Fortune's Proposal

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  “No, I don’t need anything fixed,” she said quietly. You couldn’t fix a broken heart, could you? “I just wanted to hear your voice.” Which was, she also realized, the absolute truth. “I’m sorry it’s so early.”

  She heard Gigi sigh noisily. “Well, it is that. I’m not sure what Frank is going to think, considering the hour. It’s not as if this is an emergency or anything, is it?”

  “No. No emergency.” Deanna propped her elbows on her knees, cupping the phone to her ear. That would imply something sudden, and there was nothing sudden about loving Drew and not being loved back. “Frank is presumably the voice I heard in the background?”

  Gigi’s voice suddenly turned girlish. “He’s wonderful, Deedee. You see, I got another job. I tried to tell you this past week, but you haven’t returned any of my messages.”

  “A job.” She managed a smile. “That’s great. Where at?”

  “A law firm, naturally. Horne, Hollings, and Howard. Up in Escondido.” The town was on the northern side of San Diego.

  Deanna tried not to wince. Gigi was a legal secretary. Deanna couldn’t exactly be surprised that her mother kept going back to it even if Deanna kept hoping that Gigi would break her pattern at least once. “I guess that’s where you met Frank?”

  “Oh, good heavens, no. Everyone who works at Triple H are women. No. I met Frank at the counselor’s office. Don’t you listen to any of my messages?”

  Deanna sat up straight. “You’ve been going to the counselor?”

  “Well, I told your boss I would when he called because you wouldn’t talk to me.” Gigi sounded miffed again.

  “What?” Deanna’s voice went sharp. “Drew called you? When?”

  “It was last week sometime. After you left me that completely unfeeling message. I’ve been to two appointments now.”

  Deanna swallowed. She was far more unnerved by Drew’s actions than by her mother’s chastisement. He’d told her they would handle her mother together. She hadn’t believed it at the time, even if it had sounded wholly appealing.

  Turns out, he’d handled it all. And succeeded where she’d failed.

  Her hand shook and she pressed the phone harder against her ear. “That’s really great, Mom.” And it was. Even beyond her shock, she recognized that. “So, you met Frank there?” Was he another patient, or—heaven forbid—the counselor? She dreaded asking.

  “Oh, he’s wonderful, Deedee. I know you’ll like him. He’s so sensible. Just like you. He has his own business, you see. He’s a plant expert, if you can believe that. Goes around putting in and taking care of the interior plants all around hundreds of office buildings in San Diego. He just takes care of every little thing.” Gigi giggled. “Even me. And he’s even helped me return the last four orders I received from the shopping channel. Wasn’t that the sweetest thing?”

  “Yes. That sounds very sweet.”

  “All right, well, since nothing’s wrong, I’m going to go back to bed now. Frank gets up early, you see.” She giggled again. “He has a lot of energy, if you know what I mean.”

  Deanna was torn between a groan and a reluctant laugh. “Okay, Mom.”

  “Deedee, you know how old it makes me feel to be called Mom.”

  “Sorry.” Deanna exhaled. “I’ll talk with you in a week or so, okay?”

  “Whenever you like,” Gigi chirped. “At least now you know my news. And I hope to heaven that you’re making good use of your time with your boss. Girls like you can’t afford not to make a good catch. Remember that.”

  Deanna grimaced. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  But her mother had already ended the call.

  Deanna slowly lowered the phone. The battery bar was dwindling and she turned off the power again. And then, because she still couldn’t bear to linger in the bedroom a moment longer, she took a brisk shower, pulled on her running gear and quietly let herself out of the hacienda.

  She hadn’t been able to outrun her emotions since they’d arrived in Texas. She knew that this morning would be no different.

  Moving automatically, she stretched and started out slowly. But as she neared the barn, she picked up her pace and didn’t slow once. Not even when tears started burning their way down her cheeks.

  She ran until she couldn’t run anymore and finally walked her way back to the hacienda. It took two hours.

  But at least she wasn’t crying anymore.

  Because she knew that running around Molly’s Pride trying to get over Drew Fortune was not going to get her anywhere. She’d fallen in love with a man who refused to be loved.

  And now, it was time to go home.

  The bedroom door was ajar when Drew went inside the house after he and J.R. got back to Molly’s Pride that evening, and he wearily pushed it open, blindly heading inside.

  The sight of Deanna’s hard-sided suitcase sitting open on top of the neatly made bed had him stopping short, though. And the sight of her turning away from the closet, with that sexy pink dress she’d worn the day his father disappeared made everything else inside him seem to stop working, too.

  Her gaze shied away from him as she moved to the suitcase. She was wearing that shapeless green sweater and jeans that she’d worn when they’d flown to Red Rock. “I didn’t realize you were back.”

  He slowly closed the door. “Going somewhere?”

  Her head ducked and her glossy red hair swung down to cover her cheek. “It’s become quite clear that it’s past time.” She pulled the dress off the hanger and folded it inside the suitcase. “How did the search go?”

  The only thing he and his brothers had found beyond the accident site were more rocks, more trees and more nothing.

  “We didn’t find his body,” he said bluntly.

  She inhaled sharply and looked at him. Probably for the first time since he’d walked out of their bedroom after “the barn.”

  She looked as miserable as he felt. Her eyes were bloodshot, her nose pink. “Is that what you hoped to find?”

  Had he? Or had he been hoping like hell that they wouldn’t, because then maybe he could put a cork into his certainty that his father was never coming back?

  “You’ve been crying.”

  Her lashes fell and she turned back to fuss with her suitcase. Moving the zippered case of her cosmetics from one corner to the other, then back again. “No.”

  “You’re a rotten liar.”

  “And yet you chose me to lie about—” she waved her arm encompassing the bedroom and the two of them “—us.” Her lips twisted as she flipped the suitcase closed. “Guess that was a mistake on both our parts.” She pushed the old-fashioned latches and they snapped closed with a sharp sound.

  “Why now?”

  She didn’t look at him. “I have a life to get back to.”

  Since his father went missing, Drew knew that he’d barely given any consideration to the difficulties in Deanna’s life. Not the ones she’d left behind, nor the ones created by her presence in Texas.

  And even though he’d spent the better part of the last day reminding himself of all the reasons he was better off without her, the sight of her ready to leave now sent every one of those reasons scattering just as wildly as the rocks that had scattered beneath his hiking boots while he’d climbed over one ravine after another, hunting for any sign of his father.

  “What were you planning to do? Sneak out before I got back?”

  She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Looks to me like you were.” He moved into the room and as he did, she moved, too, keeping several feet of space between them.

  He bit back a sigh. “I’m not going to jump you, for God’s sake.”

  Her cheeks went red. “I never assumed that you would,” she assured witheringly. She continued to the opened closet and retrieved her tennis shoes. Then she sat down on the side of the bed and began to pull them on.

  Her gaze followed him warily when he dragged the chair from the corner, positioned it in front
of her and sat down.

  He’d learned, over and over again, that the quickest way to get through Deanna’s reserve was to get into her personal space. Considering everything, that had become just as much a curse as a useful tool, though. And now was no exception.

  He leaned toward her. “I shouldn’t have acted the way I did.”

  She jerked the laces of her shoe into a lopsided bow. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He just looked at her.

  “Fine. You shouldn’t have. And I should have known better than to expect otherwise.” Her lips tightened and she looked away. “So, my bad.”

  It stung, but he knew he’d given her good reason.

  He didn’t need his mother to be around to be disappointed in him.

  He was disappointed in him all by himself.

  “Just because things have turned out the way they have doesn’t mean I won’t hold up my end of the bargain,” he finished gruffly.

  She went white. “I knew you’d get bored with me quickly, but that really was fast.”

  “Bored!” The word nearly choked him. “God in heaven, Deanna, where the hell’d you get that idea?”

  Her arms crossed over her chest. Her ghostly white coloring was being rapidly replaced by a flush. “You obviously can’t wait to get rid of me.”

  “You’re the one who’s packing up, sweetheart, remember?” He shoved the suitcase so hard it slid off the bed and crashed crookedly onto the floor.

  The latches sprang open and her clothing spilled out.

  “Now look what you’ve done!”

  “I’m not bored with you,” he said flatly. He had plenty of emotions where she was concerned. Emotions he hadn’t wanted to face, but not a one of them was boredom. “If you want to leave, I’ve got no reason to make you stay. My father is gone. There’s no sign of foul play. No sign of anything. He’s gone.” The words tasted bitter and he had to stop. Clear his throat. “Either he chose to go and doesn’t want to come back, not for Lily or any of the rest of us, or he’s dead.”

  And despite the tension between them—tension he knew that he alone was responsible for creating—her expression softened. “Drew. I wish you wouldn’t think that way.”

  “There’s hope, and then there’s holding on to a fantasy.”

  She looked pained. “And fantasies can’t live forever, can they?” She slid past him and crouched in front of her suitcase, flattening it out on the floor. The thin strappy shirt thing that she wore to sleep in slid out along with a pair of lacy panties, and she tossed both back inside. “It has been only a few weeks. If your father is injured somewhere—”

  “—we would have heard by now.” He hated the words even as he said them because there was still a part of him that wanted to believe otherwise. It was the same part that had wanted to believe the cancer treatments would save his mother.

  “And with Dad gone, there’s no need for you to go through with this marriage business. I’ll still pay what we agreed,” he assured doggedly. “The bank’ll be open Monday. I’ll have the money wired into your account as soon as I can arrange it.”

  She snatched up the pink dress again and balled it up. “I know I can thank you for prodding my mother into counseling because she never would have done so because of me, though you could have told me yourself that you’d talked with her behind my back. But I don’t want your money.” Her voice had turned chilly. She pitched the dress into the suitcase. “I never did.”

  The back she presented to him might as well have been a gauntlet tossed down in challenge and he spun her around on her knees, grabbing her hand. He pushed his thumb against the diamond ring that she still wore, despite everything. “I didn’t intentionally do anything behind your back. And the money’s why you agreed to all this.”

  She snatched her arm away. “I agreed because you asked for my help.”

  He winced. “And because you needed my help with your mother’s debt,” he insisted doggedly.

  The look she gave him was almost pitying. “I’m not going to argue with you.” In one sweeping armful, she’d shoved everything haphazardly back into the suitcase and flipped it closed. “If you want to believe I’m all about the Benjamins, then go ahead. At the moment I have more important things to do.” She hit the latches for a second time.

  “Like what?”

  She pushed to her feet. “Like getting away from you,” she snapped. “Isabella’s already offered to drive me to San Antonio.” Her lips twisted. “And don’t worry. I told her the truth about us this morning. So you won’t have to.” She stepped around him, heading for the door, but not quickly enough for him to miss the tears in her eyes.

  He shot up and blocked her way. “If it wasn’t the money, then why?”

  “Because I’m in love with you!” She shoved at his chest. “And now that we’ve got that out of the way, get out of my way so I can get out of yours.”

  He felt an ache in the center of his chest that had nothing to do with the surprising strength of her shove. “I don’t want you out of my way,” he admitted slowly.

  “Of course you do,” she said impatiently. “Nobody knows better than I do that the quickest route out of your life is to make the mistake of falling in love with you.” Her voice went hoarse as she tried to slip around him to reach the door. “So I’m just going to make it easy on all of us and go home where I belong.”

  “Dammit, Deanna.” His thoughts were clamoring inside his head as he caught her around the waist, hauling her up against him. “Would you stop for just one minute and listen?”

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure with a little effort you can find another assistant who’ll be as foolishly agreeable as I’ve—”

  He swore under his breath and shut off her words in the most effective way he could.

  With his mouth.

  She went rigid.

  But he kept his mouth on hers. Until he felt the thin, tight line of her lips start to soften. Until he felt the fists pushing at his shoulders start to relax. Only then did he pull his lips from hers. “Where you belong is with me,” he said quietly, and wondered why in the hell it had taken him so damn long to admit what his heart had been telling him.

  “Is that so?” Her voice was still cool. But her mossy-green eyes had gone round.

  “Yeah, that’s so,” he returned evenly. “And I know because where I belong is with you.”

  Her lips parted. She blinked rapidly, but her eyes grew even wetter. A diamond-bright tear clung perilously to her eyelashes before slowly falling to her cheek. “You don’t mean that. You’re just upset about your father.”

  “I am upset about my father,” he agreed. “But if I let you walk out of that door, then I’m living up to every failure he’s accused me of.” He moved his unsteady hands to cup her face. “I’ve been so busy telling myself what you were to me that I missed seeing what you were to me.” He caught the teardrop with his thumb. “But I’m not telling anymore.” He drew in a hard breath. “I’m just…feeling,” he finished roughly.

  She stared at him. And even though more tears had joined the first, he could still see the uncertainty in her gaze.

  Uncertainty that he’d caused.

  And he realized even more just what real fear was.

  It was losing what you loved most of all without ever having had a chance to show it.

  “You said you loved me,” he reminded, and his own eyes were suddenly burning.

  Her throat worked. She looked away. Then looked up at him. Her eyes had gone to emerald. “I do. But that doesn’t mean I have to always like you,” she whispered.

  His knees actually went weak. Maybe it was fear finally leaving him. Maybe it was relief.

  But he knew in that moment that he would do everything in his power to never let this woman go.

  She’d been his helper. His right hand. His conscience and his comfort. She was exactly what Drew’s father had told Drew he’d needed to find.

  His Molly.

  And she’d been ther
e in front of him all this time.

  Drew’s Deanna.

  He pressed his lips to her forehead. Over her wet eyes. And finally, with more gentleness than he knew he was capable of, on her lips. “Tell me you’ll never leave me.”

  Deanna sucked in a shuddering breath that tasted of hope and it was strong enough to dispel hopelessness. Her gaze searched Drew’s. And all she saw was him. The same man he’d always been. The charmer. The loner.

  He hadn’t pushed people away to keep them out, she realized with startling clarity. He’d done it to protect what was within. The boy whose first love had cheated on him. The man whose beloved mother was stolen by cancer. And now the man whose father had seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth.

  She slowly reached up and laid her palm along his jaw. Her thumb slowly brushed over his cheek, smoothing away the trail of moisture that she’d never expected to see. Her heart stopped climbing up her throat and slowly, peacefully, settled back in her chest. Only this time, it was as wide-open as the heart that she could see in his eyes as he looked back at her.

  “I loved you even before I knew I loved you,” she whispered. She pushed up on her toes and pressed her lips to his. “And I will never leave you,” she vowed.

  His arms swept behind her back, nearly crushing her to him, he held her so tightly. But she didn’t care. She was exactly where she wanted to be.

  And she knew at last, with every fiber of her soul, that she was exactly where he wanted to be, too.

  Epilogue

  “Hey, old timer.” The police officer stepped out of his cruiser and warily approached the bedraggled man slowly shuffling along the side of the highway. He’d gotten a call from a concerned citizen about a possible vagrant hitchhiking on the edge of town. “Where you heading?”

  The man slowly turned to look at him. Even when the officer shone the beam of his flashlight over the wanderer, the man’s thick hair was too matted with grime to tell the color. There were only a few things that were obvious to the officer.

  One, the old man looked like he’d been to hell and back. And the clothes that were in no better shape than the hair smelled like it, as well.