Still, she had to find a way to at least try to throw a monkey wrench into this absurd “campaign” plan of his. Not that she actually thought that the heartless Brittany would wind up marrying her brother. She knew the woman well enough to know that Brittany was too accustomed to being fawned over by a host of men to ever give that up for just one man.
But if Blake went all out to win Brittany over, he would eventually have his heart cut out and handed to him—and not on a silver platter. Wendy was determined to do whatever it took to spare her brother that ultimate pain and humiliation.
But there was only so much she could physically do right now.
Wendy frowned, staring down at the bed that imprisoned her. Giving her word that she wouldn’t get out of bed was the only way she had managed to bargain her discharge from a San Antonio hospital room. Her doctor had fully intended for her to remain in the hospital until such time as her baby was physically developed enough to be born. Complete bed rest was the only compromise available.
Which meant that she was going to need an ally to act in her place. More specifically, she needed the one woman who just might be able to get her brother to give up this ridiculous notion of asking Brittany Everett to become Mrs. Blake Fortune.
“If you’re setting up your office,” Wendy said, cutting in, “you might as well send for Katie and have her come join you.”
Caught off guard by the suggestion, Blake stared at her. “Katie?” he echoed.
“Wallace,” Wendy prompted needlessly. Katie was as much a part of her brother’s life as anyone in the family. More, probably. “You know, your marketing assistant. Cute girl, twenty-four, stands about five foot five, has pretty brown hair and soft brown eyes—”
Blake snorted. “I know who Katie is.” And then, as he replayed his sister’s initial words in his head, he nodded. His frown faded. “You know, sending for Katie’s not a half-bad idea, either.”
Yes!
“Of course it’s not a half-bad idea,” Wendy informed him serenely, then couldn’t help adding, “It’s a completely wonderful idea.
“She can help you with your work,” she underscored pointedly, praying she could divert her brother’s focus away from the girl he was mooning about and get him back on his usual track. Blake really was a very hard worker and a real asset to FortuneSouth Enterprises. This nonsense about Brittany was hopefully just that—nonsense. “Katie has wonderful organizational skills,” Wendy reminded him.
Besides, Wendy added silently, if her brother interacted with Katie, maybe he’d forget about this stupid vow to win over Miss all wrong for him. Or at least feel too stupid saying it out loud in Katie’s presence, which meant he wouldn’t be putting whatever half-baked plan he was hatching into play.
Though they had never talked about it out loud, Wendy was certain that Katie had feelings for Blake. Maybe even loved him. It was all there, in her eyes.
Not that Blake ever looked, she thought, slanting a disparaging glance in his direction, which he seemed to miss totally.
“I’ll get right on it,” Blake was saying cheerfully. Rising from the chair, he stopped to brush a kiss against her cheek. “You’re the best,” he told Wendy with enthusiasm.
“Of course I am,” she agreed, as he headed for the doorway.
“Katie, I need you.”
Katie Wallace nearly dropped the receiver as Blake Fortune’s voice echoed in her ear, uttering the words she had waited to hear for what felt like her entire life. Words that she’d been fairly convinced she was never going to hear.
Katie, I need you. He’d said it. Blake had actually said it.
To her.
They weren’t in the middle of an incredibly long meeting, or stuck in an all-night work marathon, the way they’d been all too frequently. They weren’t even in the same room together. Blake was calling her from Red Rock, where he was on what she’d assumed was a vacation or some kind of family emergency.
Ever since the tornado had ripped through Red Rock she’d been watching the news reports religiously and reading everything she could get her hands on about the devastation that had befallen the idyllic Texas town where her childhood friend Wendy had taken up residence.
When the tornado had initially hit, a news bulletin had interrupted the program that was on TV. As she’d watched and listened, her whole world had ground to a halt. She’d wanted to attend Wendy’s wedding, but because of circumstances, she’d had to remain in the office, manning her post, so to speak.
Her heart had all but stopped as she’d listened to the bulletin. She knew that Blake and Wendy, as well as the rest of their family, were all out there, stranded and in the tornado’s path. The very thought unnerved her. She’d instantly started praying and searching for more information.
At one point, she had almost torn out of the office to try to get the first flight out to Red Rock, but no flights were going out to Red Rock, not directly or with layovers. Moreover, as reports began to come in, apparently there no longer was an airport for the flights to land in. The tornado had taken care of that.
That first day, she’d stayed up over twenty-four hours, scouring the channels and the internet, searching for any shred of information. Looking for the names of those who hadn’t made it—desperately praying she wouldn’t see any she recognized.
Especially not the name of the man she had loved with all her heart since she was a little girl.
Not that Blake Fortune actually ever noticed her. Oh, he’d seen her, but never as what she wanted him to see. To him she was just his sister’s friend, the annoying girl next door. Later on, he’d acknowledged her as a college graduate with a marketing degree and he’d been impressed enough with her skills to hire her. But he never saw her as what she was. A woman who could love him the way he desired to be loved.
Still, something was better than nothing, so, as a kid she’d settled for his teasing words, his pranks, pretending indignance and secretly loving the attention. Anything, she had long ago decided, that had Blake looking in her direction was fine with her.
After she grew up, of course, she’d wanted more. Couldn’t help wanting more. She’d wanted him to look at her as something other than Katie Wallace, the little girl next door.
That was why she’d gone to college to get that marketing degree in the first place. This was the key to getting closer to him, if not in his private life, then in his professional one. She’d nurtured the hope that if she worked really hard and proved to be indispensable to him, Blake would eventually wake up one morning to realize that he had feelings for her beyond his role as her boss.
That had been her plan, but even so, right now she still was having trouble believing that she wasn’t dreaming. Was Blake actually saying what she thought he was saying?
After all this time?
Her heart was hammering in her throat as she forced out the words, “Excuse me?” into the receiver, scarcely above a whisper. She cleared her voice and spoke up. “Could you repeat please that?” Then, in case he thought she was being coy instead of just shocked, she quickly explained, “There’s interference in the line, I didn’t really hear what you just said.”
“I said I need you,” Blake told her, raising his voice. “It looks as if I’m going to be here longer than I thought. At least a couple of weeks, maybe three. When can you get out here?”
Katie allowed herself to savor his words for exactly thirty seconds. Where were Dorothy’s magic ruby-red slippers when you needed them? she thought. Because then all it would take was clicking her heels together three times and she would be there at his side. Just the way she desperately wanted to be.
She knew that this had to be about work and that Blake needed her to get things done, but she viewed the phrase he’d uttered as her first step in the right direction. Someday, she promised herself, Blake was g
oing to realize that he really did need her—and not just as his assistant.
“I can be on the first flight out there,” she promised. Even as she spoke, she began searching the internet, pulling up the various airlines and looking at departure times. “I’ll call you back the second I’m booked.”
“That’s my girl,” he said. “I knew I could count on you.”
That’s my girl.
The three words echoed in her head over and over again as she all but flew back to her apartment and set a new world record for packing quickly.
That’s my girl.
Definitely in the right direction, she thought happily.
Chapter Two
“You sure you don’t mind me setting up an office in your house?” Blake asked his older brother Scott for a second time.
Ordinarily, he would have opted to use one of the offices in the building housing the Fortune Foundation in town. However, it was currently off-limits since it had sustained major structural damage during the tornado.
Scott had only recently decided to transplant himself from Atlanta to Red Rock and had just purchased a ranch and the house that stood on it. As of yet, he and Christina, the woman who had won his heart, were redecorating the rooms and several were still in limbo. Blake was temporarily claiming one for an office—as long as Scott had no objections.
“I mean, I’m already in your hair, bunking here until Wendy’s baby is strong enough to finally make us uncles.” Blake thought for a moment, then decided to ask Scott, since he was now the Red Rock resident. “Maybe it’d be better if I rent a couple of rooms in town—”
Scott waved away what he anticipated was the rest of his brother’s thought.
“After the tornado, whatever’s available in Red Rock has most likely been commandeered for temporary living quarters for the folks who lost their homes, or whose homes are so damaged that they’re not safe to stay in right now. Besides,” Scott added as an afterthought, “turning part of my place into ‘FortuneSouth-West’ might just make points with the old man, though I doubt it.”
Their father, as everyone knew, had very high standards, which at times, Scott couldn’t help feeling, even God might have some trouble reaching. It didn’t help matters that, in the aftermath of the tornado, Scott had decided not to go back to Atlanta but to make a life for himself here, with a woman he firmly believed was his soul mate. A woman he had only known for a little over a month. The senior Fortune, Scott felt certain, undoubtedly believed that he had lost his mind—instead of finally finding his soul.
“And you’re sure I won’t be in your way?” Blake probed.
This new, improved and far more relaxed Scott was going to take some getting used to, Blake thought. Up until a month and a half ago, Scott had been as big a workaholic as their father and oldest brother, Michael. But he was definitely of a mind that this change in his brother was for the better.
“Not unless you plan on lying in the front doorway like a human obstacle course,” Scott answered. He grinned as he regarded his brother who, at twenty-seven, was five years younger than he was. “Might be kind of nice having you around for a while. Aside from that little buried-alive incident on New Year’s Eve-eve—and, of course, Wendy’s wedding—we don’t get to see each other all that much anymore,” he noted.
The observation amused Blake. “Said the workaholic,” he interjected.
“Not anymore,” Scott emphasized. “That tornado kind of made me reexamine my priorities.” Almost dying did that to a man, Scott thought. He felt as if he’d been given a second chance for a reason—and he didn’t intend to waste it by going back to “business as usual.” “There’s a lot more to life than finding different ways to continue building up a telecommunications empire.”
His brother really was sincere, Blake thought. This wasn’t just a passing phase. Scott was serious about putting his roots down in Red Rock because living here was so important to Christina, his future wife, and thus, important to him.
“Yeah, I know what you mean, about reexamining my priorities,” Blake explained when Scott raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I told Wendy that I feel like my life’s been on hold long enough and that it’s time I did something about it.”
“Anything you care to share with the class?” Scott asked, amused at the very serious expression on Blake’s face.
“I’m going after the one who got away,” Blake told him simply.
Scott nodded and smiled. He might have been a dedicated workaholic when they were all back in Atlanta, but that didn’t mean that he had been wearing blinders 24/7. He was quite aware of how his young brother’s assistant, Katie Wallace, looked at Blake when she thought no one was paying attention. At the time, he’d found it rather amusing. But now, finding himself on the other side of love, he understood how she must have felt—and continued to feel. But something wasn’t making sense, he realized.
“I wasn’t aware that she had exactly ‘gotten away,’” Scott commented.
Blake supposed that Scott was either too busy to have noticed, or maybe he’d just forgotten. “Yeah, she did,” he assured his brother.
Okay, maybe he’d missed a chapter or two of Blake’s life, Scott thought. “So you’re going after—”
“Brittany Everett, yes,” Blake said, filling in the name for Scott.
For a second, all Scott did was stare at him. And then he murmured, “Oh,” more to himself than to his brother.
“What do you mean, ‘oh’?”
There was no point in talking about Katie if his brother’s sights were set on a vapid prima donna like Brittany Everett. Like everyone else in the family, because of the circles they all moved in he was vaguely aware of the woman—and what he knew, he didn’t find very compelling.
Scott shrugged, dismissing his slip. “Nothing, just surprised that you seem so determined to get together with her.” For a moment, he thought back to his brother’s college days. “Didn’t Brittany dump you right after graduation?”
“No one dumped anyone,” Blake insisted. “We just drifted apart.”
“Right, after you caught her in a lip-lock with some other guy, if I remember correctly.”
“I should have fought for her.”
You should have cut her loose long before that, Scott thought. But Blake was a big boy now, able to make his own decisions. Besides, Scott had a feeling that the more he talked against Brittany—whose only attributes as far as he could see were strictly physical—the more, he was certain, Blake would dig in. They were alike that way, he and his brother.
So Scott dropped the matter, stepped back and hoped for the best. “If you say so. Look, I promised Christina I’d meet her for lunch, so I’d better get going. Good luck with whatever it is you’re planning to do.” And I hope you come to your senses real soon.
The reference to time had Blake looking at his own watch. “Hey, I’d better get going, too. I’ve got to drive over to San Antonio International Airport to pick up Katie,” he said, joining his brother in the hallway. “She’s flying in to help me with my strategy to win back Brittany.”
Scott stared at him, utterly stunned. “She is?” he asked. This couldn’t be right. “You actually told Katie that you were ‘launching’ this so-called campaign to get Brittany to become Mrs. Blake Fortune?”
“Well, not in so many words,” Blake admitted. The next moment, he saw a very wide smile curving his brother’s mouth. He was unaware of having said something funny. “What?”
“Nothing,” Scott answered, waving his hand and struggling to keep the laughter under wraps. “Just, good luck with that.” And then, he couldn’t resist asking, “By the way, how many pallbearers would you like at your funeral?”
Maybe the tornado had shaken Scott up more than anyone realized, Blake thought. His brother wasn’t mak
ing any sense. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
But Scott continued grinning mysteriously. And then he patted him on the shoulder. “You’ll figure it out, Blake,” he assured him, just before he hurried off down the hallway and out of the house.
Blake shook his head as he followed slowly in his brother’s path, heading for the car he’d left parked in the huge, circular driveway. He put the odd conversation with Scott out of his head.
Right now he had something more pressing to attend to.
The way he figured it, if the flight from Atlanta arrived on time, he was just going to make it to the airport by the skin of his teeth—barring the unforeseen. It was a footnote that he had gotten into the habit of adding ever since the tornado had turned his life and his family’s lives entirely upside down, tossing them on their collective ears.
Katie had deliberately brought only carry-on luggage with her. She had no desire to spend the extra time required to wait for luggage.
So, in the interests of speed and efficiency, Katie had stuffed into a single piece of luggage everything she felt she would need that couldn’t be purchased at some local shop between the airport and Red Rock. After engorging the suitcase to the point that it looked as if it would explode, she’d sat on the lid and fought with the zipper until she’d managed to bring the closure full circle.
She managed to secure the very last ticket for the next outgoing flight to San Antonio International Airport.
She didn’t relax the entire flight, her mind busily embracing the key phrase Blake had used when he’d called her.
I need you.
Part of her still didn’t believe she’d finally lived to see the day when everything she’d dreamed about for so long would actually start happening.
Don’t start sending out the wedding invitations yet, her mind warned. That was the part of her that was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
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