A Willing Wife

by Jackie Merritt

  * * *

  THE TEXAS TATTLER

  All the news that’s barely fit to print!

  Sinister Plot Stumps Feds

  Divorce Scandal Takes the Spotlight

  After a six-month no-stone-unturned search for missing “Midas” baby Bryan Fortune, the FBI closed their files on the case, declaring the debacle an unsolved mystery. The kidnappers remain on America’s Most Wanted list, and Red Rock Sheriff Wyatt Grayhawk vows to solve the puzzle that has boggled the best criminal experts money and prestige can buy. As always, the ever-vigilant family holds out hope.

  Top-secret sources close to the family report that cattle mogul Ryan Fortune has been on bended knee, pressuring lost love Lily Redgrove Cassidy to be his bride. Lovely Lily would be “Mrs.” number three, by the way. Someone, please remind dear Ryan that a married man—even a Fortune—must get divorced before he can remarry.

  Red Rock’s tall, dark and eligible widower Dallas Fortune has been “rendezvousing” on the wrong side of the tracks! Numerous sources have spied the wickedly wealthy rancher in the very close company of single mom Maggie Perez Randall, daughter of the Fortunes’ long-time housekeeper. Is it possible this solid gold cowboy has his very own Cinderella?

  * * *

  About the Author

  JACKIE MERRITT

  is still writing, just not with the speed and constancy of years past. She and her husband are living in southern Nevada again, falling back on old habits of loving the long, warm or slightly cool winters and trying almost desperately to head north for the months of July and August, when the fiery sun bakes people and cacti alike.

  JACKIE MERRITT

  A Willing Wife

  Meet the Fortunes of Texas

  Dallas Fortune: The wealthy bachelor had no plans to become a father, but ever since he rescued an adorable four-year-old, he’s found it impossible to resist the little boy and his delectable single mother. Is the marriage-shy rancher finally ready to say “I do”?

  Maggie Perez Randall: She has no time for romance—raising her son is her number-one priority. But little Travis wants a daddy, and he’s chosen their handsome neighbor as his perfect father….

  Sophia Barnes Fortune: The scorned woman will stop at nothing to make Ryan Fortune pay for daring to love another. She’ll even resort to kidnapping and harassment to claim her share of the Fortune wealth.

  Logan Fortune: This dedicated businessman’s life is thrown into a tailspin when he discovers he’s the father of an adorable little girl. But what does this bachelor dad know about babies?

  To all my friends in recreational vehicles

  that we’ve run into during our travels.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  One

  Dallas Fortune left his pickup truck parked near his sprawling adobe house, located not far from the ranch’s main house where his father lived, and walked the short distance to the barns and corrals. It was a sunny, clear day in late November, and the midday air was pleasantly warm. He’d been up since five and had already put in hours of work with the ranch hands.

  More and more, Dallas was taking over duties that his father, Ryan, had once enjoyed doing, which was fine with Dallas for several reasons. First of all, he loved the Double Crown Ranch as none of his siblings did. Matthew was a doctor of medicine, Zane preferred working in the family’s corporation, Fortune TX, Ltd., and the twins, Vanessa and Victoria, had chosen careers that had nothing at all to do with the ranch or the family.

  A second reason for Dallas’s dedication to the ranch’s operation was his father. Ryan’s plate was pretty full, considering the nasty divorce he was going through, the fact that Matthew and Claudia’s baby son Bryan had been kidnapped right from under everyone’s noses during a family get-together for the child’s christening, and last but certainly not least, Ryan was crazy in love with Lily Redgrove Cassidy and couldn’t marry her until his divorce was final.

  But Dallas’s third reason for putting in long hours and deliberately exhausting himself so he could sleep nights was deeply personal. His wife Sara had died two years ago while giving birth to their stillborn son. The double tragedy still haunted Dallas—and a third tragedy was that he didn’t give a damn that it did. He’d become a loner, a man lost in his own past, and he often shunned social events and people, both friends and family, because some had the unmitigated gall to say right to his face that he had mourned long enough. Their attempts at matchmaking sickened Dallas. And the women who paraded themselves before him to get attention caused exactly the opposite reaction.

  Dallas did have a few female friends, of course. His sister-in-law, Matthew’s wife Claudia, had been a friend since college, and he had developed a more recent friendship with Savannah Clark Perez. Not once, though, since Sara’s death had Dallas felt the slightest inclination toward anything but friendship with a woman.

  He also did a bit of traveling now and again. In fact, he had just returned from Europe, a trip that had been mostly business, as almost everything was to him these days. Pleasure simply wasn’t on his agenda anymore, and he apologized to no one for his attitude or life-style, either.

  He wasn’t thinking of those things as he hiked down to the barns and corrals today, however. His thoughts were on the herd of longhorns in one particular corral that had been sold and were scheduled to be picked up by a cattle truck at one o’clock. He had discussed the sale with his father, and Ryan had agreed with Dallas’s decision to weed out some of the older longhorns. Dallas intended to be there when the truck arrived.

  Approaching the corral, Dallas heard the longhorns milling around and bawling much more than he’d anticipated. Frowning, Dallas broke into a jog, and as he got closer to the penned animals he saw the reason for their disturbance. A small boy Dallas didn’t recognize had climbed to the top rung of the corral fence!

  Dallas’s heart skipped a beat. One wrong move and that kid could fall into the corral. The longhorns were already nervous over his presence; the boy could be trampled to death.

  Realizing that he had to be careful, and that the “wrong move” could be his own, Dallas circled the corral until he was behind the boy. Then, walking as silently as he could, he moved in on the child.

  He grabbed him just as the boy lost his balance and fell forward. With a wildly beating pulse borne of dread and relief, Dallas lifted the youngster back over the fence and then set him on his own two feet on the ground.

  Travis’s small heart was beating a mile a minute. Holding back tears because he was really a very tough guy and didn’t want to cry in front of the tall man who had rescued him, Travis stared up at him.

  Dallas leaned down and looked directly into the boy’s blue eyes. “And who might you be, young fellow?”

  “Tra-Travis Randall.”

  “Well, Travis Randall, didn’t anyone ever tell you that longhorns can be ornery critters, and that climbing the fence of their pen could be dangerous business?”

  “I just wanted to see ’em better.”

  “Haven’t you ever seen longhorns before?”

  “Mama showed me some pictures.”

  “And what is Mama’s name?”

  “Uh, Maggie. Mama’s name is Maggie.”

  Out of the corner of his right eye Dallas caught sight of
someone running hell-bent for leather. He turned his head for a better view, and saw that the runner was a woman, a small woman with long, flowing dark hair and a figure any man would notice. She was wearing cut-off denim shorts and a white tank top that left little to the imagination.

  “Could that lady heading this way at ninety miles per hour be your mama?” Dallas asked young Travis.

  The boy took a look and visibly shrank. “She’s mad.”

  “At you?”

  Travis nodded and fell silent. Dallas rose and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, and both of them waited for Maggie to reach them.

  Out of breath, she ran up, took one look at the pale face of her son, then knelt down and put her arms around him. “Something happened, didn’t it? What was it?” Her gaze rose to Dallas’s face.

  Dallas cleared his throat. “Travis accidentally fell into the corral.”

  “And I suppose he ‘accidentally’ climbed the fence?” Maggie gave her son a small shake. “Didn’t I tell you to stay in Grandma’s yard?”

  “Yes, Mama,” Travis said meekly.

  “He didn’t actually fall, Maggie,” Dallas said. “He’d just started to fall when I caught him.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  “Travis told me. Are you Maggie Perez Randall?”

  “Yes, that’s my legal name—my married name. But I prefer Maggie Perez. And you’re…?”

  “Dallas Fortune.”

  He was a Fortune. She should have known. Good-looking, confident. Oh, yes, she should have guessed that he wasn’t just another cowhand.

  And maybe she should have remembered him from childhood. They’d known each other as children, after all. Obviously he was back from his trip. Where was it she’d heard he’d gone? Oh, yes, Scotland, to look over some special breed of cattle. Or was it France? Well, it didn’t really matter. What did was that he was here now and he had saved Travis from a nasty fall.

  Rising, Maggie offered her hand, which Dallas readily shook. “Thank you for being in the right place at the right moment. If Travis had fallen into that corral…” She couldn’t even say it; just the thought of her precious son being trampled by cattle hooves was more than she could bear. But precious or not, Travis was going to get a good talking to, at the very least.

  “Don’t be too hard on him,” Dallas said quietly, as though reading her mind. “Small boys are naturally curious creatures.”

  “He disobeyed me. From the day we arrived I told him that when he played outside he had to stay in the yard.”

  Dallas couldn’t seem to stop looking into Maggie Perez’s gorgeous dark eyes. She’d grown up to be a strikingly beautiful woman—naturally tawny skin, the kind of full rosy lips that a fashion model might envy, and a perfect body and legs. Her hands and feet were small, her wrists delicate, her fingernails beautifully shaped and shiny with colorless polish.

  “Um, when did you arrive?” Dallas asked.

  Maggie looked off into the distance and frowned slightly. It had seemed like such a good idea to return to Texas—to the ranch she’d grown up on and to her family—until she got her bearings again after being laid off from her job as a bank manager. But now she wasn’t so sure. Unquestionably she wasn’t accomplishing anything positive by living with her parents, even though Rosita, her mother, and Ruben, her father, were wonderful to her and Travis.

  “I’ve…rather, Travis and I have been here for weeks and weeks,” she murmured, unnerved by the swift passage of time. She really must get herself together and decide what she was going to do with her life. Her divorce was over a year old and hadn’t bothered her nearly as much as had losing her job. But then she hadn’t really been in love with her ex, nor had he loved her. Their marriage had been a result of her pregnancy, a foolish mistake for both her and Craig, and for a while she had hoped to make it work. Craig, too, had tried—for a while—but then it all started falling apart. Without love, relationships—even marriage—simply couldn’t endure.

  “Are you home for good?”

  “No, of course not. Just until…well, I’m not really sure just how long we’ll stay, but I know we’re not here for good.” Maggie was a trifle confused. Dallas seemed to be sincerely interested in talking to her, and why would he be? Heavens, he was attractive! At least six feet tall, and so lean and hard-muscled. And his eyes were a marvelous color, a light golden brown that reminded her of good whiskey. She liked the way he wore his sun-streaked brown hair, too, long enough to touch his shirt collar.

  “Didn’t I hear something about your living in Phoenix?” Dallas said, breaking into thoughts that Maggie knew full well she shouldn’t be having.

  “I was living in Phoenix, so you heard right,” she said a bit brusquely. Admiring Dallas Fortune’s good looks was just about the most foolish thing she could do while she was here, and if there was one thing she didn’t plan on ever being again with a man, it was foolish. One stroll around that block was quite enough, thank you very much. “But I’m not going back to Arizona. I haven’t actually done anything about it yet, but I’ve been thinking about looking for work in Houston,” she found herself adding, in spite of all that common sense in her system telling her to take Travis by the hand and get the heck away from Dallas Fortune.

  “What kind of work do you do?” Dallas asked.

  “At my last job I was a bank manager.”

  Dallas nodded. “Banking is a good field.” He wanted to ask about her husband in the worst way, but not in front of Travis. Something very unusual was happening to Dallas: he was attracted to a woman! Feeling her pull, inhaling her scent, realizing that his body was reacting exactly as it should to a beautiful, sexy lady—which it sure hadn’t been doing with any other beautiful, sexy lady he knew. Obviously their chemistries blended in the unique and special way that brought a man and a woman together. Did she feel it as strongly as he did?

  Travis was beginning to squirm. Maggie took his hand in hers. “We’d better be going. Thank you again, Dallas. I shudder to think what might have happened if you hadn’t been here.” She started walking away.

  “Maggie, it was great seeing you again,” Dallas called after her.

  She turned around just long enough to say, “It was nice seeing you again. Goodbye,” and then began walking so fast that Travis almost had to run to keep up.

  “Mama, stop, you’re going too fast,” he finally complained.

  “Don’t you ‘Mama’ me, young man,” she said sternly. “You could have been hurt very badly today. Do you understand what almost happened to you? If I catch you leaving the yard again without permission, I promise I will paddle your behind and you will sit on a chair in the house for a week. Without TV or toys. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mama,” Travis said with a tearful sniffle. He could cry now that he wasn’t with Dallas, and actually a few tears might even soften his mother’s heart.

  They didn’t. Maggie marched stoically on toward her parents’ house with her son in tow, thanking God and Dallas Fortune that Travis hadn’t been injured, or worse, today.

  But she’d meant what she’d told her son, and his teary little face did not affect that decision in the least.

  Maggie’s homecoming—weeks and weeks before, as she’d told Dallas—had been everything she’d known it would be. She and Travis had arrived in the evening, surprising her parents to joyful tears. Rosita and Ruben had passed her back and forth, hugging and kissing her, and doing the same with Travis.

  “Oh, he is such a handsome boy,” Rosita had exclaimed again and again. “And you are so beautiful, Maggie. Oh, my dear daughter, I’ve prayed so often that you would return to us. Now, let’s get you settled in, then we’ll have coffee and talk. We have a lot to catch up on.”

  Rosita rarely had the time to write long letters, and Ruben corresponded with no one. But over the years Rosita had often scribbled notes to her daughter, passing on what Rosita considered to be the most crucial information about everyone who currently lived or previously had li
ved, on the ranch. And, of course, there’d been the long-distance phone calls between mother and daughter.

  Those notes and phone calls were the reason Maggie knew about Ryan Fortune’s divorce problems, and about his new love, Lily Cassidy, which, in fact, wasn’t a new love at all but an old love renewed. Then there was the bewildering event of baby Bryan’s kidnapping.

  Over coffee or tea at the kitchen table in the evening Maggie and Rosita did most of their talking. It began the first night Maggie returned to the ranch, and was what they were doing the evening of the day that Maggie and Dallas had met again because of Travis’s disobedient behavior. With Travis tucked into bed and Ruben reading his paper in the living room, Rosita related the latest news. “Sheriff Wyatt Grayhawk is still investigating the identity of the mystery baby. Of course, as I told you before, FBI agent Devin Kincaid rescued a baby from the kidnappers who the family believed was baby Bryan. But when Claudia and Matthew saw him, they knew it wasn’t their son. They’ve kept him and named him Taylor. More mysterious still is that the child turned out to be a Fortune—he has the crown-shaped birthmark and rare blood type. Yet no Fortune has claimed him.”

  Maggie sipped her coffee. “That is so odd, isn’t it?”

  “Very. He has to be the son of one of the Fortune men, because if any of the Fortune women had given birth, someone would know about it.”

  “But which man could it be? How will Wyatt find out?”

  Rosita leaned forward. “I heard that he’s mentioned a DNA screening on every one of the Fortune males.”

  “But that’s so…so personal!”

  Rosita shrugged. “So is fathering a child and then pretending you know nothing about it.”

  “Mama, most of the Fortune men have pretty fast reputations, but I can’t imagine any of them knowingly denying their own flesh and blood.”

  “I agree, but I have this feeling—”