A Fortune's Texas Reunion

For one, she hadn’t done anything wrong that he could determine. He’d smelled no alcohol on her. There was no evidence of drugs. In fact, there was no evidence of anything to explain why she’d careened off the highway without seeming to make any attempt at avoiding it.

As Charlie had observed, no skid. Meaning no braking.

While Charlie headed back down to the wreckage dragging his long winch cable with him, Pax checked in with Connie again. The ambulance was still en route. He pulled out his metal clipboard and flipped it open to fish a blank report from the contents inside, and leaned against the side of the SUV next to the opened door. He kept his focus on the form, even though the sight of Georgia’s bare legs beckoned. His fingers tingled and he clicked his pen a few times.

“You say you just picked up the car yesterday? Is it a rental?” If it was, it was a pretty specialized one.

“No, it’s mine.” Her fingers turned the water bottle this way and that. “First sports car I’ve ever owned. My purse is still in the car. My license. The registration. And my suitcase—”

“We’ll take care of that once Charlie pulls the car up. Where were you heading? Paseo’s not usually a person’s final destination. Too small. Not enough services. I can help you get to Amber Falls, though. Is there someone I can contact for you? Parents? Boyfriend?”

She bit her lip, looking in danger of crying again. “I was heading for Paseo, though. In fact, I was looking for the turnoff when—” She broke off, swallowing. She pressed her fingers to her forehead. “My, uh, my oldest brother, Austin, is the best one to contact. He’s here with Felicity. His girlfriend. She’s lovely and actually is lightening up my brother. He’s way too serious, and...” She trailed off as if realizing she’d been rambling.

To a person, Pax knew everyone in town. The only Austin he knew of didn’t have a girlfriend and definitely wasn’t too serious. In fact, just last month he’d celebrated his third birthday with a party at Rosa’s Mexican restaurant. Pax had stopped in to say hello because he’d been filling his gas tank at the pumps in front of the restaurant, which also doubled as a grocery store. “What’s your brother’s last name?”

Her blue eyes peered at him from behind her wrist. “Fortune.”

Pax exhaled, stifling a curse.

Naturally, it would be Fortune.

He’d grown up in Paseo. Aside from the years he’d spent in Dallas, he’d lived here his entire life. And until a week ago, the only Fortunes he’d personally known were Jayden, Nathan and Grayson. And their mom, Deborah. Good, normal folk who’d had no connection at all to the famous Fortunes that made their homes elsewhere in the state.

Or so he’d thought.

Now, since Deborah was getting hitched to that eccentric billionaire who was connected and also happened to be the father of Deborah’s three sons, the area was overrun with all manner of people bearing that particular name.

And his peaceful little town had been turned upside down as a result. They’d filled up the little motel. And when that wasn’t enough, they’d set up a camp on his mom’s piece of land.

People like his mom and Rosa Hernandez, who had her whole family helping her provide enough food to feed the crowd at the makeshift campground, were benefiting financially, but Pax found it all a headache.

He clicked his pen a few times. “I should’ve known when I saw the make of the car,” he muttered. In the last few days, there’d been more luxury vehicles traveling this small stretch of highway than in the last decade. Before that, it had been semis and buses transporting all manner of things to his little spot of paradise.

What was usually his haven had turned into the worst kind of circus. Paseo. The newest playground for the rich and famous.

Which now included the NOLA girl.

Steeling himself against her appeal, he tapped the business end of his pen noisily against the form and its metal-backed board. “All right, then. Let’s get to it. Full name and date of birth—”

Chapter Two

Georgia shivered as she stared at Pax, wondering where his gentle demeanor had disappeared to. The man who’d pulled her from the wreckage had made her feel safe. When he’d wrapped his arms around her, the blinding terror she’d felt had slid away.

A reaction to the situation? Undoubtedly. But she’d never ever forget that incalculable sense of pure and utter safety.

“Full name, ma’am,” he repeated brusquely.

Her rescuer still looked exactly the same. Except his eyes were no longer a soft, mossy sort of green filled with warmth and kindness. They were more like hard chips of emerald. Had turned that way the second she’d said the name Fortune.

He was the sheriff. He’d told her so, even though it said the word plainly enough on the gold badge pinned to the front of his torn khaki shirt.

“Georgia Mae Fortune,” she recited slowly.

“You’re one of those Fortunes, then.” The sheriff’s tone was even, but there was no question that he didn’t think very highly of “those Fortunes.”

Her nerves were too raw and she couldn’t help bristling. “I don’t know which Fortunes you’ve got a beef with, but my family comes from New Orleans. We just learned this year that we have a tie with the folks from around here. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“From what I’ve heard, your family has more branches on its tree than Carter’s got pills, and a scandal for every single one.”

“What bothers you more? The branches or the scandals?”

“The money you toss around like confetti. Date of birth?” His voice was clipped, too.

“January 1. And I don’t toss around money.”

“You bought that fancy car, didn’t you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Year?” He arched an absurdly handsome eyebrow, considering how much dirt was caked on it. His hair had clumps on it, too, obscuring the dark strands. If he had any gray, she couldn’t tell. Not that it would detract from his looks. Men were always lucky that way.

She, on the other hand, had discovered a gray hair earlier that year. She’d promptly visited her hairstylist, who’d laughed it off and masterfully hid the culprit in a subtle weave of lighter shades of blond among her brown.

“Still waiting, ma’am,” the sheriff prompted.

She wanted to bare her teeth at him. She grudgingly supplied her birth year.

“Thirty’s not the end of the world.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the car, which was now being dragged up the hill by the heavy metal cable that the tow-truck driver had fastened to it. “Be glad that you’re going to be alive to see it when the day actually rolls around in a year and a half,” he reminded her flatly.

She shivered again, harder this time, and water spurted from the top of the bottle, splashing on her knee.

She felt his gaze follow and shivered even more.

Whether he disapproved of the Fortunes or not, she recognized interest in a man’s eyes when she saw it.

He didn’t wear a wedding ring. But then she knew plenty of men who didn’t. She’d even dated one for a few weeks before discovering he had a wife and a newborn baby waiting devotedly back home.

When Georgia had found out, she’d given the guy a blistering earful, along with the boot. And been glad that she hadn’t shared anything more intimate with him than crème brûlée. She certainly wasn’t looking for a husband, but she still had her standards when it came to the occasional fling.

It just had been a while since she’d been...flung.

“Address?”

She rattled off the address of her town house in New Orleans.

How was she going to explain this to her parents? Neither Miles nor Sarah was a fan of her visit to Paseo. It was bad enough that her siblings were attending, too, but Georgia had traveled alone, and these days, her dad was feeling hypersensitive about things.

“You are here for this wedding business, I take it. Deb Fortune and Gerald Robinson?”

Her chin came up again at the sheriff’s disapproving tone. She wondered what he’d think if she told him that Gerald was her newfound uncle. “What if I am? The wedding festivities run for the next two weeks. Instead of turning up your nose at the confetti, I’d think the people of Paseo would be grateful for all of the business being brought to the area!”

His lips twisted. “Area’s done fine for years without all the hassle you beautiful people bring with you.”

“I won’t mistake that as a compliment.”

“Smart. Not smart enough to keep that expensive car of yours on the road, though. Assuming you weren’t trying to kill yourself, what had you so preoccupied? Looking at your phone? Taking a selfie to post on some social-media thing?”

Her jaw loosened. She wasn’t ordinarily stuck for words, but she was now. Instead of telling him exactly what she thought of his judgmental attitude, all she could do was stare at him.

And he didn’t even bat an emerald eye.

“Well? I’ll know eventually what you were doing with your cell phone, honey, so it’d be better to tell me up front than try to lie.”

“I wasn’t doing anything with my cell phone,” she said through her teeth.

“Not checking directions, or calling your boyfriend—”

“I don’t have a boyfriend. Not that that’s any of your business, either.”

“It’s my business to understand why you went off the road in my county.”

He glanced over as the tow truck’s winch whined loudly and the cable went taut. Then he turned back and focused on his form.

She wasn’t sure what grated on her nerves more—the squeal of her car being dragged up the hill, or the way the sheriff tapped the point of his pen against the metal clipboard.

“So you were distracted and looking for a turnoff—”

“I never said I was distracted,” she snapped, which just made her head pound even more. “You did. But yes, I was keeping an eye out for a turnoff. Mile post twelve, as a matter of fact. It must be near here.”

Those emerald chips drifted over her face. “About half a mile up the road. The highway curves here a little, but not sharply. It’s easy to see approaching vehicles if you’re paying attention.”

“There weren’t any other vehicles.”

“Are you sure you were paying attention?”

“Yes! I have a perfect driving record.”

His lips twisted. “Something that can easily be bought, particularly by those who can afford to trash a car like yours.”

“I didn’t intentionally trash it,” she said through her teeth, “and I have never needed to buy my way out of anything!”

He wasn’t moved. “No signs of skidding. You said you were singing with the radio?”

“Don’t try and tell me that’s against the law.”

“If you were speeding—”

“I wasn’t.”

“—that might explain the distance the car seemed to travel aloft before it impacted the ground.”

She felt her stomach suddenly lurch and she jumped down from the SUV, running through the weeds on the shoulder of the road until she reached the guardrail and lost her lunch over the other side.

When she was finished, she didn’t have enough energy left to do anything but hang her arms over the hard, hot metal.

“Here.”

She wanted the ground to swallow her up. Spinning anything to a positive slant was her stock-in-trade, but there was just no positive way to spin throwing up on the side of the road.

She took the bottle of water from Pax. Ignoring him, she took a swig, swirled it in her mouth and spit it out.

Several yards away, her car crested the edge of the road and the horrible whining finally came to a stop. The short tow-truck driver began pushing levers on the side of his truck and the back of it began tilting down toward the ground.

“I wasn’t speeding,” she told the sheriff when she thought she could speak without vomiting again. “I wasn’t texting on my cell.” She had no idea if her phone had remained inside the car. But he definitely hadn’t found it when he’d been traipsing all over taking his pictures. She felt certain he’d be examining it for God knew what if he had.

“My whole life is on my phone,” she said, more to herself than to him. “If it’s not still in the car—” She broke off, shaking her head.

“Nobody’s whole life should be on a cell phone,” the sheriff said dismissively before he walked away from her, heading toward the wrecker. She could see him talking into that small speaker thing attached by a strap to his shoulder as he went.

She made a face at the back of him. It was childish but it still made her feel a tiny bit better. Leaning against the rail, she sipped the water and studied him as he spoke with the driver. Charlie, he’d called him.

Unlike Charlie, the sheriff was tall. Her brothers were tall, too, so it was easy enough to peg the man as several inches past six feet. Her brothers tended more toward wiry builds, though. The sheriff was stockier. Broader. Not heavy. More like a quarterback than a runner. All broad shoulders, narrow hips and muscular—

Her mouth felt cottony and she swished more water around, turning to spit it out again.

When she straightened, he was approaching her again. It was easier to focus on the tear in his shirt than it was his face, with its square jaw and slashing eyebrows.

“Here.” He extended a small pink purse and she snatched it greedily, flipping it open to find her wallet still tucked safely inside.

She extracted her driver’s license and held it up. “Check me out,” she challenged. “You’ll learn I do have a perfect driving record. I have a respectable job with Fortune Investments as the director of public relations. I own my own home and I have never gotten so much as a ticket for jaywalking!” She slid a business card free as well and barely managed to keep from tossing it in his face. “My cell phone number is on there. You want to know what I was doing on my phone for the last twenty-four hours, feel free to contact my provider. I’ll agree to whatever you need.”

His fingers brushed hers as he took the license. “Charlie was able to get into your glove compartment, if I have your permission to look at the contents.”

Oh, for crying out loud. She rubbed her aching temples. “Yes, you can look at the contents. I’ve been trying to tell you I don’t have anything to hide.”

He walked back to the wrecker again.

Her eyes burned and she swiped her nose. She was not going to cry again.

Her purse might have contained her wallet and a few business cards, but there was little else in it, and certainly not her phone. She closed her eyes, trying to remember where it had been in the car. Lying on the passenger seat with her sandals? Tucked in the console?

Her stomach churned as she tried to think. She’d taken one call that morning from her assistant, Julie, about the media campaign they were launching. After that, her phone had remained silent as she’d neared Paseo and the campground where the wedding guests were being lodged.

The campground was one of the selling points she’d used with her folks when she’d told them that she, too, wanted to attend the wedding, along with her siblings. In Georgia’s case, not only was she attending the nuptials, but she was also actually going to stand up in the wedding party. Even though none of them had ever even met the bride or groom.

That fact was only one of the interesting aspects of this whole wedding business. It was Gerald and Deborah’s desire to bring together all the branches of the overgrown Fortune tree. They were showing it again and again with the incredible task of mounting a large wedding in such a small town. Once they’d known Georgia and her brothers and sisters were coming—even though their father flatly refused—they’d asked if one of them would be part of the wedding party. They wanted someone from each family to be represented.

Georgia had basically drawn the short straw at that point because—as her sisters Savannah and Belle liked to point out—Georgia had the most practice at being a bridesmaid.

Nineteen times, in fact.

For her dad’s sake, she’d pitched the whole thing as a lark. A summer getaway, camping under the Texas sky for a few weeks before the launch of the new campaign. For herself, she’d mostly thought it would be highly entertaining to be part of the wedding for a man who was actually her father’s half brother.

Of course, her father didn’t believe anything about the situation was the least bit entertaining. He certainly didn’t appreciate the fact that he might be somewhat similar to his half brother. Gerald Robinson of Texas had been born Jerome Fortune of New York. It was only after his father, Julius, died that he’d remade himself as Gerald, far, far away from his true family. He’d even gone so far as to fake “Jerome’s” death, presumably to be good and sure nobody came looking for him.

Georgia’s father, Miles, on the other hand, had been born Miles Melton in Louisiana. He was just one of Julius’s illegitimate sons with various women other than his wife. Aside from her father, there were at least three more that she knew of: Kenneth Fortunado, who hailed from Houston, David Fortune from Florida and Gary Fortune from New York. Other than those few details, she had no real knowledge of the relationships—or lack of—that they’d had with Julius while he’d been alive.

As for her dad, when he’d finally divulged the truth last Christmas to his family that they were, in fact, related to the famous Fortunes after all—something he had been denying all of Georgia’s life—he’d admitted that he’d only taken on his father’s name when he’d been a young college graduate as an “up yours” against the man who’d never acknowledged him.

The similarities between Miles and Julius ended there, though.

Miles had married Georgia’s mom when he was only a year older than Georgia was now. They’d had seven children together and were the only truly happy couple Georgia had ever seen.

Gerald, on the other hand, had inherited Julius’s penchant for infidelity. For the last few years especially, the scandal sheets had chronicled the tech mogul’s indiscretions. How he’d cheated on his society wife, Charlotte. How he’d produced even more illegitimate children than Julius had.

Then, when the news had broken a couple years ago about Robinson’s real identity, the media hounds had gone into a feeding frenzy. It would have died down eventually. When a fresher scandal hit the light of day. That’s the way scandals always worked.

But the flames were fueled all over again by Gerald and Charlotte’s highly acrimonious divorce when word got out that he’d actually dumped her in favor of marrying his first love, Deborah Fortune, who wasn’t really a Fortune at all, but had assumed the name herself when she’d given birth to Gerald’s triplet sons nearly forty years ago. Before Gerald had even married Charlotte.

It was either the worst of reality-television-style trashiness, or the most outlandishly romantic story in modern-day history.

Georgia, nineteen times a bridesmaid, didn’t expect that Gerald’s marriage to Deborah would be any more successful than his first one. But she definitely expected the whole scene to be pretty entertaining.

Particularly since she had a not-so-private fascination with reality TV.

Plus, she came from a family of seven kids but had never had cousins. Now that she knew that she did, she was unabashedly curious to meet them.

So, with a brand-new car she’d worked hard to buy and a chance for the first vacation she’d taken in years, what else was a girl to do but plan a road trip?

It was all perfect.

In planning, at least.

Reality had turned out to be something entirely different.

The winch was whining again and she realized her car—what was left of it—was being pulled onto the back of the tow truck.

She pushed away from the guardrail and hurried toward the two men standing beside the vehicle. “What about the rest of my stuff? My suitcase is in the trunk.”

“Only thing I could get at was this, miss.” The short man wiped a greasy hand on the front of his overalls before he handed her the small overnighter. “It’ll take more equipment than I’ve got here to get that trunk open. Don’t you worry none, though. Once I do, I’ll get your stuff to you wherever you’re at.”

She clutched the overnighter against her. It held her toiletries and not much more. Except for the yoga gear she’d tossed in it that morning, all of her clothes were inside the suitcase.

She felt shaky all over again.

The sheriff must have noticed because he wrapped his hand around her arm. “You need to sit down again.”

She preferred the weedy highway shoulder than the back of his SUV, but she never had the chance to tell him, because an ambulance pulled up then. The sheriff turned her over to the two people who hopped out of the boxy white vehicle. One male. One female. Both young and harried-looking, though they didn’t act it as they took charge of Georgia and settled her on the wide back bumper. They introduced themselves. Sean and Sarah.

“My mother’s name is Sarah,” she told them faintly and closed her eyes again, resting her head on the vehicle behind her. She answered their questions while they tended to her cuts and scrapes and produced a cold pack that she pressed against her forehead.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she heard a familiar voice calling her name.

She looked up to see her brother Austin jogging toward her. He was the oldest of her siblings and she always teased him that he’d come out of the womb wearing a suit and tie.

But now, he wore a T-shirt and blue jeans, his dark hair looked like it had been combed with a garden rake and even from a distance she could see the concern in his brown eyes.

No amount of willpower kept her tears away then.

She dropped the ice pack and ran into his arms. It was comforting. Familiar. And if she’d never felt that utter sense of security in the sheriff’s embrace, she never would have known it wasn’t there in her own brother’s.

“Damn,” he muttered as he took in the mangled mess of her vehicle. “What the hell happened, Georgia?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Austin. I was driving along, everything was fine and then bam! Everything was out of my control. I couldn’t steer, I couldn’t brake and I was crashing through the guardrail and—” She closed her eyes against the terrifying memory of the engine suddenly screaming, then turning quiet as she soared over brush and through trees, turning in one long, slow somersault—

She realized she was sweating and dug the heels of her palms against her closed eyes until the images faded. “All I could think was that Daddy was right.” She finally dropped her hands and looked up at him. “I should have gone on the family plane with the rest of you. I should have stuck with my old car—it was perfectly good—instead of spending a fortune on a sports car like that—”

He exhaled an oath and kissed her temple. “Stop. You’d been waiting months for that car. Accidents happen. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“I want to get away from here.”

“Felicity’s waiting at the campground,” he said. “She’s making sure the travel trailer you’ll be using is all set for you.”

“How did you know what happened?” When she’d set up her emergency account with the car dealer, she’d listed him as the person to contact.

“The sheriff’s office sent someone out to the campground to find me.”

She rubbed her temples. “You didn’t get a text or some automatic notice from R-Haz that my vehicle was in an accident?”

“Nope.”

She looked around her brother at the man in question, only to see that he was heading their way. “Watch out,” she warned Austin. “He might have rescued me from my car, but he’s got a beef against ‘those Fortunes.’” She air-quoted the term.

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

She spread her hands wordlessly.

Pax stopped a few feet away. “You’re the brother? Austin?”