The Pregnant Heiress

“My client is Lloyd Carter, Miranda’s ex-husband.”

The rest of her face still wasn’t giving much away, but something uncertain moved behind the blue of her eyes. She blinked once, slowly. “My…father?”

“No.” He spoke as gently as he could. “Miranda didn’t meet Carter until several months after you were born. I don’t know who your father was.”

She swallowed. “This man—this Carter—are you sure he’s who he says he is?”

Flynn had been putting some things together. Emma had gotten pregnant while she was living in San Diego. She’d left town in a big hurry, changed her name and was running scared. Scared of the man who got her pregnant? Afraid of a custody battle—or of the man himself? “I check out all my clients. Carter’s on the slimy side of handsome, but he’s definitely who he claims to be.”

She was stiff all over—her shoulders, her back, her expression. “How old is he? What does he look like?”

“He looks like a two-bit actor—weathered face, lots of smile lines, good cap job on his teeth. Wiry, fairly fit for his age—which is fifty-three, despite what he claims. Dark hair, gray eyes.”

Tension sighed out of her, leaving the slim shoulders slumped. “That’s not Steven.”

“Who’s Steven?”

She made a vague gesture. “Never mind. You say he hired you to find me? Was he acting for his ex-wife?”

“More or less.” Mostly less, but the situation was complicated. Flynn didn’t think this was the time to go into details.

She was looking dazed now. “So she’s alive. I’ve wondered…but it doesn’t really change anything.”

“Of course it does. Maybe your mother didn’t do right by you when you were a baby, but she wasn’t much more than a child herself then. She’s got a bucketful of regrets now, and the money to do something about them. I’m to make whatever arrangements are necessary to get you to come to her for a visit—or to stay, if you like. She’s living in Texas now, close to her family.” He paused. “Your family, too. The Fortunes.”

“Well…” She didn’t think about it long before shaking her head. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t…this is awfully sudden.” Her smile crept out shyly. “She could write to me if she wants, though. You can tell her my address.”

Appealing to sentiment hadn’t worked. Flynn was conscious of feeling disappointed in her, which was absurd. He switched tactics smoothly. He’d hit her where it counted with most people: the wallet. “One thing I haven’t mentioned. The Fortunes are rich. Not your garden variety rich, either. Buying-small-countries rich.”

“Oh. Yes, I think I’ve heard of them,” she said vaguely, as if it weren’t important. “I don’t pay a lot of attention to gossip columns and such.”

“Miranda wants to settle some money on you.”

That got a reaction, but not the one he expected. Instead of greed lighting a spark in her eyes, impatience made her snappish. “I don’t need her money. I do just fine on my own.”

He glanced at the car beside them. Three bald tires and peeling paint didn’t equal “doing just fine” to him. “Maybe so. But what’s fine for you might not be fine for that baby you’re expecting.”

Her chin tilted up. “I can take care of my baby. And myself. And now,” she said, haughty as a duchess, “if you’ll excuse me, I’d better get back to work.” She turned away.

Yeah, that’s one great ass, he thought as she walked away from him and several million dollars. Pretty face, too, in spite of those smudges beneath her eyes, and what a smile she’s got. Pity she’s a flake.

He had one last thing to try. “Maybe you forgot what I said about there being two babies,” he called out. “Are you at all interested in meeting your brother, Emma?”

She stopped and turned slowly to face him. “You’re just saying that to get me to…a brother? I don’t…do I really have a brother?”

She wanted to believe him. She wanted it so badly he could taste her yearning in the air between them. This was the reaction he’d expected when he’d told her about her mother. He walked up to her and said quietly, “His name is Justin. He’s your twin. I found him, too. Last week I told him about you and your mother, and he’s making arrangements to fly there to meet her. He’s expecting to see you there, too.”

“He’s in Texas?”

“He will be, in another day or two.”

“I have a brother. A twin brother.” Wonder filled her eyes.

“A fraternal twin.” Amusement lightened his voice. “Obviously.”

She hugged her arms around herself tightly. “All right. I’ll go.”

One

April: San Antonio

There were thirteen different lip colors on the dressing table in front of Emma. Four were pencils, three were tubes, four more were in little pots and two of them looked like a kindergartner’s crayons. She even had accessories for them: a teensy brush and two sizes of sharpeners.

Emma generally owned one or two lipsticks that she forgot to use. What was she doing with thirteen lip colors that needed their own accessories?

“Emma?” The voice that drifted up the stairs was raised enough to be heard, but fell far short of being a yell. Miranda Fortune never did anything as crude as yelling. “Are you almost ready?”

That’s how she’d ended up with thirteen lip colors. Emma sighed. “Almost!”

Which was almost true. She had her dress on. She just had to do her hair and her makeup and find some shoes, and she’d be ready…ready for a party she didn’t want to attend.

Emma grimaced and reached for one of the crayon-type lipsticks. It was appropriate; she felt like a kindergartner playing with makeup as she drew an outline on her lips with a purply-red crayon and then colored it in.

She wasn’t exactly dreading the party. She didn’t expect to fit in, but she was used to that. And her brother would be there. Two brothers, actually—she had a half brother, too, and a half sister. But it was her twin she thought of. Justin.

She smiled at her reflection, noticed the dimple in her left cheek and smiled wider. Her brother had a smile just like hers, dimple and all. The first time she’d seen him smile she’d laughed in delight. Not that she got to see his smile often—or him, either. This was his second trip to Texas, though, his second trip to see her. And Miranda, of course. Justin Bond was a very successful businessman based in Pittsburgh; he was always busy, usually too serious and very private.

But when he did smile, the sun came out. Oh, how she was looking forward to seeing him again!

Flynn Sinclair might be there, too.

Anticipation took on another note, a deeper, less certain chord that resonated in places Emma didn’t want to notice.

She heard the light tread on the stairs and tensed. Stay with your breath, she told herself, and focused on the slow in and out of her breathing the way the monk at the temple in Taos had taught her.

Her muscles were relaxed again by the time Miranda spoke from the doorway. “Kane and Allison are here to take us to the ranch.”

Kane Fortune was Miranda’s son from her marriage to Lloyd Carter. He’d taken the Fortune name soon after Miranda moved back to Texas. Emma hadn’t felt the immediate connection with Kane she’d experienced with her twin. Mostly she felt wary. “I may have exaggerated about being ready,” she said cheerfully without turning around. “But it will only take two shakes to finish up. There’s not much that can be done with this mop of mine.”

There were two women in Emma’s mirror: one with dark, frantically curly hair, one with smooth blond hair swept into a perfect chignon. Miranda Fortune was sleek, blond and lovely, impossibly elegant tonight in diamonds and a long sweep of black silk.

“Oh, my.” Emma spun around on the small stool. “Don’t you look gorgeous!”

Miranda’s lips turned up in a surprised smile. “Thank you. You look wonderful, too. Don’t worry about Kane. He won’t mind waiting a few minutes.”

Emma had her doubts about that, but she kept them to herself.

“Oh, do stand up and let me see how the dress looks!”

Emma’s dress was yet another compromise in a long line of compromises she’d made in the eight weeks since she came here. She was holding firm about the important thing, though. She wouldn’t let Miranda settle any money on her. A small trust fund for the baby, sure. That was fine. But Emma didn’t want to be rich. She didn’t know how to be rich. Who would she be if she had tons of money she hadn’t earned herself? No one she knew.

The dress was pretty, though. Miranda had wanted to take her to one of the expensive shops she patronized; Emma had wanted to go to a factory outlet store she’d discovered. In the end, they’d found this one on the fifty-percent-off rack at an upscale department store. It was more colorful than elegant, which suited Emma.

The layers of tissue-thin gauze swished pleasantly around her ankles when she stood. She grinned and patted her tummy. “I look like a cross between a hippie and a hippo—one of those dancing hippos in Fantasia, maybe.” And nothing at all like the polished woman standing in front of her.

“You look beautiful.”

The words were simply spoken and obviously sincere. Emma flushed. “Well—thank you.” A sharp jab from inside made her grin. “Elmo is more excited about this party than I am.”

“Elmo?” Both elegant eyebrows rose. “I hope that’s a joke. Yesterday you called the baby Abigail.”

Emma shrugged. “Elmo, Abigail, Zeke, Penelope—I haven’t made up my mind.”

Miranda smiled. “It might be easier to decide on a name if you’d let the doctor tell you what its sex is.”

“I like surprises.”

“That’s good, because I’ve brought you one.” She held out a small, silver-wrapped box the size that jewelry came in. Her lips still smiled, but her eyes were uncertain.

Emma felt a now-familiar stab of irritation. “That’s very nice of you, Miranda, but you really have to stop buying me things all the time. It makes me uncomfortable. You’re already giving me an allowance—”

“This isn’t anything expensive, truly.” She offered the box again. “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to wear it.”

Emma had long since realized that her idea of expensive and Miranda’s were vastly different. Reluctantly she held her hand out and summoned a smile. “How can I refuse?”

The box held jewelry, just as Emma had suspected—a necklace with a dainty silver chain. “Oh…how pretty!” She held it up. The pendant was a stylized yin-yang symbol.

“I hoped you would like it. You seem very interested in that sort of thing.”

Emma felt touched—and guilty. Miranda was trying so hard, and Emma hated to keep disappointing her. But what Miranda wanted from Emma wasn’t possible. “I’ll wear it tonight. Would you put it on for me?”

She sat back down at the dressing table. It was a pretty, totally feminine piece of furniture, covered at the moment with the detritus from Emma’s attempt at applying makeup. The mirror showed her Miranda’s face as the woman moved up behind her.

They looked nothing alike. Their hair was different, their eyes were different, their mouths, the very shape of their faces…but the nose on the older woman’s face was a lot like hers. Straight and a little too short.

It should have been a comforting discovery. After years of looking for her features on the faces of strangers, Emma ought to be glad to find her nose on the face of the woman who had given birth to her.

She wasn’t.

When Miranda bent to fasten the necklace, her fingers brushed Emma’s nape. Feelings rushed in—crowded, confused feelings that made her want rather frantically to get away. She summoned a smile. “I love it.”

“Maybe I could fix your hair.” Miranda touched one curl lightly. “You’d look lovely in a French braid, and I have a little silver clasp we could use.”

Something strong and ugly flashed through Emma. Something she had no intention of acknowledging or encouraging. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Great. I can never do anything with my hair.”

It was going to be a long night.

The party was being given by her uncle, Ryan Fortune, at his ranch outside the city in Red Rock, Texas. Emma rode there in the comfort of plush leather seats with classical music throbbing gently from the car speakers.

Miranda didn’t speak much once they got in the car, and Kane and Allison spoke mostly to each other. and Emma was glad. Making conversation could be a strain with all those undercurrents swirling around.

There would be undercurrents at the party, too, but not such personal ones. It was a big “welcome to the family” bash for her, Justin, and two other Fortune cousins—Sam “Storm” Pearce and Jonas Goodfellow—that the family had recently discovered, thanks to the efforts of Flynn Sinclair.

That man sure got around. He’d made his way into Emma’s thoughts far too often in the past eight weeks.

It was only natural that she would think of him sometimes, she told herself as the lights of San Antonio faded behind them. He’d been the catalyst for some important events in her life. It was no wonder she kept remembering that deep, laconic voice.

Elmo—or maybe Abigail—gave her a hard kick in the ribs in rebuttal.

Okay, so maybe she thought of Flynn a little too often. But there was no harm in a fantasy or two. She wasn’t really interested in the man, no matter what effect he’d had on her unruly hormones. He was a P.I., for heaven’s sake. One step removed from a bounty hunter.

Like Steven.

Emma’s shoulders tensed against the rush of fear. She had to stop reacting that way. It had been months since she’d fled San Diego in the dead of night, and Steven was very good at finding people who didn’t want to be found. Surely, if he had been determined to track her down, he would have done it by now.

No, she wouldn’t think about Steven. He was part of her past, not her present or her future. Better to think about all her new relatives. Fortunately, she’d already met a few of them—like her uncle, Ryan Fortune.

She tasted the phrase in her mind: her uncle, Ryan Fortune. Uncle Ryan. It had an odd ring to it. Odd, but pleasant.

He had come to see her soon after she arrived in San Antonio. There was something very solid about Ryan Fortune, a grounded quality she hadn’t expected in a man with his wealth. She liked him. He didn’t push. He hadn’t so much as raised an eyebrow over her being pregnant and unmarried, either.

She glanced at the woman sitting beside her in the silver Mercedes sedan. Miranda didn’t mean to push. Whatever she had been like when she was young, back when she ran away from home and gave birth to two babies she didn’t keep, she was a nice woman now. A bit too perfect, maybe, but Emma didn’t hold that against her. And Miranda was clearly delighted about the baby.

All in all, Emma thought she could like Miranda, too—if only the woman would stop trying to be her mother. It was too late for that. Years and years too late.

Ryan and Lily Fortune’s house at the Double Crown Ranch looked like an old-time Spanish hacienda. It was large, lovely and easy to get lost in.

Not that she was really lost, Emma assured herself as she paused at one end of a hallway she was almost sure she’d seen before. Just turned around. She could hear voices, the sound muted by the thick walls of the house into a sort of human ocean, rising and falling in the distance. She must be headed in the right direction.

Of course, she could have asked for directions. She’d stumbled across the kitchen in her wanderings; she should have asked one of the people who’d been clattering pans and dishes. But she hadn’t. Instead, she’d hurried off in another direction. It was absurd, but she hadn’t wanted to be seen. She felt guilty for having misplaced herself. As if she had no business being here—not here in this house, not here with these people.

Well. She paused and shook her head. It didn’t take Sigmund Freud to figure out what that meant.

Emma trailed her fingers lightly over the stuccoed wall beside her. Would she ever feel as if she belonged in these grand surroundings? As if these strangers were really family?

Probably not, she thought wistfully. She wasn’t good at making permanent connections with people. But…her hand stole to her stomach, her fingers spreading to cup the curve protectively. A tiny knee or elbow butted against her palm as her baby shifted inside her.

Emma might never belong here. But her baby would.

She smiled. Alice—or maybe Edward—would grow up knowing these people, maybe running down this hall when the two of them came for a visit, small, bare feet slapping the tile floor. Emma’s child wouldn’t even notice the niches in the thick walls that displayed pottery and other art objects, much less think about what they cost. They would all be familiar. As with all familiar things, they would be comfortingly invisible.

But it was foreign to Emma, strange and obtrusive. She remembered the objects better than the people—like the solid oak front door, the huge fireplace. She’d tried to keep track of faces and names, but there were so many of them, an overabundance of strange new relatives.

Not that everyone here was related to her. Some were relatives by marriage, others were friends or neighbors of the family. But there were an awful lot of Fortunes. Some, like her, were Fortunes by birth, but they bore other names. Like her new cousins, “Storm” and Jonas.

They had been fathered by her Uncle Ryan’s black-sheep brother, Cameron, who had died several years ago. Emma had yet another new cousin, courtesy of her Uncle Cameron’s womanizing, but Holly Douglas wouldn’t be at the party tonight. She refused to leave her home in Alaska.

Jonas had brought a bottle of port for their host—no, for Uncle Ryan, she corrected herself mentally. It was a courteous gesture…and one that hadn’t occurred to Emma.

She sighed. She didn’t know how to act with these people.

The sound of voices was growing louder, reassuring her that she was on her way back. She turned a corner and caught a glimpse of someone vanishing into one of the rooms that opened off the next short stretch of hallway.

She grimaced. Maybe a lot of the names and faces had blurred, but she had no trouble matching that particular brassy blond head to a face and a name. Thank goodness Leeza hadn’t seen her. One encounter with Lloyd Carter’s current wife had been more than enough. The woman was as sticky-sweet as strawberry jam, with big, bouncy breasts and big, sly eyes shadowed by inch-thick mascara.

Leeza had cornered Emma earlier and made a big deal about how she’d urged her husband to hire Flynn Sinclair to find Emma and Justin. She’d cooed about how her heart had been wrenched to think of “you poor little things” growing up without a mother.

Phooey. That woman had never done anything for anyone unless there was something in it for her.

Emma hurried down the hall, wanting to be somewhere else when Leeza came out of that door. What was the woman doing, anyway? Maybe she was lost. That was the charitable explanation; Leeza must be as much of a stranger to this house as Emma was. Somehow Emma doubted it, though. More likely, she was prying. She was the sort who would make an excuse to use your bathroom so she could peek inside the medicine cabinet, hoping to find some interesting dirt to sling.

Emma had nearly reached the arched entry to the great room, where people in fancy dress were milling around, talking and laughing and making Emma’s head pound.

Oh, Lord. She really didn’t want to go back in there. Normally Emma made friends easily. New faces, new places—she was used to both, and good at making herself at home wherever she was. And she genuinely liked people. She considered mingling with strangers an opportunity, not a chore. Normally.

But nothing seemed to be normal anymore.

Well, she wasn’t going to hang out in the hallway all night. She took a deep breath and plunged back into the crowd.

She made it three feet before someone stopped her.

“There you are. I’ve been looking for you.”

She knew that voice—deep, rumbly, as if each word rolled up from somewhere deep inside the big, broad chest of the man. She turned, her heartbeat picking up speed. “Flynn. I mean, Mr. Sinclair. I wondered if you would be here tonight. Ryan told me you’d been invited.”

He was too big. That was, once again, the first thing she noticed about the man—his size. Emma didn’t like oversize men with tough-guy faces. Not even when they had Superman hair, black and shiny as wet Magic Marker, with an unruly curl that parted company with the rest of his hair to make an adorable little squiggle on his forehead.

“Flynn works fine.” The corner of his mouth kicked up in the cocky grin she remembered. “I’ve been hoping I’d see you tonight.”

He had? “Well—that’s flattering.” An elbow jabbing her rib cage from inside made her rub her stomach soothingly, reminding her that he hadn’t meant that the way she wanted to take it. He couldn’t have, she thought wryly. Not when she was doing her seven-month impression of a blimp. “I was hoping to see you, too. I never thanked you.”

His eyebrows lifted slightly. “No thanks needed. I did what I’d been hired to do. But I’m curious. When I, ah, talked to you at the truck stop, I didn’t get the impression that gratitude was one of your reactions.”

“I was a little spooked at the time,” she admitted. No need to tell him that she’d felt uneasy from the moment he’d sat down in her station, long before he’d scared her by telling her he was a P.I. Flynn Sinclair simply did not have a reassuring face. His nose had been broken at least once; his cheeks were sunken, dark with beard shadow, and his eyes were set too deeply beneath thick black eyebrows.

But they were green, those eyes. Not hazel, not even grass-green, but the bright, hard color of an old 7-Up bottle.

And they were laughing at her right now. “I figured that out.”

“You probably wondered why.”

He shrugged those oversize shoulders. “I figured that out, too. You were running scared of someone—Steven Shaw. The man who got you pregnant.”

“I—how did you—did I mention him?”

“Yeah.” There wasn’t a trace of a smile left on his face now, and his eyes had that hard, unwavering focus that unnerved her and made something inside her tingle. “Are you glad I found you now? And dragged you kicking and screaming into your family?”

“Not kicking and screaming,” she protested. “But—yes, I’m glad.” Amusement mixed with pleasure. “I’ve got a brother now. Two of them, actually. Not to mention a half sister, two aunts by marriage, an uncle and more cousins than I’ve been able to count.”

“And a mother.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Kane says you and Miranda are having problems.”

They’d discussed her? She didn’t like that.

“Well, he’s wrong. Miranda and I get along fine. I’m afraid Kane and Gabrielle don’t entirely approve of me. I guess that’s natural—I’m living, breathing proof that their mother isn’t quite the perfect person they’d like to think. Kane, especially, is protective of her.”

“Funny. I didn’t get the impression that Kane disapproves of you. Maybe you’re having trouble warming up to him and Gabrielle because you’re jealous of their relationship with Miranda.”

“I don’t know Miranda well enough to be jealous of her. Besides, jealousy is a very destructive emotion.”

“I’d call it a very human emotion. If you don’t know Miranda well, that’s because you never had the chance, while Kane and Gabrielle had her all these years. Stands to reason that you’d be jealous of that.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you are a very annoying man?”

“Once or twice.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to see you so we could argue about family relationships, though. I’ve checked out that boyfriend of yours, and—”

“You’ve what?” Annoyance boiled over into temper.

“Checked out Steven Shaw. He’s bad news.”

“Tell me something I don’t know! What right did you have to go digging around in my personal life?”

“I’m a P.I. If I waited until people gave me permission to dig around, I wouldn’t get much work done.”