Wild West Fortune

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  Ariana had to admit that Charlie’s garage was the cleanest one she’d ever been in.

  “What’re you sitting there smiling about?” Jayden pulled off his cowboy hat as he sat beside her and hooked it over his bent knee.

  “You guys drooling over that Fat Boy out there.”

  He raised his eyebrow. “You know your Harleys?”

  “I did a blog a year ago on men’s love affairs with their motorcycles.” It had actually been about men’s love affairs with their toys superseding their love affairs with their mates, but that was beside the point.

  She could smile about it now. Which meant the cathartic blog had done its job. Hadn’t hurt that her readership had skyrocketed, either. That was when her editor at Weird Life had first assigned her to interview an up-and-coming architect from London named Keaton Whitfield...who also happened to be the illegitimate son of Gerald Robinson.

  And her series “Becoming a Fortune” had been born.

  Jayden’s booted toe was bobbing in her peripheral vision and her sense of well-being wilted.

  The series might have become the delight of the magazine’s readers, but it wasn’t always to the delight of her subjects whether they were one of Gerald’s legitimate or illegitimate progeny. She’d also never exposed anyone as being one of his offspring. By the time she’d interviewed Keaton—and subsequently, his half sister Chloe Elliott—they’d already learned elsewhere that Gerald was their biological father. They’d had time to adjust. Sort of.

  “Miss?”

  The same couldn’t be said for Jayden and his brothers, though. The truth—if it was the truth—would blindside them.

  Ariana realized that Charlie was speaking to her. She looked over at him, dragging her thoughts into the present.

  “You all right?” Jayden’s head was angled as he studied her from those steady brown eyes.

  It was never her intention to cause harm in her writing. But it was her intention to be truthful.

  And some truths were harder to swallow than others.

  “I’m fine,” she lied. “Just got to thinking about what a hassle it’s going to be replacing my driver’s license and everything else in my wallet. I don’t even have my credit card with me to pay the insurance deductible to Charlie.”

  Jayden’s hand covered hers and squeezed. “You’re not worried about that, are you, Charlie?”

  “Nah.” Charlie had pulled a paper form onto his desk and she could see that he’d completed some of it. Now he extended the pen he’d been using toward her. “Only need your signature, miss, and we’ll settle up the score later.”

  Jayden squeezed her hand again. “Sound good?”

  “Sounds good,” she repeated dutifully and reached for the pen.

  She just wished she were certain that settling the score with Jayden wasn’t going to cost her more than whatever she ended up owing for her car.

  Chapter Five

  “There you have it.” Jayden braked in the middle of the road and gestured at the cluster of buildings ahead of him. “Downtown Paseo in all its glory. Bet you’ve never seen anything quite like it. Outside of a spaghetti Western, at any rate.”

  He was determined to put the smile back on Ariana’s face. The smile that had been absent since she’d signed the paperwork in Charlie’s office.

  The smile that was still absent as she looked through the windshield of his truck at the town he called home.

  “I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” she agreed. “What’s the population?”

  “Last census had us just over a couple hundred. Of course, that includes the surrounding ranches.” He took his foot off the brake. “Let me give you the tour. Don’t blink now. If you do, you’ll miss it.”

  That, at least, earned a twitch of her lips.

  It was progress.

  “That’s the town hall.” He gestured to a square brick building that was under construction.

  “It’s still being repaired from the hailstorm last year. You mentioned it,” she reminded him when he showed his surprise.

  He kept forgetting her attention to detail. She had a singular ability to listen and listen well.

  It wasn’t a trait he was all that used to when it came to women. Or at least when it had come to Tess, he supposed.

  Fortunately, Ariana wasn’t Tess.

  “The construction isn’t from those repairs, though that did take a while. What they’re doing now is expanding to accommodate the library.” He pointed to the RV sitting in the town-hall parking lot as he slowly trolled past the building.

  “That motor home is the library? It’s a bookmobile?” She looked at the vehicle with a hopeful expression. “I wish this was one of the days it was open. I could sure stand a little time with the internet.”

  “Thought you called your boss before we left.”

  “I did. But I’ve also got to get the ball rolling on replacing my driver’s license and such.”

  He shook his head. “Ball is still going to have to wait. Library’s not open on Saturdays. And it’s not exactly mobile. The RV is just a shell. Doesn’t run.”

  She made a face. “Well, that’s my luck lately. So, is the existence of a library new around here?”

  “Nah. But it used to be just a wall of books in the gas station. The RV was donated by the Ybarra family a few years back. Same Ybarras who just lost their farmhouse.”

  He poked his thumb in the direction of said gas station. “You can get your gas and your groceries there. Or if you’re feeling in a festive mood, you can sit down in the Mexican restaurant they run in the back.”

  A humorous light filled her chocolate-brown eyes and the twitch on her lips had turned into a soft curve. She didn’t have on a lick of makeup but she couldn’t have been prettier if she’d tried.

  “Sounds tasty,” she drawled.

  “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Rosa—she owns all three businesses—makes some mean carnitas. Better than I’ve had anywhere else.”

  “I’d offer to take you in return for giving me shelter during the storm, but—” She spread her hands and the bracelets around her wrist sparkled. “I have no way to pay.”

  He grinned. “Play your cards right, and maybe I’ll take you.”

  “Careful. You’ll turn my head with such fancy offers.” Smiling fully, she pointed at another building.

  “Hardware store,” he provided. “Sells bits of everything from farm equipment to bolts of fabric.”

  Her eyebrows immediately went up. “How about a cell phone charger?”

  He doubted it. “Let’s check and see. I need to stop anyway and order the replacement window glass we need cut.”

  She smiled winningly and quickly unclipped her seat belt, hopping out before he had a chance to get around to her side. He followed her into the store and couldn’t help but chuckle at the amazed expression crossing her face.

  “I’ll go ask about the charger,” he offered, but she was already setting off for the nearest aisle. He couldn’t imagine what would be so interesting about stove parts and cast-iron cookware, but he followed her through the aisles anyway.

  Watching her explore fascinated him. She stretched up to look at a dusty copper bracelet display and crouched down a few steps later to examine a metal water trough. When he plucked a wind chime off the shelf, she gave him a surprised look. “Wind chimes with little fairies on it?”

  He didn’t care about the fairies. He cared about the tones it made. “We lost the set of wind chimes that usually hangs by the kitchen door. They help orient Sugar when she’s outside.”

  Her eyes softened.

  They made it around the entire store, never having encountered another person. Much to his surprise, though, she had found a section of electronics and had pounced on one packag
e in particular with glee.

  Until she’d rolled her eyes and shook her head, muttering to herself as she put the package back on the shelf.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. He handed her the package. “You can owe me if it makes you feel better.”

  She told him it did, and she clasped the package to the front of her thin excuse for a top as if it were precious and carried it there through the rest of the store, not setting it down until they reached the checkout counter at the front. “Is there anyone even here?”

  He’d begun wondering that himself. Admittedly, Paseo wasn’t a hotbed of crime when it came to shoplifting. But there was usually someone around the store, either the owner, Harvey, or one of the local kids he hired. “I’ll check the stockroom.” He headed to the back of the store again, pushing through the swinging door there and calling Harv’s name.

  The two teenagers getting busy on a camping mattress in the back sprang apart.

  Jayden gave the boy—Harvey’s grandson—a look. “Kind of hard to watch the store when your eyes are closed, son.”

  The kid flushed, though Jayden privately gave him props for trying to shield his nearly naked girlfriend from view.

  “Need some window glass cut.” He pulled a folded paper from his pocket and set it on the shelf just inside the swinging door. “Those’re the measurements. I’ll be back tomorrow to pick them up.”

  He returned to the front of the store, dropped a fifty-dollar bill on the counter for their two items and steered Ariana out of the store.

  “I can’t believe someone would leave the store open like that without anyone there,” she said as they climbed into his truck once more.

  “Someone was there,” he said wryly. He tossed the wind-chime box in the backseat. “Just...otherwise engaged.”

  She looked up from peeling open her cardboard package.

  “Sex,” he elaborated as he pulled a U-turn on the empty street. There were other highlights the town possessed besides a town hall and a hardware store, but it was getting late and the clouds on the horizon had started climbing high in the sky with what would likely become another thunderstorm before too long. And he still wanted to get by the Ybarra place. “Two kids in the storeroom making the slow day pass by a lot more quickly.”

  He watched her cheeks flush. Which was interesting, because in their limited but eventful time together, Ariana had not struck him as being either shy or prudish. “Never made out in the back of a store when you were a teenager?”

  She rolled her eyes, shaking her head. “Never worked in a store when I was a teenager.”

  “So, what did you do when you were a teenager?”

  “Daydreamed.” She gave him a wry smile, looking vaguely chagrined. “Babysat. Helped out at the front desk at the dental office where my mom still works.” She lifted her shoulder. “Cheerleading.”

  “No kidding?”

  She did a sort of rah-rah thing with her arm. “Go Cougars.”

  “Suppose you dated the captain of the football team, too.”

  “Briefly.” She pulled the contents from the box and held up the car adapter. “Do you mind?” When he shook his head, she leaned forward and plugged it into the cigarette lighter, then sat back and attached it to her cell phone. “Whoahoa!” She held up her phone. The surface of it was black, but a small light on the corner was blinking. “We have liftoff.”

  She was clearly delighted, so he didn’t remind her how useless he figured the thing was in their corner of the world.

  She rolled down her window, propping her elbow in the opening, and her long hair streamed away from her face. “Anyway, the quarterback’s name was Scotty. We lasted all of two weeks.”

  “What ended the great romance?”

  “Juliette Wysocki. My next-door neighbor, head cheerleader and chief easy-pants of the school.” She waited a beat. “Not that I held a grudge or anything.”

  He laughed. “Easy-pants, huh?”

  “Better than calling her Empress of Slutville. Though I’ll tell you that particular shoe is one she’s still wearing.” Her eyes danced as she looked at him. Then she seemed to realize that her long hair was blowing across his shoulder and she gathered it together, holding it in one hand.

  He’d been a long way from complaining about it. Ariana had amazing hair. Thick. Lustrous. He couldn’t look at it without wanting to wrap his hands in it.

  He dragged his mind out of that particular puddle.

  “So you lost out to Juliette’s seductive ways. What happened then?”

  “I swore off boys for the rest of the year, graduated almost at the top of my class—that honor went to Simon Mendivil—went to New York City on a two-month internship and came back home to start UT a few weeks later.”

  “What’d you think of New York City?” He could imagine her there.

  “Vibrant. Crowded. Way too expensive. Have you been?”

  He nodded. “Always on my way to somewhere else, though.”

  “Well, while I was there, I shared a one-bedroom apartment with four other girls. Cozy, to say the least.”

  “What was the internship for?”

  “Working at an advertising firm. It was interesting and I was even offered a longer-term stint, but I couldn’t afford to stay on the pittance I was earning, and I didn’t have time enough after hours to get another job. So—” She shrugged. “I came back home.” She peered through the windshield. “That’s not another storm, is it?”

  “Supposed to be the tail end of the season for storms, but I figure anything’s possible. Clouds are pretty far off yet.” He flipped through the radio dial, finding a handful of talk shows in Spanish, a fuzzy country station and a pregame for the Astros. No weather at all. He turned the volume down, but left the baseball station on.

  She was chewing her lip.

  He reached over and caught her hand. “Don’t look so worried. Watching the rain from our front porch is one of the most peaceful things in the world.”

  “So long as it’s only rain,” she said.

  But she’d stopped torturing her soft lower lip.

  And she’d left her fingers curled around his.

  * * *

  Even though Nathan had said the tornado had torn down a neighbor’s farmhouse, until Ariana saw it for herself through Jayden’s windshield as he slowly rolled to a stop in front of it, she had no real conception just how devastating the sight would be.

  “Oh, my God,” she murmured. She couldn’t tell if the house had been a single story or a multistory. She couldn’t tell if it had been painted white or yellow or purple.

  If it weren’t for an avocado-green refrigerator with the door half torn off lying on its side in the midst of the pile of sticks and lumber and debris, she wasn’t sure she would have even known it had ever been a house.

  Someone’s home.

  “That poor family.”

  Jayden’s expression was solemn as he pushed open his door. “You want to come or wait here?”

  Beyond the group of camper trucks and SUVs clustered together, she realized that someone had erected a pop-up canopy midway between the remains of the house and a tall white barn, and there was a group of people milling around it. “I’d like to come if I won’t be intruding.”

  “When it comes to Paloma and Hector Ybarra, nobody is an intruder.”

  She pushed open her own door. “They’re the owners, I take it?”

  “Yes. Be careful,” he warned. “Don’t get close to the house.”

  She nodded and went around the back of the truck to join him on the far side. He pulled a five-gallon jug of water out of the truck bed that she hadn’t even noticed before and propped it on his shoulder before taking her elbow as they walked toward the tent. Which was good, since Ariana could barely tear her attention a
way from the destruction of the house and she nearly tripped over a broken roof tile in her path.

  It didn’t matter how many news stories she’d ever watched about tornadoes and the damage they caused. It was positively eerie seeing the house leveled, while a couple hundred yards away, the barn looked blissfully untouched.

  “Jayden.” A diminutive white-haired woman broke away from the group under the tent and approached them. She was smiling and her arms were held wide. “What a welcome sight you are. I see you brought us more water.”

  Jayden let go of Ariana and set down the heavy water container to hug the tiny woman. “Lo siento, Paloma.”

  “Ah. Thank you, mijo. But it is a house. Hector and I are the home.” She patted his cheek, looking past him with bright brown eyes to Ariana. “And who is this?”

  Jayden’s gaze moved over Ariana, setting off a sweet warmth inside her. “A new friend. Ariana Lamonte, this lovely lady is Paloma Ybarra. One of my most favorite people on earth.”

  Ariana held out her hand and found it clasped warmly between both of Paloma’s. “I’m so sorry to meet you under these circumstances, Mrs. Ybarra.”

  “Better to meet than not to meet, isn’t that right, Jayden?” She smiled up at Ariana. “Come and meet my Hector.” Still holding Ariana’s hand, she also grabbed Jayden’s arm and tugged them toward the canopy. She called out something in Spanish and a teenage boy trotted past them to take the water and add it to the collection of supplies that Ariana could see under the canopy.

  “Graciela is here,” Paloma was telling Jayden. “She and Tomas arrived this afternoon.” Her eyes bounced back to Ariana. “My daughter and her husband. They live in Mexico City. Tomas is an attorney there.”

  “She definitely moved up from the likes of me,” Jayden said with a smile. His eyes met Ariana’s over Paloma’s head. “Graciela was the girl who got away.”

  “He is teasing you, Ariana,” Paloma assured her. “Jayden was only a boy when my daughter finished high school.”

  “Yeah.” They’d reached the tent and Jayden gave Ariana a quick wink. “The unattainable older woman.” He moved away from Paloma and Ariana to kiss the cheek of a strikingly beautiful, dark-haired woman who threw back her head and laughed throatily over whatever it was he said.