Fortune's Greatest Risk (The Fortunes 0f Texas: Rambling Rose Book 4)

by Marie Ferrarella

  Had he been one of those spiteful people willing to blame everyone else for anything he had to put up with, Dillon would have let her continue beating herself up for dousing his shirt and causing him to practically sneeze his brains out. But to do so wouldn’t have been right, or fair and he had too much of a conscience to indulge in that sort of behavior.

  “It’s not your fault,” he told her. “The fault is mine. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to what was going on. Like I said, sometimes I have an allergic reaction to certain scents. If I had been paying closer attention to what you were trying to show me, I would have realized that.”

  Hailey felt his admission opened up a door, leaving her free to talk. Maybe some good could come out of all of this, after all.

  “You know, you did look a little preoccupied when I was taking you on that tour,” she told him. Actually, he had looked a lot preoccupied, but saying that might have sounded as if she were criticizing him, so she left it at her initial statement. Instead, she diplomatically approached the subject she was attempting to broach. “Maybe you could stand to avail yourself of one of the spa treatments we offer here at Paz.” Her enthusiasm grew as she continued, “I could personally set up an appointment for you and then—”

  Dillon immediately stopped her before she could get carried away. “No. No, thank you. I’m good,” he assured her.

  The man was good-looking, but he definitely wasn’t “good” in the sense he was trying to convey. He needed prodding, she thought.

  “Are you sure? Because these treatments can be really helpful, Mr. Fortune. They’re designed for the busy executive like yourself. Tell you what,” Hailey continued eagerly. “If you feel a little uncomfortable about getting one of our special tailored massages, I would be more than happy to be the one who—”

  “Nope, I’m fine,” Dillon insisted, cutting her off. “It’s all good, really. Thanks, but no thanks,” he repeated, leaving the woman absolutely no wiggle room to talk him into anything.

  The truth of the matter was he sensed that he could easily be attracted to this woman. The very last thing he needed—or wanted—was for that feeling to escalate. And that would be exactly what would happen if she put her hands on his back and torso to work the kinks out of his stiff, sore muscles.

  “Okay,” Hailey replied compliantly, “if you say so. But I want you to know that if you should decide to change your mind, the offer stands open anytime that you feel the need to try our method of—”

  “Thanks, but I won’t be changing my mind,” Dillon informed her, cutting her off. “Don’t worry about it,” he stressed rather forcefully. “The only thing I want from you is—”

  “Your shirt, yes, I am well aware of that,” Hailey said, anticipating what he was about to tell her. She really didn’t have to be a mind reader in order to know that.

  “Well, yes, that, too,” Dillon readily agreed. “But what I was about to say is that I’d also like you to promise me that you won’t mention this incident to my brothers. I doubt if the topic will come up,” he added, stating the fact before she had an opportunity to, “but on the outside chance that it might, I’d really rather that they didn’t find out about this unfortunate incident.”

  “Yes, of course. I won’t say a word to anyone,” Hailey promised him. “Your secret’s definitely safe with me, Mr. Fortune.”

  Dillon laughed despite himself. “Considering everything that has just happened between us, I think you can call me Dillon,” he told her.

  A smile rose to her lips, so warm in scope that it fascinated him for a couple of moments.

  “I’d like that,” Hailey told him, then added his name, making what she said sound infinitely more personal. “Dillon.”

  He caught himself thinking that his name sounded almost lyrical as it came from her lips.

  Wow, he was really getting carried away, Dillon upbraided himself. At best this was just a business meeting that had gone wrong, nothing more. Besides, as Hailey had already pointed out, his mind had been elsewhere, not here.

  “Would your brothers really give you a hard time if they knew about this?” she asked, curious. Hailey immediately backtracked when she saw Dillon’s brow go up. She didn’t want him getting the wrong idea. “Not that I’d ever mention any of this,” she quickly added, trying her best to reassure him. “Because I’d never say a word. To anyone,” she emphasized once again. “Really,” Hailey stressed. “I just asked you that because I was curious about what it was like, having all those siblings around. People who you know you can always lean on, no matter what.” That sounded like heaven to her. “How many siblings do you have again?” she asked, cocking her head.

  He was doing his best not to get distracted again. There was something about this woman that tended to do that to him. Anyway, why would she want to know that? he couldn’t help wondering.

  “I have seven,” he finally answered. He kept the fact that some were half siblings to himself. Continuing to remain cautious, Dillon watched the woman’s face as he asked, “Why?”

  Hailey shrugged. “No reason. I was just thinking that it had to be nice, having that many siblings around. You always have someone to talk to, someone to turn to for advice. I just have one sister,” she told him. “And I have to admit that I always thought it would have been really great to come from a large family.”

  Dillon shrugged, thinking of the people who comprised his family and of some of the incidents that had occurred while he was growing up.

  “It has its moments, I suppose,” he admitted somewhat reluctantly.

  “Like what?” she asked, her tone encouraging him to elaborate.

  Damn, it was happening again. He was getting distracted. Why did this woman have that effect on him? She seemed so guileless...

  He had to snap out of it! He really needed to be on his way.

  Dillon glanced at his watch again, then at her. “Could you check to see if my shirt’s ready yet?”

  The man looked as if he were ready to jump out of his skin at any second, Hailey observed. She wondered if she’d said something to set him off.

  His question had her snapping to attention. “Oh, right. Sorry, I guess I forgot about that,” she confessed. “But you obviously didn’t,” she added with a smile. She could feel herself growing nervous again. “How could you, standing there in that robe?” she asked. “I didn’t mean to go on like that,” she apologized for what felt like the dozenth time since he had arrived at the spa. “I’ll go right now and see if it’s ready.” She hurried off.

  It wouldn’t be ready, he thought. Not unless the shirt somehow “knew” it had to dry itself after it had finished washing.

  He glanced at his watch again. How much longer was he going to have to hang around this place waiting for his shirt to dry?

  Not that being with this woman was any sort of actual hardship, he amended in all honesty. Under any other set of circumstances, he might have even welcomed the excuse.

  But right now, he felt like a total idiot and standing around in this long fluffy robe just seemed to intensify that reaction.

  It also upped the chances of someone coming in and seeing him looking like this.

  He really wanted to get out of here.

  Now.

  Chapter Three

  A while later, the dryer Hailey had put Dillon’s newly washed shirt into was still running.

  To check, Hailey pressed the pause button on the oversized machine and it tumbled to a noisy halt.

  Opening the door, she fished out Dillon’s shirt, ran her hand over the material and frowned. It still felt a bit damp. Not dripping, she conceded, but definitely damp. If given a choice, she knew that she wouldn’t have wanted to put it on. The damp material would feel clammy against her skin.

  Against his skin, Hailey corrected herself.

  She was about to put the shirt back into the drye
r when she heard Dillon’s deep voice coming from directly behind her.

  “Is it ready yet?”

  Surprised, she turned around. He’d followed her. She wouldn’t have thought that he would. The laundry room wasn’t all that hard to find, but coming here necessitated walking out into the hallway wearing that long, flowing fluffy robe—and being seen wearing it, something she’d gotten the very strong impression that he wanted to avoid.

  The man really had to be anxious to get out of here, she thought.

  Even so, Hailey felt she had to be honest with him. “No, not really.” She looked down at the shirt as she spoke, and when her eyes raised, she noticed Dillon had crossed the floor and was now standing right beside her.

  For some reason, being alone in the room with Dillon and envisioning him naked from the waist up beneath the spa robe made the hairs along her arms all stand up, almost at attention.

  You’re not being very professional, Hailey. You’ve had undraped men on your massage table before and it’s never affected you.

  Still, the appealing vision of Dillon Fortune that had popped up was a difficult one to banish from her brain.

  “Let me see it,” Dillon was saying. He put his hand out expectantly, waiting for his shirt.

  “Okay.” Hailey held the blue silk shirt out to him. “Go ahead, touch it,” she coaxed.

  The moment the words were out of her mouth, she realized how they must have sounded to him. They sounded like an invitation. Embarrassed, she cleared her throat. “I mean, you can see that it’s still pretty damp,” she told Dillon, avoiding his eyes. “If you give it a few more minutes—”

  “That’s all right,” Dillon said, overriding the woman’s protest. At this point, in order to be on his way, Dillon would have worn the shirt even if it were completely sopping wet.

  His urge to bolt was so strong that he allowed the robe to drop off his shoulders. It fell to the floor as he slipped on his shirt. He was so intent on putting it on, he didn’t see the startled look, immediately followed by an appreciative one, passing over Hailey’s face. But she was very aware of it as she caught her reflection in the dryer door.

  Damn, she’d already seen the man’s sculpted torso, but seeing its reflection completely paled to viewing the man up close and personal like this. Hailey felt a wave of intense heat pass over her and it was all she could do to keep her knees from buckling.

  How was this man walking around unattached and without legions of starry-eyed, eager women following him around, desperate for his attention? It made no sense to her.

  Breathe, Hailey, breathe. He isn’t interested in you that way. His desire to make a hasty exit makes that perfectly clear. Don’t complicate matters by drooling on him.

  Meanwhile, Dillon was still getting dressed. It was a little tricky, pushing his arms into the damp sleeves, but it was amazing what a man could do when pressured by a sense of urgency.

  “The main thing,” he told her, “is that that smell is gone.”

  As if to test his statement, Hailey leaned in toward his chest and took a deep breath. She wrinkled her nose a little.

  “Well, actually, there’s still a trace of it left,” she told him. Wait. What was she doing, stepping so close to him and smelling him? Had she lost all sense of professionalism?

  After a moment’s hesitation, Dillon leaned back. “I—” He stopped, then started again, regaining his thoughts. With her so close, it wasn’t easy. “It’s good enough,” he finally declared. “As long as it doesn’t attract a swarm of bees, I’m ahead of the game.”

  “But if you just give it a few more minutes, Mr. Fortune...” she tactfully protested. In light of his obvious anxiousness to flee, she had reverted back to his surname, feeling that to call him Dillon was far too familiar right now.

  “I’m already late for...something,” Dillon said evasively.

  That would explain his constantly looking at his watch and his phone while she had been taking him on the tour, she thought. The pang that went through her was involuntary. Did he have a hot date waiting for him? Or maybe he was going to be meeting up with his next conquest?

  It was none of her business, Hailey silently told herself. Whoever it was, the person was obviously enough to distract him.

  Hailey bent over to pick up the fallen robe and slung it over her arm as he finished buttoning his still damp shirt. It seemed to cling to every ridge, every ripple, she couldn’t help noticing.

  Keeping her face forward, Hailey fell into place beside him as Dillon started walking toward the front exit.

  “Will we be seeing you at the grand opening?” she asked.

  Focused on making his retreat, as well as on what time it was, Dillon hadn’t heard her. But by the look he saw on her face, the woman was obviously waiting for some sort of response from him.

  “What?” he asked, still walking as he tucked his shirt into his slacks.

  “The grand opening, it’s in a few days,” Hailey prompted. “Will we be seeing you there?”

  “Oh. Right. Yes, of course. Wouldn’t miss it,” he assured her a second before he made good his escape.

  “I don’t know about that,” Hailey murmured under her breath as she watched him hurrying down the front steps. “You seemed to have missed the tour, even though you were physically here for it.”

  With a sigh, Hailey turned away from the spa’s large double-glass doors.

  “So? How did it go?” Candace asked.

  Hailey’s assistant seemed to materialize directly behind her the moment that the contractor had walked out of the building.

  “It went,” was all that Hailey allowed herself to say.

  Candace frowned. “Well, that doesn’t sound very good.”

  Hailey tactfully walked back her initial assessment. “It could have gone better,” she amended. “I got the impression that Mr. Fortune’s mind was elsewhere during most of the tour.”

  “His mind was probably on his next project,” the young woman guessed.

  Or his next conquest by the looks of it, Hailey thought. She had seen men preoccupied with the women in their lives, or the women they were about to have in their lives. Dillon had all the signs.

  But, for the sake of the spa and things moving forward on that front, Hailey decided to agree with her assistant. “You’re probably right. He was undoubtedly thinking about his next project. I guess I’m being just a little bit edgy.”

  Still, despite her pep talk to herself to the contrary, Hailey couldn’t help being curious about who the person on the other end of Dillon Fortune’s phone had been. Whoever it was was wreaking havoc in what otherwise seemed like Dillon Fortune’s orderly world.

  * * *

  To her way of thinking, the butterflies that Hailey had experienced at the beginning of the week while she had waited to give the handsome contractor a tour of the spa were just a dry run for what she assumed she would be experiencing today, at the spa’s official grand opening ceremony.

  But oddly enough, she turned out to be wrong. To Hailey’s surprise, when the big day came, she was completely calm.

  Hailey had spent the days between then and now overseeing every single detail involved in the grand opening, then going over them twice, from the festive decorations to the extensive array of catered food. She’d even easily handled the last-minute shipments of some equipment. Mercifully, nothing rattled her.

  She survived it all and when the big day finally did arrive, she was ready hours ahead of time. To her relief, the butterflies in her stomach seemed to remain subdued.

  One of the first people to arrive to the festivities was Ellie Fortune Hernandez, Rambling Rose’s mayor and Steven Fortune’s recent blushing bride. As expected, Steven was at her side.

  The mayor was scheduled to make an appropriate speech about how the spa was one of the projects that were already revitalizing the town an
d how she anticipated that this feeling would be on the upswing in the weeks to come, thanks to other projects that were in the works.

  Waiting for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony to take place, everyone meandered around the front of the spa, availing themselves of the refreshments that were set up on tables before the front doors. Hailey was there to play hostess to the gathering crowd.

  The slender dark-haired mayor and her six-foot-tall husband were still practically newlyweds. The striking couple definitely looked the part. Anyone looking at them could see that they still had that newlywed glow about them, although Hailey was willing to bet part of that glow was due to the fact that Ellie Hernandez was also pregnant. Her condition was just now beginning to show and no matter what the young mayor talked about, she seemed to be literally beaming.

  Hailey found that she was both very happy for Ellie as well as just a little bit envious of the woman. Hailey could only imagine what it had to be like to be that in love with someone and to be that loved in return. In Hailey’s estimation, anticipating the birth of a baby only added to that perfect scenario, increasing happiness by a hundredfold.

  She sincerely doubted that it would ever happen for her.

  Don’t bite off more than you can chew, Hailey.

  Just as she was about to say something to Ellie, the mayor beat her to it. Ellie came up to her, gestured about the immediate area and said, “So I see congratulations are in order.”

  Hailey’s eyes dipped down to the mayor’s waist. It was still very trim looking, but Hailey could see that it was just beginning to widen in order to accommodate its new little boarder.

  “I hear the same can be said to you and your husband, Madam Mayor,” Hailey responded, looking over Ellie’s shoulder and catching a glimpse of Steven who was talking to someone.

  Ellie offered her a serene smile, the kind that was so commonly seen gracing the faces of expectant mothers.

  “Thank you,” Ellie responded, her eyes shining. The next moment, the mayor’s husband came up to join them. He rested his hand protectively on Ellie’s shoulder.