The Millionaire and the Cowgirl

“Yeah.”

“Alone?”

“With my daughter,” she said, closing the stall door. The latch clicked into place and seemed to echo in the stillness, broken only by a frustrated fly buzzing near the window and her own wildly beating heart.

“I didn’t know you were married.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh.” He probably thought she was divorced, and for now, until her equilibrium was restored, she’d let him think what he wanted. He could bloody well leap to whatever conclusions his fertile mind conjured up.

She was used to speculation. Raising a child alone in a small town was always grist for the ever-grinding gossip mill. Over the years people had made a lot of wrong assumptions about her—assumptions Sam never bothered correcting. “Mom moved into town when Dad died, but Caitlyn and I—”

“Caitlyn’s your daughter?”

She nodded tightly, afraid of giving away too much. “We wanted to stay out here. I was raised in the country and I thought she should be, too.”

“What about her father?”

A roar like a wind through the mountains in the middle of a winter storm surged through her brain, creating a headache that pounded behind her eyes. “Caitlyn’s father,” she repeated. “He’s—he’s out of the picture.” Silently calling herself a coward, she grabbed a brush to stroke Joker’s sleek coat.

“Must be tough.”

If you only knew. “We manage,” she said, throwing her back into her work as nervous sweat began to slide down her spine. Tell him, Sam, tell him now! You’ll never have such a golden opportunity again. For God’s sake, he deserves to know that he’s got a child, that he’s Caitlyn’s father!

“I didn’t mean to suggest—”

“Don’t worry about it,” she interrupted, moving to the other side of Joker and sending a cloud of dust from the animal’s rump. She worked feverishly, her mind racing, her mouth as dry as Sagebrush Gulch in the dead of July.

“If you don’t watch out, you’ll rub the spots right off of him.”

She realized then how intent she’d been on her work. Even Joker, usually never distracted from feed, had crooked his long neck to look at her. “Sorry,” she muttered and tossed the brush into a bucket. Kyle was making her nervous, and the subject of Caitlyn’s lack of a father was always touchy. Today, in the hot, dark stables, with the very man who was responsible for impregnating her and leaving her alone, Samantha felt trapped. She let herself through the stall door and tried to ignore the way he sat upon the top rail, as he had ten years before, jeans stretched tight over his knees and butt, heels resting on a lower rail, eyes piercing and filled with a sultry dark promise as he watched her. But that was crazy. Those old emotions were gone, dried-up like Stiller Creek in the middle of a ten-year drought.

“Sam…” He reached forward and touched her arm, his fingers grazing her wrist.

She reacted as if she’d been burned, drawing away and throwing open the door. A shaft of bright summer sunlight pierced the dim interior and a breath of hot, dry air followed along. Hurrying outside, she heard his footsteps behind her, new boots crunching on the gravel of the parking area, but she didn’t turn around, didn’t want to chance looking into his eyes and allowing him to see any hint of what she was feeling, of the bare emotions that surged through her just at the sight of him. Damn it, what was wrong with her? “I—I’ve been coming over here, doing my dad’s old job, acting as foreman ever since the last guy, Red Spencer—he’d been here for seven years or so, I guess, before Dad retired—anyway, Red took over for Dad when Dad couldn’t handle the job, but he left a couple of months ago. Moved to Gold Spur, I think it was, to be close to his son and daughter-in-law. Kate asked me to keep an eye on things and I agreed, but now that you’re back you won’t be needing me—”

“Sam!” This time his fingers found her wrist, clamped tightly and spun her around so fast she could barely catch her breath. “You’re rambling, and near as I remember, that’s not like you.”

“But you don’t know me anymore, do you?” she said, her anger, ten years old and instantly white-hot, taking control of her tongue. “You don’t know a damned thing about me, and that’s because it’s the way you wanted it!”

“For the love of—”

She yanked back her hand. “All the records are in the den.” Making a sweeping gesture toward the house, she kept walking to her truck. “It looks like your tractor might need a new clutch, there’s a buyer from San Antonio interested in most of your cattle, I’ve got a list of people who want Diablo—er, Joker—as a stud. The hay’s in early this year and—”

“And you’re running scared.”

“What?” She whirled and faced him, fury pumping through her bloodstream, hands planted on her hips.

“I said you’re—”

“I heard what you said, I just couldn’t believe it. You,” she said, eyes narrowing in silent, seething anger as she pointed a furious finger at him, “of all people have no right, no right to accuse anyone of running!” Throwing her hands into the air, she looked up at the blue sky with its smattering of veil-thin clouds. “You’re unbelievable, Kyle. Un-be-liev-a-ble!” Turning on a well-worn heel, she stormed to her truck, threw the rig into gear and ripped out of the parking lot, leaving Kyle in his fancy new boots, tight jeans and designer shirt to eat her dust.

“Is somethin’ wrong?” Caitlyn, sitting on the far side of the old pickup, pinned her mother with blue eyes so like her father’s as the truck sped into town.

Tar oozed on the shoulders of the old country road. Hot air blew threw the open windows, catching Caitlyn’s already tangled wheat blond hair.

“Wrong?” Samantha’s heart tightened as she shifted down for a corner. The sun was sitting low on the horizon and waves of heat shimmered from the asphalt, distorting the false fronts of the Western-looking buildings. Clear Springs paid homage to the latter part of the nineteenth century with its architecture.

“Yeah, you’ve been acting funny ever since you picked me up.” Caitlyn wasn’t having any of her mother’s double-talk.

“I suppose I have,” Sam admitted, remembering how Kyle had rattled her cage. She’d been still fuming as she’d retrieved her daughter from a friend’s house.

“Why?”

“I just saw an old…friend today. It took me a little by surprise.”

“So?”

Yeah, right. So? “And I have a headache.” That wasn’t a lie. From the second she’d laid eyes on Kyle Fortune, her head had been pounding.

“Your friend gave you a headache?” Caitlyn shook her head, still not buying her story. “You look mad.”

“Mad?”

“Uh-huh. The same way you looked last year when you found out that Billy McGrath had his birthday party and invited everyone but me and Tommy Wilkins.”

Sam’s blood boiled at the memory of that incident. “Well, that was wrong and Billy’s mother knew it was wrong and… Oh, well, it’s all water under the bridge now.” Samantha reached toward the dashboard and grabbed her sunglasses. At the time she’d wanted to throttle bratty Billy and his snob of a mother, who had decided that two kids out of a class of twenty-one weren’t good enough to attend the birthday swimming party. The two kids who were whispered to be illegitimate.

“So why’d your friend make you mad?”

“He didn’t…he just showed up unexpectedly and it surprised me,” she hedged, then tapped Caitlyn’s smudged nose. “I’ve got to stop at the bank and the post office, but then we can get an ice cream at The Freeze.”

Caitlyn’s eyebrows smoothed. “How about a sundae?”

“Why not?” Sam exclaimed as she passed the sign welcoming visitors to Clear Springs, Wyoming. Maybe it was time to celebrate. It wasn’t every day that her daughter’s father landed back in town. Oh, God, how would she ever tell him that he was Caitlyn’s dad? What would he do? Laugh in her face? Call her a liar? Be so stunned that his lying, silvery tongue would be finally stilled? Or would he see the naked truth with his own eyes and decide that it was time to become a father? If he wanted even partial custody, there was no way she could fight him. Against the Fortune family money and bevy of lawyers, she wouldn’t stand a chance.

Sam’s throat was suddenly dry as sand. She pulled into a parking space and told herself not to overreact, that Kyle was only here for six months, that even when he found out that Caitlyn was his daughter, it wouldn’t matter. He would be reasonable, wouldn’t he? He had to be. But what about Caitlyn? How would she feel about the man who was her father?

Samantha couldn’t lose her child. Not to anyone. Not even to the man who had sired her.

Two

“What a mess.” With a snort of disgust, Kyle eyed the handwritten ledgers. The musty journal was spread open on the old oak desk that had been in this den for all the years he could remember. The oaken behemoth had belonged to Ben Fortune, Kyle’s grandfather and Kate’s husband, though Kyle couldn’t remember a single time he’d seen Ben sit in the timeworn leather chair. No, this ranch had been Kate’s haven from the fast pace of the city, but these damned journals were a mystery. Why no computer system? No link to the Internet? No modem? No accounting program? This wasn’t like his grandmother, a woman who had lived her life ahead of her time, who’d used a cell phone and fax machine as easily as she splashed on perfume. Kate Fortune had been connected by computer to all of her late husband’s companies, including factories as far away as Singapore and Madrid. Though she’d spoken the language of the wildcatters working for Ben’s oil company, she flew her own private jet. If any ranch out in the wilds of Wyoming should have a damned PC and modem, it was Kate’s spread. The lack of telecommunications just didn’t make sense. Unless Kate came here to get away from the rat race and preferred the leisurely pace that had worked for ranchers for decades.

The phone rang, and Kyle snatched up the receiver, half expecting to hear Samantha’s husky voice on the other end of the line. He tensed. “Kyle Fortune.”

“Well, whaddya know!” Grant’s voice boomed across the wires as Kyle settled back in his chair. “I heard a nasty rumor you were back in town.”

“Bad news travels fast.”

“Especially in this family.”

Amen, Kyle thought. The Fortunes had always been a close-knit lot, but ever since Kate’s death, Kyle had felt a newfound kinship with his cousins and siblings—a camaraderie born of shared grief for a loved one lost.

“Mike called and said you’d taken a company jet to Jackson, so I figured you’d show up sooner or later.”

“Just in time to get a look at that beast you inherited.”

Grant chuckled. “Fortune’s Flame.”

“Fortune’s Folly, if you ask me.”

“I’ll take him off your hands as soon as he’ll ride in a trailer. I know Samantha’s been working with him.”

“Seems as such.”

Sam. Why couldn’t he quit thinking about her?

“I suppose you know that Rocky’s thinking about moving out here?”

“Rocky? As in Rachel?”

“Your cousin and mine.”

Kyle hadn’t seen Rachel since the reading of the will in Kate’s lawyer’s office. Usually adventurous, with a quick smile, Rocky had been as sober as the rest of the family that day. Dark circles had shadowed her brown eyes and she’d nervously fingered the charm her grandmother had bequeathed her. She’d seemed lost at the time, but then they all had.

“So my horse is okay?”

“I ran into Sam as she was working with him. The stud looked full of the devil.”

“He is.” Grant chuckled.

Glancing out the window as twilight caressed the land, Kyle said, “Sam’s got a kid.”

“Yep.”

“Said the father was out of the picture. I didn’t know she’d been married.”

“Wasn’t.”

“So where is the guy?”

“Beats me. I never asked. Wasn’t any of my business,” Grant said. Unspoken but implied was the message and it’s none of yours, either.

Kyle heard the quiet reprimand in Grant’s tone but ignored it. “No one knows?”

“Well, I suppose Sam knows, and Bess, her mother. Some of the gossips in town try to point the finger at Tadd Richter. You remember him?”

“Yeah. Never met him, but heard he was a local hood.”

“He ran with a fast crowd, rode a big motorcycle, drank and was always in trouble with the law. His folks split up and he ended up in jail, or a juvenile home somewhere near Casper, I think. Anyway, Sam had hung out with him right before he left town and then…well, she turned up pregnant. Not that it’s any of your concern. She’s kept quiet about it all these years and I figure she’s got her reasons…. Anyway, I just called to welcome you to Wyoming.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s not a bad place, you know.”

“Never said it was.”

“But you weren’t too happy to have to move here.”

Kyle stared through the panes to the stand of aspen guarding the banks of Stiller Creek. “I don’t like being told what to do. Not even by Kate.”

“It won’t be so bad. You might find you like it out here, discover what it is you’re running from or looking for. You never know.”

“Nope, you never do.” Kyle felt his temper flare a little. Never one to mince words, Grant had let it be known that he hadn’t approved of Kyle’s rootless lifestyle in Minneapolis.

“Maybe you need to slow down a mite.”

“Maybe,” Kyle drawled, though his jaw tightened. He didn’t need a lecture. He knew that he’d thrown away a few years of his life, dabbling at this business and that, making a little money, sometimes losing a lot. Marrying the wrong woman. Working for the family and getting fired was the latest disaster. He didn’t want to be reminded of that failure, nor could he explain the restlessness that had chased after him since boyhood, the feeling that he couldn’t stay in one place too long. And, he suspected, six months in Clear Springs with Samantha living next door was going to be far too long.

“I’ll be by in a couple of days and see that you’re not mistreating Joker.”

“Yeah, more likely that stallion will be the end of me.”

“Or Sam will.”

Amen.

“She’s a bossy one. Likes to run things her way.”

“I figured that much out already.”

“Just remember, she might bug the hell out of you, but she knows a lot more about ranchin’ than you do.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You do that. See ya tomorrow.”

Kyle hung up, scowled at the ledgers on the desk and slammed the book closed. Sam. He hadn’t thought about her in years, wouldn’t let himself, but ever since he’d set foot in Wyoming, he couldn’t get away from her.

“Damn it all to hell.” Rotating his neck, he winced as a vertebra near the top of his spine popped. Tadd Richter—what had Sam seen in that lowlife? And why did Kyle care? It was old news.

His coffee, bad instant stuff when it was hot, was now cold and looked as if it might gel. Kyle ignored the cup. The old chair groaned as he stood and walked to a cupboard where, once upon a time, Ben had kept his liquor. Empty. “Strike two.” No computer and no liquor, not in this den with its yellowed, knotty pine walls, faded prints of rodeo riders and braided rug tossed over an ancient plank floor. It was as if life out here in godforsaken Wyoming hadn’t changed in the past fifty years. “Thanks a lot, Kate,” he grumbled, though the ranch in summer had always held a special spot in his heart—a spot he’d rather not remember.

Jet lag hadn’t settled in and probably wouldn’t. The plane ride from Minneapolis to Jackson hadn’t been all that bad, nor had the trip out to the ranch in his hastily purchased, used pickup. No, it wasn’t the travel that bothered him so much as the feeling that he was being manipulated. Again. By his grandmother. From her damned grave.

Snapping off the desk lamp, he walked in his stocking feet through the long hall that ran the length of this rambling, two-story house, the place where he’d spent many of his summer vacations. Sometimes the family had taken trips to faraway and exotic places—Mexico, Jamaica, Hawaii or India. But the summers he remembered best, the ones he cherished, weren’t when he was ensconced in some opulent hotel boasting five-star restaurants, mineral springs and connecting pools. No, the best summers of his life he’d spent here, learning how to rope calves, saddle horses, brand the stock, skinny-dip in Stiller Creek and sleep under the blanket of stars in the vast Wyoming sky.

Kyle walked up the steep, uncarpeted stairs to the second floor, where a warren of attic rooms was housed. At the end of the hall was the bunk room in which he and his cousins had slept. He felt the worn wood of the door and touched the gouge where Michael had broken the lock when Kyle and Adam had locked him out. Kyle had been about twelve at the time. Michael, a year older and full of piss and vinegar, wasn’t about to let a little latch keep him from breaking open the door and seeking some kind of vengeance for his brother catching him off guard and nailing him with a stream of ice-cold water from the garden hose.

Smiling, Kyle remembered Michael, dripping from head to toe as he’d crashed through the door and sprawled into the room, clunking his head on the end of one of the bunks and nearly knocking himself out.

It seemed like a lifetime ago. Before he’d started shaving, before he’d really noticed girls. Before Sam.

Snapping on the light, he walked into the room and eyed the bunks, three sets now without sheets, mattress ticking faded, tucked under the eaves and in the dormers. Nowhere in sight was the carton of cigarettes they’d swiped from their grandfather, the Playboy magazines that one of the ranch hands had “loaned” the boys or the bottles of booze they’d hidden deep in their dresser drawers when a local cowboy had, for a stiff fee, bought them whatever kind of rotgut whiskey they could afford.

Running his hand over one of the bed frames, he stopped at the window they’d used for escape. The ledge was located close to an ancient apple tree with wide branches, and the boys had rigged an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to lower themselves to the ground or climb back up. They’d thought they were so smart, but, Kyle suspected, their grandmother probably knew everything that was going on. She was just too clever to have missed all of their shenanigans.

“Son of a bitch,” he growled, his fist curling in grief. To think that she was gone—really gone—caused a raw emptiness deep in his soul. What had she been doing, flying alone in the damned plane, looking for some rare plant in the Amazon rain forest? She’d never made it. Her plane had exploded over Brazil somewhere, falling to earth in a horrifying ball of flames. Her charred body had been shipped back to the States, where her stunned children and grandchildren had fought their disbelief and dealt with the fact that the most influential force in their lives was suddenly gone.

Opening the window, Kyle let in a late-evening breeze and stared across the rolling acres—his acres now, he reminded himself. Well, they would be in six months, if he could hack it here that long. It wasn’t as if he was unhappy to leave Minneapolis; his life there had stagnated and he’d never really found himself, never settled down, never held a job long enough to count. No, he’d been restless by nature, and maybe that’s why of all her grandchildren, Kyle had been picked by Kate to inherit this ranch. It was probably the old lady’s way of forcing him to put down roots.

Hell, he remembered the funeral and the closed casket covered with floral sprays, the church packed with mourners, the family members draped in black and fighting tears. Then later, stunned, barely able to speak, they’d sat around a huge table in Kate’s attorney’s office and listened while Sterling Foster, seated at the head of the table, his hands folded on Kate’s last will and testament, had eyed them all. “Kate Fortune was a remarkable woman, mother of five children—though only four were raised by her,” he began, his gaze moving slowly around the table. “Grandmother of what—twelve? And a great-grandmother as well.” He smiled sadly. “Though widowed for ten years, she was still the driving force behind Fortune Cosmetics. She survived the death of a husband, Ben, as well as the loss of her child…well, you know all this. First, she instructed me to give everyone the charms she’d collected at the times of your birth. I’ve taken them from the sculpture in the boardroom that displayed them all.” He passed a silver tray with white envelopes around the table, and when the platter reached him, Kyle found his name typed neatly on one of the packets. Oh, Kate, he thought sadly as he tore open the envelope and withdrew a silver trinket.

Sterling cleared his throat and lifted the neatly typed papers before him. “I, Katherine Winfield Fortune, being of sound mind and body…”

Everyone’s attention was on the lawyer, and Kyle felt his muscles tense. This was all so wrong. It was as if the world had suddenly stopped and shifted beneath his feet.

His sister Jane sat next to him, her fingers tightening over the sleeve of his coat, the antique lace of her cuff smudged with mascara where she’d wiped her eyes. She’d tried to be brave, but her lower lip continued to tremble and she’d clung to him for support. A single mother, she was supposed to be able to stand on her own, to face the challenges life threw at her. But none of them—sons, daughters, grandchildren—could believe that they’d lost someone so dear and integral, the foundation of their lives.

“Oh, God,” she moaned, a strand of cinnamon-colored hair falling out of its barrette.

He placed his hand over Jane’s and met Michael’s somber gaze. Michael’s eyes reflected his own misery. Michael. Always responsible. Where Michael had always done the right thing, Kyle had been the screwup. Michael shouldered responsibility; Kyle ran from it.

Jane seemed to gain some starch in her spine. Blinking and straightening her shoulders, she reached for the water pitcher on the table and poured herself a glass. At a signal from Allison, she poured a second glass. Allie the beauty, a model and spokesperson for Fortune Cosmetics, the rich girl with the thousand-watt smile. Now her pretty face was drawn and pale as she sat wedged between her brother and twin sister, Rocky. Even Rocky’s normally animated expression was lifeless in her grief.

Rocky seemed to gain a little strength from her only brother, Adam, who, as Sterling droned on, absently patted her shoulder. Adam was the oldest child and only son of Jake and Erica Fortune. Surrounded by sisters, Adam was someone Kyle used to look up to, a kindred spirit—a rebellious son. Adam had turned his back on the family fortune, knocking about the country for a few years before he joined the military, only to give it up when his wife died. Now Adam was a single father with three children and trying to cope.

Kyle didn’t envy him. Hell, he didn’t envy anyone here today. Tugging at his collar, he tried to concentrate.

Sterling, catching his eye for a brief instant, flipped the page and kept reading in his soft-spoken drawl. Kyle liked the guy. He seemed to shoot from the hip and rarely minced words. Reading glasses were propped on the tip of his nose, and his white hair, impeccably combed, gleamed silver in the gentle light thrown by brass fixtures.

“And to my grandson Grant McClure, I bequeath Fortune’s Flame, a registered Appaloosa stallion….”

Kyle watched for a reaction from his stepbrother, but Grant continued to stare out the window, never once flinching at the sound of his name. Grant seemed as out of place here in his jeans, Western-cut jacket and Stetson as a dusty pickup in a parking lot filled with BMWs, Cadillacs and Porsches. Kyle silently wagered with himself that his cowboy stepbrother couldn’t wait to climb on a plane, shed the lights of the city and fly back to the harsh life he loved in the middle of nowhere—Clear Springs, Wyoming.

Next to Grant, Kristina, the only child of Nate and Barbara, Kyle’s father and stepmother, fidgeted in her chair and bit her lower lip nervously while trying to appear interested. Spoiled beyond belief, she tossed a strand of blond hair over her shoulder and looked like she wanted nothing more than to flee from the stuffy attorney’s office. She caught Kyle’s eye, sent him a silent message, then glanced away.