His arm around Lucy’s shoulders, he pulled her to the side, away from the security people and closer to him. “Now, before this really gets crazy here, where was I?”
“Transferring. And becoming a trainer.” It all sounded too good to be true. And she’d learned a long time ago that if something seemed too good to be true, it usually was. Still, she mentally crossed her fingers as she looked up at Collin. “You can really do this?”
“It’ll take some time,” he warned her. “The paperwork has to go in and the wheels within any government agency turn slowly.” Then he grinned. “But yeah, I think it can be done.”
Her eyes remained on his, looking for answers, for something she could expand on. “Do you want to do this?” she pressed.
He laughed. This was why he loved her. Because she could look into his heart and see things about him others couldn’t. Because she seemed to know him better than he knew himself.
Except that this time she’d misread the signs.
His arm around her tightened. He lowered his voice, bringing his mouth closer to her ear as the commotion behind them grew. “I think maybe it’s time I stop trying to save the world and save a little piece of it for myself. Let the younger guys play Bruce Willis.”
She frowned a little at his statement. She didn’t want him retiring from the world. She wanted him safe, but not at the cost of who he was. “You’re not exactly old.”
“No.” He brushed a lock of her hair from her face, toying with it. “But I’ve got a reason to go on living now. I didn’t before. Having a reason slows you down. Makes you hesitate.”
She could swear she felt her heart leap up inside of her. “And what’s that reason?”
He smiled down into her eyes, wondering how he thought he was alive before he’d met her. “Can’t you tell?”
“Nope, sorry.” She shook her head. “I need it spelled out for me.”
“Okay. L-o-v-e.” Humor played along the corners of his mouth. “That satisfy your spelling needs?”
Love. He loved her. She struggled to contain herself. “Depends,” she deadpanned.
He cocked his head, unsure what she was driving at. “On?”
Joy was squeezing out to every corner of her being. It was rough keeping it from her face for even a moment longer as she played out the charade. “On whom that l-o-v-e is aimed at.”
His voice softened to a rough whisper. “You. Only you.”
Her breath grew short, her pulse intensified. “You really love me?”
“I turned an army transport around for you. Put my C.O. on hold for you. If that’s not love, lady, then I don’t know what is.” He pulled her closer to him, fitting her neatly against his body. “Now, the question before the house is, do you love me?”
With all her heart and soul, she thought. “If you have to ask, Collin, then you’re not as smart as I thought you were.”
Too many things in his world went unspoken. This, he needed to hear. “I’m just a simple soldier at heart. But even simple soldiers need love.”
“You have love, Military Man.” Lucy moved her body even closer against his, fusing their energy. “You had it almost right from the start.”
“Start,” he echoed with a smile, nodding his head in approval. “I like the sound of that word. Means the beginning of a brand-new adventure.”
“You’re going to be having all your adventures at home with me,” she informed him.
“Hey,” he said just as the room began to fill up with policemen and more security personnel, “sounds good to me. You’re all the adventure I’ll ever need.”
Her eyes were dancing as she laced her arms around his neck. “You got that right.”
He began to kiss her, then stopped. He wanted to make sure everything was perfectly clear. He had a habit of taking things as a given. Which meant taking them for granted. He didn’t want that to happen with her. Ever. “You do understand that I’m asking you to marry me, right?”
It took her a second to recover. That was something she most definitely hadn’t understood from the conversation. Everything inside of her shouted with joy.
“Good thing you’re good with your hands, Military Man, because your verbal skills…” Lucy held her hand out and waffled it back and forth in the air. “Not so much.” Lacing her hand around his neck, she grinned up at him. “But we’ll work on it.”
“The answer, woman. What’s the answer?”
Her eyes danced. “What do you think the answer is?”
“I think yes.”
Ignoring the other people in the room for a moment longer, she stood up on her toes, her body fitting snugly against his. “Then you get the prize.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Someone was calling to him, asking questions. He knew he’d have to get back to them by and by, but right now he had something more pressing to attend to. The rest of his life was calling to him. He answered the call with a long, soulful kiss.
Everything you love about romance…and more!
Please turn the page for Signature Select™ Bonus Features.
Bonus Features:
Author Interview
A Conversation with Marie Ferrarella
Bonus Read
Fate and Fortune by Christie Ridgway
Sneak Peek
Fortune’s Legacy by Maureen Child
BONUS FEATURES
Military Man
USA TODAY bestselling author Marie Ferrarella has written more than 150 books for Silhouette! Recently she chatted with us as she took a break from writing her latest book.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of writing? The most challenging?
Going through my final draft. The story’s all laid out and all I need to do is make adjustments. Seeing the final product is always a thrill for me.
The most challenging is that naked screen every morning, knowing I have to fill it. It’s also a challenge to try to remember all the characters I created within a series, keeping them straight and making sure they all have different personalities.
If you couldn’t be a writer, what would you be?
Depressed.
Seriously, if I couldn’t write, I might have turned to being an actress, or cooking—each is a creative outlet.
Besides writing, what other talent would you most like to have?
I’d love to be able to play the piano. Or dance (my body wants to; my feet speak a foreign language). For the most part, I’m a Jill of all trades. I sew (made my own wedding dress—wash and wear), like tinkering and fixing things around the house. I like working with my hands.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Marrying the man I fell in love with and having two great kids. Becoming a writer is a very close second.
What is your most treasured possession?
It’s a tie. My optimism and my imagination. I couldn’t survive without either one.
Who are your heroes in real life?
Arnold Schwarzenegger. He came to this country with very little money and was determined to make something of himself. He became the top in his field, but knew he had to find a way to manage his money, so he went to school and got a degree in finance. Then he wanted to become a movie star. He did it. He wanted to get into politics. He did it. The man doesn’t know the meaning of the word surrender.
Nora Roberts because she reached the top of the hill, then built a mansion on it.
Also, anyone who doesn’t give up, even when the odds are against them. I love reading stories about people who make it when no one thinks they can.
Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
King Arthur in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King.
What is your favorite quote or motto?
“Failure is not an option here.” (Apollo 13)
One I quote often is something my mother taught me in Polish a long time ago. Translated, it goes “When you don’t have what you like, you like what you have.” I tell this to my kids. However, I am push
y and go after what I don’t have—until I get it (that’s how I initially landed my husband).
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Perfect happiness would be having my husband, kids and brothers happy, successful and living close by (for the record, the kids are still at home and my brothers live within four miles of my house). And seeing one of my books get on the New York Times bestseller list.
What actress would you want to play you in a movie?
Someone spunky and perky. In lieu of that, drop-dead gorgeous would be nice (like Charlize Theron).
FATE AND FORTUNE
by Christie Ridgway
A brand-new Fortunes of Texas story
(Part 2 of a 3–part serial)
CHAPTER 4
Reese listened as Daisy summed up their situation.
“All right,” she said. “We’re stuck with two broken vehicles on a deserted country road, left here by a homicidal kidnapper who sat us back-to-back on the gate of my pickup truck and duct taped our wrists together at our sides. There’s no reason to hope for an imminent rescue.” She paused. “So what do you think we should do next?”
Several options came to his mind. He was a businessman after all, one whose job it was to buy financially crippled companies and rebuild them into profit makers again. Solving problems was second nature—hell no, first nature to him.
“We could start crab-walking in the direction of civilization,” he said, his tone practical. “It won’t be pretty, but it’s doable. Or we could—” He paused.
“What?”
Problem solving took a sudden back seat as knowledge finally sank in. They were alive.
My God, they were alive!
Maybe it was due to the bump Jason Jamison had taken to the head, maybe it was due to some latent humanity still flickering somewhere inside his dark heart, but the criminal had gone off in Reese’s car and had left them there, unharmed.
They were alive.
I want to live, Daisy had told Jason. I’ve just rediscovered my first love.
Hearing those words again in his mind, Reese knew what he wanted to do. What he had to do right now.
“What, Reese?” Daisy asked again.
He pressed his back against hers, then turned his head over his shoulder. “Daisy,” he said, his breath stirring the river of her golden-brown hair flowing between them. “Daisy, look at me.”
And when she obeyed, her mouth was there, her lips half opened in surprise. In invitation.
His RSVP was gentle.
Reese pressed his mouth to Daisy’s and memories rose like the sweet scent of her perfume in the air. He remembered their first kiss—on their first date, watching some horror flick that had her jumping closer to him with each dumb dead body. She’d jumped when he’d kissed her, too, and he’d felt her bare arms goose bump beneath the palms of his hands.
It had been erotic as hell at eighteen. The memory of it was erotic as hell now. He twined his fingers with hers and held on tight as he filled her mouth with his tongue. Grown-up Daisy made a little noise, a whimper of pleasure, the very same sound that teenage Daisy had made all those years ago when he’d French-kissed her to the melodramatic sound track of a low-budget slasher movie.
They said it was the thrill of survival that made kids enjoy scary movies, that it was a high they’d seek over and over. Reese didn’t know. He only knew that he and Daisy had survived today and that it only made their kiss hotter, better, more necessary than anything they’d shared when they were kids. Because those kisses had always been laced with the poignant, bittersweet knowledge that it was going to end when the summer ended.
It’s magic again.
Reese wrenched his mouth away and stared at Daisy. So close, he could see the dilated darkness of her pupils and the rim of summer blue surrounding them.
“Daisy,” he whispered. She was weaving another spell on him. A charm that combined Texas afternoon air with the remembered taste of cherry lip gloss and the new visual of her all-grown-up curves. He wanted her like before. He wanted her again. He wanted to believe in forever. “Daisy.”
“What is it, Reese?” Her voice was husky, and the deep note seemed to slide down his body to grab him right where he was most vulnerable.
“Reese?”
The magic never lasts. It never had. It never would. He had years of brief, unsatisfying relationships and even briefer flings to prove it.
So with an effort he straightened and tossed a wry smile her way. “Sorry. That was my rendition of ‘Joy to the World,’ I guess.”
Her face went pink and she turned forward again. “No apology necessary.”
She seemed just as content as he to take a few minutes to recatch his breath. To regain his bearings. The truth was, with the state his body was in, he wouldn’t be able to roll off the damn truck, let alone crab-walk a couple of miles, especially not all the way to civilization.
It was as if he was eighteen again.
Reese cleared his throat. “So, uh…still working on the egg farm?”
“Once a farmer’s daughter,” she said lightly, “always a farmer’s daughter.”
“You look good.”
“Thanks. You, too.”
Reese realized their fingers were still linked. Expert problem solver that he was, he used that fact to ascertain her left ring finger was bare of wedding band or engagement ring. The distinct relief he felt at that must be because, playboy that he admittedly was, he didn’t play with other men’s women.
“You’re still in L.A.,” she said, more of a statement than question. “A corporate raider—‘The Pirate Lavery.’ I believe that’s what the magazine article I read called you.”
L.A. Business Monthly. He supposed a copy of it might have shown up here in the wilds of Texas. Maybe one of his Fortune cousins had passed it to Daisy or mentioned it to her. He shrugged. “They made me sound ruthless. The fact is, I fix the companies I buy.”
“Purely out of the goodness of your heart, I suppose,” she said dryly.
He grinned. “No, for lots and lots of money.” He glanced over his shoulder at the back of her head. “Does that offend the organic-egg-farmer’s daughter?” She’d always been so different from him. Rural to his urban. Texan to his Californian. Farmer’s daughter to his tycoon’s son.
It’s why it had seemed smart to walk away from her at the end of that summer and never look back. It had been the rational, reasonable, sensible thing to do. There had never been a forever in their future.
So there had never been a letter or a phone call from him, either.
“I have nothing against financial success,” she replied mildly.
Then why did it suddenly sound as if she had something against him? Maybe she was remembering his broken promise to call and write, too.
“I didn’t know what to say to you after I left,” he heard himself mutter. “I didn’t think it would help if I—”
“It was better that you didn’t,” Daisy said. “And remember, I had your phone number. I had your address. I can hardly be mad at you for what I didn’t do myself.”
Well, hell. She was right about that. It irked him, come to think of it, that she hadn’t tried to contact him. “Why didn’t you?” He spit out the words before he could help himself, turning to look at her.
She turned to him, too, her mouth once again just a wish away. He could smell her again, that sweet, flowery fragrance that he used to sink himself into, just as he used to sink his fingers into her wealth of honey-brown hair.
“Because it was never meant to last,” she said. “I knew that. You knew that, too.”
“What if—” Reese tried to stop himself. He tried to remember that he’d come to Texas to talk his sister out of romantic foolishness, so he shouldn’t be spouting any of it himself. But the words just kept rushing out of his mouth. “What if we were both wrong?”
CHAPTER 5
Daisy stared over her shoulder at Reese, the man who had been the eighteen-year-old boy who�
��d walked away after their perfect summer. At seventeen, she’d known he would never come back. She’d known she would never see him again. Her practical nature had accepted that, even though her heart had ached for…a long, long time.
Yet here he was.
And he’d just said that maybe they’d been wrong about their feelings for each other not lasting.
She swallowed. Reese was looking at her mouth and it tingled—her whole body tingled, as if bathed in those euphoric bubbles that had been rushing through her bloodstream. Her mouth went dry again and she licked her lips.
Reese groaned and moved in to take another kiss.
His mouth was hotter, more insistent this time. The tingles on her skin ignited into sparklers of heat. Mouths still fused, they both tried shifting closer, but their awkward pose—back-to-back and opposite wrist duct taped to opposite wrist at their sides—meant their movements were counterproductive. First her lips slid off his; next he was kissing her chin instead of her mouth.
“Damn!” Reese lifted his head. “Jamison was more diabolical than I thought.”
“He wanted to hamper us from coming after him.”
“He’s hampering me from something I want a lot more than that,” Reese muttered.
Daisy laughed. Her euphoria was climbing higher, and though she wanted nothing more than to be face-to-face with Reese and in his arms, there was something reassuring about the frustration in his voice.
It proved he wanted her as much as she wanted him.
“Can we get loose somehow?” she suggested. “Maybe we can find a way to saw through the tape.”
Reese held up one set of their linked hands and inspected the thick band of silver tape binding their wrists. “I kept my first car together with this stuff. It’s made to last, damn it.”
Made to last. Just like her feelings for Reese.
Oh, God. Closing her eyes, she rested her head against the back of his. This wasn’t smart. This wasn’t what ever-practical, always-rational Daisy Frances had thought would happen when she’d fallen for Reese so long ago. It was supposed to have been a short-lived summer fling. She let out a silent groan.
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