to L.A. that Ryan was not only suffering over fear for his wife, but from an inoperable brain tumor, as well.

Reese was here to see how he could help with the kidnapping situation—though he knew other relatives had already circled the wagons—and also to check in with Ryan.

Big, handsome, generous Ryan Fortune. Reese couldn't imagine a world without the older man.

Magic never lasts.

For some reason the other guy was smiling now. And the gun he held looked even more deadly. Every muscle in Reese's body tensed. He held Daisy's hand tighter.

“Well, well, well. Reese Fortune Lavery. Is the lady behind you another fortunate Fortune, too?”

“I'm Daisy Frances.” She stepped closer to Reese, her front to his back.

“And not a Fortune,” instinct prompted Reese to add. “Who are you?”

The man full-out grinned. “Not a Fortune, either, though I finally have something of the Fortunes I've always wanted.”

Foreboding walked icy-tipped fingers down Reese's back. He stepped sideways to completely block Daisy. “Yeah? What's that?”

“Two million beautiful Fortune dollars in ransom money. I'm Jason Jamison.”

 

Jason Jamison? Daisy Frances swallowed down the scream she wanted to make. “He's the one who kidnapped Lily,” she whispered in the direction of
Reese's ear. “They've been looking for him for days.”

Reese Lavery. Good God, she'd plowed into Jason Jamison, only to run into Reese Lavery, as well.

She'd always had rotten luck with men, starting from the day Reese Lavery took himself out of Texas and out of her life, for good.

A summer fling. A teenage summer fling. Growing up on a farm and with organic Ed “The Egg Man” as her only parent had necessitated Daisy being practical from an early age. Even when she'd fallen head-over-sandals for Reese Lavery that summer she was seventeen, she'd known from the start that he'd go back to his California girls in September and forget all about her.

It was her dumb luck that she'd never forgotten him.

“Listen, Jamison,” Reese was saying. “Daisy and I have no beef with you.”

Daisy and I. There used to be a Daisy and Reese, she remembered, for half of June and all of July and August. The wide plain of Reese's shoulders was beneath her hands. He was broader now, heavier with muscle, but she could feel his heart beating just as it used to—racing as it had whenever they were close.

But it was racing with tension now. His muscles were like steel.

“But, see,” Jason said, “I have this longtime, long-standing ‘beef' with the Fortunes.” His tone was conversational, almost amused.

“Not with Daisy and me. Especially not with Daisy,” Reese said firmly.

His voice was so cool, so calm that it made her feel calmer, even though his heart was thrumming against her palms.

“Daisy and you. You and Daisy.” Before, Jason Jamison had seemed somewhat confused from that bump on his head, but he appeared wide-awake and unpleasantly alert now. “You and Daisy seem to already know each other.”

Reese hesitated, his muscles going even steelier. Daisy figured he was trying to figure out the best thing to say under the circumstances. “I visited the Red Rock area fifteen years ago,” he finally said, his voice low. “Daisy was my first love and I've never forgotten her.”

She didn't know which was more shocking—the words he'd said or that they were an echo of her very own thoughts.