Texan Seeks Fortune

by Marie Ferrarella

  Connor nodded. Instead of going into the children’s bedroom, he suddenly asked her a question out of the blue, “Can you get a babysitter?”

  The question caught her completely off guard. Brianna looked at him quizzically, then slowly told Connor, “I guess so. For when and for how long?” she wanted to know. She couldn’t make any sort of plans without that information.

  “This Saturday,” Connor answered. “And as for how long, that’s anyone’s guess.”

  That wasn’t exactly helpful, she thought. “You’re going to have to be a little more specific than that.”

  “I’ve been invited to a baby shower,” he told her. Then, before she could point out the obvious, Connor added, “It’s a coed baby shower. They’re all the thing these days.”

  They might be all the “thing,” she thought, but she wouldn’t know anyone there and she was rather shy. “I don’t think—”

  He didn’t want her to say no. He wasn’t about to analyze why, but it was suddenly important to him that she come with him, if for no other reason than she see some of the people she had been researching.

  “It’s a family affair,” he told her, then specified, “A big family affair. Some of the people I’ve been trying to locate may be there, along with a lot of other members who I already know.” He’d met some of them a few months ago when his sister Schuyler had organized a family reunion. “I thought you might like to meet some of the names you encountered during your initial research for Charlotte.”

  He was tempting her.

  Everything seemed different to her now that she’d made love with him. She found herself wanting to meet his family.

  “Well, I have to admit that I am kind of curious about them,” she confessed.

  He couldn’t have been more pleased. “Great, it’s all settled,” he declared happily.

  It didn’t quite work that way, she thought.

  “Hello, mother of two,” she reminded him, waving a hand before his eyes as if that helped underscore her point. “Nothing’s settled until I can make arrangements to leave the kids with someone.”

  “You’re leaving us?” Ava cried, clearly horror-stricken. Neither one of them had seen the little girl come into the doorway of the living room. “It’s ’cause Axel threw up, isn’t it?” she asked her mother, then whirled around on her heel, turning toward her room, where she’d left her brother. “Axel, you’re making Mama go away.”

  Brianna sighed as she shook her head. “Never a dull moment,” she said to Connor.

  Axel stumbled into the living room, still somewhat unsteady after last night’s episode.

  Connor quickly took over. “Hey, guys, your mother’s not leaving you. You know better than that. She’d never leave you. She’s just going to get someone to stay with you so she can go to a party for a few hours,” he explained to them.

  “You’re fibbing,” Ava accused. “Mama doesn’t go to parties,” she insisted. “She just goes to work. Sometimes to the store.”

  “You went to a party,” Connor reminded the small, judgmental audience. “Don’t you think your mom should have a chance to do that, too?”

  Ava looked as if she was really thinking the question over. Axel took the momentary lull as his chance to speak up. Drawing closer to Connor, he eagerly asked, “Can you be the one to babysit us?”

  This was getting out of hand again, Brianna thought. So what else was new?

  “Axel, Ava, stop putting Mr. Fortunado on the spot,” she told them.

  “I would,” Connor said, interrupting Brianna and answering the little boy’s question. “But I’m the one taking her to the party.”

  “Can you take us, too?” Ava wanted to know, looking at him hopefully.

  “Okay, you two,” Brianna said, her voice growing serious now. “I think you both need to stop bothering Mr. Fortunado and just be grateful for everything he’s done for you so far.”

  “Like what?” Ava wanted to know. The little girl wasn’t trying to be wise, she was really asking for an example.

  “Like helping to bring you home last night,” Brianna answered. “Like bringing over pizza for you to eat. Like playing games with you two,” she enumerated, looking from one child to the other.

  A light seemed to dawn on Axel. “Oh. Yeah. That,” he remembered, hanging his head.

  “Yes, ‘that,’” Brianna echoed. Her annoyance spent, she said, “Now why don’t you two go play with Muffin and Scruffy for a while? Mr. Fortunado and I have work to do,” she told them.

  But apparently Ava had more questions for her mother. “Why do you call him that?” she wanted to know, glancing toward Connor as she asked her mother.

  Brianna knew her daughter. Ava wasn’t stalling. She appeared to really want to know the answer to her question.

  “Mr. Fortunado?” Brianna repeated. Ava’s head went up and down. “Because that’s his name,” she told the little girl.

  Ava knew that, but it apparently didn’t answer her question. “Don’t you like him?” she asked.

  “Yes, I like him,” Brianna said. She avoided looking at Connor as she said it.

  “Then why don’t you call him Connor?” Ava wanted to know. “That’s his name.” The little girl smiled at him. “He likes being called Connor.”

  Why was everything a struggle with these two, Brianna wondered. A struggle and a debate. “All right. If I call him Connor, will you and your brother go back in your room and play?”

  “Sure!” the two cried, united for the space of exactly a moment. Even so, the children remained where they were.

  Brianna frowned. “Well? Why aren’t you going to your room to play?”

  Ava exchanged looks with her brother. It was clear that for now, she was the spokesman. “’Cause we’re waiting for you to call him Connor,” Ava answered.

  Brianna tamped down her annoyance. “Let’s get to work, Connor,” she said.

  And just like that, her children grinned and took off.

  Connor, she noted, had been struggling to keep a straight face. Now that her children were gone, he gave up the effort.

  “I think,” Connor said, laughing, “if they gave out medals for mothers, I’d definitely nominate you to get one.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured. She debated her next words, then told him, “I’m just grateful that you’re not making a run for the hills. That you didn’t make a run for it the first day you heard my two arguing with each other at the top of their lungs,” she admitted.

  She was serious, he realized. In all fairness, ordinarily he would have been that guy. But there was something about this woman that got to him from the first moment she mistook him for the plumber and grabbed his hand, pulling him into her house.

  “They’re entertaining,” Connor told her as they went to her office.

  “Their dad didn’t think so,” Brianna murmured, more to herself than to him.

  Connor slanted a look at her as they sat down, wondering if he should say anything. He didn’t want to insult Brianna and he certainly didn’t want to say anything that would make her back off.

  But he owed her honesty, he decided, and he did feel strongly about this point. “No offense, but their dad was an idiot.”

  “None taken,” she assured Connor with a humorless laugh. And then she added, “And between the two of us, yes, he was.”

  Now that she had pushed open the door, Connor had more questions for her. “How long were the two of you together?”

  Brianna was quiet for so long, he thought she was going to ignore the question. And then she said, “Five years.”

  Five years seemed like an awfully long time to spend with someone who was obviously so self-centered. “Why did you stay?”

  Brianna debated coming up with excuses. But there really was no point in making anything up. So she was honest with him.

 
“I guess I’m just a sucker for strays. I kept thinking I could help him, turn him around so that he could be the father the kids deserved.” She pressed her lips together, remembering. “Jonny had a substance abuse problem and I thought that if I could just say the right thing, find the right way to approach his problem, I could help him kick the habit. Help him become a better person.” She laughed at herself.

  It was a sad sound, Connor thought.

  “You can’t change anyone, Bri, no matter how good your intentions are. They have to want to change themselves,” Connor said.

  “I know, you’re right, but I really thought I could help,” she said ruefully. “And there were the two kids we had.”

  “The kids he didn’t want, as you said,” Connor recalled.

  “The kids he didn’t want,” Brianna repeated, confirming the truth behind those words. Brianna blew out a breath. There was no point in rehashing the past and there was work to get done. “Look, hurricanes Axel and Ava are liable to come whirling back here at any moment, so I suggest that we use this time to work on that list of names we’re whittling down,” she told Connor.

  “Right as usual,” he answered warmly. And then he paused. “But you are coming with me to the shower this Saturday, right?”

  “If I can find a sitter,” Brianna reminded him pointedly.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get a sitter even if I have to buy one for you,” Connor told her.

  She wasn’t sure if he was kidding, but she intended to do this on her own. She didn’t want him thinking of her as some helpless female. There were only so many times he could be allowed to ride to her rescue.

  “Don’t worry. It’s not going to come to that,” Brianna told him. “I have a few people who owe me favors. I’ll find someone.”

  He nodded. “Okay. But if you don’t, my offer’s still open.”

  Connor smiled at her as he said it.

  Brianna did her best not to get lost in that smile. She didn’t succeed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You’re not saying anything,” Brianna said self-consciously.

  Butterflies were madly crashing into one another in her stomach. She was already nervous that she wasn’t going to fit in because the dress she’d borrowed from Beth Wilson wasn’t good enough to wear to the shower that she was attending with Connor.

  When she’d opened the door a minute ago to let Connor in after he’d rung her bell, he hadn’t said a single word in response to her greeting.

  Not even hello.

  He was still just standing there in total silence, just looking at her.

  Brianna drew the only conclusion she could from his silence. “You don’t like it.”

  Connor finally forced himself to snap out of his trancelike state.

  “Like it?” he echoed. “I love it. It’s gorgeous. You’re gorgeous,” Connor corrected himself. For the first time in his life he felt like he was tripping over his own tongue. “I’m just trying to get used to seeing you like this. I’ve never seen you wearing anything but jeans and a T-shirt before.”

  Brianna still wasn’t convinced. “So it’s okay?” she asked hesitantly.

  He had to laugh. “If it was any more ‘okay’ I wouldn’t let you leave the house. I know guys aren’t supposed to say things like that these days, but—wow. Just wow.”

  “Wow is fine.” She pushed back her uncertainty and her nerves. “Wow is good,” Brianna amended.

  Connor took in a deep breath. The light scent she was wearing almost made him dizzy. She made him dizzy, he thought.

  “Are you ready?” he asked her.

  Brianna nodded as she grabbed her purse. “Just let me tell the sitter we’re leaving.”

  At the last minute, she’d managed to get Beth Wilson’s younger sister, Meredith, to stay with Ava and Axel. Meredith was getting her teaching license and wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, so she was more than happy to watch the children. She saw this as perfect training for her future vocation.

  Connor stood patiently by, waiting for Brianna to say goodbye to her clinging children. He found himself reassuring them, that yes, he’d bring their mother back to them tonight.

  And then finally, they were off.

  “I’m really glad you’re coming with me,” Connor said once they were in his car and on their way to the baby shower. Admittedly, a baby shower was not his thing, but attending the event would allow him to get together with members of the Fortune clan he hadn’t met yet. “I’ve never been to one of these things before and I don’t want to make a fool of myself.”

  “A coed shower’s probably different from a regular shower,” Brianna told him. “I doubt if there’ll be any silly games or anything like that,” she told him. “So you can relax. I’m the one who’s going to be out of her element.” She saw him turning toward her quizzically. “I won’t know anyone.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he counseled. “I probably won’t know half the people there, either. The whole idea of my going to the shower is to meet relatives I haven’t met yet and to spread the word about Charlotte. To warn them about Charlotte,” Connor amended.

  “So they don’t know that she’s done all those things you told me about? The hacking and burning down your—half uncle, is it?” she asked. Connor nodded in response. “Burning down his mansion,” Brianna continued. “They don’t know she’s the one behind it?”

  It hadn’t been as obvious as she thought. “I’ve just put the pieces together recently myself,” Connor explained. “So in all likelihood, a lot of these people might not have figured it out yet. And others probably don’t even know about Charlotte.”

  Brianna sat back in the passenger seat, thinking over what he’d just said. “This is going to be an interesting baby shower,” she commented.

  Truer words were never spoken, Connor thought less than half an hour later.

  When they arrived at the party, most of the guests were already there. The baby shower was being thrown for a very pregnant Billie Fortune Pemberton and her husband, rodeo champion Grayson Fortune. Since this was his family’s company as well as the company that had suffered recent setbacks thanks to Charlotte’s devious machinations, Connor felt they were all connected to one another in a number of ways besides just by blood.

  “I’m really looking forward to meeting Grayson, Nathan and Jayden Fortune,” Connor confided to the woman at his side as they made their way through the room where the party was being held. The triplet brothers hadn’t made it to the reunion.

  Brianna found herself wishing that she had brought the notes she’d been working on for Connor. Maybe then she could keep people’s names and faces straight, she thought.

  “My Lord, those three look like carbon copies of each other,” she whispered to Connor, spotting Grayson and his brothers.

  Connor grinned. “They’re triplets,” he told Brianna. All three had dark brown hair and brown eyes and stood over six feet tall.

  “How do their wives tell them apart?” Brianna marveled.

  “I’m sure they have their ways,” he answered with a wink. “Those are the sons that Gerald didn’t know he fathered until recently,” Connor said. “They were raised by their single mother, Deborah.”

  Right now, he didn’t remember how much Brianna knew and how much of this information he’d discovered for himself before he’d come to her. Repeating the information drove it home for him.

  “Once Gerald finally found out about them, that’s when he finally left Charlotte. He was furious that she knew of the triplets’ existence and had been keeping it from him all this time. I think she secretly knew that unlike all the other women Gerald had slept with, both as Gerald Robinson and under his first identity as Jerome Fortune, Deborah was the one woman he had always really loved. Once he found out that Deborah had given birth to his sons, he tracked her down and begged for her forgi
veness.”

  Brianna supposed maybe there was hope for the man, after all—if he survived Charlotte’s wrath, she thought. “Well, if that’s the case and Charlotte is as vindictive as you said she is, why hasn’t she tried to seek revenge against Deborah yet?”

  She was certain they would have heard about any attempts by now. She was beginning to realize that Connor had his finger on the pulse of everything connected to the family.

  “Because the woman is nothing if not crafty. She might be evil personified, but she is definitely patient when it comes to exacting her revenge,” Jayden Fortune said, answering Brianna’s question. The triplet had walked up behind them just in time to overhear the conversation.

  After formally introducing himself and his wife, Ariana, to both Connor and Brianna, he told them that he and his two brothers were as surprised as anyone to have Gerald suddenly show up in their lives after all these years.

  “We’d never met him until then and it wasn’t exactly a warm reunion as far as my brothers and I were concerned,” Jayden told them.

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Grayson said with a harsh laugh.

  “As a matter of fact, we were ready to ride the man out on a rail,” Jayden continued, “‘father’ or no ‘father.’ We all thought that he had deserted Mom as soon as he knew she was pregnant. But he swore up and down that he never knew. We all had our suspicions that his wife knew—the woman’s a viper that knows everything,” Jayden maintained, “but Charlotte would have never told him about us because she was probably afraid that Gerald would have tried to do right by our mother.”

  “She turned out to be right,” Nathan said, joining the conversation. “And Mom,” he said as he exchanged looks with his two brothers, “well, our mom has this kind, forgiving heart,” he told Connor and Brianna. “And she believed Gerald when he said he never knew that she was pregnant when he left.”

  “She seems genuinely happy with Jerome or Gerald or whatever the hell he calls himself these days,” Grayson told Connor and Brianna. “My brothers and I haven’t really taken to him yet,” he said honestly. “But as long as Mom’s happy and he’s good to her, well, that’s all that really counts.”