LASSOED BY FORTUNE

by Marie Ferrarella

  Chapter Eleven

  Because she felt as if Liam was challenging her to remain, Julia stayed and finished her dinner.

  And since prolonged silence would wind up creating a far too tense and pregnant battleground, Julia kept up a steady stream of chatter, talking about whatever came to mind.

  They talked about his family, his siblings in general and his mother more specifically. Julia had always liked his mother and she asked him about Jeanne Marie’s reaction to discovering that she not only had family outside of her husband and children, but that she was actually one of triplets—and a Fortune to boot.

  Little by little, Julia managed to draw Liam out on the subject.

  “I guess that for the first time,” he said, nursing his beer, “my mother felt as if she had roots that went back a ways, that she belonged to a family that had a history. Up until that point, she always wondered why she’d been given up. She didn’t really talk about it, until she finally had some answers. Ma’s like that,” he attested. No one had realized how much knowing meant to her until that point.

  “Did finding answers to her questions make her happy?” Julia asked.

  He thought about the way his mother’s face had lit up when the truth had finally come out. It wasn’t even the money, which she’d promptly returned, it was the sense of belonging that had pleased her.

  But all that was far too much to go into right now, so all Liam said in reply was, “Pretty much.”

  It was enough for Julia to work with. “Then why do you resent the Fortunes so much? Her brother, James Marshall, didn’t have to come looking for her and he certainly didn’t have to offer your mother her share of the Fortunes’ fortune—no pun intended,” she added. “Resenting them doesn’t really sound reasonable, does it?”

  He shrugged. In his heart, he supposed what she was saying was true, but he didn’t want to admit it. “Feelings don’t have to be reasonable,” he told her. “That’s what makes them feelings.”

  In a very odd, off-kilter way, she supposed Liam was right. When you came right down to it, a lot of feelings weren’t reasonable. What she was feeling right now for him certainly wasn’t reasonable.

  What it felt like was that she was walking around with some kind of a bomb inside her that was going to explode at any moment unless she found some way to defuse it.

  And quickly.

  If she listened closely, she could almost hear the seconds ticking away—synchronized with the beating of her heart.

  “Yes, well, I guess that’s something you’re going to have to work out,” she told him, trying to sound offhanded as she got to her feet. Rising from the table, she took a plate in each hand.

  Liam rose to his feet, as well. “What are you doing?”

  She thought that was pretty self-evident. “Cleaning up.”

  He put his hands over hers, trying to get her to set the plates down again. “Leave them. I’ll take care of it later.”

  But Julia turned out to be stronger than she looked. And more stubborn, as well. She pulled her hands away, still holding on to the plates.

  “No, you cooked, I’ll clean. It’s only fair,” she insisted.

  With that, she made her way back into the house and the kitchen.

  Liam was quick to follow in her wake, catching up to her in the kitchen. “I never thought about dinner being a battleground for fair play,” he told her.

  She stopped by the sink, intending to wash off the plates and put them into the dishwasher.

  “Just leave them in the sink, then,” he urged. He was behind her and he leaned over to turn on the faucet to rinse off the plates himself.

  His goal was to get her to leave the dishes there until later. He had a feeling she was just going to take off if he let her and he didn’t want the evening to end just yet. He found he liked talking to her if they weren’t engaged in a game of one-upmanship.

  And even if they were.

  But Julia chose that moment, as he leaned over her, to turn around so that she could voice a protest over his instructions.

  What happened next neither one of them consciously intended at all.

  But it happened anyway.

  Her body brushed up against his, the contact not leaving enough room for a whisper to slip through. She could feel her body temperature instantly rising and as she tried to speak, a single word—no more than a letter, really—got stuck in her throat.

  “I—”

  Liam couldn’t help himself. He’d promised—no sworn—to himself that this wasn’t going to happen a third time. He wasn’t going to just snatch opportunity out of the air and act on it.

  Wasn’t going to kiss her even though every bone in his body begged him to.

  But he discovered much to his surprise that the strength needed to resist Julia, to bank down the high wave of desire that she evoked within him, refused to materialize just when he needed it most.

  So down he went for a third—possibly fatal—time…and he kissed Julia.

  Kissed her as if there was no tomorrow, no yesterday, no future, no past. Only this moment—and he wanted to make the very most of it that he could.

  The instant that resolve echoed in his brain, Liam gave himself up to the fire that was all but consuming him. The fire that made him realize that tonight, it wouldn’t end with a flash of common sense that would in turn cause him to pull away because this was, ultimately, all wrong.

  This time it was going to end in an entirely different way—unless Julia protested or actually came out and asked him to stop. She was her own best advocate because he knew for a fact that he couldn’t retreat on his own anymore.

  He wanted her that badly.

  But she didn’t say anything, didn’t ask him to stop. Didn’t indicate in any way that she wanted him to stop.

  And so, one kiss fed into another and another until he’d lost count just how many there had been.

  More than a little, less than enough.

  Somehow they had managed to get from the kitchen into the living room, a trail of hastily removed clothing marking their path as they navigated the heady seas of desires fueled with passions.

  The more he kissed Julia, the more, he discovered, he wanted her.

  He could feel his body priming, yearning for her and the mind-spinning feeling of fulfillment that waited just beyond the torrid meeting of lips and limbs.

  *

  She couldn’t think.

  For perhaps the first time in her life, Julia couldn’t think straight at all, couldn’t put together a few coherent words into a sentence. Single words, all revolving around what has happening at this moment, were all that popped into her head.

  And dominating them all was one three-letter word. YES!

  This had to be, she thought, what jumping out of an aircraft was like, the air all but whisked out of her lungs, the ground coming up at her at an increasingly dizzying speed.

  It was exhilarating and completely terrifying at the same time.

  Terrifying because she had never felt like this before. Hadn’t even imagined feeling like this before. The word more kept echoing in her head over and over again, coupled with an insatiable craving that seemed to have just taken over her entire being.

  Arrows of heat shot through her body as Julia felt Liam press urgent kisses along her neck. Kisses that caused a quickening in her loins to such an extent, she was reaching peaks without even knowing she was climbing toward them.

  Grasping Liam’s shoulders, she dug her fingernails into his flesh, a cry of wonder and joy bursting from her.

  Stunned, shaken, she looked at this tall, rugged rancher she’d known since childhood in abject wonder, almost unable to focus at all.

  What was incredibly keen was this craving to have those wild bursts that echoed throughout her body happen again—and again.

  And they did.

  She felt like sobbing.

  She felt like cheering.

  And each time another one of these thrilling explosions happened, J
ulia found herself being propelled just a little higher than she had gone a moment before.

  This was something altogether new for her.

  She’d had relations with Neal, perfectly good relations, she’d thought at the time, if a little lackluster. But anything that had happened between her ex-husband and herself paled in comparison to what she was experiencing this moment, here with Liam.

  When he pressed her back against the deep cushions of his oversize sofa, she arched so that she could feel the hardness of his body against hers. Just the slightest contact was infinitely arousing to her.

  When she heard the slight sound of pleasure escaping between his lips, she was empowered to continue, to go higher, because she sensed that while he was trying to be controlled in his responses, she’d tripped a wire within him that set all those sensations she was experiencing free within him, as well.

  A sense of triumph echoed through her.

  Further proof that what they were sharing was unraveling him, as well, came when she heard him groan, “What the hell are you doing to me?”

  Joy cascaded through her because she had proof that this wasn’t just one-sided, that she wasn’t the only one in this swirling cauldron of wickedly delicious sensations that had so unexpectedly found her.

  Julia wrapped her legs around his lower torso as she raised herself up against Liam, a silent invitation for them to become one, to join together and remain united for as long as they were physically able to do so.

  If she was lucky, she thought, eternity would find her this way.

  It made no sense and Julia didn’t care. All she cared about was this exquisite lovemaking she had unwittingly stumbled across.

  No wonder all the girls had flocked to him the way that they had. He was an incredible, natural lover. And tonight, he was hers.

  Liam couldn’t hold out any longer. Wanting to prolong their foreplay for as long as humanly possible for Julia’s enjoyment as well as his own, he found he hadn’t the power to resist going to the next level indefinitely.

  The need within him to savor that final sensation was growing too great.

  Gathering Julia to him, his heart racing enough to render him all but breathless, Liam finally entered her. Claiming what was already his from the very first moment that the world had been created.

  She didn’t think it could get any better.

  She was wrong.

  It got better.

  Incredibly better.

  She could feel herself rushing toward the top of the summit, to the farthest point on the star. And then, it happened, the anticipated explosion came and it was so much more than she had thought it would be.

  Julia clung to him with the intensity she could have exerted if they were free-falling. Because, in a way, they were.

  *

  Slowly, the world came back into focus.

  Reluctantly—that seemed to be such a key word in his life these days—the beat of her heart registered as it slowed to something less than the speed of light.

  The magic dimmed a little.

  Liam went on holding her, not knowing if she wanted him to, telling himself that if she didn’t, she would have wedged her hands against his chest and tried to push them apart. He would have released her then, because she’d wanted him to.

  But she gave no such indication, so he went on holding her to him. Went on inhaling the scent of her hair—vanilla mixed with lavender—went on savoring the pulses of heat as they went through his body, each a little smaller in magnitude than the one that had come before.

  He stayed like that, holding her, until Julia’s breathing returned to normal around the same time that his did.

  “Was that dessert, or your closing argument?”

  Her words, mingled with her breath, were warm against his chest, but he wasn’t sure if he had made them out correctly.

  If he had, he still had no idea what she was talking about. “What?”

  Julia raised her head and looked at him, the ends of her red hair moving slowly and seductively along his flesh, arousing him all over again.

  Arousing him almost as much as having her naked body pressed up against his was doing.

  “Was that dessert—because we haven’t had any—or your closing argument?” she asked again. Julia smiled when she saw the confusion on his face. “When you invited me to dinner on your ranch, I thought you wanted to corner me so you could make your argument against having that restaurant built here.”

  That had been his initial intention, but that wasn’t something he wanted to admit to now, or even briefly touch upon. Not when she’d succeeded in knocking his entire world off-kilter the way she had.

  When he had invited her over for dinner, he’d wanted to seduce her. Instead, somehow, though he wasn’t sure just how, Julia had succeeded in seducing him.

  “That would have been underhanded of me,” he said, deftly not admitting or denying anything.

  “I know.” Her face flushed slightly, making him feel guilty over the lie—and attracted as hell to her all over again. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Liam told her, guilt getting the better of him. “I—”

  Her mouth was so close to his, this time she was the one who gave in to impulse and lightly, teasingly brushed her lips against his.

  It only made her want more, so there was a second pass in the wake of the first. This time she pressed her lips against his just a little harder.

  Julia could feel him responding beneath her. Her eyes were laughing as she grinned wickedly. “I guess this is dessert, then,” she murmured.

  He was aching for her all over again. He couldn’t remember ever responding so quickly after having just made love.

  Nibbling along her lips he asked, “Would you rather have ice cream?”

  Only if I could lick it off your body.

  The thought, coming like a lightning bolt out of nowhere, startled her. And made her feel that much hotter.

  “Nope,” she said out loud, not brave enough yet to give voice to her wanton thoughts.

  Liam laughed then, catching her up in his arms and rolling so that in one swift, single movement, their positions were reversed and he was back on top of Julia again.

  “Me, neither,” he told her.

  Her heart began to race again as a fresh wave of anticipation washed over her. All she could think about was doing it again.

  And again.

  “I guess it’s official, then. I’ve joined the crowd,” she told him.

  He knew she was thinking of the other women he’d been with, the others who had graced his bed or he theirs. But she wasn’t just a warm body for the night—much as he wanted her to be.

  She was more.

  Much as he didn’t want her to be.

  Framing Julia’s face with his hands so that all he could see was her face without any other distraction—a face that had its own beauty, both inner and outer—he told her, “You could never be part of a crowd, Julia.”

  She liked hearing him say her name. It sent a small shiver down her spine. She knew that some would view that as an adolescent reaction, but she didn’t care. She still savored it.

  “That’s a lovely line. Practice it much?” she breathed, her eyes teasing his, the rise and fall of her breasts wreaking havoc on the rest of him as they brushed rhythmically against his chest.

  “No. Because it’s not a line,” he told her just before he lowered his mouth to hers.

  Because she desperately wanted to believe him, to believe that for at least this small, isolated moment, on this night, he meant what he said to her, Julia pretended that it was true.

  Tomorrow she could think about how foolish she was being, to actually believe that she could be special to him, a man who had had so many women, most far more experienced than she would ever be.

  But tonight, she told herself, she was special to him.

  Almost as special as he was to her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Liam was in deep trouble
and he knew it.

  He had completely lost his edge, his clear perspective, and it was all Julia’s fault. The indignation he’d been carrying around about the Fortunes intruding into his life, silently implying by their very existence—at least in his eyes—that he and his family, his father, weren’t good enough, weren’t important in the scheme of things unless they were Fortunes by birth, by marriage or by association, didn’t seem to be nearly as explosive as it had been earlier.

  He’d even begun to wonder if maybe he’d allowed unfounded anger to get the better of him, letting it dictate his reaction without any substantial evidence to back up his feelings.

  After all, it wasn’t as if he had been bullied by one of the Fortunes, or humiliated by one of them, or any one of a number of embarrassing things that would have made him feel slighted.

  He couldn’t, in all honesty and with a clear conscience, point to a single incident that could be seen as a trigger that had created all this animosity within him.

  He was being far too philosophical about this. What the hell was going on with him?

  Had making love with Julia brainwashed him? Or had it somehow managed to clarify things for him?

  He didn’t know.

  All he knew was that he was confused. That the anger he had felt about the Fortunes intruding into his and his family’s way of life…well, that was gone.

  Or maybe it had just gone into hiding.

  He decided that if he talked to his father, listened to his father’s take on all this—after all, it was his name that was being pushed aside to make room for the Fortune surname—he’d get some of his initial fire back.

  Or make his peace with it being gone.

  One way or another, talking with his father could very well resolve at least some things for him.

  Leaving a few immediate instructions with his ranch hands that would sufficiently see them through the morning chores, Liam drove off to see his father.

  The sooner he got this resolved, the better.

  Tomorrow the town was taking a vote on the future of this restaurant that was so dear to Julia’s heart. The townspeople had had a week to think about the matter. Any last-minute arguments, pro and con, were going to be made then. He knew he didn’t have all that much time to make up his mind whether or not this was a fight he still wanted to have.