Fortune's Cinderella

by Templeton, Karen

  A half smile tugged at Scott’s mouth. “Everybody’s shy compared with Wendy. But then, more than one Wendy in the family might have taken us all under. So, I hear you’re a developer…?”

  They fell into an easy conversation for the next few miles, everyone’s chatter competing with the hammering of rain on the Escalade’s roof, the windshield wipers’ rhythmic groans. When the visibility worsened, however, Javier became far more intent on driving than talking, giving Scott a chance to check his own messages on his iPhone. Not that there were many this close to New Year’s, but the business world never completely stopped, even for the holidays.

  He heard his mother ask his father something, his father’s curt, distracted reply. A relationship dynamic he’d always taken for granted…until witnessing Wendy and Marcos together.

  As far as he could tell, the relationship his sister and new brother-in-law had seemed to be based on mutual regard and respect for each other’s opinions and intelligence. God knew, he thought with a smile, his strong-willed sister was not easy to live with, but Marcos seemed to actually thrive on the challenge. The stimulation. And while Wendy would never be “tamed” by any stretch of the imagination, being with Marcos had obviously forced her to focus on something other than herself. And that could only be a good thing.

  Which made Scott wonder—not for the first time, as it happened—what, exactly, had kept his parents married for more than thirty-five years. Loyalty? Habit? After all, it was no secret—at least to their children—that the relationship was strained. Strike that: it might be a secret to his father. Because as Virginia Alice’s role as mother became more and more attenuated, Scott more and more often caught the haunted “Now what?” look in her eyes.

  And yet, Scott had no doubt their bond was indissoluble, if for no other reason than appearances meant too much to both of them. Lousy reason to stay together, if you asked him. And why, in all likelihood, their older progeny sucked at personal relationships. Business savvy? The drive to succeed? Sure. Those, they all had in spades. But the ability to form a lasting attachment to another human being?

  Not so much.

  Scott exhaled, thinking of his own track record in that department. Granted, his lack of commitment was by choice. He enjoyed the company of women, certainly, but falling in love had never been on his agenda. Or in his nature, most likely.

  Which was why seeing Wendy so…blissful was…unsettling. As though she hailed from a different gene pool altogether. Cripes, she was so young. So fearless, falling in love with the same reckless abandon as she did everything else—

  His phone rang, rescuing him from pointless musings.

  “Scott Fortune here—”

  “Mr. Fortune, glad I caught you. It’s Jack Sullivan. Your pilot?”

  “Oh, yes… What can I do for you?”

  He heard a dry, humorless laugh on the other end of the line. “Not a whole lot, I don’t imagine. Afraid I’ve got some bad news—all this rain’s flooded out the route I normally take to the airport.” At Scott’s muttered curse, the pilot said, “Oh, I’ll be there, don’t you worry. Just gonna take a bit longer than I’d figured.”

  “How much longer are we talking?”

  “Hard to say. Might be a half hour or so, maybe a little more. But until this weather straightens out I’m not taking that bird up, anyway. So y’all just go on ahead and sit tight, have a cup of coffee, and hopefully this will have all blown over by the time I get there. Good news is, hundred miles east of here, it’s completely clear!”

  “Problem?” Mike asked quietly behind him. His brother’s thinly veiled criticism made Scott bristle, as it always had. Not that he’d take the bait.

  “Pilot’s going to be late,” he said mildly, slipping the phone back into his pocket. “Roads are flooded.” At Mike’s soft snort, he added, “Hard as this might be to believe, there are some things even we can’t control.”

  As if on cue, they hit a squall that was like going through a car wash, making Javier slow the car to a crawl and Scott’s mother suck in a worried breath.

  “Man,” Javier said. “I sure wouldn’t want to fly in this weather. I’m beginning to think your sister had the right idea, staying put.”

  Probably, but despite what he’d said to his brother, Scott was chafing, too, at their plans being derailed, at being in a situation over which he was powerless.

  Because first, last and foremost, he was a Fortune, and Fortunes did not like being told “no.”

  Ever.

  From behind the snack bar counter, Christina Hastings watched the well-heeled group trickle through the front door and across the tiled lobby of the chichi private airport and reminded herself of two things: one, that being envious was a waste of time and energy; and two, that being grateful for what you already had went a long way toward receiving more.

  And besides, she had goals. Because a girl had to have goals, or she might as well shrivel up and die.

  Sighing, she tossed her long braid over her shoulder, then checked the coffeepot to make sure it was still full, casting a baleful glance toward the two-story window running the full length of the lobby’s back wall. It was dumb, letting the gloomy weather get to her. Dumber still that she’d agreed to come in on her day off, in case somebody had a sudden hankering for a premade Caesar salad with three bites of chicken or an overpriced bottle of water. By rights, she should be home, wrapped up in a throw on her sofa with her dog, Gumbo, smooshed up beside her, watching Buffy DVDs and enjoying the next-to-last day with her little fake Christmas tree before she took it down for another year.

  Instead, she was amusing herself—although she used the term loosely—by watching the goings-on in front of her. Living in Red Rock—as opposed to under one—it had been impossible not to hear about the Fortune/Mendoza wedding at Red, the local family restaurant in town she’d only ever seen from the outside. Or that the small jet still in its hangar on the other side of the flight school building had been chartered to take the bride’s family back to Atlanta. Not that it apparently mattered whether the men—all tall, all dark, all handsome, sheesh—were here, there or in Iceland, given their preoccupation with their spiffy, and probably five-minutes-old, electronic toys. As opposed to her ancient flip phone with half the numbers rubbed off. Made texting a mite tricky.

  Not that she had anybody to text. She was just saying.

  “Hey, there. What’s good today?”

  She smiled for the improbably red-headed flight attendant she’d seen once or twice before, dressed in a nondescript uniform of black pants and vest over a long-sleeved white shirt. “Same as always. Although the turkey sandwiches don’t look half bad.”

  “Let me have one of those, then. And a Diet Coke.”

  “You flying out with this group?”

  “Yep. The Atlanta branch of the Fortunes. Older guy’s the father, the younger men his sons.” As the flight attendant waited for her order, she nodded at the women now gathering in the posh lounge tucked underneath the second-floor offices on the other side of the lobby. “Not sure about the women, though. Although the little blonde looks exactly like the older one near to having a conniption, so I’m gonna guess she’s a daughter.” She pulled the tab on her soda. “Wonder what’s got Mrs. Fortune so bent out of shape?”

  She was, too. Elegant, reed-thin, the still-beautiful, silver-haired woman periodically pressed a tissue to her mouth, while the conservatively dressed blonde tried—with little success, it seemed to Christina—to comfort her distraught mama. A third woman—younger than the others, very pretty, oblivious to what was going on around her—flounced past them to plop down on one of the sofas. She leaned over to tug an e-reader out of her giant designer purse, her long, dark curls spilling over the shoulder of her cropped suede jacket, which matched her killer boots.

  As the attendant droned on a
bout the weather, Christina watched the Fortune brothers—one dressed like he was about to meet the president, another in a sportcoat and jeans, the third decked out in a wicked cool leather jacket and black pants—milling about, each in his own little world. Close in age, looked like. Lord, no wonder the older woman was distraught—she was awfully skinny to have pushed out that many kids that close together. A thought that evinced a brief pang Christina had no intention of indulging.

  She handed the attendant her change; the redhead thanked her, then left to go talk with Mrs. Fortune. The brunette, apparently too fidgety to stay seated, got up to wander aimlessly into the lobby to look at a glassed-in display of model planes in the middle of the floor. A second later some guy in a cowboy hat strode past, carrying a stack of boxes…and winked at the brunette, obviously startling her into scurrying back into the lounge, where the oldest of the men and one of the younger ones had settled into opposite ends of the biggest sofa, yakking on their phones and ignoring the excited weatherman trying to get their attention on the big-screen TV.

  Two more handsome young men ferried inordinate amounts of luggage into the building, piling it near the exit to the airfield. One lobbed a quick smile in Christina’s direction before heading back outside. The highlight of her day, she thought morosely, only to mentally smack herself.

  Overhead, thunder complained as the skies poured even more rain across the glass wall, hard enough to nearly obliterate the small single-engine plane on the other side—

  “Excuse me? Could I get an espresso, please?”

  With a start, Christina jerked around, running into a pair of bronze-ish eyes. Ah. The One in the Leather Jacket. The pissed One in the Leather Jacket, apparently.

  Christina shrugged, apologetic. Tried unsuccessfully to ignore the mouth. And the cheekbones. Holy moly. Not only did this family have, if the scuttlebutt was to be believed, more money than God, they had a gene pool to die for. “Sorry, all I’ve got is regular. Or decaf.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  Okay, the man was easily the best-looking guy she’d ever seen in her entire life—how she wasn’t blinded, she did not know—but still. A pain in the butt is a pain in the butt.

  This ain’t Starbucks, Bucko, she wanted to say. But she didn’t. Partly because she didn’t have the energy, and partly because, along with his iPad, the guy was toting a silly little pink bakery box. Which for some reason tickled her no end.

  “For what it’s worth,” she said, “which isn’t much, I’ll grant you, I’ve been after my boss to get an espresso machine ever since I started working here. He ignores me. So.” Overhead, hail pummeled the steel roof, the sudden din making her jump. Outside it looked like God had dumped out His snowcone machine. When she turned back to Leather Jacket Dude, he was glaring at the deluge.

  “It’ll let up,” she shouted over the barrage. Although why she felt compelled to reassure him, she had no idea. He turned the glare on her, and she sighed. “Regular or decaf?”

  The man grimaced. And he hadn’t even tasted the coffee yet. Forget an espresso maker, Christina couldn’t even get Jimmy to spring for a decent Colombian brew.

  “Regular,” he grumbled. “Black.”

  Christina opened her mouth, then shut it again, thinking Just give the man his coffee, honey chile. She poured it into a foam cup, smooshed a plastic lid on top, then set it on the black granite counter, wiping her hands on the seat of her jeans to keep from messing up her apron, which was a bear to get clean. “That’ll be a dollar fifty. The flight attendant said you’re all family?”

  He barely glanced at her before reaching inside his jacket for his wallet, the slight move releasing a very pleasant scent. Probably not something he picked up at Walgreens. “Yes. We were here for my sister’s wedding.”

  “Oh, that’s nice. From Atlanta, right?”

  He frowned slightly, like he couldn’t figure out why on earth she was talking to him. Well, tough. Talking to people was what kept her from going insane, giving in to the loneliness that sometimes felt like it would suffocate her. Gumbo was a great dog, but his conversational skills were limited. “Yes,” he said, looking up when the hail stopped, as abruptly as it had started.

  “See?” Christina said. “Told ya. You watch, the sun’ll be out before you know it.”

  For a moment their gazes touched, his a bit disconcerted as his cell phone rang. Almost like he heard the distinct twannnnng in Christina’s midsection. Uh-oh. Distractedly he hunched it to his shoulder, mumbling, “Scott Fortune,” as he handed her a twenty, then started to walk away.

  Must be nice, she thought as the twanging died out, to be able to treat twenties like quarters. “Wait! You forgot your change—”

  A deafening, blood-chilling roar drowned out her words, raised the hairs on her arms. Scott turned, the startled look in his eyes tangling with hers a split second before the glass wall exploded and Hell rained down around them.

  Chapter Two

  The woman’s scream pierced his brain, rudely dragging Scott back to consciousness. His heart pounding hard enough to hurt, he lay motionless, his eyes still closed, his ears still ringing, trying to regain his bearings…until she screamed again.

  “For the love of all that’s holy, stop that.”

  After a beat or two of blessed silence, he heard, “I thought you were dead.”

  That raspy voice…ah. The waitress. “No. At least I don’t think so—” The last word ended in a cough; yanking his jacket collar over his mouth and nose, Scott opened his eyes. Panic cramped his chest: through the occasional shaft of dust-clogged light eking through the rubble, he realized he’d come damn close to being buried alive. He fumbled for his phone, only to realize it had apparently fallen out of his pocket. Damn.

  “Um, are you okay?” she said. “I mean, c-can you help me? I’m stuck.”

  Adrenaline spiked through him. “Hold on…” Debris clattered as Scott tried to heave himself upright, only getting as far as his knees when his right temple gave him hell. Flinching, he quickly brushed his fingers over the spot—no blood, thank God. “Where are you?”

  “Close enough to think you were dead, obviously. I can see you, though. Kinda. Keep going, you’ll find me.”

  “How long was I out?” he asked as he cautiously crept toward her.

  “Not long. Couple minutes, maybe? You remember the tornado hitting?” she asked when he reached her, barely six feet away. Propped on her elbows, she lay back against what he assumed was the counter base, her legs imprisoned beneath a pile of rubble. Even through the haze he could see the grim set to her mouth.

  “Yes,” Scott said quietly, knowing he’d never forget the wind’s brutal, relentless shrieking, like a million furious demons. “Guess I blacked out right after, though. Does it hurt?”

  “I don’t think…no. Not really. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not. I can’t move, but at least I don’t feel like I’m being crushed. But something—” Grimacing, she strained to pull herself free; Scott’s hand shot to her shoulder, stopping her.

  “Stay still. Do you hear me?”

  Not looking at him, she nodded. “Just…hurry.”

  “On it,” he muttered as he snatched away the lighter stuff—wood lathing, plaster chunks, shards of glass. But despite having lifted weights for years, Scott was no match for the granite slab pinning her to the ground. He tried another angle, his back and shoulder muscles burning like a sonuvabitch, but no dice. Sitting back beside her, he punched out an exasperated breath. “Why the hell did they use granite for the counter?”

  Her head fell back, her eyes shut. “And yet,” she said through faint, rapid breaths, “no espresso maker. Go figure.”

  More dust sifted down beside them, the sound like scurrying ants. “Call me crazy, but this seems like an odd time to crack jokes.”r />
  “It’s that or s-scream again. D-deal.”

  He groped for her hand in the dim light, found it; her fingers tightened around his, kicking his heart into overdrive. “Take some deep breaths before you hyperventilate. There, that’s better,” he said when she complied, then gently squeezed her hand. “You scared?”

  A snort preceded, “Yeah, fear is kinda my go-to emotion when I think I might die.”

  “We’re not going to die.”

  “Oh? Last I heard, death couldn’t be bought off.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Her eyes opened as she shifted, clearly trying to suppress a wince. And shivering. “S-sorry. Today hasn’t gone exactly the way I thought it w-would…no, it’s okay, I’m fine,” she said when he let go to shrug off his jacket.

  “I’m wearing a sweater. You’re not. So no arguments. Can you sit up a little more?” Nodding, she did, at least enough for him to wrap the jacket around her shoulders, tug her smooth blond braid free.

  “Thank you.”

  “Anytime.” Elbowing aside the first stirrings of alarm, Scott glanced around. “This is…surreal.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Especially as I can’t recall ever seeing a tornado around here before. Farther north and west, sure. But…” Her eyes lifted. “I think…I’m gonna pretend this is all a dream. And any minute I’ll wake up and…it’ll be over.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” He inched a little closer. “I’m Scott, by the way.”

  “I know.” Her eyes drifted closed again. “Heard you on your cell phone.”

  “Speaking of which, mine’s gone AWOL. Do you have one?”

  “Sure thing. In my purse.”

  “Which is where?”

  She almost laughed. A sound that, under other circumstances, he would have found extremely appealing. “Around here somewhere. And you need to be quiet now.”

  Scott angled his head to see into her face. Her eyes were still shut. “You didn’t tell me your name.”