Fortune's Secret Heir

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  “I know.” She pursed her lips. In profile, her face looked young and pale. But that could have been attributed to the long flight and jet lag. “I told you I was a big girl, Ben. Let’s just chalk it up to being out of the country and get back to normal.” She pushed open the door without waiting for the driver to do it for her. “No harm, no foul, right?”

  She pushed the door closed on him before he could respond.

  Not that he had a suitable response, anyway.

  “Wait until she gets inside,” he said through the intercom when the driver returned to the car.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Through the tinted window beside him, he watched Ella march up the ramp. She grabbed hold of the suitcase and disappeared through the front door.

  She didn’t look back.

  “Okay to go now, sir?” The driver’s disembodied voice spoke to him.

  He realized he was rubbing the center of his hollow chest and dropped his hand. “Yes.”

  The limo pulled away from Ella’s house and Ben closed his eyes. He hoped it wasn’t going to be too long before he could do so without seeing her image smiling winsomely up at him.

  When he let himself into his own house a short while later, Mrs. Stone appeared, looking typically grim. “Clear out Henry’s room,” he said abruptly. “Give all the stuff away to a shelter or something.”

  She actually showed some expression of surprise. “Are you sure, Mister? What about the photograph in your room?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. He’s not coming back,” he said flatly, and strode up the stairs toward his office. He was almost at the top when he spoke again. “Mrs. Stone. Keep the picture.”

  In his office, he placed Ella’s tennis shoes on the center of his desk, where she’d find them when she showed up for work.

  * * *

  Only she didn’t.

  Not the next day.

  Or the next.

  It was only at the end of the week, when he was weeding through the pile of message slips that Bonita had left, that he found the one from Rosa at Spare Parts. The temporary agency he’d used to find Ella in the first place.

  He shoved aside the rest of the messages, not caring the way they scattered, and called Rosa at the agency.

  “Oh, Mr. Robinson.” She sounded relieved. “I was hoping you’d return my call. As I relayed earlier, regrettably, Ms. Thomas wasn’t able to complete her assignment with you because of a personal matter. But I have a few other candidates I think might be suitable, if you’d like me to send them around.”

  His only interest in Spare Parts had been Ella.

  It didn’t take a stretch to know that he was the personal matter preventing her from returning. “No, thank you, Rosa. My needs have changed.”

  “Of course. Please don’t hesitate to contact me in the future if—”

  “I will,” he interrupted. “Good night.” He disconnected and turned his chair around to stare out the windows behind his desk. “You’ve only got yourself to blame,” he said.

  “Talking to yourself is the first sign.”

  He swiveled around again to see Wes. “First sign of what?”

  “The insanity of being a Robinson.” Wes threw himself down into one of the chairs fronting Ben’s desk and stretched. “So I’m here—” he glanced at his watch “—at eight at night, as requested by the esteemed Bonita. Question is why?”

  “That’s something we’d like to know, too,” Zoe said, entering the office with the rest of their sisters on her heels. “Rachel had to have Matteo fly her in from Horseback Hollow, for goodness sake.”

  Rachel looked less perturbed than Zoe did about this fact. Probably because she rightfully sensed the point of the meeting was about their father. And Zoe had a blind eye where Gerald was concerned.

  “I doubt Matteo minds too much,” he said drily. It gave his sister’s husband an opportunity to visit his brother Joaquin, who’d been consulting on Robinson Tech’s recent expansion and rebranding.

  Zoe rolled her eyes, not at all pacified.

  Kieran and Graham brought up the rear and dragged chairs around from the conference table on the other side of Ben’s office so there were enough places to sit.

  “Maybe meeting at your house would have been better,” Rachel said, moving to look out his office door. “You’re sure Dad isn’t going to walk in us or something?”

  “Maybe he should,” Zoe muttered.

  “Bonita assures me that he and Mother are at a charity banquet this evening,” Ben said. He leaned back in his seat, bouncing the end of his pen against his desk. Then he tossed it aside and sat forward. “We have a brother,” he said bluntly. His eyes met Wes’s for a moment.

  “We have lots of brothers,” Sophie pointed out wryly.

  “Another one,” Wes offered before Ben could.

  “Yeah. His name’s Keaton Whitfield. He lives in London.”

  “So that’s what that sudden trip of yours was about,” Graham said. Instead of sitting, he’d chosen to lean against the window near the conference table. He was only two years younger than Ben and Wes, and if anyone could be considered the peacemaker of the family, it was him.

  Maybe because he’d been smart enough to choose cattle over computers.

  “Ella found him.” Just saying her name made that hollow feeling in his chest show up again, and he yanked his tie loose, wanting to alleviate the discomfort.

  “How do you know he’s not lying?” Zoe challenged, arching a smooth brow.

  “He looks like us,” Ben said, meeting Wes’s gaze again. “Trust me. There’s no doubt.”

  Wes’s lips twisted and he looked down at his hands clasped across his stomach.

  Rachel perched forward on her chair. At twenty-seven, she was the oldest of his sisters. And though she wasn’t quite as opposed to Ben’s hunt for Gerald’s illegitimate offspring, she was much more interested in his Fortune beginnings. “What about Kate Fortune?”

  “Still in the hospital, last I checked.”

  “What about our grandmother? Have you found out anything more about Jacqueline Fortune?”

  He shook his head. “Ella—” Dammit. He pushed out of his chair. “We haven’t been able to find out if she’s actually dead or not. There’s something weird going on there.”

  “You’re suspicious about everything.” Olivia spoke for the first time. “You have been ever since that witch took Henry—” She broke off when Ben pinned her with a glare. “What?” She looked around for support. “We’re all thinking it.”

  Wes pinched the bridge of his nose before standing. “I’ve got a dating app to roll out in a few weeks,” he said. “Unless you’ve got anything else I need to know, I’m out of here.”

  “Keaton said he’d help us find the others,” Ben stated.

  Wes’s lips twisted. “Happy day.” He left the office, closing the door after himself again.

  Zoe moved to take his seat. “What do you hope to accomplish?” she demanded. “If you do find this Jacqueline person?”

  “I don’t know,” Ben admitted, suddenly weary of the entire matter. The fact that it was an unexpected response was clear in the expressions looking back at him. He wished he could leave the same way Wes had, but he’d been the one to call the meeting in the first place. He sat back in his chair, spreading his hands, palms upward on the desktop. “I started out wanting to drag our father’s indiscretions out into the light. So I’d feel better about myself, I guess.” The admission was hard.

  “Oh, Ben,” Rachel murmured.

  “Don’t say I’m not like him,” he returned. “My whole life I’ve been told how much I’m like him. Stephanie showing up with the baby when she did—” He looked at Rachel. “I felt like a chip right off the old block.”

  “You started out,” Gra
ham prompted. “Does that mean something’s changed?”

  “Not the end result,” Ben admitted. “I looked at Keaton earlier this week and I...I want to know if there are more of us out there. More people we have a connection with. More people our father has let down in ways we can’t even begin to understand.”

  “To what?” Zoe looked skeptical. “To help them?”

  He thought of Randy Phillips, with whom Bonita had already scheduled an on-site visit. “Whitfield doesn’t need our help. He’s successful in his own right. But what if there are others? Struggling or—”

  “I always knew you were a softy,” Rachel murmured. She got out of her seat and gave Ben a kiss on the cheek, never knowing the sting that her words carried.

  In Boston, Ella had accused him of being a softy. He’d done a bang-up job of showing her otherwise.

  If he hadn’t, maybe she’d have still been in his life.

  But they were done. His actions had seen to that.

  When the rest of his brothers and sisters had finally left him alone in his office, he pulled out his cell phone and pulled up the data for his personal bank account.

  With a few more taps of his fingertips, he issued the compensation they’d agreed on to be mailed to her home. She’d have a check in a few days at the latest.

  Then he pocketed his phone and walked to his office door. “Now we’re done,” he said, and snapped off the light.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Only they weren’t done.

  Because three days later, Ben was staring in disbelief at the envelope he’d just opened.

  The check he’d issued to Ella was inside. Ripped cleanly in half.

  “Bonita,” he yelled, but didn’t wait for his secretary to haul herself into his office. He went to her and shook the envelope at her. “When did this arrive?”

  She gave him a mild look over her reading glasses. “Do you need more prunes in your diet, Ben? You seem awfully constipated since you returned from London last week.”

  He slapped the envelope down on her tidy desk. “There’s no stamp on it. Was it hand-delivered?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “How would I know that?” Being the know-it-all that she always was, she plucked out the two halves of the check and studied them. “Well, that’s quite a sum of money,” she murmured.

  He stormed back into his office, slamming the door after himself.

  He crossed the office and dialed Ella’s home number. But it just rang and rang, not even being picked up by an answering machine.

  He strode back out of his office. “I’m going out,” he told Bonita.

  “You have a departmental meeting in a half hour.”

  His steps didn’t slow. He was fueled by a fury that he’d never before felt. “Cancel it. Or handle it yourself. At the moment, I don’t much give a damn.”

  It was probably a miracle that he didn’t get stopped for speeding when he drove to Ella’s house. He pulled the Porsche up into their cracked driveway and, not giving himself a chance to think, darted up the ramp and knocked hard on the door.

  “They’re not there,” a voice said from behind him, and Ben whirled to see a wizened old man standing on the other side of the bushes separating the driveways.

  Ben approached the hedge. “Where are they?”

  “The hospital, o’ course.” The man gestured with his hedge trimmers. “You’re that fancy fella Ella knows.”

  Ben didn’t feel fancy. Fear tore through him so violently, he felt like shredding the hedge with his bare hands. “What hospital? What for? What happened?”

  “Rory.” The other man’s eyes squinted. “University. Kid got himself another case of pneumonia.”

  Ben yanked out his phone and called Bonita. “Find out the status of Rory Thomas,” he barked. “Patient at University Brackenridge. Call me back.” He hung up on the sound of her railing at him and looked back at the old man. “How long ago did he get sick?”

  He scratched the white whiskers that sparsely populated his wrinkled cheeks. “Sometime last week. My memory’s not so good sometimes.”

  “Thank you.” Ben suddenly reached across the hedge to shake the old man’s hand.

  “Bernie,” the man said, and wiped his palm on his shirt before shaking Ben’s hand. “That’s some car you got,” he called when Ben returned to the Porsche. “But you slow your butt down ’cause there’s kids in this neighborhood!”

  Difficult as it was, Ben moderated his speed. At least until he hit the highway. He reached the hospital in record time and called Bonita again when he pulled into the parking structure. “Well?”

  “Cool your jets or I’m going to give myself a well-deserved raise,” she said tartly. “It’s not that easy getting information about a patient, you know. There are such things as privacy rules and—”

  “Do you have a room number or not?”

  She sighed mightily and gave him one.

  “It’s not ICU or anything, is it?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  It was good enough for him and he breathed a little easier. “Thanks.”

  He left the parking garage and made his way through the hospital, taking a detour when he spotted the gift shop on his way. He didn’t know what the heck to purchase for a teenage boy. And he left the gift shop again with a bouquet of bobbing red and yellow balloons that made him feel more than a little self-conscious, a bag full of junk food that no doctor would allow a pneumonia patient to consume and a chess set.

  When he finally found his way to Rory’s room, the door was ajar and he knocked lightly with his balloon hand.

  The door swung open wider, and Elaine Thomas looked up from her position sitting next to the hospital bed.

  Her lips parted a little at the sight of him, and then she set aside the book she’d been reading and gestured for him to enter. “Rory, look who’s here.”

  Never feeling less certain in his life, Ben looked at the boy in the bed. But Rory didn’t look all that different than he had after the chess tournament. Maybe a little paler.

  Definitely not as pale as his sister looked.

  Ella was sitting on the other side of the bed in front of the window and she was whiter than Rory’s bedsheets, her hair looking like fire as it streamed loose around her shoulders.

  He didn’t look at her, though. Because if he did, the emotion in him would take hold again.

  Instead, he kept his focus on Rory and the boy’s mom, lifting his weird collection of gifts. “I didn’t know what to bring,” he admitted.

  Elaine quickly unwrapped the ribbons holding the balloons from his hand and attached them to the foot of Rory’s bed. “It’s very sweet of you,” she said, giving Rory a look.

  “Yeah.” The kid was obviously more interested in the chess set, and the bag of candy bars and sweets that Ben handed him than he was the balloons. “Thanks.” He set the chess box on the rolling table beside his bed and peered into the plastic bag. “Oh, nice,” he breathed. “Peanut butter cups.”

  “I didn’t know you’d gotten sick,” Ben said. “I would have—”

  Ella’s chair suddenly screeched against the floor and she stepped around him, leaving the room.

  “—come sooner,” Ben admitted.

  “Perhaps you should go after her,” Elaine suggested.

  Ben’s chest felt tight. “And say what?”

  “Say what’s in your heart.”

  “I’ve never once been told to do that.” The admission came out of nowhere. “Maybe I don’t know how.�
�

  But Elaine didn’t look shocked. “Have you ever once looked at a woman the way I see you look at my daughter?” She smiled gently. “You’ll know how when the time comes.”

  Ben needed no more urging.

  He followed Ella out into the corridor, where she was pacing back and forth, flags of color now flying in her cheeks.

  Her eyes snapped as he approached her. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  “Why not? We had an agreement,” he said. “Remember? You help my search and in return I pay—”

  “The agreement changed,” she cut him off, her voice tight. “You think I don’t know how much you paid for me to go to Boston? To London? The hotels? The clothes? Everything? I can’t return those things. But I certainly didn’t need that check you sent!” She looked defensive. “I don’t know if you meant it for services rendered or just more charity—”

  He grabbed her arms and hauled her close to his face. “Shut. Up.”

  She looked outraged. “I don’t take orders from you, Ben Robinson.”

  “No, but you’ll sneak off with my heart,” he snapped, and let her go again, moving across the corridor, because he was either going to shake her or kiss her.

  Doing the former was against everything he believed, and doing the latter was what had gotten him in over his head with her in the first place.

  * * *

  Ella shook her head, trying to clear it of the odd buzzing inside. She obviously hadn’t heard him correctly because Ben believed he didn’t have a heart. “You made it plain I couldn’t continue working for you—”

  “When the hell did I do that?”

  A nurse walking down the hall on squeaky shoes gave them a censorious look.

  Ella raked back her loose hair with shaking hands. Since she’d returned from London only to discover Rory had gotten sick again, she’d practically been living at the hospital. She and her mom traded off nights spent there so Rory would never be alone.

  She still felt guilty for being in London. Walking through parks with Ben. Lying in bed with Ben. Losing her heart to Ben. All while her brother had been home, stricken with yet another case of pneumonia.