A Fortune's Children's Wedding

by Barbara Boswell

  And while Flynt spend his evenings with Angelica, Brandon spent his with…

  Flynt frowned thoughtfully and remembered hearing Brandon sing enthusiastically about “a girl crazy for me.” He hadn’t given the lyrics much thought at the time. Brandon also sang about “little deuce coupes, funkytowns and superfreaks.”

  But now that he took time to consider the situation, Flynt realized that Brandon must have a girlfriend here in Birmingham. Brandon viewed himself as quite the ladies’ man; typically, he would not have lasted two weeks without female companionship. Would he have lasted here two weeks without any complaints unless he was occupied by a girl crazy for him?

  Girl—that was the operative word. Flynt suppressed a groan. He fervently hoped Brandon’s Birmingham “girl” was at least of legal age.

  “Flynt, one last thing before we hang up,” said Kate. “Have there been any more threatening notes? We’ve been concerned that Brandon and Angelica are at risk and—”

  “Angelica is safe, Kate,” Flynt hastened to assure her. “There haven’t been any more threats and I’ve—kept a close eye on her.”

  He actually blushed. If Kate only knew how close! But frustratingly, maddeningly, never close enough.

  Flynt gulped with enough force to swallow a head of lettuce whole. His propensity for sexual implosion in Angelica’s presence hadn’t lessened one iota, nor had hers. Though they hadn’t discussed his theory about emotional maelstrom-equals-loss-of-control since he’d outlined it that day in her office, both heeded it.

  Neither was ready to risk implosion or to cede control to someone else, particularly not someone they’d known such a short time. He and Angelica were well matched when it came to caution, willpower and restraint, Flynt mused. Just as their desire and their need for each other was well matched.

  And though they couldn’t give in to their lust, they couldn’t ignore it, either. They had to kiss, they had to touch. The temptation, the necessity for it was too strong to be denied.

  So they kissed good-night at the end of every evening; they held hands and lightly caressed each other’s backs or necks or arms. That was titillating and exciting, yet safe, as long as they set very firm limits.

  Which they did. They didn’t spend time alone in cars, unless they were driving to and from a place; they avoided his hotel suite and her apartment unless Mara and TJ were there, too. Otherwise…

  Flynt didn’t dare speculate on otherwise, not with Angelica’s grandmother on the other end of the line.

  “I’m glad to hear you’re so conscientious, Flynt,” said Kate, “though I never doubted it. I would love to fly down there and meet Angelica, but I don’t want to barge in when she’s just getting used to the idea of her father. I suppose we’ll have to wait until she is ready to meet the rest of her family. Do you think it’ll happen soon, Flynt?”

  “I don’t know, Kate,” replied Flynt.

  Actually, he did know. It wasn’t going to happen soon, if ever, because Angelica insisted she wanted nothing to do with either her father’s or her mother’s relatives.

  Flynt guessed it was her way of proclaiming total loyalty to Romina, though whether or not Romina herself demanded such fealty, he did not know.

  But he was unwilling to dash Kate’s hopes with unbridled pessimism. “Maybe it’ll be sooner than any of us think, Kate.”

  Chapter 9

  Two days later, Flynt realized that the kind little white lie he’d told Kate actually had been uncannily prophetic.

  Angelica was to meet the Fortune side of her family much sooner than any of them had anticipated. Especially Angelica and himself.

  They were sitting at a coffeehouse when Angelica told him a reporter with the notorious and very popular Globe Star Probe had called her, claiming to be checking out an anonymous tip. Was Brandon Malone Fortune actually her father?

  Even though Angelica had been aghast and muttered an unintelligible reply before hanging up, the reporter, Kieran Kaufman, had left repeated messages on her machine.

  “Do you think Brandon has been blabbing the story in bars around the city and somebody phoned it in to the Globe Star Probe? Or maybe…is it possible that Brandon himself is the anonymous tipster?”

  “I truly doubt it,” replied Flynt.

  “Because his paternal feelings are so strong he’d never expose me to a scandal rag?” Angelica took refuge in deadpan, gallows humor.

  “As much as I’d like to believe it, what I really think is that Brandon operates from a position of self-interest.” Flynt was blunt. “And he has nothing to gain by calling the Probe.”

  “Except publicity. Maybe he developed a taste for it when he was reunited with Kate. Maybe he wants to be in the spotlight again,” Angelica surmised darkly.

  “Why is Brandon hanging around Birmingham, anyway?” Angelica cried, anxiety making her stomach somersault. “Haven’t I made it clear that I don’t want to know him? I don’t even see him, except every once in a while by accident, if he happens to stop by your suite when I’m at the hotel.”

  And always chaperoned by Mara and TJ, Flynt mused wryly.

  “Somehow Brandon has managed to keep himself entertained while he’s in town.” Flynt refrained from adding that it was likely a young female companion who was doing the entertaining. Why upset Angelica further?

  “I bet I know why he hasn’t left.” Angelica scowled. “His mother probably made some deal with him, that if he stays here for a set number of days or weeks, supposedly spending time with me, he’ll get a nice cash payoff.”

  She noticed that Flynt looked uncomfortable. “I’m right, aren’t I, Flynt? Kate Fortune is paying him to stay here on the pretext of playing daddy.”

  Flynt thought of the terms of the deal he himself had struck with the Fortunes. If he were to tell her those details, she might assume he was staying because he was getting paid.

  And nothing could be farther from the truth. The way he felt about her now, Flynt knew he would stick around even if Kate were to cancel their deal.

  “Brandon’s mother isn’t paying him to stay here on the pretext of playing daddy, Angelica.” He felt compelled to clear Kate of that charge. He didn’t want Angelica harboring hostility toward her grandmother, who was genuinely eager to accept her as a full-fledged member of the Fortune family.

  “I’m listening to what you’re not saying, Flynt.” Angelica stared intently at him. “That my grandmother isn’t involved but one of the Fortunes, maybe one of Brandon’s brothers or sisters, is paying him to stay here in Birmingham? And they don’t care if he gets to know me or not, they’re just glad he’s not in Minneapolis stirring things up.”

  Flynt couldn’t help but smile. “It’s safe to say that Brandon’s sisters and brothers prefer him out of Minneapolis and out of their hair.”

  He reached across the table and laid his hand over hers. “Do you know that you just referred to Kate as your grandmother? Not Brandon’s mother, not Kate Fortune, but your grandmother.”

  “Don’t go reading anything into it, Flynt. It doesn’t mean anything,” Angelica insisted.

  “I think it does. I think you’re beginning to adjust to the idea of being related to the Fortunes, Angelica. To accepting Kate Fortune as your grandmother, rather than as some larger-than-life character who occupies a separate universe from you.”

  “But she does. Which brings us back to all those calls from that nosy reporter, that Kieran Kaufman creep,” Angelica said grimly. “The press might be a part of the Fortune family’s world but not mine. The Globe Star Probe wouldn’t call plain old Angelica Carroll, nurse-midwife, unless maybe they wanted help concocting a story about delivering a Martian baby or something.”

  “They wouldn’t need help concocting a Martian baby story, they could bang it out in an hour themselves. And whether it’s Carroll or Fortune, you are anything but plain old Angelica.”

  “And you’re a sweet-talking smooth operator.” She smiled flirtatiously at him, feeling better for no other
reason except talking things over with him…made her feel better.

  Suddenly the situation didn’t seem so alarming, just merely annoying. And eminently manageable.

  “If I screen all my calls and that reporter keeps getting my answering machine, I bet he’ll give up and go away.” She shook some chocolate shavings into her cappuccino and took a sip. It was delicious.

  “After all, Brandon and I are hardly a hot story that warrants a zealous pursuit. It’s not like either one of us is a movie star or TV or sports star. Those are the tabloids’ prime targets.”

  “You would definitely be superceded if a movie star should get arrested or pregnant or if a TV star throws a tantrum and walks off a hit show,” Flynt agreed dryly.

  “Some celebrity somewhere will be sure to fall in love or break up with another celebrity. Or get married or divorced or sick. Or die. Then awful Kieran Kaufman and the rest of the tabloid pack will be hot on that trail. Brandon and I will be forgotten.”

  Angelica clinked her cup to Flynt’s in a cheerfully irreverent little toast.

  She shouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss her apprehensions, Angelica lamented in the frenzied days that followed. Deluding herself into a state of misplaced optimism not only had been naive, but downright stupid.

  The Globe Star Probe reporter did not leave Birmingham. And though Angelica continued to avoid all his calls, Kieran Kaufman reached Brandon, who admitted the truth of her parentage.

  “I’m proud to have a daughter like Angelica, even though she doesn’t want anything to do with her old man. And who can blame her? I’ve messed up my life, I’m a loser,” Brandon mournfully told the reporter, adding a hopeful, “I just hope it’s not too late to change.”

  The Globe Star Probe printed the quote and the story along with pictures, one of Angelica, snapped unawares as she left the hospital. The other photo was a glamorous retouched studio portrait of Brandon—perhaps supplied by him?

  Angelica was upset but since the story was buried in the middle of the Probe and nobody she knew would admit to reading the tabloid, she anticipated little or no troublesome aftermath.

  Once again she was to be proven wrong.

  A singularly slow news week followed that particular issue of the Globe Star Probe. No celebrity anywhere did anything at all to attract tabloid attention. In fact, nothing newsworthy seemed to be happening on any front. Quiet reigned in the entertainment industry and in politics. Not a single intriguing crime occurred. Even the weather remained calm, with no horrific storms to provide diverting tales of survival and loss.

  The Globe Star Probe sought to correct the dearth of stories by nourishing the one they’d found in Birmingham. And as Kieran Kaufman explained to Brandon who then told Flynt, the TV tabloid shows weren’t averse to bolstering their print counterpart by pumping up a promising story.

  A TV crew for Insider, a popular but critically scorned tabloid news show, arrived in Birmingham to accompany Kaufman as he interviewed the loquacious Brandon and a wary, reluctant Romina. Angelica refused to deal with any reporters at all, and except for being occasionally ambushed by cameras, she was left alone.

  And then Kieran Kaufman found Ike Searcy P.I., or maybe it was the other way around. But it was the revelation of Romina’s connection to the Fortunes, as the mother of Brandon’s child, that inspired Searcy’s client Ted Carson to file a hundred-million-dollar civil suit against the Fortune Corporation.

  The lawsuit accused the Fortunes of financially enabling Romina Carroll to aid and abet Darlene Carson’s custody violation and flight with the Carson children.

  Suddenly the mainstream media was interested in the story, sending reporters, camera and film crews to interview whatever Fortune they could corner in Minneapolis, as well as Brandon and Romina in Birmingham. The top-rated network magazine shows expanded the story to include “secrets of the underground,” a look at the “hidden world of women and children on the run.”

  The Fortune family was not pleased….

  “We are being accused of subsidizing an underground network for fugitive mothers and their children in flagrant violation of custody laws?” Jake Fortune yelped during an urgent phone call to Flynt and Brandon. “What in the hell have you gotten us into now, Brandon?”

  “Brandon hasn’t done anything,” Kate, on the other line for this conference call, said, defending her youngest son to her oldest.

  “If it’s not too much trouble, perhaps Flynt Corrigan, our man on the scene, could explain what is going on down there and why the media jackals have been unleashed on us this time?” Jake was sarcastic.

  Flynt tried to explain about Brandon’s alleged connection to Nancy Portland’s underground network. “Romina might be involved—well, she undoubtedly is—but there is no tangible proof linking her to it, only circumstantial evidence that will never stand up,” he added, quoting Weatherall the FBI agent.

  “No one has been able to nail Romina for anything, though plenty have tried,” Brandon boasted proudly.

  “And, of course, there is no proof that Romina has financial ties to the Fortunes or ever had. Searcy and Carson’s lawsuit will be thrown out,” Flynt predicted.

  Jake Fortune was not appeased. “But if a judge decides to throw the case to a jury, they just might decide all that lack of proof makes her look slippery and deceptive rather than not guilty. And if she’s found guilty, we’re guilty simply by association. It’s the law of the jungle.”

  “Even if the suit is thrown out, our team of lawyers will be tied up for weeks, filing motions and scheduling depositions,” growled his brother Nate, on another extension.

  “Meanwhile, we’re faced with a barrage of negative publicity, not to mention the possibility of inspiring a horde of paranoid greedy crackpots to file their own lawsuits against us for whatever absurd reasons,” Sterling Foster, on yet another extension, intoned glumly.

  “So what should I do?” Brandon sounded downcast. “Come back to Minneapolis?”

  “No!” Jake, Nate and Sterling all chorused so loudly that Flynt’s ears rang.

  “You stay down there with Angelica, Brandon, dear,” Kate interjected diplomatically. “Getting to know your daughter is the most important thing.”

  “I didn’t have the heart to tell your grandmother that Brandon isn’t getting to know you at all,” Flynt told Angelica later that afternoon, after the fractious phone call.

  They were strolling in the rose garden next to the city library, enjoying the warm May sunshine. Angelica had a break between patient appointments, and Flynt was always ready to rework his own business-by-proxy schedule to take the opportunity to see her.

  “Brandon isn’t, but you’re getting to know me pretty well,” teased Angelica.

  In spite of the media storm swirling, she felt almost recklessly happy. Just being with Flynt affected her that way.

  Besides, to her heartfelt relief, she seemingly had been relegated to footnote status in this latest Brandon saga.

  “Yeah, I am,” Flynt said huskily. He took both Angelica’s hands and drew her toward him. “But not well enough.”

  He was feeling bold enough, hungry and desperate enough to kiss her right there, in a public place, in full view of anyone who happened to come along. He still wasn’t sleeping very well, and when he finally did fall into a restless slumber, he experienced incredibly erotic dreams, all starring Angelica.

  The risk of losing control and giving in to sexual implosion no longer seemed so threatening, so foolhardy. Flynt tried to remember why he’d thought holding back was the wise, safe course for them to follow.

  He didn’t want to be wise or safe, he wanted Angelica. More with every passing day.

  Abandoning restraint, he touched his lips to hers, half expecting her to pull away. He knew she was uncomfortable with public displays of affection; she still blushed at any reference to their totally uninhibited PDA in Swank that first night.

  To his surprise Angelica stretched up on tiptoe and leaned into him, le
tting her mouth linger lightly against his. Flynt’s response was instantaneous. With a soft muffled groan, he crushed her to him, thrusting his tongue into the moist heat of her mouth.

  She clung to him, her tongue meeting his stroke for stroke, wriggling to get closer. She couldn’t seem to get close enough.

  Flynt wove his fingers through her hair, pulling it away from her face to expose her neck. He began to nibble on the smooth, creamy skin.

  “I want to be alone with you,” he said huskily,

  “We are alone…sort of.” Angelica’s heart was thundering in her ears. She touched the tingling spot on her neck. It felt moist and ultra-sensitive. She swayed a little, her legs weak and unsteady. “The park is practically deserted this time of day.”

  “You know what I mean, Angelica.”

  She knew. Shivering, she pulled away, turning her back to him.

  Flynt closed his hands over her shoulders and kneaded. “I’m sorry, Angel. Not for kissing you, but for doing it here.”

  “Flynt, I—I didn’t want to stop,” she whispered, her voice taut and breathless.

  It was a disturbing admission, one she’d never expected to make to any man. But Flynt wasn’t just any man. Until she’d gotten to know him, she hadn’t thought a man like him existed.

  Flynt Corrigan was honest and direct and didn’t resort to lies and deception to get what he wanted. He was a man who got angry but never went crazy with temper, a passionate man with control over his emotions. He was reliable and dependable, but understood fear and pain. Perhaps even better than she did, for she’d never had to deal with a loss as profound as a missing brother.

  And for the first time in her life, Angelica could say with certainty that she knew a man who would never hit a woman or child. Why, Flynt would clobber any other man who did such a thing. She gazed at him, her dark eyes rapt.

  Flynt smiled at her. “I didn’t want to stop, either, Angelica.”