A Small Fortune

by Marie Ferrarella

  If it was the latter, then he’d know for certain that what he was feeling right now was all due to his being on the rebound.

  And if it turned out to be the former, then for once, he’d really lucked out.

  But there was only one thing wrong with his going forward with his little experiment. He needed Marnie to watch his son, and he knew that Jace would be utterly devastated, not to mention completely unmanageable, if she suddenly dropped out of his life. For better or worse, the boy was attached to her.

  Almost as attached as he was, Asher couldn’t help thinking.

  Again, he really needed to know if what he was feeling was genuine or just something he’d created because of his intense desire to be part of a unit. Was he attracted to Marnie because of Marnie, or because he couldn’t deal with the loneliness that was echoing inside him?

  When she was around, he tended to think that what he was experiencing was very, very real. It was only when she was out of his sight that he was plagued with these doubts.

  Doubts that arose out of the ashes of his failed marriage.

  Well, since he couldn’t just pick up and call a moratorium on her coming over—not without major repercussions—he would do the next best thing. He would keep his distance until he was sure that what he was feeling was real. He owed it to all three of them.

  * * *

  Marnie noticed the difference in Asher’s behavior toward her almost immediately when she arrived later that afternoon.

  Anticipating seeing Asher again after the fabulous evening they’d spent discovering each other’s bodies, she was stunned when she walked into the house and Asher barely returned her greeting. Hers had been enthusiastic and sunny. His, when he finally responded, was monotone and barely audible.

  “Is anything wrong?” she asked.

  She found herself saying the words to Asher’s back because after opening the front door and muttering the all but inaudible greeting, he’d just turned away from her. He was making his way out of the foyer, even as Jace appeared, grabbed her hand and began tugging her in the direction of the family room.

  When Asher gave no indication that he intended to answer her question, or that he had even heard her question, she raised her voice and this time used his name to get his attention.

  “Is anything wrong, Asher?”

  Being aloof was really killing him, but he knew that he had to put some distance between them emotionally. Pausing for a second, he spared her a glance over his shoulder. “No, nothing’s wrong. What makes you ask?”

  He sounded so cold she could only stare at him, stunned.

  Had she gotten the wrong signals after all? Had last night been some aberration that she had brought on because she’d been so willing to make love with him? Was this going to be a case of her being nothing more than a notch on his belt?

  No! Damn it, she refused to believe that. Asher wasn’t some empty-headed egotistical playboy out for a good time. He’d been tender and sensitive last night. He was a good father, a good man.

  Something had to be wrong, and she intended to find out what that something was, even if broaching the subject made her feel somewhat awkward and uncomfortable.

  But because Jace was right there, she couldn’t ask Asher outright the way she really wanted to, awkward or not.

  “No reason,” she finally replied quietly.

  Maybe this was just a mood and he’d work his way out of it, she thought hopefully. If that was the case, then he needed a little space and she could certainly give him that.

  Turning to Jace, she smiled at the bright, eager face turned up to hers and asked, “So, what’ve you got planned for us today?”

  It was absolutely the right thing to say because Jace laughed gleefully and declared, “C’mon, you gotta come with me.”

  At least one of the Fortune men was happy to have her here, she thought ruefully.

  Because she couldn’t do anything about the situation with Asher right now, she forced herself to put it out of her mind and focused exclusively on the little boy.

  After all, that was what she was being paid for.

  * * *

  If she didn’t know any better, she thought a couple of days later, she would have said that Asher was deliberately avoiding her. The moment she would put Jace to bed for the night, reading to the boy until he finally fell asleep, Asher seemed to all but disappear into his den, working on something on his computer.

  When she tried to ask him about it, Asher told her that he couldn’t discuss the matter as it was a confidential project for his family business, JMF Financial.

  Hearing him utter those words really made her feel like an outsider.

  His ongoing—and sudden—coldness ate away at her. Why was he doing this? Why was he suddenly behaving this way?

  Could he actually be afraid that she was going to try to drag him to the altar? Or blackmail him for some reason? Try to take his money?

  Both notions seemed absurd.

  There was no doubt in her mind that she was reaching the end of her rope. Every time she tried to talk to Asher about his complete about-face ever since they’d made love, he found some excuse to throw in her path. He’d tell her that he couldn’t talk to her now because he was working on a project, or had to make a call, or any one of a number of other flimsy excuses that, from where she was standing, just seemed like another lie.

  Why would he lie to her when he knew she was completely willing to believe anything he said to her? She certainly wouldn’t lie to him.

  Marnie just did not understand what was going on here.

  After suffering a great many rebuffs, she just backed away, trying to safeguard her feelings from another assault—intentional or accidental.

  And, after trying in vain to pin Asher down and find out what had brought about this sudden change in him, she made up her mind that two people could play this stupid game. She was not about to give him the satisfaction of seeing just how hurt and disappointed she was with the way he was treating her.

  Her pride wouldn’t allow it.

  Though she’d marched up to his den and stood before his closed door, she turned on her heel and went straight to the front door. Too angry to speak, she was going to go home. And she did, slamming the door in her wake.

  * * *

  Asher heard the front door slam. The sound reverberated through every bone in his body.

  She’d left, he thought. Gone home angry. Damn it, he was being stupid, wasting time like this trying to figure out if he was right or wrong in the way he was reacting to her.

  For two cents, he would throw up his hands, go back to the way things were and the hell with all the consequences.

  Having made up his mind—at least for the moment—Asher was filled with a need to explain to her why he’d been acting like such an idiot. Then he’d beg her to give him another chance to start all over again.

  Well, maybe not all over again, he amended, but at least do over this last week.

  He was all set to go running after her, confident that she hadn’t pulled out of his driveway yet because he hadn’t heard her start up her car, when his cell phone rang.

  Habit had him pulling his phone out and glancing at the caller ID, thinking—unclearly, granted—that it might be Marnie calling to give him a piece of her mind. He’d listen, then ask for forgiveness.

  But the name on the screen belonged to Shane, not the woman who had just slammed his front door. Shane had gone on a fact-hunting trip back to Atlanta. Like it or not, Asher needed to take this.

  Feeling incredibly frustrated, not to mention torn, he hit Accept on his phone and bit off a terse “Hello.” In the background, he heard Marnie’s car starting up. Making a last-ditch attempt, he got to the front door and pulled it open.

  She had already backed out of h
is driveway. He was just in time to see her speeding away.

  His heart sank.

  “Well, don’t you sound cheerful?” he heard his brother say on the other end of the call.

  Asher didn’t bother suppressing his sigh as he closed the door again. He walked back to his den slowly.

  Maybe this was for the best after all, he tried to tell himself. He still hadn’t come to any real concrete conclusions about what seemed like his feverish actions, and being around Marnie without having Jace as a buffer might be a really big mistake on his part.

  Again.

  “Sorry,” he said to Shane. “It’s been kind of a rough week.”

  He heard Shane laugh dryly. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  With effort, Asher blocked out all thoughts of Marnie for the moment and shifted his attention to his brother’s call. Shane had gone back to Atlanta to try to find out if there was any information to be gathered about the mystery woman in their normally straitlaced father’s life, one Jeanne Marie. She was the woman their father had graced with all those shares in the company.

  Asher replayed his brother’s droll comment in his head. “I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing,” Asher told him.

  “Probably not,” his brother allowed. “Seeing as how you’re in Texas and I’m stuck back here in Atlanta, hitting my head against one dead end after another.”

  Not exactly the news the rest of them had been waiting for here. “I take it from your cryptic description that you’re calling to tell me that there’s nothing to tell me.”

  Again a disparaging laugh prefaced Shane’s response. “Yeah, something like that. Dad’s lady friend did live here in Atlanta, but she’s not here anymore. At least I can’t find her. I went to the address that I found on Dad’s personal computer, but she’s long gone.”

  Why should the woman stay in Atlanta when she could travel anywhere on their dime? “She probably decided that she can afford to live high on the hog now that she has all this money.”

  “Yeah, thanks to the fact that she now has a sugar daddy.” Shane groaned at his own description. “Fine, upstanding James Marshall Fortune.”

  Asher could almost hear his brother shiver. Admittedly, it wasn’t the way anyone first pictured their austere father. But then, they’d all thought of him as the faithful, loving husband and obviously that hadn’t been true, either.

  “I’d rather not have that image in my head if it’s all the same to you,” Asher told his brother.

  “Hey, I’m with you, Ash,” Shane agreed. “Doesn’t change the fact that that’s probably what he is to her, though. One piece of news,” he continued. “I managed to locate a picture of this Jeanne Marie. Not bad looking, really.”

  Asher responded by asking the obvious. “Why would he make a homely woman his mistress?”

  But to his surprise, rather than go along with his assumption, Shane put the brakes on that line of thinking. “You’re jumping to conclusions, Ash. We don’t know that this woman is his mistress.”

  What else could the woman be, getting that sort of a “gift” from their father? They knew the man’s character well enough to be convinced that the patriarch wouldn’t stand for blackmail.

  “Well, she sure as hell isn’t his adoptive mother,” Asher cracked. “Not at her age.”

  “True,” Shane agreed. Asher did have a point. Still, thinking of the woman as their father’s mistress really didn’t sit well with him. A mistress usually meant that this was a long-term relationship, and he couldn’t get himself to believe that the man had been deceiving them all this time, leading a dual life.

  “So,” Asher asked when Shane had stopped talking for a moment, “what are you going to do now?”

  “I thought I’d stay here a couple more days, poke around some more, see if I can’t find someone who knows where she went. Maybe I can find a friend of a friend, that sort of thing.” There was a trace of impatience in the smooth Southern drawl. “There’s got to be some kind of a trail,” Shane insisted. “The woman couldn’t have just taken those shares and disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  Despite the sophisticated tracking methods that abounded these days, there were still ways a person could fall off the grid if she knew the right people. Maybe Asher and his brothers needed to avail themselves of those kinds of people, he thought.

  “Granted,” he said to Shane, “but maybe we need to get professional help. You know, like a private investigator.”

  “Yeah, I thought of that, too,” Shane confessed. “I’ll let you and the others know what I decide to do after I’ve figured it out.” His tone changed slightly as he asked, “Say, how are you doing?”

  “What do you mean?” Asher asked evasively.

  Shane would have thought that was self-evident, but he spelled it out for Asher. “Well, in getting settled in Red Rock—and getting on with your life,” he added with definite emphasis. Shane had never really cared for his ex-sister-in-law.

  “I’m okay.”

  Asher’s tone was far from convincing, Shane thought. “You don’t sound okay.”

  He wasn’t, but this was just too complicated to sum up in twenty-five words or fewer across approximately a thousand miles. Asher could feel his patience swiftly unraveling, and he didn’t really want to snap at his brother.

  “Shane, I already have a mother. I don’t need another one.”

  “Testy,” Shane noted dryly. “Does that mean you’re finally ready to put that woman behind you—or is something else going on?” he asked suspiciously.

  For a second, Asher almost gave in. He was this close to telling his brother about the conflicted feelings he was having.

  But then, in the next moment, he decided against it. After all, he was a grown man and that meant he was supposed to sort things out for himself, not go running to his brothers and bend their collective ears about his messed-up love life every time there was a new problem to deal with.

  “Nothing else,” he answered. “And when there is, I’ll let you know,” he added with finality to forestall any further questions.

  Shane wasn’t taken in for a moment. But he also wasn’t about to pressure his brother for information. “Fine, you do that,” he said. “You know where to find me.”

  Shane wasn’t very convincing, Asher thought. Even a child would know that. Any second now, the inquisition was going to begin in earnest. He needed to stop that in its tracks.

  “I’ve got to go,” he told Shane, then added the first thing that came to his mind as an excuse. “Jace is calling me.”

  “You let him stay up so late?” Shane asked in surprise.

  “‘Let’ has nothing to do with it,” Asher replied, and then he hung up before Shane could say anything further. He really didn’t want to get embroiled in an argument and that was where this exchange between them looked as though it was heading.

  The fact that Shane only pressed him because he cared didn’t make it any easier to take, Asher thought.

  Chapter Fifteen

  She just couldn’t take it any longer.

  Marnie felt as if her heart were being ripped out of her chest one tiny, jagged piece at a time. She’d been turning up at Asher’s house every afternoon, promptly after her riding sessions were over, for over a week now and she couldn’t take it any longer.

  Couldn’t take the charade that was going on.

  Pretending that she didn’t care about Asher, that she wasn’t really hurt by his abrupt about-face, was killing her. She had given him every opportunity to apologize, every opportunity to come around, or at least explain why he was acting this way.

  Rather than explain, Asher was growing even more distant toward her, something she hadn’t thought was possible. But it obviously was.

  Maybe this was actually the real Asher and t
he other one had been an act. One that he had gotten plainly tired of.

  If that was the case, then she was lucky she found out now, before she was too heavily invested in the man’s life.

  Ha, a small voice in her head mocked her. As if you weren’t already really involved with this guy.

  Okay, so maybe she was, but she could still take matters into her own hands, still pull back and save herself.

  The moment she decided on her course of action, Marnie didn’t feel liberated, didn’t feel triumphant as she’d hoped she would. What she felt, pure and simple, was guilty. Because she knew that if she stopped coming over, Jace would think he was being abandoned again.

  But there was nothing she could do about that. She had to think about herself for once in her life. Right now she was living in a state of limbo, and the only way she was going to be able to move on was to excise Asher and everything that went with him from her life.

  That meant cutting ties with Jace, too.

  It was a matter of survival.

  All the same, she dreaded making the phone call, even though she had her excuse rehearsed and in place. But, dreading it or not, she had to do it. She couldn’t very well not call and then not turn up. That would leave Asher in a lurch, wondering why she hadn’t shown up as per their agreement.

  It would have served him right if she didn’t call, but he wasn’t the one she was concerned about. She didn’t want to leave Jace hanging.

  Besides, just because Asher was behaving like a grade-A jerk didn’t mean she had to do the same. She was better than that.

  Squaring her shoulders, Marnie picked up the landline extension, pulled it onto her lap and dialed Asher’s number.

  The phone on the other end rang once, then twice, then a third time. She caught herself crossing her fingers that it would ring one more time because then that meant she’d get voice mail. She would really prefer leaving a message to having to talk to Asher in person.

  As if in answer to her prayer, she heard the voice mail pick up. The next voice she heard was Asher’s.