She laughed. “I know. That’s why you won’t hear me saying them very loudly. I would prefer if the two of you would just keep it to yourselves.”
“Okay, we won’t blab your horrible dark secret to everyone—” Josh gave her a mischievous smile “—as long as you have dinner with us.”
She was delighted that he felt comfortable enough to tease her. “That sounds suspiciously like blackmail, young man.”
“Whatever it takes.”
She returned his smile, then shifted her gaze to see Ross watching both of them out of those brown eyes of his that sometimes revealed nothing.
“I suppose we could throw something else on the grill for you,” Ross said. “You eat much fish? We’ve still got bass from the other day.”
If she were wise, she would tell Josh ‘thanks but no thanks’ for his kind invitation. She already felt too tightly entangled with Ross and his nephew. But the boy was reaching out to her. She couldn’t just slap him down, especially if it might help her reach him better and help him through this grief.
“In that case, I would love to have dinner with you, as long as you let me pick up a salad and dessert from the deli on the way over.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Ross said.
She smiled and tossed the basketball at him. “I don’t mind. It’s a weird rule in my family. The winner always buys the loser’s dessert. You can consider the salad just a bonus.”
He was still laughing as she climbed into her car and drove away.
CHAPTER SIX
By the time she left the deli with her favorite tomato salad and a Boston cream pie, her stomach jumped with nerves and she could barely concentrate on the drive across town to the Fredericks’ luxurious home.
She let out a breath. It was only dinner. This jittery reaction was absurd in the extreme. It was only a simple dinner with a client and his uncle.
Nothing more than that.
Still, she couldn’t deny that Ross affected her more than any man had in recent memory. It had been seven years since her husband’s death. Seven long, lonely years. She had dated occasionally since then but only on a casual basis. She knew she was the one who always put roadblocks up to avoid things becoming more serious. The time and the person never felt right.
For a long time, she had been too busy trying to glue together the shattered pieces of her life. Then she had been too wrapped up in her new career as a child and family therapist and the new job at the Fortune Foundation to devote much time or energy to a relationship.
For the past year or so she had begun to think that she was finally in a good place to get serious about a man again, to try again at love. She had dated a few possibilities but nothing had ever come of them.
Ross Fortune was definitely not serious relationship material. Despite the attraction that simmered between them—and she knew she was not misreading those signs—Ross Fortune came with complications she wasn’t prepared to deal with. Beyond his current family turmoil, she sensed he was a hard man, not very open to warmth and tenderness.
She tried to picture him being content spending a quiet evening at home with a child on his lap and couldn’t quite manage it. But maybe she wasn’t being fair to him. Maybe that restlessness she sensed was a result of his brother-in-law’s murder and the subsequent fallout from it.
Julie sighed as she approached the Fredericks’ large house that gleamed a pale coral in the fading sunlight. That unspoken attraction between them was real and intense, but for now that was all it could remain.
She wasn’t sure she could afford to see what might come of it, not when she had the feeling Ross Fortune was the kind of man who could easily break her heart like a handful of twigs.
Josh, she reminded herself.
She was here only because he asked her, because she wanted to think they had formed a connection since his father’s death and she wanted to help him sort through his jumbled mix of feelings.
Her own weren’t important right now.
The evening was warm and pleasant as she closed her car door. In other neighborhoods, she might have heard the happy sounds of children playing in the last golden twilight hours before bedtime, but the Frederickses lived in Red Rock’s most exclusive neighborhood. All she could manage to hear was the whir of air conditioners and a few well-mannered birds tweeting in the treetops.
Her own neighborhood near the elementary school was far different, an eclectic mix of old-timers who had lived in Red Rock forever and some of the new blood that had moved into the town, drawn by the quiet pace and friendly neighbors.
Moving here from Austin a year ago had been good for her, she thought as she rang the doorbell. She had made many new friends, she had a busy social life and she enjoyed a career where she felt she was affecting young lives.
Did she really need to snarl that up by yearning for a man who appeared unavailable?
At just that moment, Ross opened the door and she had to swallow hard. He was wearing Levi’s and a navy-blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He looked casual and relaxed and her traitorous body responded instantly.
She was staring at his mouth. She realized it a half second too late and jerked her gaze up, only to find him watching her with a strange, glittery light in his eyes that struck her as vaguely predatory.
“Hi,” she murmured.
“Evening.”
“It’s a gorgeous one, isn’t it?”
He glanced past her to the soft twilight and blinked a little as if he hadn’t noticed it before. “You’re right. It is. Come in.”
She followed him inside. Though his sister had been in custody for less than a week, the grand house already felt a little neglected. A thin layer of dust covered the table in the foyer and several pairs of shoes were lined up by the door, something she was quite sure Frannie wouldn’t have allowed.
“Where’s Josh?” she asked.
“Holed up in his room, claiming homework. I’ll let him know you’re here in a minute. Actually, I’m glad to have a chance to talk to you alone first.”
Her heart skipped a beat, despite her best efforts to control her reaction. “Oh?”
“About Josh, I mean.”
She hoped he didn’t notice her flushed features or the disappointment she told herself was ridiculous. “Of course.”
“Do you mind coming out back with me? We can talk while I throw the steaks and your fish on the grill.”
She nodded and followed him through the house, noticing a few more subtle signs of neglect in the house that weren’t present when she was first here nearly a week ago. A few dirty dishes in the sink, a clutter of papers on the edge of the kitchen island, a jacket tossed casually over the back of a chair.
Ross grabbed a covered platter from the refrigerator, then opened the sliding doors to the vast patio that led to an elegantly landscaped pool. In the dusky light, the area looked quiet and restful. While she didn’t much care for the style of the rest of the house, Julie very much admired the gardens around Lloyd and Frannie Fredericks’ mansion.
She eased into a comfortable glider swing near the grill and watched while Ross transferred the meat from the plate to the grill with the ease of long practice. When he was done, he approached the swing and after a moment sat beside her, much to her dismay.
He was so big, so very masculine, and she was painfully aware of his proximity.
“What did you want to talk about?” she finally asked, hoping he didn’t try prodding her again to reveal details about her counseling session with Josh earlier.
“I’m looking for an honest opinion here,” he said. “What do you think about Josh’s girlfriend?”
Okay, she hadn’t been expecting that. “Lyndsey? I haven’t met her.”
“But Josh has mentioned her, right?”
“Yes. That first night when I stayed here with him while you were at the jail.” She didn’t want to breach Josh’s confidences by mentioning all the times he had brought up her name during their therapy session
. “Why do you ask? Don’t you like her?”
Ross was quiet for a moment, a push of his boot sending the glider swaying slightly. “I’ve only met her briefly myself. Can’t say whether I like her or not. But I know Frannie was concerned about how serious they seemed to be getting. Now that I’ve had a chance to take a closer look at the situation firsthand, I’ve got to admit, it worries me a little, too.”
“In what way?”
“To me, it seems like they’re together all the time. I mean, all the time! When he’s not over at her place or she’s not here, he’s talking to her on the phone or texting her or talking to her online. I don’t know how intense things were between them before Lloyd’s death but I’m a little worried that he’s becoming too wrapped up with her. He’s only a kid, with his whole life ahead of him.”
“Don’t you remember your first love? They can be pretty intense.”
“No,” he said, his voice blunt. “I never had one.”
She stared. “You never had a girlfriend?”
“No. Not in high school, anyway. I was too busy with…things.”
“What kind of things? Sports?”
His mouth tightened. “Family stuff.”
He didn’t seem inclined to add any more, so Julie forced herself to clamp down on her curiosity to press him.
“Well, first love can be crazy for a teenager,” she said instead. “Wonderful and terrible at the same time, full of raw emotions and all these fears and hopes and insecurities. I’m sure his emotional bond to Lyndsey is heightened by the chaos elsewhere in his life. She must seem like a sturdy rock he can hang on to.”
“She strikes me as the clingy, needy sort, just from the little I’ve been able to see of her,” Ross said.
She could barely think straight, sitting this close to him, but she did her best to rearrange her mind to gain a little clarity. “Well, that might be part of her appeal to him. Lyndsey is somebody who needs him. Look at things from Josh’s perspective. His father is dead. His mother is in deep trouble, but not any kind of trouble he can solve for her. Aiding this girl with whatever troubles she’s having might make Josh feel less helpless about the rest of the things going on in his world.”
He pushed the swing again with his foot. “So you think I ought to let their little romance run its course?”
“Josh is almost eighteen. There’s not really much you can do about it.”
“I could lock him in his room and feed him only gruel,” he muttered.
She laughed. “He’s a teenage boy. I imagine he would figure out a way to sneak out and go for pizza.”
He was quiet for a long moment. When she glanced over to gauge his expression and try to figure out what he was thinking about, she thought she detected a hint of color on his cheekbones.
“Should I take him to buy condoms, just to be on the safe side?” he asked, without looking at her.
The temperature between them seemed to heat up a dozen degrees and she knew it was not from the barbecue just a few feet away. She cleared her throat. “Maybe that’s a conversation you ought to have with his mother.”
“I can’t discuss my nephew’s sex life with my sister while she’s in jail!”
She supposed she ought to be flattered that he felt he could discuss such a delicate subject with her, but she couldn’t get past the trembling in her stomach just thinking about “Ross” and “condoms” in the same conversation.
“I can’t tell you what to do,” she said. “You’re going to have to make that decision on your own. But I will say that if Josh were my son or in my care, it’s certainly a conversation I would have with him, especially if he’s becoming as serious with his girlfriend as you seem to believe.”
He didn’t look very thrilled by the prospect, but he nodded. “I guess I’ll do that. Thanks for the advice. I can see why you make a good counselor. You’re very easy to talk to.”
She smiled. “You’re welcome.”
He gazed at her and she saw that heat flare in his eyes again. The world seemed to shiver to a stop and the night and the lovely gardens and the soft wind murmuring in the treetops seemed to disappear, leaving just the two of them alone with this powerful tug of attraction between them.
* * *
He was inches from kissing her.
Ross could feel the sweet warmth of her breath, could almost taste her on his mouth. He wanted her, with a fierce hunger that seemed to drive all common sense out of his head.
He tried to hang on to all the reasons he shouldn’t kiss her. This was not supposed to be happening right now.
His life was in total chaos, he had far too many people depending on him and the last thing he needed was to find himself tangled up with someone like Julie Osterman, someone soft and generous and entirely too sweet for a man like him.
One kiss wouldn’t hurt anything, though. Only a tiny little taste. He leaned forward and heard a seductive little catch of her breath, felt the brush of her breast against his arm as she shifted slightly closer.
His mouth was just a tantalizing inch away from hers when he suddenly heard the snick of the sliding door.
“Ross?” Josh called out.
Julie jerked away as if Ross had poked her with hot coals from the grill and the glider swayed crazily with the movement.
“Over here,” Ross called.
He didn’t like the way Josh skidded to a stop, his size-fourteen sneakers thudding against the tile patio, or the way his eyebrows climbed to find them sitting together so cozily on the glider.
He also didn’t like the sudden speculative gleam in his nephew’s eyes.
“Hi, Julie. I didn’t hear you come in.”
She was breathing just a hair too quickly, Ross thought. “I only arrived a few moments ago. Your uncle and I were just…we were, um…”
“Julie was helping me with the steaks. And speaking of which, I’d better turn them before they’re charred.”
He definitely needed to get a grip on this attraction, he thought as he turned the steaks while Julie and Josh set the table out on the patio.
She was a nice woman who was doing him a huge favor by helping him figure out how to handle sudden, unexpected fatherhood. It would be a poor way to repay her by indulging his own whims when he had nothing to offer her in return.
“I think everything’s ready,” he said a few moments later.
“We’re all set here,” Julie said from the table, where she sat talking quietly with Josh about school. They had set out candles, he saw, and Frannie’s nice china. It was a nice change from the paper plates he and Josh had been using while he was here.
He went inside for the russet potatoes he had thrown in the oven earlier while they were waiting for her to arrive, and he put the tomato salad Julie had brought into a bowl.
“Wow. I’m impressed,” Julie exclaimed as he set the foil packet containing her fish on her plate and opened it for her. The smell of tarragon and lemon escaped.
“Better wait until you taste it before you say that,” he warned her.
He knew only two ways to cook fish. Either battered and fried in tons of butter—something he tried not to do too often for obvious health reasons—or grilled in a packet with olive oil, lemon juice and a mix of easy spices.
He knew he shouldn’t care so much what she thought but he still found it immensely gratifying when she closed her eyes with sheer delight at the first forkful. “Ross, this is delicious!”
He was becoming like one of the teens she worked with, desperate for her approval. “Glad you like it. How’s the steak, Josh?”
His nephew was still studying the two of them with entirely too much interest. “It’s good. Same as always.”
“Nothing like family to deflate the old ego,” Ross said with a wry smile.
“Sorry,” Josh amended. “What I meant to say is this is absolutely the best steak I have ever tasted. Every bite melts in my mouth. I think I could eat this every single day for the rest of my life. Is that better?”
Julie laughed and it warmed Ross to see Josh flash her a quick grin before he turned back to his dinner. He didn’t know what it was about her, but when she was around, Josh seemed far more relaxed. More like the kid he used to be.
“What are your plans after the summer?” she asked.
Josh shrugged. “I’m not sure right now.”
Ross looked up from dressing his potato and frowned. “What do you mean, you’re not sure? You’ve got an academic scholarship to A&M. It’s all you could talk about a few weeks ago.”
His nephew looked down at his plate. “Yeah, well, things have changed a little since a few weeks ago.”
“And in a few more weeks, this is all going to seem like a bad dream.”
“Is it?” Josh asked quietly and the patio suddenly simmered with tension.
“Yes. You’ll see. These ridiculous charges against your mom will be dropped and everything will be back to normal.”
“My dad will still be dead.”
He had no answer to that stark truth. “You’re not giving up a full-ride academic scholarship out of concern for your mother or some kind of misguided guilt over your dad’s death.”
Josh’s color rose and he set his utensils down carefully on his plate. “It’s my scholarship, Uncle Ross. If I want to give it up, nobody else can stop me. You keep forgetting I’m not a kid anymore. I’ll be eighteen in a week, remember?”
“I haven’t forgotten. But I also know that you have opportunities ahead of you and it would be a crime to waste those. I won’t let you do it.”
“Good luck trying to stop me, if that’s what I decide to do,” Josh snapped.
Ross opened his mouth to answer just as hotly but Josh’s cell phone suddenly bleated a sappy little tune he recognized as being the one Josh had programmed to alert him to Lyndsey’s endless phone calls.
He didn’t know whether to be annoyed or grateful for the interruption. He had dealt with his own stubborn younger brothers enough to know that yelling wasn’t going to accomplish anything but would make Josh dig in his heels.
“Hey,” Josh said into the phone. He shifted his body away and pitched his voice several decibels lower. “No. Not the best right now.”
Change of Fortune Page 7
