Amelia realized her aunt wasn’t gaping at her over the news there was to be no wedding. “You don’t seem very surprised.”
Jeanne Marie lifted one shoulder. “Well, honey. You are here.” And again, even though her words were full of Texas drawl, her mild, somewhat ironic lilt was exactly the same as Josephine’s entirely proper Brit would have been.
It was still startling to Amelia, even after meeting her aunt nearly a year ago.
“I’m assuming you have a good reason for not announcing you broke things off with your young man in England?”
“It’s complicated,” she murmured, even as she felt guilty for leaving her aunt under the impression that there had ever been something to break off in the first place. James had been as much a victim of their supposed engagement as she, since the presumptuous announcement had been issued by his father. But once it had been, and Amelia hadn’t denied it, James had been doing his level best to convince her to make it a reality. Under immense family pressure to make a suitable marriage, he’d given up hope of a match with the girl he really loved—Astrid, who sold coffee at the stand in his building—and tried giving Amelia a family ring in hopes that she’d come around, though she’d refused to take it. “Jimmy and I have known each other a long time.”
While she really only knew Quinn in the biblical sense. The irony of it all was heartbreaking.
“Sometimes a little distance has a way of uncomplicating things,” Jeanne said. “And as delighted as I am to have you here, it does tend to raise a few questions. Particularly havin’ to get you from Quinn Drummond’s place practically before sunup. And havin’ you dressed like you are.”
Amelia’s fingers pleated the hem of the oversize shirt. “I was trying to avoid paparazzi.”
“So you said while we were driving here.” Jeanne Marie finally set down the mug. She was obviously as disinterested in her tea as Amelia was. “What’s going on between you and Quinn?”
“Nothing.” She felt heat rise up her throat.
“And that’s why you called me from his house at seven in the morning. Because nothing is going on between you two.” Jeanne Marie’s lips curved. “In my day, that sort of nothing usually led to a shotgun and a stand-up in front of a preacher whether there was another suitor in the wings or not.”
Amelia winced.
Her aunt tsked, her expression going from wry to concerned in the blink of an eye. “Oh, honey.” She closed her warm hands around Amelia’s fidgeting fingers. “Whatever’s upsetting you can be worked out. I promise you that.”
Amelia managed a weak smile. “I appreciate the thought, Aunt Jeanne. But I grew up with my father always telling us not to make promises we couldn’t keep.”
Jeanne Marie squeezed her hand. “I wish I’d have had a chance to meet your daddy. Your mama says he was the love of her life.”
Amelia nodded. Her father had died several years ago, but his loss was still sharp. “He was.” She couldn’t contain a yawn and covered it with her hand. Despite having slept several hours at Quinn’s, she still could hardly keep her eyes open. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m the sorry one,” Jeanne Marie said. She patted Amelia’s hand and pushed to her feet. “You’re exhausted, honey. You need to be in bed, not sitting here answering questions.”
It took all the energy Amelia possessed to stand, also. “Are you certain I’m not imposing?”
Jeanne Marie laughed. “There’s no such thing as imposing among family, honey. Deke and I raised seven kids in this house. Now they’re all off and living their own lives. So it’s nice to have one of those empty rooms filled again.”
“You’re very kind.” She followed her aunt along the hall and up the stairs to a corner bedroom with windows on two walls. Amelia remembered the room from her first visit to Horseback Hollow six months ago, though it had been her mother who’d been assigned to it then. It was obviously a guest room. Simply but comfortably furnished with a bed covered in a quilt with fading pastel stitching that was all the lovelier for its graceful aging, a side table with dried cat’s tails sticking out of an old-fashioned milk bottle, and a sturdy oak wardrobe. White curtains, nearly translucent, hung open at the square windows and moved gently in the warm morning breeze.
“This used to be Galen’s room,” Jeanne Marie said. “Being the oldest, there was a time he liked lording it over the others that he had the largest room.” She crossed to the windows to begin lowering the shades. “Would have put you in here back when you came for Toby’s wedding in April, but James Marshall and Clara were using it.”
“Leave the windows open,” Amelia begged quickly. “Please.”
“The sunlight won’t keep you awake?”
She self-consciously tugged at her ugly shirt. Light was the least disturbing thing she could think of at the moment. And better to have sunlight than darkness while the memories of the last time she’d been at her aunt’s home were caving in on her. “The breeze is too lovely to shut out.”
Jeanne Marie dropped her hands. She opened the wardrobe and pulled out two bed pillows from the shelf inside and set them on the bed. “Bathroom is next door,” she reminded. “I’ll make sure you have fresh towels. And I’m sure that Delaney or Stacey left behind some clothes that should fit you. They might be boxed up by now, but I’ll try to scare up something for you to wear once you’re rested.”
Her welcome was so very different than Quinn’s, deserved or not, and Amelia’s eyes stung.
She cried much too easily these days. “Thank you.” She sat on the foot of the bed and tried not to think about sitting on the bed at Quinn’s.
She’d thought that had been a guest room, too. Until she’d awakened early that morning and had gone looking for him. She’d done what she hadn’t had the energy for the night before. The rooms upstairs were spacious and full of windows and nothing else. Almost like they were stuck in time. Waiting for a reason to be filled with furniture. With family. Downstairs, he had a den with a plain wooden desk and an older style computer on it. The living room had a couch, a television that looked older than the computer, and a gleaming black upright piano. She’d drawn her fingers lightly over the keys, finding it perfectly tuned.
What she hadn’t found was Quinn. Not only had he been nowhere to be found inside the two-story house, but she’d seen for herself that his home possessed only a single bed.
Which, regardless of his feelings, he’d given up for her.
* * *
Jeanne Marie watched the tangled expressions crossing her new niece’s delicate features and controlled the urge to take the girl into her arms and rock her just as she would have her own daughters. “We’ve got most of the crew coming for supper tonight. But you just come on down whenever you’re ready,” she said comfortingly. “And don’t you worry about me spilling your personal beans to your cousins. You can do that when you’re good and ready.” Then she kissed Amelia’s forehead and left the room, closing the door behind her.
She set out fresh towels in the bathroom, then headed downstairs to the kitchen again and stopped in surprise at the sight of her husband just coming in from the back. “I thought you’d be out all morning.”
“Thought I could get the engine on that old Deere going, but I need a couple more parts.” He tossed his sweat-stained cowboy hat aside and rubbed his fingers through his thick, iron-gray hair before reaching out a long arm and hooking her around the waist. “Which leaves me the chance for some morning delight with my wife before I drive over to Vicker’s Corners.”
Jeanne Marie laughed softly, rubbing her arms over his broad shoulders. How she loved this man who’d owned her heart from the moment they’d met. “We’re not alone in the house,” she warned.
His eyebrow lifted. “I didn’t notice any cars out front. Who’s come this early for supper? Can’t be Toby and his brood.” He grinned faintly. �
��Those kids’ve been coming out of their shells real nice lately.”
“And they’ll continue to do so,” Jeanne agreed, slightly distracted by the way Deke’s wide palms were drifting from her waist down over the seat of her jeans. “As long as no more hitches come up to stop Toby and Angie adopting them.” Their middle son and his new wife were trying to adopt three kids he’d been fostering for the past eight months and the process hadn’t exactly been smooth so far.
Her blood was turning warm and she grabbed his wide wrists, redirecting his hands to less distracting territory. “Amelia’s here.”
His brows pulled together for a second. “Amelia? Josephine’s youngest girl?”
“We don’t know another Amelia,” Jeanne Marie said dryly.
His hands fell away. He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms over his chest. “Fortunes are everywhere,” he murmured.
She knew his face as well as she knew her own. She had happily been Jeanne Marie Jones for forty years. But learning that she had siblings out there, learning that she had a blood connection to others in this world besides the children of his that she’d borne, had filled a void inside her that Deke had never quite been able to understand. Even though her adoptive parents had loved her, and she them, not knowing where she’d come from had always pulled at her.
And now she knew.
And though Deke hadn’t protested when she’d added Fortune to her own name, she knew also that it hadn’t been entirely easy for him. When their kids followed suit, it had gotten even harder for him to swallow.
No. The advent of the Fortunes to the Jones’s lives hadn’t been easy. And maybe it would have been easier if James had gone about things differently when he’d tracked her down. Her newfound brother was a self-made business tycoon used to having the world fall into place exactly the way he planned and he’d not only upset his own family in the process, he’d sent Jeanne Marie’s family reeling, too, when he’d tried to give her part of his significant fortune.
She’d turned down the money, of course. It didn’t matter to her that all of her siblings turned out to be ridiculously wealthy while she was not. She and Deke had a good life. A happy life. One blessed with invaluable wealth for the very reason that it had nothing to do with any amount of dollars and cents.
Convincing her pridefully suspicious husband that the only fortune that mattered to her was the name Fortune, however, had been a long process.
One that was still obviously in the works, judging by Deke’s stoic expression.
“How long’s she staying?” he asked.
“I have no idea. The girl came here to figure some things out, I believe.” Because she always felt better being busy, she pulled a few peaches out of the basket on the counter and grabbed a knife. She’d already made a chocolate cake for dessert for that evening, but Deke always loved a fresh peach pie. And even after forty years of marriage, a man still needed to know he was in the forefront of his wife’s thoughts. “Do you think she should stay somewhere else?”
He frowned quickly. “No. She’s family.” His eyes met hers. “I get it, Jeanne Marie.”
Her faint tension eased. He might not exactly understand the way she’d taken on the Fortune name, but he did get “it” when it came to family. Nothing was more important to him, even if he didn’t always have an easy time showing it.
“She’d been at Quinn Drummond’s,” she added. Then told him everything that had happened since Amelia had called. She pointed the tip of the paring knife she was using to peel the peaches at Deke. “I don’t care what everyone’s saying about her and that Banning fella.” She deftly removed the peach pit and sliced the ripe fruit into a bowl. “There’s definitely something going on between her and Quinn.”
“I’d think Quinn’s too set in his ways to be interested in a highbred filly like Amelia.” Deke reached past her to filch a juicy slice. “’Specially after the merry chase that ex-wife of his led him on. She was a piece of work, remember?”
She did and she made a face. “That was years ago.”
“Yup. Having your wife leave you for her old boyfriend leaves a stain, though. Least I think it would. Now he’s interested in a girl the world thinks is engaged?” He stole another slice, avoiding the hand she batted at him.
“You keep eating the slices, I won’t have enough left to make a pie for you,” she warned.
His teeth flashed, his good humor evidently restored. He popped the morsel in his mouth and gave her a smacking kiss that tasted of him and sweet, sweet summer. It melted her heart as surely now as it had the first time he’d kissed her when they were little more than kids.
Then he grabbed his hat and plopped it on his head again. “I’ll stop at the fruit stand on my way back from Vicker’s Corners,” he said, giving her a quick wink. “Replenish the stock.” He started to push open the back screen door.
“Deke—”
He hesitated.
“You’re the love of my life, you know.”
His smile was slow and sweeter than the peaches. “And you’re mine. That’s what gets me up in the morning every day, darlin’.”
Then he pushed through the screen door. It squeaked slightly, and shut with a soft slap.
Jeanne Marie pressed her hand to her chest for a moment. “Oh, my.” She blew out a breath and laughed slightly at the silliness of a woman who ought to be too old for such romantic swooning.
Then she looked up at the ceiling, thinking about her young niece. Amelia was running away from something, or running to something. And she needed to figure out which it was.
Jeanne Marie was just glad that she was there to provide a resting place. And that she had a man of her own who could understand why.
* * *
Quinn had no intention of going by Jeanne Marie and Deke’s place later that evening. But he ran into Deke at the tractor supply in Vicker’s Corners before the baseball game and the man—typically short on words and long on hard work and honor—asked after Quinn’s mom. That brief exchange of pleasantries had somehow led to Deke casually tossing out an invitation to come by for supper.
“Havin’ a cookout,” Deke had said. “All the kids’re coming. And you know how Jeanne Marie always cooks more’n we need.”
Quinn had wondered then if it was possible that Deke didn’t know his wife’s new niece was there. And then he had wondered if it was possible that Jeanne’s new niece wasn’t there.
Which had led to him poking at that thought all through the ball game, same way a tongue poked at a sore tooth, even though it hurt.
He ought to have just asked Deke.
Instead, here he was at six o’clock in the evening, standing there staring at the front of Jeanne and Deke’s place.
He could smell grilling beef on the air and hear the high-pitched squeal of a baby laughing. Ordinarily, the smell of a steak getting seared really well would have been enough to get his boots moving. He didn’t even mind the babies or the kids much. He’d had plenty of practice with Jess’s batch, since she popped one out every couple of years.
His reluctance to join them now annoyed him. He’d had plenty of meals at the Jones’s place over the years. He’d been in school with the older ones and counted them as friends. He’d danced at Toby’s wedding. With Amelia. Right here, in fact, because Toby and Angie had been married out in back of the house.
Quinn hadn’t been back since.
Muttering an oath, he grabbed the short-haired wig, slammed the truck door and headed around the side of the house. He knew they’d all be out back again and he was right.
This time, though, instead of rows of chairs lined up like white soldiers across the green grass and a bunch of cloth-covered tables with pretty flowers sitting on top arranged around the space, there were a couple of picnic tables covered with plastic checked tablecloths, a bunch
of lawn chairs and a game of croquet in the works.
He spotted Amelia immediately and even though he wanted to pretend he hadn’t been concerned about whether she had or had not sought haven with her aunt, the knot inside him eased.
She was off to one side of the grassy backyard where Toby’s three kids were playing croquet, and talking with Stacey, Jeanne’s and Deke’s second youngest. The two females were about the same age and the same height, but Stacey was as sunny and blonde as Amelia was moonlight and brunette.
Both women were engaged, too, he thought darkly, though only one of those engagements caused him any amount of pleasure. He was just a little surprised that Colton Foster, who was Stacey’s fiancé, hadn’t gotten her to the altar already. As he watched, Amelia leaned over and rubbed her nose against Piper’s, Stacey’s year-old daughter, who was propped on her mama’s hip.
He looked away and aimed toward Deke where he and Liam were manning the grill. “Smells good,” he greeted. “Would only smell better if that was Rocking-U beef.”
Liam snorted good-naturedly. Horseback Hollow was dotted with small cattle ranches and all of them were more supportive than competitive with each other. “You got yourself a new pet there? Looks like a rat.”
Quinn wished he’d have left the wig in the truck. He’d only thought as far as returning it to its owner so he wouldn’t have the reminder around. He hadn’t thought about the questions that doing so would invite. “It’s a wig. Thought maybe one of Toby’s kids might want to keep it around for Halloween or something.” The excuse was thin and he knew it. “My sister’s kids outgrew it, I guess,” he improvised and felt stupid even as he did. He’d never developed a taste for lying. Anyone who knew Jess’s brood would also know the five boys were hellions who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a wig.
Liam was eying him oddly, too. “Whatever, man.” He grabbed a beer from an ice-filled barrel and tossed it to him. “Crack that open and get started. Maybe it’ll soften you up before we get to dickering over that bull of yours I want to buy.”
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