Cowboy in Disguise

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  She swept, swept, swept until she’d managed to push almost all of the water out of the car. Then, before it could flow back inside, she shoved a few of the sopping towels that Hallie had been using into the door track, creating a rough sort of dam. Then she did the same thing with the second elevator. Hallie had noticed and brought her several fresh towels.

  “Here.” She crouched down and helped wedge them into place.

  “Thanks.” Arabella watched her from the corner of her eye. “Hallie, I’m really sorry that I didn’t mention—”

  “Forget it,” Hallie said, cutting her off brusquely. “I shouldn’t have overreacted like I did.”

  Arabella turned to face her head-on. “We’re okay then?”

  Hallie made a face. “How can we not be? Look at you. Black eyes and on your hands and knees mopping up water.”

  “Oh, God.” Arabella covered her face again. “All day long I’ve been forgetting how awful I look. First Jay and now—”

  “Jay?” A smile played around Hallie’s lips. “What’s going on with Jay?”

  Arabella’s face went hot and Hallie’s lips pursed in a silent whistle.

  “Not bad,” the other girl said under her breath. “Not bad at all, girlfriend.” Then she pushed to her feet and started squeegeeing water out of the corridor and toward the lobby.

  It was dark by the time they all successfully conquered the water well enough that there only remained a gloss of moisture on the terra-cotta floor.

  All of the area rugs had been pulled out to the parking lot. So had all of the heavy wood furniture and everything else that was even capable of being moved at all.

  Someone brought in folding chairs—Arabella thought it might have been Jay, but by that point she was too exhausted to really notice or care.

  She was just glad to get off her feet and tuck into one of the sandwiches that Nicole and her sisters produced.

  Callum, who’d spent much of that afternoon with his cell phone glued to his ear while he helped out with the cleanup, was sitting on the registration desk. His brothers were huddled nearby. One of them—Wiley—had his arm around Grace’s shoulder. She looked as exhausted as Arabella felt.

  “Obviously, we’ll have to close while the restoration work gets completed,” Callum announced to everyone assembled.

  “What’d the insurance company say?” That came from Kane.

  Nobody could miss the look that passed between Callum and his brothers. “They haven’t said they’ll deny this latest claim outright, but—” He shook his head and eyed everyone in the room. “I’m not going to lie here. The balcony was tampered with.” His gaze fell on Grace and his brother Wiley. “We can just count our blessings that nobody was hurt worse than Grace with her broken leg. The food tampering at the Give Back barbecue was a passel more of bad publicity. We’ve beefed up security in and around the property. We’ve been trying to advertise the hell out of this place. The commercial we just filmed hasn’t even hit the airwaves yet. We’ve had more cancellations in the last month than we’ve had reservations. And now this?” He spread his arms and dropped them wearily.

  Wiley stepped forward then. “We’re not giving up,” he said flatly. “We’re Fortunes and we don’t give up.”

  Someone muttered a “hear, hear.”

  Callum clapped his brother on the shoulder. “Wiley’s right. Fortunes don’t give up.” His lips tilted slightly as if he’d only needed that particular reminder. “But I wouldn’t be doing my job right now if I didn’t caution everyone here that the future right now as far as the hotel is concerned is anything but certain. So if you want to find a job elsewhere or—”

  Brady stood. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m not going anywhere.”

  Arabella popped up. “Neither am I.” She lifted her hands. “If I’m not cleaning rooms right now, then I’ll help paint walls. Whatever it takes.”

  “So will I,” someone echoed.

  “Me, too.”

  Callum’s smile widened slightly. “Well. We won’t go down for lack of fight and support,” he said huskily. “Now, it’s late and you guys have lives to get home to.”

  “What do we do tomorrow?” That came from Beulah.

  Grace stepped forward. “If I may?”

  Callum waved his hand in invitation. “Everyone’s opinion matters here, Grace. Particularly yours.”

  “If we could have all of the supervisors and department leads report as usual, we’ll have enough staff on hand to deal with anything that crops up in the next week or so. Everybody else—”

  “Will still receive your regular pay,” Callum inserted. “It’s none of your fault this is happening, and we’re not going to pull the rug out from under anyone’s feet.”

  “Not without due warning,” Wiley inserted cautiously.

  Arabella knew he was the family attorney. Naturally he had to add something to that effect.

  “We’ll have an all-staff meeting here a week from Monday,” Callum added without missing a beat. “If you don’t hear from Grace personally or one of the other managers here, then check in yourself for more details on the where and when. One way or another, we’ll have more news by then.” He clapped his hands together once. “Any questions?” He looked over the group, waiting patiently.

  “Not a question,” Hallie said, looking around rather nervously. “Just something to say.” She smiled a little crookedly then punched her hand into the air. “Go Hotel Fortune!”

  Arabella’s eyes misted. She punched her fist, too, and smiled at Jay, who was leaning against a far wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “Go Hotel Fortune!”

  In minutes, the cheer had filled the damp lobby as everyone chanted the phrase over and over and over again.

  If a hotel could be saved through sheer enthusiasm, Hotel Fortune would end up being just fine.

  Chapter Twelve

  Despite the worrisome matter of the hotel’s repairs, the days that followed were some of the sweetest days that Arabella had ever known.

  Neither she nor Jay were heads of anything, which meant they had a vacation, forced or not.

  They helped Louella harvest strawberries for half the day on Monday and spent the rest of the day in his barn loft bedroom making love.

  On Tuesday, Jay talked Arabella into climbing inside the woefully tiny cockpit of a plane he rented.

  They flew all the way to Houston—which wasn’t all that far admittedly—and had lunch with his parents. On the return flight to Rambling Rose, Arabella didn’t even remember to clutch her armrests in terror because she was so caught up with teasing Jay over the stories his mother had regaled her with over lunch. “You might have told me you were a child prodigy,” she said. Loudly, because it was the only way he could hear her over the noise of the engine propeller.

  “I wasn’t a prodigy,” he said dismissively, and just as loudly.

  “You won a piano competition when you were nine! Against people who were three times your age! And you graduated from college when you were twenty!”

  He rolled his eyes and pointed at the checkerboard landscape beyond the windows. “There’s the barn.”

  She looked out and sure enough, she could see the rooftop of his barn and the water wheel beside it.

  “Can we fly over the hotel?”

  In answer, the wings of the plane banked slightly.

  She whooped nervously and closed her eyes to the sound of his laughter. But only briefly, because it was much too interesting seeing the land below.

  On Wednesday, he got her up on Loretta’s back and with him on Waylon, they rode all over his grandmother’s property. Then he heated the water for the tub in the peach orchard and pretended to wash Arabella’s back even though he was a lot more interested in her front.

  He admitted that he’d suspected, and now knew for certain, that that tub had always b
een big enough for two.

  That evening, they had dinner at Provisions with Adam and Laurel. Stephanie, who was Callum’s sister and had acted as Larkin’s foster mom for a brief while, was watching the toddler with her husband for the evening.

  By tacit agreement, they stayed away from the subject of the hotel. Instead, Adam and Jay talked beer brewing and Laurel and Arabella gossiped about the rest of her brothers—namely Josh and Brian who’d yet to find the loves of their lives as Kane, Brady and Adam had. The only thing she had a hard time doing was keeping Brady’s secret about Harper’s pregnancy.

  But if he hadn’t told the rest of the family, it was obvious that she shouldn’t do so for him, no matter how badly she wanted to share that good news.

  It was late when they all finally parted and much to Arabella’s disappointment, Jay drove her back to Brady’s house instead of his place.

  She twirled her fingers down the front of his shirt when he walked her to the door. “Sure you don’t want to...you know.”

  He laughed and caught her marauding fingers. “I definitely want to you know. But Brady already wants to strangle me for sleeping with his baby sister. You spent the night with me last night. And the night before. If he has any more stress about it, I’ll feel guilty for causing his stroke.”

  “He’s as bad as our father,” she muttered, even though a part of her was charmed by Jay’s version of gallantry.

  “Besides.” Jay kissed her chastely on the forehead. “We had the bathtub earlier today. And you still haven’t finished Oscar and Aaron’s story. You’ve left them locked in the back of a moving truck. I need to know that they end up okay.”

  She caught his hand before he could step off the porch and pressed it to her cheek. “I hope you know I’m falling in love with you.” The words just wouldn’t be contained. Any more than the fullness in her heart could be.

  The only light shining over them came from the porch light that Brady had left burning just exactly the way her father had always done when they’d been teenagers. It was just bright enough to be sure that any kissing that went on was visible to everyone up and down the block.

  And it was also bright enough to see that Jay wasn’t returning her sentiment anytime soon. His brows were pulled together and the corners of his lips were turned down. “Bella—”

  She steeled herself and kept her smile in place through sheer willpower. “I don’t expect you to say ditto, Jay. I just wanted you to know.” She braced her hands on his shoulders and went up on her toes to kiss his lips. “Oscar and Aaron are waiting.”

  Then she quickly slipped inside the door and closed it behind her.

  Her heart thudded heavily in her chest and she leaned her head back against the door.

  A moment later, she heard the soft rumble of his truck engine as he drove away.

  She exhaled and opened her arms for Murphy to jump up into them. The dog slathered her face in kisses. And if he tasted a few salty tears along the way, she knew she could trust him to keep her secret.

  * * *

  Jay stared blearily at the cop sitting across the table from him. He’d left Arabella at her brother’s house eight hours earlier and he hadn’t slept a wink in the minutes since.

  Instead, he’d called Detective Teas and arranged to meet him at the police station at seven that morning.

  “You wanted my confession,” he told Detective Teas hours later when he’d finished his story. They were sitting in the same interrogation room that Teas had used with Jay weeks ago. “And now you have it.”

  Jay was pretty sure the cop didn’t look stunned very often, but he looked stunned now.

  He flopped his chair forward onto all four legs and reached one arm out to flip the lock on the door he’d already closed.

  “You’re Jett Carr,” he repeated. “The one my daughter’s been going around wearing a shirt that says she’d give it all up for Jett Carr. That Jett Carr.”

  Jay grimaced. “You don’t have to rub it in, Detective.”

  The cop pushed his chair back again, balancing it once more. Only this time, he lifted his legs and crossed them at the ankle over the corner of the table. He propped his hands behind his neck and a broad grin crossed his face. “Why the hell didn’t you just say so? And why now?”

  Jay scrubbed his hands down his face. “Because I want to sleep at night without you hanging over my head.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but he didn’t figure the officer needed to know it was the trust in Arabella’s eyes that was driving him more. He pushed out of his chair. “I never even wanted to be Jett Carr.” He paced from one corner to the next. “But everyone insisted I needed a name with more...salability than just Jay Cross.”

  “It’s a name,” Teas said on a laugh. “Who cares?”

  “Everyone in Los Angeles.” Jay rubbed the back of his neck and for some reason, found himself telling the detective all about the ways and means that had gone into turning him from a college student with a side hustle playing piano and writing songs into a full-time guitar-strumming singer. It was as if once he’d started confessing, he couldn’t make himself stop. “I grew my hair. Grew a beard.” He rubbed his jaw, feeling the prickles of day-old stubble. “Trademark shades. Cowboy hat. And one day I looked in the mirror and didn’t even recognize myself. I was involved with a woman my family detested. Had a manager who cared more about booking the next gig than he did about the fact that I was losing my mind. Two record deals that barely made the needle jump. And then—” he spread his fingers “—poof. The label cut me loose. Tina followed the day after. My manager about a week after that.”

  “But that video of yours is all over creation!”

  Jay laughed wearily and paced around the room in the other direction. “And it’s ironic as hell, too. That was my sarcastic way of bidding it all adieu. Goodbye, LA. Goodbye, Jett Carr, whose skin I’d never fit, anyway. I recorded it on my damn phone for God’s sake. Never intended to even upload it, but you know cell phones these days. Once it’s got a setting, it’s got it forever, and the next thing I knew ‘Giving It All Up’ was all over the airwaves. Everybody and their mother’s brother suddenly wanted a piece of Jett Carr again and—” He shook his head. “I couldn’t take it. I escaped home to Texas but the only place that people really didn’t connect me to music at all was here in Rambling Rose.”

  “Living in a barn out back of your grandma’s farmhouse.”

  “It might’ve been a barn,” Jay muttered, “but I’ve put a little money into it over the years.”

  “Because you knew you’d need an escape hatch sooner or later?”

  He exhaled. “Maybe. Jett Carr did earn me money over time. I worked my ass off for it, too. But I never really cracked the ice until that video.”

  “Well, hiding out after the fact seems like it was the best way you could have found to ensure even more interest in it. If you’d have just told me all this from the start, it would’ve saved the department a lot of time and money.”

  Jay threw himself down on the chair he’d vacated. “If I make a donation to the policeman’s fund will that help?”

  Teas smiled slightly. “How big a donation?”

  Jay pulled out the checkbook he’d brought with him, because he’d figured one way or another he would be paying for the visit. He wrote out several digits and signed his name. His real name. He tore out the check and slid it across to the detective. “Will that do?”

  Teas gave it a considering look and then nodded. “So if it’s not you tinkering with things over at Hotel Fortune, who do you think it is?”

  Jay grimaced. “Who the hell knows? Someone who’s got a gripe against the Fortunes. The ones who built the place, I mean.” He couldn’t stand the thought that the vengeance might extend to Arabella.

  “Yeah.” Teas scratched his chin. “Only thing is, we can’t seem to find anyone with a real gripe. That Callum fella a
nd his brothers have done a lot of good things here in town. First they built that pediatric center. The veterinary clinic. Provisions has the best food in town. Took my wife to Roja and that’s gonna be just as good. Retail shops. A fancy spa where my wife is constantly begging me to send her. They’ve brought in new money. Created jobs.” He drummed his fingers against the table. “Even checked into that lady who went off the deep end a few years ago. Charlotte Robinson? Ex-wife of that Robinson Tech guy? Her permanent address is still the fancy sanitarium place she got checked into after she tried her hand and failed at kidnapping.”

  Jay vaguely remembered his mother recounting the sensationalistic story several years back. But he’d been in California then and couldn’t have cared less about a bunch of people he’d never met, much less heard of.

  “It’s gotta be an inside job. But the only one who didn’t have a good alibi has been you.”

  “I still don’t have a good alibi,” he pointed out. “You just know now what I was doing in the years between insurance and showing up here.”

  “You saying you tampered with the balcony?”

  His lips thinned. “To what end?”

  “Exactly.” Teas slapped his hand down on the table. “I just need one thing from you.” He flipped the pages on his yellow pad to one that was empty and sent it skidding across the surface toward Jay. He followed it with a pen from his lapel pocket. “Sign an autograph for my daughter. Her name is Keisha.”

  Feeling relieved, bemused and pretty much spent, Jay picked up the pen and scrawled out his autograph.

  To Keisha.

  All the best.

  Jett Carr.

  Then he set down the pen and pushed to his feet.

  Teas stood as well. He carefully pulled off the sheet of paper and folded it in fourths to tuck into his pocket. “What’re you going to do now?”

  “About what?”

  “Half the world’s still looking for you, bud.”