A Small Fortune

by Marie Ferrarella

  “You’ve reached the home of Asher and Jace Fortune. We can’t come to the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number, we’ll get back to you as soon as we’re able.”

  “Yeah, able.” That was Jace in the background, chiming in, she thought fondly.

  Taking a breath, she said, “This is Marnie. Something’s come up and I’m afraid I won’t be able to babysit Jace anymore. Sorry,” she added. The word, she couldn’t help thinking, didn’t begin to cover how she actually felt—not that he cared, she thought ruefully. “Tell Jace goodbye for me. I’ll miss him,” she added deliberately.

  Asher, she thought angrily, was probably too thick to pick up her message.

  And then she hung up—quickly before the sob she felt welling up in her throat came out and betrayed her.

  “What came up?”

  Marnie nearly jumped out of her skin. Whirling around in her seat, she saw that her mother was standing directly behind the sofa she was sitting on. Gloria McCafferty looked rather perplexed.

  “I know that those heart-to-heart talks we used to have occurred strictly because you were still a preteen and now that you’re all grown up I don’t expect for you to tell me everything,” her mother tactfully emphasized as she came around to join her on the sofa. “But I did think that you’d give me a summarized update of what was going on in your life—the PG-rated stuff—at least every once in a while.”

  There was both sympathy and a faint look of expectation in Gloria’s eyes as she sat down and placed her hand over her daughter’s. She was every inch the classic mother, her own heart aching whenever she sensed that her child’s did.

  “What came up?” she asked again, trying to coax the information out of Marnie.

  Marnie sighed and shook her head. “Nothing, Mom. Really.”

  Instead of clearing anything up, that only brought up more questions. “Then why did you—?”

  She really, really didn’t want to talk about it. It hurt too much. “Look, I thought you above all people would be glad I decided not to work for Asher Fortune anymore. After all, you were the one who said you didn’t want me taking in any more ‘strays,’ remember?” Marnie reminded her mother tersely.

  “And I still don’t,” Gloria told her. Unable to help herself, she pushed the hair out of her daughter’s face. “Because I worry about you getting hurt.”

  Marnie lifted her chin defensively. “Well, I can’t get hurt if I’m not there, can I?”

  Gloria took that same chin in her hand and looked at her daughter’s face closely. She saw all she needed to know there.

  “You already are hurt, aren’t you, honey?”

  It drove Marnie crazy that her mother could just delve into her head like that and read her like a book. She thought of voicing a denial, contradicting her mother’s assumption, but something in the pit of her stomach told her that it was futile.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she murmured with a vague shrug.

  “It matters to me,” Gloria insisted. “I wasn’t telling you not to get involved, Marnie. I want you to be involved. I want you to have someone in your life, a good man who’ll love you and see you for the rare person you are. I want you to have a family with this man. I was just warning you to be careful because I know what a huge heart you have. There are some men out there who would use that strictly for their advantage. I just didn’t want you becoming a victim.”

  “Well, you can put your worries to rest, Mom. I’m just going to be teaching kids how to ride at the stables for a while. No more babysitting.” She knew she couldn’t bear it. It would just remind her of Asher and Jace.

  “What happened, Marnie?” her mother asked gently.

  Because she desperately needed to unload to someone, at least a tiny bit, Marnie gave her mother an abbreviated, bare-bones summary of the problem. Since she didn’t want to go into any details, what she did was simply say, “He wasn’t interested.”

  Her answer left Gloria utterly speechless for a moment. Recovering, she said, “Well, just as well, then. You wouldn’t want to get involved with a stupid man, now, would you?”

  Without thinking, Marnie was instantly defensive of the man who’d taken her heart prisoner so callously. “He’s not stupid.”

  “Oh, but I beg to differ. Anyone who wouldn’t be interested in a young woman as beautiful, as intelligent and as hardworking as you are has to be stupid. He might deserve your pity, but he definitely deserves nothing else.” She offered her daughter an encouraging smile. “I’d say you dodged a bullet there, Marnie.”

  I don’t feel like I dodged a bullet, Mom. I feel like it hit me right in the heart.

  Marnie rolled her eyes in response to her mother’s words. “Mother, you’re prejudiced.”

  “Possibly,” Gloria allowed generously. “But I also have eyes. That in turn allows me to recognize both your faults—your heart’s way too big—and your virtues, which are too numerous for me to mention at this time,” she deadpanned.

  “Oh? Why?” Marnie asked innocently. She had never known her mother to pass up an opportunity to talk, especially at length.

  “Because if I do—” Gloria rose to her feet “—I’ll make you late for your eager little students.” As her daughter stood up as well, Gloria patted her on the shoulder, a gesture of comfort as well as one of pride. “They just might go riding off on their own, and you’d have to spend half the afternoon looking for them.”

  The scenario her mother had verbally drawn was intentionally melodramatic. Picturing it, Marnie couldn’t help laughing.

  “Thanks, Mom, I needed that,” she told her. It really did feel good to laugh.

  “Just doing my job, dear,” she assured Marnie. “I’m your mother. I’m supposed to be able to cheer you up.” She kissed Marnie’s forehead. “Now go teach. Be with people who appreciate you.”

  Marnie started to cross the living room, intent on picking up her purse and car keys so that she could be on her way. “I love you, Mom.”

  “And I, you,” Gloria responded. They both knew that was a given.

  * * *

  “But why can’t Marnie come over?” Jace whined, asking the question for what had to be the thousandth time since Asher had told his son the upshot of the message she’d left on his voice mail several days ago.

  It had been five days since he’d heard that message. Five days and he hadn’t been able to get her on the phone so they could talk this out.

  Five days since he’d started blaming himself, torn between believing that he’d acted like a fool and believing that he’d actually done the right thing.

  But Jace was coming dangerously close to wearing out his last surviving nerve. Desperate, he pitched a lie to the boy in hopes that it would finally make Jace stop asking after Marnie.

  “Because she said she had other kids to take care of. Other kids who needed her.”

  “But we need her,” Jace insisted, clearly agitated.

  “No, we don’t. We’re doing fine without her.” No, he couldn’t help thinking, they weren’t. But at least he had his brothers taking turns having Jace over and watching him for a few hours. It was supposed to help him, Asher thought.

  It didn’t.

  “Daddy, you said you never lie,” Jace accused with a pout. “We’re not doing fine,” he told his father as if it was a fact of life. “We miss her.”

  More than words can say.

  The thought rose in Asher’s mind of its own accord. Ever since he’d listened to Marnie’s voice on the voice mail and felt his heart sink, he discovered that rather than be relieved that she took the matter out of his hands, he was absolutely miserable.

  Miserable because he felt he had nothing to look forward to.

  Miserable because he found himself lying to his son, trying to find solace in a situation that was act
ually utterly intolerable to him and becoming even more so with every day that passed.

  Even if he hadn’t been acutely aware of the toll that not seeing Marnie had taken on him, there were his brothers, who were more than willing to point out how surly he’d become these last few days. They pointed it out on every available occasion.

  They were right.

  What’s more, this was even worse than when Lynn had walked out on him. He hadn’t thought it was possible to miss someone as much as he missed Marnie—at least, not miss someone so much and still live.

  Asher felt like a lovesick fool and he found himself fighting with Jace constantly. Jace in turn had become incredibly sullen, and if Asher had thought the boy was acting out when Lynn left, it didn’t even hold a candle to the way he was behaving now that Marnie had stopped coming over.

  “She wouldn’t do that,” Jace insisted, referring to what his father had just told him. “Marnie wouldn’t leave us for some other dumb kids.” His small, crescent brows drew together in a thin, light brown line. “You must’ve made her mad,” he suddenly accused. “You made her mad and that’s why she went away. Just like Mommy went away because I made her mad.”

  The accusation, along with the accompanying confession, pulled Asher up short. Not because Jace was accusing him of being the reason why Marnie had gone away—when had his son become this insightful?—but because Jace thought that he was the reason why Lynn had left.

  This was just too painfully close to the truth for Asher to allow it to stand unchallenged.

  “Do you really believe that, Jace? That you’re the reason why your mother left?” he asked his son incredulously. As Jace nodded, he forgot about his own pain and just focused on his son’s. “We’ve already talked about this, Jace. I told you that you’re not the reason your mom picked up and left. She just didn’t want to be married to me anymore,” he lied, all the while secretly worrying.

  Did Jace somehow suspect that he actually was the reason his heartless mother had walked out?

  Why?

  Asher had tried so hard to place the blame elsewhere. Anywhere but on his son’s small shoulders.

  But this really wasn’t about Lynn. At bottom, Jace wasn’t talking about his mother, only Marnie. He wanted his father to do anything he could in order to get Marnie to come back again.

  “Maybe if you apologize to her, you can get Marnie to come back and be with us again,” Jace said hopefully, then followed up his logical projection with a heartfelt “Please, Daddy? I really, really miss her, don’t you?”

  Asher sighed. More than anything, he wanted to say no, that he didn’t. But the truth of it was, he was getting tired of lying to both Jace and to himself. He missed Marnie. He missed her like hell and he didn’t want to put up with the situation much longer.

  “If you call her and say you’re sorry, she’ll forgive you. She’s a nice lady,” Jace was saying, still pleading his case. “She doesn’t get mad all the time, like Mommy did.”

  “There’s no guarantee that she’ll come back even if I do call,” Asher pointed out.

  “But she sure won’t if you don’t,” the boy told him simply.

  Asher laughed and shook his head. The boy had obviously been born with an old mind. And, he was beginning to think, his son could argue the ears off a brass monkey. “How old did you say you were again?”

  “Four.” He looked up at his father, clearly confused. “You know that, Daddy.”

  Asher nodded. “Yes, I know that.”

  He also knew that Jace was right. If he didn’t try to persuade Marnie to come back, she had no reason to come back. It was up to him to make the first move, to apologize.

  God knew he’d done a lot of that with Lynn, but she’d left anyway. However, Marnie was nothing like his ex. And, in his own way, Jace had pointed that out, too. The boy’s point, beneath all this, was that he wasn’t being fair to Marnie, judging her by Lynn’s behavior.

  “You gonna do it, Daddy?” he asked eagerly, hope springing eternal in his small, young chest. “Are you gonna tell Marnie that we’re sorry, that we won’t ever do anything to make her go away again if she just comes back to us?” Jace asked, his eyes bright with anticipation and hope. He looked as if he was obviously moving in for the kill.

  “I guess I’m going to have to. Otherwise you’re not going to give me any peace, are you, big guy?” he asked with a grin.

  Jace responded solemnly, shaking his head so hard his straight blond hair flew about his small face. “Uh-uh. I want her to come back to us, Daddy. And you do, too.”

  Definitely a gifted child, Asher thought. “Okay, Jace, you win. Let’s go get you over to your uncle Wyatt’s house.”

  Jace’s face fell. Since Marnie had been gone, he had been making the rounds to his uncles’ houses, going to a different one each day. He loved his uncles all right, but they were no substitute for Marnie. For one thing, their imaginations weren’t nearly as much fun.

  “Why?” the boy wanted to know petulantly.

  “So that I can go to find Marnie and tell her that I’m—that we,” he corrected himself, “are sorry.”

  Jace cheered as he reached up and threw his arms around his father’s waist. It was obvious that the boy felt that Marnie was almost as good as back.

  “Yay! I knew you would do it.”

  Jace had a lot of faith in his ability to persuade people. Asher could only hope that he was half as good as his son thought he was.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Marnie was beginning to think she was losing her mind.

  There was no other explanation for the unexpected, sudden bouts of paranoia she’d been struggling with for the last couple of hours. Surrounded by horses and the group of students she was teaching, she just couldn’t shake the feeling that someone, other than her students, was watching her.

  Intently.

  Someone, apparently, who was very good at hiding because when she looked around the perimeter of the corral and the outlining area, she didn’t see anyone.

  She was probably just imagining it, Marnie told herself. Maybe it was even a reaction stemming from not seeing Asher anymore.

  Don’t go there, don’t go there, don’t go there, she silently and adamantly ordered herself.

  Her plan was to stay as busy as humanly possible, taking on as many students—hers and any stragglers belonging to other instructors who might have called in sick for the day—as she could in an attempt to be so busy that she didn’t have a single moment to herself. Because she knew what she’d do with those moments. She’d wind up allowing her mind to stray and maybe relive a memory or two.

  That was not the way to get over Asher Fortune. No reliving anything. No regrets. No going back. Otherwise she was going to be doomed to grieving over losing the man.

  How could you lose what you never had? Marnie asked herself.

  “You okay, Miss Marnie?” a little girl, Bettina Gregory, asked her, tugging on her checked shirtsleeve and looking up at her, rather concerned.

  The rest of the class had been dismissed fifteen minutes ago. Bettina’s mother was paying for extra time for the girl with an eye out for a spot on the Olympic equestrian team the next time around or so.

  Marnie smiled down at the child, doing her best to reassure her. “I’m fine, Bettina. Just a little preoccupied,” she confessed, then added an apology. “I’m sorry.”

  The girl didn’t seem to hear the apology. She was focused on trying to understand the meaning behind her riding instructor’s other words.

  “Does being preoccupied have anything to do with that man who’s been watching you today?” the girl asked innocently.

  Marnie’s head shot up and she was instantly alert as she scanned the immediate area again.

  There was someone watching her.

  “
What man? Where?” she demanded, looking into the distance again.

  She still didn’t see anyone, Marnie thought impatiently. What was he, invisible to anyone over the age of twelve?

  “Over there, by the barn,” the girl said, pointing to the stables where the horses were put away for the evening.

  Marnie squinted slightly, shading her eyes from the sun. She still didn’t—

  Yes, she did, she quickly amended.

  There, in the distance, on the far side of the stables, there was the outline of a man turned in the general direction of the corral where she taught her lessons.

  Asher.

  “Don’t worry, Bettina,” Marnie said slowly, the words leaving her lips in slow motion. “He’s not a stranger. I know who that is.”

  The little girl tilted her head as if that would make her understand what was going on better. “Then it’s okay?”

  That remained to be seen, Marnie thought. “Yes, it’s okay.”

  The next moment, the little girl grinned broadly. “My mom’s here!” she announced cheerfully.

  Which meant that she would have no student to hide behind, Marnie realized. The little girl had been her last student of the day, and since she had stayed for some private tutoring, there was no other child in the corral for her to turn to and pretend that she was just too busy to talk to Asher.

  “Don’t forget to put your horse away in the stable,” Marnie said automatically.

  “Yes, Miss Marnie,” Bettina replied obediently. Picking up the reins, she fairly skipped with her mount to the stable. “C’mon, Mom, watch me put Snowball away,” she called out to her mother.

  Bettina’s mother looked at her watch, forced a smile to her lips and gamely made her way to the stable in her daughter’s wake.

  Leaving her alone and completely exposed, Marnie thought.

  She had an overwhelming desire to flee, but if she did that, it would allow Asher to see that his previous behavior toward her had cut through her like a well-honed, deadly knife.

  There was no way she was about to give him that sort of satisfaction.