Fortune's Proposal

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  “Isabella?” She rushed into the kitchen. “Is there news?”

  Isabella lifted her hand, but not her head. “It’s okay.” Her voice was muffled. “It’s not William. Just give me a second.”

  Deanna leaned against the island, letting her panic subside until she could breath. She frowned at the woman’s downturned head, then went to the cupboards near the sink, opening and closing doors until she found a glass. She filled it with water and took it over to Isabella.

  She crouched down on her heels so she could see Isabella’s face beneath her thick curtain of hair. “You got dizzy again, didn’t you?” she guessed. “Like you did at the church.”

  Isabella opened her eyes, sliding a guilty look her way before slowly sitting up. Her curtain of dark hair slid down behind her back as she nodded.

  “Drink some water.” Deanna fit the glass into Isabella’s hand, prepared to catch it if she wasn’t able to hold on to it. “Are you feeling sick?”

  Isabella lifted the glass and drank down half the contents. Then she let out a long breath. “I think I might be pregnant,” she said in a low voice.

  Deanna’s lips parted. “That sounds…wonderful…doesn’t it?”

  Isabella’s lips turned up at the corners. “Absolutely. It just seems like now isn’t exactly the time to add that to everyone’s plate.” Her glance slipped past Deanna toward the empty doorway as she set the glass on the counter. “J.R. and I didn’t tell anyone at the time, but I had a miscarriage about six months ago.”

  “Oh, Isabella…”

  The other woman raised her hand. “It’s all right. And we weren’t really trying to keep it a secret or anything. It was a blow, of course, once we realized, but I was so early along, I didn’t even know I’d been pregnant until the doctor told me. I just don’t want J.R. worrying about this right now.”

  “Not that I have even twenty-four hours to base this on,” Deanna offered, “but I’m pretty sure he would want to be worrying about you. He’s clearly devoted to you.”

  Isabella smiled. The color was coming back into her cheeks, much to Deanna’s relief. “And I am to him,” she assured. She slid off the bar stool and went around the island again to pick up the knife she’d left there. “We’ve wanted to start a family ever since we got married two years ago. I know J.R. will be thrilled. And I know he’ll be worried whether he admits it or not. I’m already thirty-two. Like it or not, this sort of thing just seems to get more complicated with every year past thirty. And I don’t know for certain, yet. I haven’t done a test. It’s just a hunch. Not only do I not want him worrying more just now, but I also don’t want to raise his hopes if I’m wrong.” She deftly sliced a tomato in half. “You can understand that, right?”

  Deanna nodded. “Yes.” She lifted her hands. “But what can I do to help?” She meant more than just the dinner preparation, and the other woman knew it.

  “You’re the only one I’ve told,” Isabella said. She let out a deep breath. “Just being able to tell someone is a lot, believe me.” She reached below the island and pulled out a cheese grater and a plastic bowl and set them on the counter. “And you can grate.”

  Deanna knew that the other woman would never have shared her suspicion if she didn’t believe Deanna and Drew were heading toward the altar, and her conscience weighed heavily.

  But she nodded and moved around the island to stand beside the other woman, and began unwrapping the cheese. “You’ll let me know if you do need something, all right? Even if it’s just to sneak a pregnancy test into the house for you.”

  Isabella laughed softly. “I knew I liked you, Dee.”

  And Deanna liked Isabella.

  She liked every member of Drew’s family that she’d met since arriving in Red Rock.

  And she hated the deception that she and Drew had created.

  But she hated the thought of letting him down more.

  They ate their late supper of salad and spicy enchiladas and chased it down with the most delicious caramel cake that Deanna had ever tasted in her life. But she strongly suspected that the only reason Jeremy and Drew did any justice to the meal was because they didn’t want to disappoint Isabella.

  Then, while they were eating the decadent dessert that Evie had left for them, J.R. returned. Lily had finally gone to bed, he reported, primarily because William’s brother Patrick and his wife, Lacey, had come to the Double Crown and Lacey had been able to convince her cousin-in-law that she simply had to get some rest.

  “Would she take a sedative?” Jeremy asked.

  “I doubt it,” Isabella cautioned.

  “Given the state she was in, let’s hope that doesn’t become necessary,” J.R. told him.

  “Is anyone staying with her?” Deanna asked.

  “Lacey,” J.R. said. “For tonight at least. She and Patrick have a brief trip they’re leaving on tomorrow that they can’t postpone.” J.R. leaned back in his seat at the head of the table. Isabella sat adjacent to him and their hands were linked on top of the table. “I don’t think any of us want her to be alone right now. Fortunately, there are enough family members around town that we can keep that duty covered without too much effort.”

  “I could go tomorrow,” Isabella offered immediately.

  J.R. eyed her. “You look more tired than I feel,” he said. “Frannie’s already said she’ll go over tomorrow. You can all work out details then.”

  Deanna quickly focused on the bright yellow-and-orange linen napkin on her lap, folding it in fourths. If Isabella was right, she had a good reason to look tired right now.

  “Lily doesn’t look like the type to appreciate being babysat.”

  They all turned to look at Drew. He hadn’t said a word at the table to anyone other than Deanna sitting beside him, when he’d told her they’d craft a media release before morning.

  “She’s not,” Isabella agreed after a moment. “She’d hate feeling coddled. But right now, I know she’s more focused on William than she is on herself.” She stood and began reaching for plates.

  Deanna rose to help. She was more than a little surprised when the others did, too. Even Drew.

  Since the man didn’t even order his own lunch at the office if he could avoid it, she wasn’t exactly used to seeing him carrying dirty dishes anywhere, much less to the kitchen sink, where he began rinsing them, as well as the others that were quickly stacked beside him before J.R. disappeared to take care of some ranch matters and Jeremy went off to return yet another call from his service.

  “I’ll finish up in here,” Deanna offered to Isabella, who looked ready to shoo Drew out of the way, and was relieved when the other woman accepted, even subsiding to her husband’s none-too-subtle efforts before he’d left that she retire for the night.

  “Tomorrow is going to be a better day,” she said before she left the kitchen.

  Which left Deanna alone in the room with Drew.

  And the last time they’d been alone—

  She cut off the treacherous thoughts.

  It was harder than it should have been, though, and only by mentally pulling on one of her ugly suits as a paltry armor against the feelings inside her did she find the strength to move naturally next to him as if she hadn’t thrown herself at him the way she had.

  But her gaze still kept straying to his sinewy forearms below the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt. “I can do that,” she told him a little more abruptly than her “act natural” act called for.

  “So can I.” He stuck a plate under the running water and rinsed it. Water sluiced over his bronzed wrist. “I did have a mother, you know.” He set the plate aside. “You can load the dishwasher.”

  Too bemused to form an argument, Deanna figured out the latch on the fancy dishwasher and opened the door. Bending over, she began loading the rinsed items inside. But not even that action was familiar, since her modest apartment didn’t possess even a nonfancy variety.

  “Did you have regular chores as a kid, then?” Her gaze had automat
ically started to rise when she spoke, but it went dead still when she found her eyes nearly on a level with his rear.

  One of the plates clattered as it slid into its slot too quickly and she carefully redirected her gaze from the painfully excellent cut of his custom-tailored trousers over those glutes and was grateful that he couldn’t see her.

  “We all had chores.” His hand moved and a water glass appeared almost in front of her nose. Mindful that it probably wouldn’t tolerate the same carelessness as the plate, she carefully lifted it out of his hand as he continued. “Inside the house and out,” he was saying. “Until he got old enough that he realized the payment wasn’t worth the chore, I used to bribe Darr into taking most of mine.”

  She straightened. “That sounds more like the man I know,” she said wryly and caught a wisp of a smile around his lips. The first in hours.

  And no matter what sort of mess she was in, she still felt as if she’d won some great prize at the sight.

  “I didn’t mind the yard work so much,” he admitted. “It was outside at least.” He looked at the window above the sink, but all that was visible were their own reflections against the darkness outside.

  It was strange enough to be standing alongside him working on the dishes, much less to see their images in that windowpane.

  It was far too…domestic.

  Particularly when she couldn’t stop thinking that, sooner or later, they were going to be sleeping in the same bedroom again.

  Same bedroom.

  Same bed.

  She bent over the dishwasher rack again, fitting another plate into place, only this time she was careful to keep her eyes focused where they belonged. “If, uh, if you want me to, I could draft the media release for you. Maybe a few versions for you to look at.” She’d done so dozens of times before for him; just not ones that dealt with such a serious, personal matter.

  “Did you have to do chores?”

  She straightened again. “What? Oh. Yeah.” All of them, pretty much, since Gigi had usually been incapable of it. “Most kids do.” She took the last dish from him and placed it in the rack, then closed the door and went out of the kitchen, back to the dining-room table where she took her time gathering up the colorful woven place mats and napkins before carrying them into the kitchen in hope that he would lose his sudden curiosity about her childhood.

  He was standing where she’d left him, only he’d turned his back to the sink and his arms were crossed over his chest. His brooding gaze tracked her movements as if he were trying to calculate something while she brushed off the place mats and left them stacked on the island. She carried the cloth napkins into the laundry room next to the kitchen that she’d noticed earlier, but eventually, she couldn’t pretend there was any more busywork.

  He was still studying her when she stopped next to the granite-topped island again. She felt like a bug on the end of a pin, and didn’t care for it at all. She lifted her hands. “What?”

  “When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

  She hadn’t known what was ticking around in his mind, but she certainly hadn’t expected that. He couldn’t have chosen a question that would have surprised her more.

  She blinked and shrugged a little. “I don’t know. A ballerina for a while. Isn’t that what all little girls want to be?”

  “After you were older than five,” he drawled.

  “What did you want to be when you were five?” she returned tartly.

  “A fireman, but I grew out of that. Obviously, Darr didn’t.” His lips twisted. “He always did have a hero complex.”

  She wrapped her fingers around the wrought-iron back of one of the bar stools. “You admire him.” Despite his dark humor, she’d seen that already for herself.

  “Not everybody has what it takes to run into a burning building when everyone else is trying to get out of it.”

  “I guess that’s true. I’ve never really thought about it before,” she admitted. And as nice as she considered his younger brother to have been, she was much more fascinated with what made Drew tick. It didn’t seem to matter that part of her knew it wasn’t wise to indulge such a fascination at all. “So after the fireman, what’d you want to be?”

  “I was asking you that question, remember?”

  She exhaled. “Fine. I wanted to be a pilot. You?”

  “President of Fortune Forecasting.”

  “Even when you were a kid?” She was surprised. She’d always suspected he’d gone into the family business because it had been expected, not because it was something at which he’d turned out to be exceptionally good.

  “Even then.” His gaze was steady. “What stopped you from being a pilot?”

  Her hands twisted around the wrought iron and the band of the engagement ring dug into her finger.

  She didn’t know what was spurring Drew’s sudden interest, but the sooner it ended, the more comfortable she’d feel. “Money. More specifically, the lack of it. So, about that press release?”

  “If you had the money now, would you still want to become one?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why all the questions, Drew?”

  “Just trying to get to know my fiancée better.”

  She squelched her response just in time. For all they knew, given his father’s disappearance, her position as his fiancée could well turn out to be unnecessary after all.

  And in comparison to what he was going through, the reason behind her desire to be a pilot seemed utterly unimportant. She unwound her fingers from the wrought iron and rubbed her reddened palms down the sides of her jeans. “Because I realized even if I could fly off to be like my father, it still wouldn’t have brought him back home to me.”

  His gaze stayed steady on her face and she mentally braced herself for yet another intrusion into her life.

  But after a moment, all he did was unfold his arms and push away from the edge of the farmhouse-style sink. “Draft up whatever you think the release should say. I’ll look at it when I get back. You can send it first thing in the morning.”

  Her wits felt scattered trying to keep up with him. “Where are you going?”

  “Out.”

  He scooped a set of keys off the rack of them by the kitchen door before quietly letting himself out into the night.

  Feeling abruptly spent, Deanna could only stand there and watch him go.

  Chapter Eight

  Deanna was talking on the phone in J.R.’s office. He’d kindly offered it for her and Drew’s use after their stay in Red Rock quickly lengthened from four days to ten when she heard the slam of a door elsewhere in the house.

  Drew and Jeremy must be back from town where they’d gone to see Darr at his fire station, because Isabella didn’t make that much noise and J.R. was out at Lily’s.

  Ten days had passed since William’s disappearance.

  Ten torturously slow days.

  And ten even more torturously…slow…nights.

  She couldn’t marshal her pulse that sped up just from knowing that Drew was in the house, but she could still pretend. So she focused on the task at hand—namely her telephone conversation with Fortune Forecasting’s L.A.-based Human Resources director.

  “Send a hard copy of the proof overnight,” she finished telling Chelsea. “I’ll let you know if there are any changes by the end of tomorrow, and if not, you can sign off on the brochure and get it into production.” Fortune Forecasting had long been scheduled to be part of a three-day job fair in Los Angeles later that week, and the brochure was part of the printed collateral that was to be made available there. Drew had been scheduled to give a speech at the event, but she’d already arranged a replacement—a professional baseball player that Drew was friends with who was a popular figure on the motivational circuit.

  She heard another door slam and a raised voice. J.R.’s. She could easily distinguish now the differences in his voice compared with Drew’s and Jeremy’s.

&
nbsp; She glanced at her watch. It was the middle of the day. She still had at least a dozen calls to return on Drew’s behalf, and more than twice that many emails to attend to. But the sound of J.R.’s voice when she’d thought he was going to be gone all afternoon was unusual enough that when she hung up with Chelsea, she left the office and went to investigate.

  She found them all in the great room, including Drew. Even Isabella had come out of her workroom where she had a loom on which she wove her amazing tapestries and blankets.

  What surprised Deanna most, though, was the sight of Lily Fortune.

  She hadn’t seen the woman since the day of her non-wedding, although Deanna knew that in addition to J.R., Isabella and Jeremy had been regular visitors out to her ranch. She couldn’t hazard a guess whether Drew had been. Aside from knowing that he—along with his brothers—had visited every police station, hospital and morgue in half the state, he never said where he was going when he disappeared from the hacienda every evening or what he was doing when he went.

  All Deanna knew was that for the past ten days, every evening after supper—which Deanna had continued helping Isabella to prepare since that first night—he left the house and didn’t return until after Deanna was in bed and asleep. Or at least pretending to be asleep.

  And when morning dawned and she did wake, he’d be gone again, leaving only the impression of his head on the pillow as proof that he’d ever been there at all.

  He couldn’t have made it more plain that he wasn’t interested in chancing any more close encounters of the intimate kind upon waking.

  She looked from him to Lily, who was pacing back and forth in front of Jeremy near the windows. She was wearing jeans and a button-down plaid shirt with her hair braided down her back and couldn’t have looked more different than the bride she’d been, yet she still possessed the same indefinable, elegant strength that Deanna couldn’t help but admire.

  “Ross has news,” Isabella told Deanna quietly. “He was on the road when he called and Molly’s Pride was closer than Lily’s place, so he’s coming here to meet with us all at once.”