A Fortune's Children Christmas (Anthology)

by Lisa Jackson; Barbara Boswell; Linda Turner

  “So you’re abandoning the search? You’re just letting that monster run off with my child?”

  Even to her own ears, she sounded slightly hysterical, but she couldn’t help it. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since James had kidnapped Laura, twenty-four horrifying hours in which she had done nothing but sit by the phone and wait for him to call. He would call, she’d assured herself over and over again. He wasn’t a deliberately cruel man—he would at least call to let her know that Laura was all right.

  But although the phone had rung dozens of times as people learned of Laura’s abduction and called to sympathize, none of the callers had been James. Friends, family, co-workers at the bakery where she worked. But never James.

  He wouldn’t hurt her, Naomi told herself for the thousandth time. Laura was his daughter. He loved her. After his divorce from his wife, he’d moved to Wyoming just to get to know her. Whatever kind of scum he was, he wouldn’t hurt his own daughter.

  But as much as Naomi tried to cling to that thought, fear ate away at her like a cancer. Because she knew in her heart that James hadn’t taken Laura because he wanted her for himself. She was the one he was trying to hurt, the one he was striking out at. She’d refused to marry him—again—and he was livid. There was no telling how far he would go to get revenge.

  “We’re not giving up,” Officer Hawk assured her grimly. “But you must know that we’re searching blind now, ma’am. Mr. Barker obviously planned this right down to the last detail, and we don’t even know what kind of vehicle he’s driving. We’re putting up posters of Laura all over the state, but unless someone spots her with him or he makes a major blunder, there’s not a lot we can do. Our best hope is that he’ll call—or bring Laura home after he feels you’ve suffered long enough. In these kinds of cases, that’s usually a couple of days.”

  Naomi knew he was only trying to make her feel better, but she didn’t have any illusions about James Barker. Unfortunately, she hadn’t always been so discerning when it came to the man. She met him one night when she was living in Denver and he stopped to help her when her car broke down. He’d set out to charm her, and she’d never thought to resist. They started dating and she fell in love. It wasn’t until she got pregnant that she learned he was married.

  She should have recognized it—the signs were all there. In all the months they were involved, he never stayed overnight, never gave her his phone number, never took her to his place. Because introducing his mistress to his wife would have been awkward, to say the least.

  Devastated, she broke off all ties with him, quit her job and moved to Wyoming and the reservation where her mother’s people lived, to have her baby. That was three years ago. She’d thought he was out of her life for good—until he showed up in Wyoming a month ago after hiring a private investigator to find her. As charming as ever, he announced that he was now divorced and wanted to marry her.

  When she immediately turned him down, she expected him to be furious. But he took the rejection in stride and promised he had changed and would change her low opinion of him. For her daughter’s sake, she wanted to believe him, so she had given him a chance. And for a while, it did seem as if he was a new man. He visited Laura at least three times a week, and he was always nothing but charming. Then, just this past weekend, he’d proposed again, and she realized that all this time he’d been using Laura to try to get to her. Furious, she’d told him she wouldn’t have him on a platter with an apple in his mouth.

  This time, he hadn’t handled rejection nearly as well as he had the first time. Raging at her, he’d called her all sorts of filthy names, then stormed out. Naomi thought he had left the area, then yesterday, he showed up at Laura’s day care and spirited her away while the teacher was calling Naomi to see if it was all right for James to take her daughter shopping. No one had seen Laura since.

  And although Officer Hawk felt like this was a typical custody squabble between two parents, Naomi knew better. In his experience, maybe a recalcitrant father could be counted on to take a child home after a couple of days, but she knew James now. He was a mean, spiteful man who was, she felt sure, somewhere close—she could feel it in her bones. It wouldn’t surprise her in the least if he was hiding in plain sight, watching her suffer and loving every minute of it. It would be just like him.

  And he wasn’t going to get away with it. Laura was hers, she thought fiercely. Hers! The tribal police might not be able to do anything at this point, but by God, she could. She just needed a tracker, someone who could flush the slime out and find out where he was hiding her daughter. She didn’t personally know anyone who could do that for her, but she knew someone who did.

  As soon as Officer Hawk left, she quickly called Lucas Greywolf. He was the only doctor on the reservation, and his wife, Rocky, owned and operated a flying service that was well-known for its successful search-and-rescue operations. If anyone could recommend a good tracker, they could.

  As she’d hoped, Lucas didn’t disappoint her. He’d already heard about Laura’s kidnapping, as had most of the rest of the reservation, and he immediately recommended Rocky’s cousin, Hunter.

  “I’ve seen a lot of men who can track, but never anyone quite like Hunter,” he told her. “He’s better than good. I don’t know how he does it, but he can track an eagle across the sky. He just moved here a couple of months ago and took over Fortune Construction. Give him a call and tell him I told you to call.”

  Immeasurably relieved, Naomi could do nothing to stop the tears that welled in her throat and eyes. “Thank you so much,” she said thickly. “You don’t know how much this means to me. The police are doing everything they can, but I just can’t sit on my hands and wait.”

  “Of course you can’t! If it was one of our kids out there, God knows where, you’d better believe Rocky and I would call on whoever we had to to find them. Keep the faith, Naomi. Hunter’s a good man and damn good at what he does. He won’t give up until he finds her.”

  Searching through the paperwork piled high on his desk, Hunter swore softly and wondered why his secretary had to choose this week out of all the weeks in the year to have her wisdom teeth out. He had a bid to send in on the shopping mall in Crow County, payroll to do and a report to fax off to Kate just to keep her apprised of the current state of affairs. She hadn’t asked for any kind of monthly accounting of the business, but he felt honor-bound to let her know how things were going. Considering the trust she had placed in him by handing him the company, it was the least he could do.

  He still couldn’t believe she’d done it.

  He would have sworn it was the last thing he wanted. And Kate, crafty old woman that she was, had known it. After the Christmas party, she’d told him he was free to turn the gift down then or at any time during the year, no hard feelings. Torn, he’d been tempted, but he hadn’t wanted to disappoint her. Then, on the first day, when he’d walked into the office and seen the way the current foreman was running the place into the ground with mismanagement and workers who didn’t want to work, he’d itched to get in there and change things. Right then and there, he’d been hooked.

  The phone rang then, the third time in the last five minutes, and once again, he wished Isabel was there to at least handle the calls. How was a man supposed to get any work done when he was constantly being interrupted?

  Snatching up the phone just as he found the figures he needed for the bid he was working on, he growled, “Fortune Construction. Hunter speaking. What can I do for you?”

  “Hi. It’s me,” Kelly said quietly. “Kate asked me to place a call so she could see how you’re doing.”

  Leaning back in his chair, Hunter grinned. He and his great aunt had kept in touch since the Christmas party, but he always enjoyed talking with Kelly first. They had become friends, and like the rest of his family, he was concerned about her dating his cousin, Chad. He’d tried to warn Kelly that Chad was a heartbreak waiting to happen and she was headed for trouble, but she’d refused to believe Cha
d would ever hurt her. For her sake, Hunter hoped she was right, but he wasn’t holding his breath.

  “Hey, lady. How’s fortune treating you?”

  “Just fine,” she said, chuckling. “How about you? How’s business?”

  “Wild and hectic. I don’t even have time for a coffee break any more.”

  Far from sympathetic, she laughed at his disgruntled tone. “Kate’ll be pleased.”

  Kate was, in fact, thrilled when she came on the line a few minutes later and heard how busy he was. They discussed the situation, and by the time he hung up, they decided he needed to hire more men. God only knew when he’d find the time to do it.

  Returning his attention to the bid he was working on, he was running numbers on his calculator, figuring cost, when the outer door to his office opened. Expecting one of his foremen, he didn’t even look up. “Have a seat, Fred. I’ve almost got the numbers on the pipe figured—”

  “Excuse me, but I’m looking for Hunter Fortune. Dr. Greywolf told me I would find him here.”

  Startled, Hunter glanced up to find a slender, petite woman already stepping into his office. Construction wasn’t the all-male domain it had once been, so it wasn’t completely out of the ordinary for him to deal with a woman in his business. But he’d never dealt with one quite like the one who stood before him. He had, over the years and in all parts of the world, seen his share of beautiful women, but this one was striking. She had the coal-black hair of a Native American, flawless, honeyed skin and large, startling gray eyes that were, quite simply, beautiful. If she’d smiled, Hunter didn’t doubt that she could have knocked a man out of his shoes.

  Studying her, Hunter thought she might have been a woman who had once smiled easily, but not now. Her eyes were haunted and vulnerable with a pain he could only guess at, her cheeks damp from the tracks of recent tears. She appeared to be, quite literally, a damsel in distress.

  Hunter’s first instinct was to rush to the rescue and ask questions later. But he’d learned the hard way that that was how a foolish man got burned. Not all damsels were as helpless as they looked. The last woman he helped claimed she was trying to get away from an abusive husband. Later, when he’d given her the money for a bus ticket out of state, he discovered the whole story was a scam and she wasn’t even married.

  Pushing to his feet, he eyed her carefully. “I’m Hunter Fortune. How do you know Lucas?”

  “He’s my doctor. My daughter’s doctor.” With no warning, the tears that had stained her cheeks were back, welling in her eyes, and she was clenching her hands tightly together before her, as if that would help keep her from flying apart. “Please…I need your help. My daughter—”

  Alarmed, Hunter started around his desk. “What about your daughter? Is she hurt? Where is she? Why didn’t you take her to Lucas?”

  “No, it’s not that. She’s not hurt—at least I don’t think she is. Her father—oh, God, he took her! Kidnapped Laura. Dr. Greywolf said you’re a tracker. Please, you’ve got to help me find her!”

  She was crying then, quietly sobbing, her streaming eyes stark with despair, and Hunter felt something twist where his heart was supposed to be. “Shhh,” he said quietly, urging her into a chair. “Sit down, Mrs.—”

  “Ms.,” she choked. “My name is Naomi Windsong.”

  “Okay, Ms. Windsong, why don’t you start from the beginning and tell me how all this happened? Have you gone to the police?”

  She nodded. “But there’s nothing they can do.”

  Struggling for control with a strength of will that couldn’t help but impress him, she pulled herself back together and told him the whole story, leaving nothing out from the moment she’d had the misfortune to meet James Barker to the second when she realized he’d absconded with her daughter. And with every word, her voice got stronger, her anger fiercer.

  “He’s not going to get away with it,” she finally concluded coldly. “I know he’s here somewhere, and if you won’t help me, then I’ll turn over every rock in the county to find the snake if I have to, but he’s not keeping my daughter.”

  She’d do it, Hunter thought, watching in amazement as she changed from a weepy, vulnerable woman to a fierce, protective mother right before his eyes. She’d fight whoever she had to, do whatever was necessary, to get her daughter back. His mother had had that same spirit. If his father had tried to take him from her before she’d died, she would have moved heaven and earth and taken on the entire Fortune clan and all their money to get him back. Naomi Windsong would do no less.

  And he liked that about her. There was something about a gutsy woman that he’d always found appealing. But how could he help her? He had his hands full just trying to get Fortune Construction off the ground. There were times in the past two months when he still didn’t know if Kate had blessed him or cursed him when she’d bought the failing company, changed the name and handed it over to him to run. But come hell or high water, he was going to make it work. That meant keeping his nose to the grindstone and making sure his crew did the same.

  They were half finished with a fast-food restaurant on the eastern edge of the reservation, and just yesterday, he learned he’d gotten the bid for a new clinic in Cheyenne. He’d bid both projects just barely over cost because he needed the business to reestablish the company’s reputation, and that meant there was no room for error. Or time to put either project on hold. Deadlines were tight, and both projects were too important to the future of the company to leave in the hands of a foreman while he took off to look for Laura Windsong.

  But even as he opened his mouth to tell Naomi that he couldn’t do it, he knew he couldn’t let her go off by herself to look for her daughter. She was just angry enough, just desperate enough, to try it, and if she wasn’t careful, she could end up in real trouble. Most of the county was still unsettled and wild, and even though her heritage appeared to be the same as his own, Naomi Windsong looked like a city girl who had never roughed it a day in her life. She’d be in over her head within the first hour. And then there was James Barker himself. Any man who would kidnap his own a child just to get back at her mother was capable of anything.

  And the bastard wasn’t going to get away with it. He wouldn’t let him. He’d had a knack for tracking ever since he was a kid, a sixth sense that never failed him. In his travels over the years, he’d volunteered his services whenever anyone was lost. If James Barker was out there, he’d find him.

  “You don’t have to take off on your own,” he told her grimly. “Just give me time to line someone up to take over for me here, and I’ll help you find your daughter.”

  Two

  Light-headed with relief that she’d finally found someone to do something, Naomi expected Hunter to talk to the police, then immediately start tracking James from the spot where he’d abandoned his car. Instead, he asked for the name and address of Laura’s day care. Surprised, she frowned. “Why? The police have already talked to Laura’s teacher. She couldn’t tell them anything except that James had taken her.”

  “I realize that, but I’d like to talk to her, just the same. That was the last place Laura was seen, so that’s where I start tracking. So what’s the name and address?”

  “Little Dear Day Care. It’s at First and Main. But I still don’t see why you want to waste time talking to Sarah Rivers,” she said in growing frustration as she followed him out of his office. “She told the police everything she knows, and the longer you waste time talking to her, the more time James has to get away. Don’t you think you should—”

  Stopping in his tracks, he pivoted to face her, his brown eyes razor sharp as they locked with hers. “Let’s get something straight right here, Ms. Windsong. I know you’re sick with worry, and all you want to do is rush right out and find your kid. It’s a natural instinct, but that’s not the way I operate. I do things my way, at my own pace, or I don’t do them. So if you’ve got a problem with that, then you’d better say so right now, and I’ll give you the name of another t
racker who might be able to help you.”

  Her gaze clashing with his in a battle of wills, Naomi didn’t doubt for a second that he meant every word. Everything about him was hard as stone—the cut of his jaw, his finely chiseled mouth, his blade of a nose. And then there were his eyes. Brutally direct and confident, they warned her that if she didn’t let him run the show, she was on her own.

  And for a span of ten seconds, she hated him for that. Laura was her daughter, damn him! Hers! And if he thought she was going to stand around like some meek little woman and hold her tongue while he dragged his feet finding her, he was in for a rude awakening. She would say whatever she liked, do whatever she had to to light a fire under him if that’s what it took to get him to move. And if he didn’t like it, that was just too damn bad.

  But if she did, she could start looking for someone else to help her. And Lucas said he was the best.

  Frustrated, resenting his dispassion when her nerves were wound tighter than a broken clock spring, she reminded herself that finding Laura was what was important here, not proving a point to Hunter Fortune. If he was as good as Lucas said he was—and she had every reason to believe that he was—then she had to trust him to know what he was doing.

  Still, it wasn’t easy for her to back down from a challenge, and she was less than gracious when she said grudgingly, “I don’t want another tracker. Lucas said you were the best, so do what you have to do. Just find Laura.”

  “I wouldn’t have agreed to look for her if I didn’t think I could find her,” he said simply, and had no idea how his quiet confidence reassured her. “Now that we’ve got that settled, let’s head on over to the day care. We’re burning daylight.”