Fortune Found

by Victoria Pade

  Jessie laughed but didn’t think it was wise to say that she already knew he wasn’t a big jerk, so instead said, “I’ll probably stick with the just-no-sparks thing, too.”

  “And then they’ll all have to give it a rest.”

  Jessie considered the ruse. “I suppose you do have a point. If they think we gave it a try and it just didn’t go anywhere, they’ll have to accept it and back off.”

  “Not that I don’t enjoy working with you and talking to you…” Flint added with a small but genuine smile that convinced her that he actually did. Even if they didn’t click.

  “But that roof is in bad shape,” Flint went on, “and even with two of us it’s going to be a big job. Unless you want to volunteer to work up there, then we can keep this going…”

  “Mid-June Texas heat on a rooftop? I don’t think so.”

  “We do a date, then?”

  “I guess we could give it a try,” Jessie agreed. “When?”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll tell Coop and Kelsey as soon as I get inside. Hopefully they’ll figure if we’re seeing each other socially tomorrow night, they don’t need to push things in the day and Coop and I can get started on the roof.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” Jessie promised.

  “And then we’ll have our fake date—at seven?”

  “Sure.”

  “Ella’s really going be mad at me after that, isn’t she?” Flint asked.

  “It’s probably going to keep you blacklisted,” she confirmed.

  “I’ll have to get you home early to convince everyone that the date is a flop—maybe that’ll help.”

  And somehow the thought of making sure the date didn’t last too long was also a bit of a downer.

  But Jessie shooed that away. Flint was right, a short date was more likely to look like a failure. And that was what they were going for.

  “Okay, then,” Jessie said. “We have a pretend date tomorrow night at seven.”

  “For barbecue. And we’ll just hope our plan works.”

  Jessie nodded her agreement, and in the process her gaze caught on his face once more. On his smoldering eyes. On lips that were so, so supple…

  And why she should suddenly wonder if pretend dates ended with good-night kisses, she had no idea. But that was exactly what she was wondering. Along with what it might be like to be kissed by Flint.

  But the moment she realized that was what was going through her mind, she jolted herself out of it, telling herself that of course there wouldn’t be a good-night kiss. The whole point of the fake date was to convince their families that they didn’t click.

  “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow for work first, though,” Flint said then.

  Which seemed like her cue to leave, so she said she would see him the next day and headed to her back door, pondering why she was looking forward to a date that was only for show.

  Chapter Four

  “Mama, you’re so pretty!”

  “Thank you, Braden,” Jessie said to her four-year-old son.

  She was putting on the finishing touches for her pretend date with Flint on Wednesday evening by trying to force earrings into pierced lobes that hadn’t been used since Pete’s funeral. It had somehow drawn the attention of all four kids, who were sitting or lying on her bed to watch.

  “You look good as Miss Osterman,” Bethany contributed, a compliment indeed because Miss Osterman had been the twins’ twenty-two-year-old drop-dead gorgeous swimming instructor and Bethany had already announced that she wanted to look just like that when she grew up. Who didn’t? had been what Kelsey and Jessie had answered with a laugh…

  “You should stay home and eat with us,” Ella contributed morosely, frowning at Jessie in the mirror that Jessie was facing, the mirror that reflected the kids behind her as well. “Gramma is making us macaroni and cheese with the squiggly noodles.”

  Oh, Ella, I’m sorry, Jessie thought. But when this is over you’ll be able to relax…

  “I wanna go,” Adam lamented before Jessie could think of what to say to her oldest daughter. “I wanna eat with Fwint.”

  “No one’s going but your mama,” Jessie’s mother said, apparently having overheard Adam as she’d approached the room because her response came at the same time she appeared in the doorway. “Tonight is for your mama and Flint—grown-ups only. Now let her get ready and come downstairs—supper’s ready.”

  All four kids hopped up and Jessie turned from her dresser mirror to give Ella a hug as her oldest slipped off the bed.

  “It’ll be okay. You’ll see,” she whispered.

  Ella didn’t answer her, obviously not convinced.

  Jessie’s mother waved fluttering hands at her daughter. “Go on, get back to what you were doing. He’ll be here soon and I have a surprise dessert for Ella—her favorite.”

  “Strawberry ice cream?” Ella said, barely enthusiastic.

  “Strawberry ice cream with my special fresh strawberry sauce to put on top,” Jeannie Hunt said as she shooed the kids out and pulled Jessie’s bedroom door closed behind them all, leaving Jessie alone.

  And torn between hating Ella’s obvious displeasure about her spending time with Flint Fortune and trying to figure out her own feelings.

  She shouldn’t feel anything about this date. Certainly not excitement. Or anticipation. Or eagerness. She definitely shouldn’t have butterflies in her stomach. And there was no way she should have needed to change her clothes three times before settling on the khaki slacks and red camp shirt that was very—very—fitted. No way she should have deep-conditioned her hair so it would have extra wave and shine when she wore it down.

  All for a date that wasn’t real. A date that was nothing but subterfuge, a ploy to get her family to stop pushing her and Flint Fortune together. Yet she was feeling excited and eager and there were butterflies in her stomach.

  As if this were a real date.

  And every bit of that also caused her guilt. Guilt for Ella’s confusion and anger. And guilt over Pete, too…

  She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and wished what she’d wished a million times since that day she’d lost her husband—that everything hadn’t gotten so complicated, so difficult.

  This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. She was supposed to be married to Pete, living her life and caring for the kids with him, looking forward to growing old together.

  She wasn’t supposed to be raising four kids alone. She wasn’t supposed to be dating—for real or not.

  And she wasn’t supposed to be feeling any kind of attraction for a man who wasn’t Pete…

  That was just so weird. And unsettling. It made Jessie feel as if she were being disloyal to Pete.

  “But it’s not a real date,” she told her reflection in the mirror as she finally got one small hoop earring in and began to work on the second.

  A fake date concocted to put an end to Kelsey’s matchmaking. And once that was accomplished, Jessie reminded herself, she would again be free to put her energies into her kids. Which was what she was determined to do. Her family was her priority and nothing was going to change that.

  And part of making them her priority meant that she was determined to be cautious about what—and who—she allowed into their lives.

  Yes, Kelsey thought Flint was a decent guy and so far Jessie hadn’t seen anything that said he wasn’t. But he also wasn’t from the best background—from what little Jessie knew.

  Granted, she didn’t know much, and she certainly didn’t know any of the details, but she did know that Flint and Coop’s mother had been married four times. That she’d had four children with three different fathers.

  That had to have made an impression on Flint, and Jessie couldn’t imagine that it had made a good one.

  And because she knew, too, that Flint was divorced—though, again, without knowing any details—and he’d said himself that he was not to be tied down—she thought that it didn
’t speak well of his staying power and that that could potentially have come from his less-than-ideal background.

  If there was one thing that Jessie was terrified of, it was feeling about someone the way she’d felt about Pete, and losing them. She just couldn’t go through that again in any fashion—including divorce. She couldn’t risk that kind of loss for herself and she wouldn’t risk it for her kids.

  If she ever took a chance on another man, it would have to be with someone she knew without a doubt would never choose to leave her. Someone who would stick around through thick and thin.

  That someone wasn’t likely to be a man who was accustomed to seeing his mother go in and out of marriages, who already had a divorce of his own under his belt and was clearly a commitment-phobe.

  “Not that it matters. You don’t click with him, remember?” she told her reflection sarcastically.

  That tone of voice would have made Pete laugh. And suddenly, as had happened many times since his death, Jessie had such a strong sense of him that it made her wonder if his spirit was there with her.

  Watching her get ready to go out with another man.

  Pete had liked the earrings she was struggling to put on. Maybe she shouldn’t wear them.

  But somehow, even in her sense that Pete was with her, she didn’t feel as if she needed to change her jewelry.

  And that was when—out of the blue—another thought occurred to her that actually seemed to bear the mark of her late husband.

  Pete had always been an optimistic, upbeat person. Even in the most dire situations she’d never known him not to find the good that could come of anything. And while having a fledgling attraction to another man wasn’t a dire situation, it struck her at that moment that maybe the good to come out of it was that feeling even the slightest attraction to someone new, someone other than Pete, was a sign that she was becoming capable of moving on.

  The idea gave her a twinge of guilt, too, but she knew taking that first step was an indication that she was healing. That healing meant regaining some emotional health and stamina and resiliency. It meant she was getting stronger. And strength—especially when she was raising four children—was exactly what she needed.

  “So, wondering what the man looks like without his shirt on is okay?” she asked her reflection and the room in general.

  When the question made her laugh a little, she decided it must be okay. That her secret appreciation of Flint’s physical attributes were indeed a positive sign that she was coming out of her grief.

  And since there was no danger of it going any further than that because he’d already let her know she didn’t do anything for him, and because tonight’s dinner was the beginning of the plan to get her sister and her sister’s matchmaking minions to back off, Jessie decided she could look at the whole picture as a positive.

  As just a reawakening, of sorts. Like the first blossoming of Texas bluebonnets in spring to mark the end of winter, feeling a hint of attraction to Flint Fortune marked the end of the emotional winter that had come over her with Pete’s death.

  It was nothing more than that.

  So it was okay, she concluded. She could go on this pretend date with Flint, come home and get on with business as usual.

  And if her heart skipped a beat when the doorbell rang and a moment later Braden called up the stairs, “Flint’s here…”

  It was just part of that secret attraction to the man that didn’t really mean a thing.

  And finally, firmly in that conviction, Jessie got the second earring in, took a last look at herself in the mirror, decided she was presentable enough and marched out of the room to meet her date.

  The barbecue joint that Kelsey and Cooper had recommended was just outside Austin, so it didn’t take Jessie and Flint long to get there.

  Their conversation during the trip was merely about the best and worst barbecue they’d each had in the past, and about how to get to the place. But once they were seated at the round wooden table in the down-home roadside establishment that was part restaurant, part bar, part honky-tonk, Jessie knew it was time for a new vein of small talk.

  And maybe coming up with some of that would keep her from admiring all that Flint could do to a plain pair of cowboy boots, a crisp white dress shirt and jeans that had made it impossible not to look at his rear end and his thighs every chance she got.

  So she opted for satisfying one of the many pieces of curiosity she had about him and his family, and said, “Yesterday when William and Lily were at Kelsey’s house someone mentioned the medallion Anthony wore when he was found. That keeps coming up—was it some kind of family heirloom or something?”

  “You might say that. Not that we knew it until recently. There are four medallions—Ross, Coop, Frannie and I each had one, but we thought they were junk. We only learned recently from our mother—when we pushed her on the subject—that Uncle William gave them to her to give to us. Apparently he told her to make sure we knew that they were important keepsakes that had been in the family for generations.”

  “That isn’t what she did?” Jessie asked.

  “Not our mother,” he said, somewhat disparagingly. “We had to piece it together ourselves. We think that the medallions were Uncle William’s way of trying to help us feel part of the family, to give us a sense of connection. Which would have been really nice for us all to know because we always thought we were the black sheep. But with my mother, that wasn’t how they were presented to us.”

  The drinks they’d ordered came and, with them, menus. But rather than looking at them yet, Jessie said, “How did she present them?”

  “They were our Christmas gifts one year. We’d been left with a neighbor while Mom went off with her man-of-the-hour to Las Vegas the week before. She barely made it back for Christmas morning and our only presents were the medallions. I’m sure she’d forgotten all about getting us anything else and had taken out the medallions as a last-ditch effort to give us gifts. She told us they were from buried pirate treasure, which we believed at the time because we were all just little kids.”

  “Were you happy to get them?”

  “At the time? They weren’t what any of us had wanted, but sure. If my mother is good at anything it’s spinning a tall tale. For weeks we used them to play pirate. They were our gold doubloons.”

  “But that didn’t last?”

  “You know how it is. Eventually the game got old, the medallions were stuck in drawers and as we grew up we all just figured they were worthless trinkets that she’d picked up in Vegas before she’d rushed home that year. We didn’t think they had any value. Certainly not that they connected us to the Fortunes.”

  “But when Anthony showed up?”

  “Ross saw the medallion and remembered them. Of course the baby wasn’t Frannie’s and Ross actually knew where his medallion was, so he wasn’t ever in the running for Anthony’s dad. But I couldn’t find mine and neither could Coop—”

  “Which initially meant that either of you could have been Anthony’s father.”

  “That’s how it seemed, yeah.”

  “And for you both there were multiple possibilities for women who could have come across your medallion and taken it?”

  He had the good grace to smile sheepishly over his beer. “Anyone could have come across the medallions and taken them. But given that there was an almost-newborn with it strung around him, it was a good bet that a woman one of us had been involved with had taken it. About the same time the DNA results came back that cleared me, I found my medallion. I’m keeping it safer now. Coop got his back with Anthony, but when Uncle William saw it he seemed to recognize it and got agitated. He said it was his, so Coop let him keep it. Who knows, that might help get his memory to come back, too.”

  “I hope something does,” Jessie said as the waitress returned to take their dinner order.

  They both glanced quickly at the menu and ignored the recommendation of ribs, both choosing pulled pork sandwiches instead.

&n
bsp; When the waitress had taken the menus and left, Flint settled back in his chair, leveled dark eyes on her and apparently took his turn at making small talk. “So tell me about yourself. Do you work?”

  “Ha! You mean other than helping Kelsey get her house remodeled and decorated, wrangling four kids, doing a gazillion loads of laundry a week, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, driving car pool to a dozen different activities—”

  He laughed. “I didn’t mean to say you don’t do plenty of work. I just meant—do you have a job on top of all that? You said you and your husband had worked at the same construction company.”

  “I couldn’t go on working there after the accident,” she confessed quietly. “There was life insurance on Pete and our mortgage was paid off with a death benefit rider on the house insurance, plus there was a settlement from the company, so I have some financial cushion. The first year after losing Pete it took everything I had just to get myself out of bed in the morning, just to take care of the kids—”

  “I’m sure,” Flint said sympathetically.

  “But I do still have four kids to keep going, to hopefully send to college, so last year I started temping in the school district as a secretary. I liked working with the kids, the teachers and the principals were all great—there’s sort of a community feel to working in a school that was really nice. The pay isn’t wonderful, but I’ve applied for a full-time position next year because it would be a way to make a living without dipping into the nest egg too much, and it would give me hours and vacations similar to what the kids will have when they’re all in school with Ella.”

  Their food arrived, but beyond thanking the waitress, Flint’s attention remained on Jessie. “You’ve applied for a full-time job but you don’t know if you got it?”

  “Not yet—it’s summer vacation. I was told not to expect to hear anything until July or even the first of August—just before the principals go back for the next year.”

  They tasted their sandwiches and decided Kelsey and Coop had been right about the food. Then, as they ate, Flint returned to the subject of her working.