Fortune's Second-Chance Cowboy

by Marie Ferrarella

  She kept as straight a face as she could. “I don’t know CPR, so I guess I’d better say yes.” And then every single part of her being grinned. “Yes, I’ll marry you. Yes, yes, yes,” she cried, throwing her arms around his neck again.

  “I heard you the first time,” he answered, gathering her in his arms.

  “I wanted to be sure you did.”

  “I did,” he answered, then added, “I do,” before he kissed her again.

  And, just to be sure that she wasn’t going to change her mind, he went on kissing her for a long time.

  Epilogue

  “So, how did it feel to find out that your father is one of the famous Fortunes?”

  The question came from Ariana Lamonte, the magazine writer and blogger who had already interviewed several of Gerald Robinson’s children.

  They were sitting in the living room of the guesthouse where Chloe was presently living, and the vivacious reporter had already asked her a number of probing questions.

  At first, Chloe had thought she was just going to avoid the woman, but after the reporter had called her a number of times in the last few days, Ariana didn’t give her the impression that she was about to give up until she got what she wanted. And besides, submitting to the interview seemed almost like an initiation into the family. Others had done it, and if her responses and feelings were put down on record, then by all rights that made her a part of the family, as well.

  “It felt strange,” Chloe admitted, answering Ariana’s last question.

  The woman’s fingers flew over her small laptop, making notes as thoughts occurred to her.

  She looked up at Chloe, giving her a sympathetic smile. “That’s right, he was AWOL for most of your life, wasn’t he?”

  “Not most,” Chloe corrected. “All.”

  Ariana nodded, her keyboard clicking rhythmically as she made more notes. “So what did you think of him when you two finally met?”

  “We haven’t.” When Ariana looked at her sharply, she added, “Yet.”

  “But you’re going to, right?” the woman with the long brown hair and the animated, deep brown eyes pressed. “Now that you know who he is, you can’t just not meet the man,” Ariana insisted.

  “There’s been talk about setting something up, yes,” Chloe replied vaguely.

  And there was. Gerald Robinson had actually reached out to her. But, still harboring anger over the way the man had treated her mother, Chloe was in no hurry to meet her father face-to-face. She had stalled.

  “Aren’t you at least curious what he’s like?” Ariana wanted to know.

  She supposed she was somewhat curious. She wouldn’t be human if she wasn’t. “Maybe a little,” she admitted.

  Ariana laughed. She paused and reached over to lightly touch Chloe’s hand. “Well, if it were me and my absentee daddy had all that money—”

  “I don’t care about the money,” Chloe told her, cutting the woman off.

  Ariana could only shake her head. “Well, you’re a better person than most,” she confided.

  Chloe set her jaw. “There are some things that money can’t pay for. But I will give him a chance to explain why he did what he did—if he actually has a reason.”

  Ariana smiled warmly at the young woman sitting across from her. “You’re a good person, Chloe Elliott. Or would you rather I called you Chloe Fortune? Some of your siblings have taken on the name,” the reporter said.

  “I’d rather you just called me Chloe,” she told the reporter.

  “I think I’d like that,” Ariana replied. She closed her laptop. “Well, I think I have everything I need,” she said, concluding the interview as she rose to her feet. “If I think of any further questions, I’ll give you a call. And after you meet your father face-to-face, I’d appreciate it if you give me a call,” she requested.

  Chloe accompanied her to the door.

  “Thanks for your time,” Ariana told her. “I’ll email you a copy of the interview when it’s finished.”

  As she began to walk out, the woman nearly collided with Chance, who was just about to knock on Chloe’s door.

  “I can see why you were in a hurry to wrap this interview up,” Ariana said, looking appreciatively at the tall cowboy, then gave Chloe a grin. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”

  The moment the reporter crossed the threshold and left the house, Chance closed the door behind her. He flipped the lock in place.

  “So, how was it?” he asked Chloe, turning to face her.

  “Not as bad as I thought,” Chloe confessed. “She was nice. She asked a lot of questions, but I think that I managed to hold my own.”

  “I knew you would,” Chance told her. He pressed a kiss to her temple as he gave Chloe a quick, warm embrace.

  “Well, that puts you one up on me.” She looked away from the door and turned her face up to Chance. She knew he had just come from a meeting with Graham about the planned expansion. “So, tell me,” she urged, waiting for him to share his news.

  “Everything’s in motion,” he told her happily. “With any luck, the military equine—” he deliberately drew the word out to emphasize it “—therapy center will be opening ahead of schedule. I can’t tell you how good that makes me feel.”

  “Oh, I think I can guess,” she told him, amusement dancing in her eyes.

  He knew he needed to put this in perspective for her. He wanted her to understand just what she meant to him. “Almost as good as knowing that you’re actually going to be marrying me. You still are, aren’t you?” he asked, closing his arms around her.

  Chloe’s smile was wide and warm. “Try to stop me,” she told him with a laugh.

  “Now, why would I want to do that?” he questioned as if she had just suggested something completely absurd. “My mamma didn’t raise any stupid children.”

  “Good. Neither did mine. Wanna go for a ride?” she asked him.

  “Why don’t we skip going for a ride today?” he suggested. “And just go straight to the good part.”

  “I thought you once told me that riding was the good part,” she reminded him.

  “I did and it was—until I met you and found a whole other way to feel good.” He pulled her tighter. “No more talking,” he said as he lowered his mouth to hers.

  One touch of his lips had desire streaking through her. “No more talking,” she agreed.

  So they didn’t.

  * * * * *

  Don’t miss the next installment of the new

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  Just a Little Bit Married

  by Teresa Southwick

  Chapter One

  “Rose, this might come as a shock, but we’re not divorced.”

  Lincoln Hart looked around the room to make sure there was nothing pointed, heavy, or sharp enough to take out an eye, bash in his skull or maim a fairly important body part. Satisfied, he studied the woman he hadn’t seen in ten years and realized Rose Tucker was even more beautiful than she’d been then, when she took his breath away every time he saw her. When he was so in love that being apart from her was almost a physical ache.

  Rose. Even her name was lovely. She was more polished than the young woman he’d walked away from. And more hostile, but he couldn’t blame her.

  After what he’d just said she was going to hate him even more than she had a decade ago, and she’d hated him quite a lot then.

  “What? Not even a hello?” The hostility in her dark blue eyes wavered to make way for surprise, then suspicion.

  “I thought it best to lead with the headline, make sure you got the information before slamming the door in my face.”

  “You’re telling me we’re still married? I don’t believe you. What kind of game are you playing now? What in the world would you have to gain by pretending we’re still married?”

  “I’m not pretending. And I’m as thrown by this as you are.”

  “I doubt that.” She put a hand to her forehead as if feeling dizzy.

  Linc reached out and curved his fingers around her upper arm to steady her. “Let’s sit down.”

  Apparently his touch snapped her out of it because she yanked her arm away. He half expected her to take a swing at him and wouldn’t blame her if she did. This whole mess was his fault from start to finish. If there was anything at all positive about his screwup, it was that his family knew nothing about his brief, whirlwind marriage.

  His brothers, Sam and Cal, would rag on him relentlessly, which was bad enough. Katherine and Hastings Hart, his mother and her husband, and his younger sister, Ellie, would be disappointed in him for the way he’d handled the situation. But none of that mattered now. He and Rose had a problem and it was all on him.

  “We should probably sit—”

  “Don’t be nice to me, Linc. We both know that’s not who you are.”

  “What I did to you was lousy, Rose, but that’s not who I am.” He wasn’t the man she thought she’d married, but he wasn’t a complete jerk, either.

  They stood in the postage-stamp-sized living area of her apartment, which was upstairs from her small interior design studio in an old, redbrick building on one of Prosper, Texas’s, side streets. The fact that this one-room place had charm was a reflection of her skill as an interior designer. The paint was pale gold except for one olive-green accent wall in the living room. The kitchen and living areas were set apart by the clever placement of the love-seat-sized sofa. Wall hangings, knickknacks, lamps and throw pillows added color without being stuffy and formal. It was homey and warm. He liked her taste very much.

  “You must have questions,” he said.

  “How do you know we’re not divorced?” She tucked a strand of long black hair behind her ear.

  “My lawyer passed away after a short illness and I had to hire a new one to handle my personal affairs. He insisted on looking over all of my official documents. There was a marriage license but no divorce decree. After researching the situation, he discovered that the papers were never filed with the court.”

  “How could that happen?”

  It was hard not to cringe at her bewildered tone, especially since he’d assured her he would handle everything. “I hired a half-price lawyer and got what I paid for—half a divorce.”

  “Why would you do that, Linc? Your family is worth millions and Hart Industries must have a platoon of the best and brightest legal minds around. It doesn’t make sense that you would get an attorney from outside the company, especially someone incompetent. The Harts don’t do things like that.”

  Leave it to Rose to zero in on the core of the problem. It wasn’t something he wanted to talk about, but she had a right to know. “I’m not a Hart.”

  “Excuse me? You’re what now?”

  “Hastings Hart isn’t my father.”

  “No way.” She shook her head.

  “It’s true. Hastings and Katherine confirmed it. I found out right after we got married.”

  “How?”

  “My biological father came to see me. He confessed he had a...thing with my mother.”

  “You told me your parents were deliriously happy,” Rose said with equal amounts of accusation and defensiveness in her voice.

  “That was their story. Turns out there was a rough patch. My older brothers were born nine months apart—twins the hard way, she always said. The fact is she had her hands full raising them and Hastings wasn’t around much. He was traveling, working long hours to build Hart Industries into something he could leave to his sons.”

  “So she turned to another man and had an affair?”

  “He and my mother were legally separated and headed for a divorce, so technically it wasn’t an extramarital affair.”

  “And you never knew? Never suspected?” There was skepticism in the questions.

  “No. They worked through their problems and he promised to give me his name. Both of them agreed there was no reason for me to know.”

  “And your biological father was all right with the arrangement?”

  “He was a lawyer on the partner track at an ultraconservative law firm that specialized in divorce. Sleeping with a client and getting her pregnant would have caused a scandal that might have cost him his career, so keeping it secret was fine with him.”

  “Yet he told you all those years later. Why?”

  “Midlife crisis, I guess. He never had children.” He stopped, waiting for the anger to roll through him so he could continue the act and pretend he was reconciled to the ugly secret. “No one to carry on the family name got to him, probably.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “It was a short conversation. At that moment I didn’t know whether or not he was lying.” Turned out the guy was the only one who hadn’t lied. “Hastings and Katherine confirmed.”

  “And you haven’t talked to your father since? Asked him why he finally came forward?”

  “No.” The man ruined his life. Sharing DNA didn’t make that okay. “The narcissistic bastard only thought about the fact that he had a son, not what the revelation would do to that son.”

  “Oh, God. Linc
—” Shock and resentment were replaced by pity in her eyes and that wasn’t much of an improvement. “I guess it hit you hard.”

  “Let’s just say finding out your parents lied to you about Santa Claus is nothing compared to learning your father isn’t who you thought.” Linc had had no idea who he was and his only thought was to protect Rose, even from himself.

  He remembered that time as if it was yesterday. She’d been hired for the summer at Hart Industries in the real-estate development branch of the company he was taking over. They fell madly in love, had a whirlwind romance and he swept her away to Las Vegas, where they got married. It was the best time of his life and he’d never been happier. Then everything went to hell.

  He shook his head and met her gaze. “You thought you married a Hart but I’m not one.”

  Understanding dawned in her eyes. “You think that was important to me?”

  Intensity rotated through him and was nearly as powerful as what he’d felt ten years ago. He recalled the anguish and pain in her voice when she’d pleaded with him to tell her why he was leaving. What she’d done. It was an understatement to say he hadn’t been thinking clearly. He left the Harts, too, and stayed away for a long time. “It mattered to me.”

  “So you had to split from me and got a half-price lawyer to do it.”

  “I didn’t feel it was right to use a Hart attorney since I wasn’t really part of the family. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I walked away from everyone.” He backpacked through Europe, although it would be more accurate to say that he drank his way from one country to the next. “After two years I came back.” But he never forgot that he was the bastard son who always needed to prove himself.

  “And your father? The biological one?”

  “What about him?”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Good question. Like I said, I don’t see him. And if it’s all the same to you I don’t want to talk about him. I only brought it up for context.”