A Fortune Wedding

by Kristin Hardy

  “Fine, we’ll make it a loan.”

  “Put the checkbook away,” Frannie told her. “Please. I’m not Cindy, I can’t come to you with my hand out.”

  Lily’s eyes softened. “Sweetheart, you could never be like Cindy in a million years. And money isn’t an issue. We’ve got scads of it, we can get you whatever you need.”

  “What I need, for once in my life, is to take care of myself.” Frannie looked at her, eyes pleading. “Everybody wants to help—you, Ross, William, Roberto—but I need to do this alone. I’ve been depending on other people for way too long.”

  “Roberto? Roberto Mendoza? What’s he got to do with all of this?” Lily frowned. “Frannie, the police were questioning him about the murder. You shouldn’t even be talking to him. It’ll just make things worse.”

  Frannie smoothed her hair back. “I’m still charged with Lloyd’s murder, Lily. They could haul me back in at any time. How can it possibly be any worse?”

  “How dare you show your face here?” a voice hissed venomously.

  Frannie jolted and glanced up to see a cadaverously thin blond woman stopped on the sidewalk, staring at them. Lloyd’s mother, Jillian Fredericks. Frannie had been wrong. Things could get worse.

  A whole lot worse.

  Chapter Eight

  “How did you get them to let you out?” Jillian’s voice was low and hostile.

  Frannie raised her chin. “They finally realized they didn’t have enough evidence to hold me.”

  “Oh, I’m sure. After all, you’re related to Ryan Fortune,” she sneered. “Nothing that goes on with you people in this town should surprise me. But we all know how you really got out.”

  “The way I got out was by having nothing to do with Lloyd’s murder.”

  “You’re lying. You have been from the beginning. You trapped him into marrying you.”

  “I trapped him?” Anger began a slow burn in her. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Jillian. If anyone set a trap, it was Lloyd.”

  “I doubt that very much.”

  Frannie’s gaze was very direct. “Do you?”

  She remembered that night, the one that had changed her life forever. A party thrown by some of Lloyd’s fraternity brothers. He’d shown her off, introduced her to Long Island iced teas and taken her, stumbling, to a back room. He’d been insistent and she’d been in no condition to protest. It’ll be good, he’d said, I promise. But it hadn’t been. He’d been too rough, too eager, too focused on his own pleasure to have a care for hers as he’d stripped her of her innocence.

  She’d sworn she would never allow Lloyd to touch her again. But when she’d told him the next day, he’d railed at her, accusing her of sleeping with Roberto. “You think you can throw me aside for some hired hand?” he’d demanded. “I’ll make you sorry.”

  She’d fled on horseback, but Roberto had followed. And heartache had come on their heels.

  I’ll make you sorry, Lloyd had promised.

  And he’d spent nineteen years doing just that.

  “You’re lying.” Jillian’s eyes glittered. “You’ve always lied.”

  “You know it’s the truth.”

  “Don’t you talk about my Lloyd.” Her voice rose. “You held him back. You were never good enough for him, ever. He could have married anyone and he settled for you, you little round-heeled piece of trash. You’re nothing, Frannie Fortune, nothing,” she spat. “I hope they send you to jail to rot.”

  Lily shot to her feet. “That’s enough, Jillian.”

  Jillian turned her malevolent gaze to Lily. “That’s enough, all right, enough of you Fortunes.”

  Frannie raised her hand. “Lily, let me handle this. Jillian, I’m sorry about Lloyd,” she said evenly. “No mother should lose her child, and maybe that kind of pain can make a person say anything. But you’re out of line and this is no place for a scene.”

  Jillian shook off the friends who were trying to draw her away. “You want a scene? Just wait. Everyone knows you killed him. There’s blood on your hands. I don’t care who you bribed to let you out, everyone knows you did it. And I’ll make sure you pay for it.”

  And she turned away, leaving Frannie shaking.

  “Are you all right?” Lily asked.

  Frannie took a deep breath and let it out. “I should be. You’d think I’d be used to her after all this time.”

  Lily frowned. “I don’t like to be unkind about anyone, but I really think Jillian is not right in the head. I think the strain of Lloyd’s murder has sent her off. I hope Cordell gets her some help.”

  “She’s always been that way, Lily. You can’t imagine how awful she was to live with.” Frannie remembered the weekly visits, the phone calls, the steady drip of poison in Lloyd’s ear every time he talked to his mother. “Nothing was ever good enough for her, nothing I said, nothing I did. Anything nice I ever tried to do she threw back in my face. If it wasn’t Lloyd ordering me around, it was Jillian, always trying to butt in with Josh and Lloyd, telling me how to decorate the house, what to do, what to wear, how to move, how to think, how to breathe.” She took a deep breath. “I was a doormat, but I’m done with that now, it’s over.”

  And it was as she said the words that she realized it really was. Lloyd’s hatefulness, Jillian’s hostility weren’t a part of her life anymore. She didn’t have to swallow her frustrations, put aside her desires, turn the other cheek to keep the peace, accept an unacceptable situation. She could live her life without compromise.

  She turned to Lily with shining eyes. “Things are going to change.”

  Lily raised her water glass for a toast. “To your new life. To no more Jillian.”

  They clinked glasses. “No more sitting home all day waiting for something bad to happen,” Frannie marveled.

  “No more Stepford house.”

  “No more parties with people I hate.”

  Lily toasted her again. “No more mean people,” she said.

  “No more spending three days cooking Thanksgiving dinner, only to spend eight hours listening to Jillian tear it apart,” Frannie countered.

  “Oh, double toast on that one,” Lily said.

  Frannie’s laughter turned into a sputter as the breeze blew a lock of hair into her open mouth. “Gack,” she said, pulling out the strands. “No more eating my own hair. No more—” She broke off, staring across the street.

  Lily raised a brow. “No more…whatever it is you’re staring at?”

  Frannie turned to her, mouth curving. “Would you mind if I skip out on lunch?”

  “Skip out on lunch? Not a chance. Wherever you’re going with that look in your eye, I’m going with you.” Lily threw a bill on the table and rose to follow Frannie. “And just where are we going, anyway?”

  Frannie laughed. “To do something I should have done a long time ago.”

  The glossy blue bulk of Roberto’s truck blocked Frannie’s driveway, forcing her to stop partway up the concrete apron. She got out to the sharp reports of hammer blows. Roberto was at work on the garage, she saw, craning her neck to glimpse the top of his head over the truck. She headed toward the front of the truck to find him.

  And stopped in her tracks.

  Roberto wore jeans and a plain T-shirt, his tanned skin dark against the white cotton. A leather tool belt was slung about his hips, making them look very narrow. A nail dangled from his lips like a cigarette. As she watched, he picked it out and positioned it against the board with one hand. With the other, he brought the hammer around in a sweeping arc and with a single blow drove the nail all the way into the wood.

  Her lips parted.

  He shifted and slammed in nail after nail, smoothly, rhythmically and with deceptive speed. There was an assurance, an insouciant grace in his every motion. Muscle flexed in his back, rippled in his forearms. She’d never seen a man who inhabited his body so completely. It made her think of some lithe, powerful animal like a jungle cat. She stared, transfixed.

  He’d fin
ished and was turning to pick up his tools when he saw her.

  Time went by—seconds? Minutes?—she couldn’t say because for just that time they didn’t speak, didn’t move, only locked eyes with each other. And then he was walking toward her, slipping his hammer into the tool belt without a glance. His eyes looked black, even in the sun. Her lungs snatched a breath of their own accord.

  “You cut your hair.”

  She swallowed. “It was getting in my way.”

  “I like it.”

  There was something in his voice, some vibration that set up an answering thrum deep within her.

  Straight toward the hazard signs.

  You shouldn’t even be talking to him.

  The breeze caught up the strands of her hair and tossed them around. In his eyes, there was desire, but also something far more seductive—delight. “I remember the first time I saw you,” he said softly, reaching out to brush her bangs off her forehead. “You’d just gotten out of the car. You were wearing this little white skirt and a pale green shirt with no sleeves. You reminded me of one of those pixies in the Disney movies.”

  It took her a moment to find her voice. “I didn’t think you noticed me.”

  “I noticed you. Maybe you wouldn’t say boo to a goose when you got there, but even then you had this look like you were fixing to make some kind of trouble.”

  “What trouble did I ever cause?”

  “Besides distracting me every minute of every day?”

  “You can’t blame me for that,” she said, moistening her lips.

  “What about the fact that I haven’t gotten a decent night’s sleep since I hit town?”

  He was too close, she thought, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off of him.

  “Show me what you’re working on,” she said with effort.

  He studied her. “I think you know what I’m working on.”

  The seconds stretched out. She could feel each individual thud of her heart.

  His teeth gleamed and he turned. “But if you want to see what you’re paying for, I just finished putting in the new frames around the garage doors. It’s supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow, so I’ll have to wait to paint them until the weather cooperates.”

  “Nice job,” she said, but she wasn’t focusing on the wood. She was remembering the first time she’d ever seen him. He’d been lankier then, his hair longer, flowing thick down to his collar. He’d seemed so serious that she’d been afraid to talk to him. But she’d discovered that what she’d taken for brooding had been simple thoughtfulness, that he was also capable of laughter. He’d been genuinely interested in what she had to say instead of talking over her the way Lloyd had. Lloyd’s idea of wooing her had been concerts and rides in his sports car. He’d never understood that the truest seduction was simply listening.

  But then, he’d never understood her, period.

  Roberto walked into the garage and picked up his toolbox. “I’m done out here. Why don’t you show me those doors that don’t latch and I can get to work on them?”

  The interior of the house was cool and dim after the bright sunlight of the outdoors. “Do you want something to drink?” Frannie asked as they walked into the kitchen.

  Roberto set down the toolbox. “Water would be great.”

  She reached into a cupboard and pulled out a glass, conscious of the way his eyes followed her as she went to the refrigerator to fill it. Such a simple thing, and yet there was something oddly intimate about the act of setting it down before him and watching him drink, his throat moving as he swallowed.

  “Thanks,” he said when he’d finished, handing her the glass. For a fraction of a second, their fingers brushed and she felt the heat bloom up her arm. “All right, where are those doors?”

  Frannie set down the glass by the sink. “The pantry door right here, the door to the hall bathroom, the den, the—”

  “Hold on. That’s enough for starters. When you said half the doors in the house didn’t close, I thought you were joking.”

  “Trust me, there are more.”

  “I’ll let you know when I’m ready for them.” He set down his toolbox by the pantry door and set to work.

  She’d been wary of having him work on the house because she’d feared him getting too involved in her life. She hadn’t considered the hazard of simply having him around for hours at a time, watching him make repairs with those clever, capable hands.

  And being unable to forget what they’d felt like on her skin.

  So she tried to distract herself by going back to packing. It didn’t help, though. It was impossible to forget he was there. Over and over she found herself stopping to listen for the click of the tools on his belt when he shifted, the curses he muttered under his breath when he hit a snag, the whisper of his clothing as he walked. Somehow, the fact that they were in different rooms only made her more aware of him.

  And she knew when he walked in even before he spoke.

  “Okay, those are done. Where are the others?”

  She rose to meet him. “There’s the door on the guest room.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Upstairs. And Josh’s bathroom door.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else on this floor?”

  She hesitated. “The closet.”

  “The closet where?”

  “My bedroom. The master bedroom,” she corrected, feeling her cheeks warm.

  A slow smile spread across Roberto’s face. “Is that so? Does that mean I get the tour?”

  She scowled at him. “I thought you were a professional.”

  “At some things.” He eyed her. “At others, I like to think of myself as a dedicated amateur.”

  Her pulse beat a little harder. “The other two rooms are right next to each other.”

  “Might as well take care of this one first, since it’s close.” He picked up his toolbox. “Show me where it’s at.”

  “You’ll find it at the end of the hall.”

  “Oh, I think you’d better show me. A door that important, you’ll want to get it done just right.”

  When she still hesitated, he grinned. “Relax, chica. It might shock you, but at thirty-nine I think I can just about manage to keep from tearing your clothes off and having my way with you at the sight of a bed. Not that the idea doesn’t have its appeal,” he added softly, the smile fading.

  Frannie started down the hall, vividly aware of Roberto just behind her. Naked, on the bed, twined together. Would it be so hard to block the image if she hadn’t been with him before? If she didn’t remember the feel of his bare skin pressed to hers? They hadn’t made love in a bed, but on the soft grass beneath the red oaks, with the rolling hills all around. And when he’d parted the front of her shirt to find her, he’d shown her just how electric touch could be.

  The rooms opening onto the hallway were all closed off, leaving it dim, intimate. The door to her bedroom seemed very far away. And when they finally reached it, her hand on the knob was slippery with nerves. She opened it and they walked into a flood of light.

  Soft blue walls, a cathedral ceiling, French doors leading to the pool deck. A half acre of pale gold carpet.

  And a bed the size of Rhode Island.

  He was being punished for boasting, Roberto thought. He was being made to suffer, because when it came down to it, he wasn’t so far above it after all. What he was was full of it, because when he stood next to that wide swath of coverlet and pillows, all he could think about was having her naked beneath him, pressing her into the soft mattress and taking them both where he knew they could go.

  “This is the door,” Frannie said.

  It was her hair that was the problem. He’d about flipped when he’d seen her come walking up with that sunbeam hair cut away into a little cap that made her look about sixteen and lighthearted and happy. All of a sudden, those delicate features weren’t weighed down by the heavy spill of hair anymore. He could
really see her again, chin and cheekbones, that delicious mouth that always spoke to him of mischief.

  And tempted him to the point of madness.

  Roberto set down the toolbox and pulled open the closet door.

  It was his second mistake.

  The closet was hers, he could tell the minute the door started to swing back and her scent flowed out to envelop him. The ranks of clothing whispered of her. There was a robe hanging from a hook on the back of the door. Red silk.

  He swore he could smell his synapses frying.

  Don’t think about it, he told himself as he knelt next to the doorjamb and unscrewed the strike plate.

  It was a simple repair that should have taken five minutes, but it seemed like it took him three or four times that because he couldn’t focus. His eyes were on the wood and metal, but his attention was on Frannie.

  She moved restlessly around the room, the way he imagined she might at night as she was getting undressed, slipping out of her shoes, unzipping her dress, sliding into that silky robe. Maybe she’d sit on the padded bench in her dressing area as she took off her jewelry. And he’d come up behind her and slide the robe off her shoulders to find her warm and naked and—

  “How do you do that?”

  The words brought him back to reality with a jolt. He blinked. “How do I…”

  “How do you fix the door?”

  He gave a sigh of relief. “Oh, that. See this hole?” He held up the strike plate, waggling his thumb in the gap. “The spring latch on the door is supposed to fit into it. In your doors, the strike plate’s set too far into the jamb so that the latch never makes it that far.”

  “So how do you fix it?”

  “Take it off and use a file to take away enough metal that the spring latch can make it in.” He rose. “Where’s your trash can?”

  “In the dressing area,” she said.

  He walked through the threshold and in a flash took in the first room in the house that seemed truly hers. With its half wall of mirrors, deeply female furnishings and sense of luxurious disorder, it evoked the feel of a harem. On the polished wood counter, a hairbrush lay next to a bin of lipsticks and eye color. Within a wooden box with the top askew, he glimpsed the flash of gold. A deep blue silk scarf had been tossed over the padded stool as though she’d just taken it off. Her scent hovered in the air.