Fortune Found
Victoria Pade
Flint Fortune’s family was trying to play matchmaker – but the footloose cowboy was determined to remain a free agent.Sure, Jessie was beautiful – but she was also a widow, with four kids…definitely not right for a bachelor. Yet he couldn’t help but notice that Jessie’s drop-dead-gorgeous exterior was matched only by the warmth of her heart.
“I just really, really …likeyou …”
That made her feel a whole lot of things that were dangerous for her to be feeling.
Then he glanced up from his study of their hands intertwined and gazed into her eyes for a moment before he leaned just an inch or two closer, clearly aiming to kiss her.
But instead he paused, waiting as if tonight he wouldn’t do it unless she met him halfway, unless she let him know that it was something she wanted him to do.
She wished she didn’t. But wishing didn’t make it so. She wanted him to kiss her so badly that she couldn’t keep herself from drifting an inch or two forward herself, raising her chin almost imperceptibly but enough to give permission.
Permission he didn’t hesitate to accept …
Dear Reader,
Flint Fortune grew up with a bad opinion of marriage. In spite of that, he was crazy enough to try it once himself, with disastrous results. Since then he’s been convinced that marriage and family are not for him.
Jessie Hunt-Myers is a young widow who doubts that any man will ever be interested in taking on her and the four small children she’s raising on her own.
During the past six months, the tides seem to be turning for all of the Fortune family of Red Rock, Texas and, while Flint may think he’s not included in that, when he meets Jessie he can’t be so sure. But four—count them—four kids? That’s a whole lot to take on. And Flint just isn’t altogether sure he can do it. The problem is, he also doesn’t know how he’s going to walk away from the most wonderful woman he’s ever met.
I hope you enjoy this final installment in THE
FORTUNES OF TEXAS: LOST … AND FOUND. I
know I enjoyed writing it.
Happy summer reading!
Victoria Pade
About the Author
VICTORIA PADE is a USA TODAY bestselling author of numerous romance novels. She has two beautiful and talented daughters—Cori and Erin—and is a native of Colorado, where she lives and writes. A devoted chocolate lover, she’s in search of the perfect chocolate-chip cookie recipe. For information about her latest and upcoming releases, and to find recipes for some of the decadent desserts her characters enjoy, log on to www.vikkipade.com.
Fortune Found
Victoria Pade
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Chapter One
“Iss him! Iss him! Iss Fwint, Mama!”
The announcement came from Jessica Hunt-Myers’s excited three-year-old son, Adam, when he dashed to the open bathroom door, poked his head in, then dashed out again.
“Let me guess,” Jessie said to her sister, her tone holding no shortage of suspicion. “That phone call a little while ago was from Flint Fortune, saying he was on his way. That’s why you stopped me from sanding the baseboards, rushed me into your bathroom and gave me this sudden makeover.”
Jessie stood with her hips resting on the countertop that surrounded the sink, facing her sister, Kelsey. Kelsey was wielding a fluffy blush brush and applying the powder to Jessie’s face much the way they’d played dress up with their mother’s makeup when they were little girls.
Kelsey gave her a wide-eyed smile. “This really is new stuff that I just wanted you to try because I thought you’d like it. And that clip does look better in your hair than it did in mine,” she said innocently.
Jessie rolled her eyes, not buying the innocent act for a second. “Kelsey …” she groaned. “First you try to match me with a guy you like yourself—the guy you ended up with—and now you’re trying to push his brother?”
Kelsey shrugged. “I kept the first one for myself. It seems only fair that I find you someone else to make it up to you,” she joked.
The first one had been Cooper Fortune and after unsuccessfully attempting to put Jessie together with Coop, Kelsey had succumbed to her own attraction to the man. They were now engaged, raising Cooper’s six-month-old son, Anthony, and had moved into the house next door to Jessie’s.
The house was in need of extensive remodeling, which was the reason Jessie and Adam—the youngest of Jessie’s four children—were at Kelsey’s house late that Sunday afternoon. Jessie was helping with some of the work.
The renovation was also why Cooper’s brother, Flint, was scheduled for an extended stay in Kelsey and Coop’s guest room.
An extended stay that was apparently about to begin.
“I don’t need—or want—to be fixed up with anyone,” Jessie said emphatically.
“It’s been two years since Peter died, Jess,” Kelsey cajoled gently.
“Two years, eleven days, three hours.”
Kelsey shook her head sadly. “And you need more in your life to distract you from still counting the days. The hours.”
“More in my life?” Jessie said with a laugh. “I have four kids, Kelsey. Mom and Dad retired to move in with me and lend me a hand because I have so much in my life—”
“Your kids will grow up, Mom and Dad will decide to travel or get a place in a retirement community the way they talked about before. And then where will you be, Jess? Alone—that’s where.”
“With a bathroom all to myself and a house that actually stays clean for five minutes and the possibility that I might never again run out of cookies …” Jessie said in a dreamy tone of voice, making light of the bleak picture her sister was painting.
“Alone,” Kelsey repeated direly.
“Ella is seven. Braden and Bethany are four. Adam is only three. It’ll be a long, long time before I have to worry about that.”
“But don’t you want someone for yourself again now?” Kelsey persisted. “Pete would have wanted—”
“Oh, don’t pull that one! I hate it when people say what Pete would have wanted.”
“Okay, then he wouldn’t have wanted you to end up old and alone,” Kelsey insisted, reversing it.
“I’m not ready,” Jessie said definitively. “And when I am, it will happen. Without your beating the bushes for a man for me.”
“I haven’t been beating the bushes. I just think that sometimes fate presents opportunities and I know that without a push, you won’t see what’s right in front of you. Even though Flint is pretty hard to overlook—or didn’t you notice how hot he is?”
“Are you having second thoughts?” Jessie goaded her sister, turning the tables to distract her.
It didn’t work.
“No! It’s because I’m so in love with Coop that I want the same thing for you. And because I’ve learned firsthand that these Fortune men are men worth having and I want you to have a man who’s worth having. The way Pete was.”
“You can’t be sure that Flint Fortune is a man worth having just based on his brother. You barely know Flint himself.”
That particular member of the famed Fortune family of Texas didn’t live in their small town of Red Rock where so many other Fortunes did, so he was a stranger to both Kelsey and Jessie. A stranger who had come into town when suspicions arose that an abandoned baby might have been his son, the baby who had proved instead to be Coop’s child. The fact that Flint Fortune was inclined now to help out his brother and spend a little time with the rest of the family he didn’t seem close to, didn’t mean he was any less of a stranger to Kelsey or to Jessie.
“Okay, maybe I don’t really know much about him,” Kelsey admitted. “But I know he’s Coop’s brother and a really, really, hot guy …”
“Hot is not enough to sell him,” Jessie persisted.
But it was the one thing Jessie couldn’t argue because it was the plain and simple truth. She’d met Flint at the party Lily Fortune had had at the Double Crown ranch to introduce baby Anthony to the whole clan. And while Jessie might not have become wide-eyed with instant hero-worship of Flint the way her youngest son had, she had certainly not been able to overlook how impossibly attractive the man was.
“And no matter how hot he is,” she said to her sister, “I’m not in the market for any man.”
Not that she had so much as the most remote hope that any man was likely to want a widow with four small children. And if she allowed for the possibility of having a man in her life and then got rejected by him because of her kids? That just wasn’t a door she wanted opened. For her kids or for herself.
Plus rejection also equaled loss, and putting herself or her kids in line for suffering the loss of another man was also not—absolutely not—something she was going to do.
“Adam already thinks Flint hangs the moon …” Kelsey reminded in a singsong intended to tempt Jessie.
“Well, Flint doesn’t hang the moon,” Jessie responded in the same singsong. “He’s just a guy in a world full of guys who I don’t have the time or the inclination to mess around with.”
“Look at yourself,” Kelsey implored, stepping back, taking Jessie by the shoulders and turning her to face the mirror. “You look fantastic. Don’t wait around until the lines come in and everything starts to sag and droop and shrivel up—”
“Thank you so much for that image of my future.”
Jessie scowled, then craned her head to get a better glimpse of her sable-colored brown hair in the back. “One way or another, this hair clip hurts and I don’t want it,” she said, taking it out and shaking her hair so it fell free around her shoulders.
“The blush is nice, though, isn’t it?” Kelsey said. “It’s a little sparkly.”
Jessie studied her face more closely in the mirror, wondering if her slightly pale skin or her brown eyes or her maybe-a-little-too-straight-and-thin nose really were good enough to get her another man …
But she shied away from even the thought of that and judged the blush alone. “Yeah, it’s nice.” Because it did accentuate her high cheekbones and give her a healthy glow.
“Now tuck your T-shirt into your jeans so your butt shows,” Kelsey said, as if that simple admission that the blush was nice had encouraged her.
“Kelsey—”
“Come on. Those aren’t your best jeans, but you still have a good rear end that can almost be seen in them.” Kelsey began to tuck in the back of Jessie’s T-shirt.
“Will you stop?” Jessie protested.
“No, I won’t!” Kelsey decreed. “It’s bad enough that you’re wearing a big old T-shirt with a slogan on it, at least tuck it in.”
“I beg your pardon! The kids gave me this T-shirt for Mother’s Day and I like it,” she said, looking fondly down at the front of it where a picture of all four kids mugging for a camera stared back at her from beneath lettering that proclaimed her the World’s Greatest Mom.
“I know—I helped them pick it out. But you were supposed to sleep in it, not wear it outside of the house,” Kelsey chastised.
“I can’t just sleep in it. One of them might think I’m not proud of it.”
It was Kelsey who rolled her eyes this time. “Just tuck it in at least, and come out and say hello to Flint.”
“I don’t suppose I have a choice because he’s out there.”
Well, she did have a choice about tucking in or not tucking in the T-shirt. And even though she assured herself that she was only doing it so she didn’t look like a slob, she unzipped her jeans, tugged the tails of the shirt down inside them and then zipped them up again.
“Happy?” she asked her sister as if she’d only done it to appease Kelsey.
But while Jessie had tucked in her T-shirt, Kelsey had produced a hairbrush from somewhere and was holding that out to her. “Now put this through your hair and I try this lipstick—”
“No lipstick!” Jessie refused. But she took the brush and swiped it through her hair just so she was presentable. Certainly not to impress Flint Fortune or any other man.
And for that same reason, just before she followed Kelsey out of the bathroom, she took one final glance at herself in the mirror.
And regretted that she hadn’t worn jeans that were slightly less baggy.
And a T-shirt that wasn’t so oversize she should only be using it for pajamas.
But truly, it was just because she didn’t like to meet anyone when she looked sloppy.
It had nothing to do with Flint Fortune himself.
Truly.
“See, Mom? I tol’ you—iss Fwint!”
“Yes, I see—F-l-int,” Jessie answered her son, correcting Adam’s pronunciation, before she focused her attention on the new arrival after Kelsey had welcomed him with a hug.
“Hi, Flint,” Jessie greeted the man whose presence seemed to command the living room where he stood, a full five-feet-eleven inches of pure masculinity.
“Hi. Jessie, right? You’re Kelsey’s sister?”
“She’s my sister all right,” Kelsey confirmed with great enthusiasm.
But to Jessie the question had sounded like a shot-in-the-dark guess and she thought that that indicated that she hadn’t made much of an impression on him.
He, however, was every bit as impossibly attractive as she recalled from the party.
Unlike her late-husband’s boy-next-door looks, Flint Fortune had a swarthy, staggering handsomeness. His hair and eyes were brown, like Pete’s. But unlike the lighter shades that her dearly departed husband had sported, Flint’s hair was a deep, rich, bittersweet-chocolate brown, and his eyes were also much, much darker—the color of espresso with flecks of gold. Unusual, penetrating eyes that somehow seemed to hint at hidden depth in the man himself.
Although she had no idea why she was noticing that.
It was Kelsey’s fault, Jessie decided, for putting thoughts of how hot this man was in her head.
But there was certainly no denying that he was hot. Hotter than hot. Above those unusual eyes were straight brows and a square forehead that was the perfect canvas to sport his slightly wavy, eminently touchable-looking hair. His nose was straight and well-shaped above full, provocative lips, and he had just the faintest dip in a chin that was hammocked between sharply drawn, granite jaws.
Add to that striking face broad shoulders that were barely contained by the Western-style shirt he was wearing with the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms and somehow-sexy wrists; narrow hips and long, thick legs that did great justice to the pair of jeans he was wearing, and there was no question that this was a formidably good-looking man.
But that didn’t change a thing as far as Jessie was concerned.
“Fwint has cowboy boots like me!” Adam announced, obviously taking in every inch of Flint. Much the way his mother just had, although she’d missed the boots. “Mine are home. I wanna go get ‘em!”
“Not right now you won’t,” Jessie intervened.
“But I wanna wear ‘em!”
“You can’t wear cowboy boots with your shorts. You can wear them another day, when it’s cooler,” Jessie said, eliciting a frown from her youngest before he bent over to study Flint’s feet more closely.
“Will my feets get big as Fwint’s feets?”
For no reason Jessie could fathom that made her wonder what Flint’s naked feet looked like. Which was not only totally bizarre, but seemed like something too personal for her to be thinking about at all and she curbed her wandering thoughts.
She also decided to curb her overzealous son who had risen from his close scrutiny to stand with one arm wrapped around the big man’s left leg and the side of his tennis shoe-clad foot against Flint’s to compare them.
“I’m sorry,” Jessie muttered, dragging Adam away from the grip that was more familiar than he should have been having with any stranger and firmly holding him against the front of her own thighs. “This must be some kind of new phase. He’s never been so …” She wasn’t sure how to say that her son seemed enthralled with this man. She settled on “… so taken with anyone before.”
“I like ‘im,” Adam announced matter-of-factly. “I wanna do what he doos.”
“Seems like Adam has decided you’re his role model, Flint,” Kelsey contributed with a pointed glance at Jessie, inspiring another eye roll from Jessie.
But undaunted, Kelsey said, “Coop is working in the basement. Jess, why don’t you and Adam take Flint up and show him the room that’ll be his while he’s here so I can go get my other favorite Fortune man and tell him his brother is finally back?”
Jessie shot her sister an I’ll-get-you-for-this glance. But she couldn’t refuse the request without appearing rude, so she had to concede.
Refocusing on Flint’s cover-model face, she said, “What will eventually be the actual guest room is down here. But right now it’s full of paint cans and supplies, so Kelsey was thinking you could take the extra bedroom upstairs.”
“I’ll show you,” Adam offered, breaking free of his mother’s grip to run for the stairs in the entryway.
“I guess we should follow our leader,” Flint said with a sexy half smile, apparently amused by her son.
“If we don’t he’s liable to drag you upstairs himself,” Jessie said.
“There’s not much to him, that could do him some damage,” Flint joked. Then he leaned over and picked up the suitcase he must have brought in with him, and said, “After you.”
Had her sister not pointed out the fact that she wasn’t wearing her most flattering jeans, Jessie was convinced that the way her rear end looked in them wouldn’t have crossed her mind. Or the fact that she had Flint Fortune directly behind her on the stairs.
Now she was far more conscious of where his eyes might be as they climbed the steps. And of what he might be thinking if he was at all interested in checking her out—which he probably wasn’t. But if he was, could he tell her butt wasn’t bad despite the baggy jeans?
But those were not thoughts she wanted to be having. And trying to elude them, she finished the second half of the stairs at a quicker pace.
Adam was waiting for them at the landing, his father’s brown eyes watching eagerly for Flint.
The moment Flint reached the top, Adam said, “Iss over here,” and made a dash for the bedroom beside the nursery where Anthony was napping.
Jessie and Flint again trailed her son into the small bedroom that had yet to be decorated but contained the necessities—a double bed, a nightstand complete with a lamp and a dresser upon which was an old television set.
“We live there!” Adam announced excitedly. He was standing at one of the bedroom’s two windows and pointing to the house next door.
“Ah, right. Coop mentioned that.”
Jessie appreciated that Flint indulged the little boy by setting his suitcase down and joining Adam at the window.
“See?” Adam said when Flint got there. “Tha’s my mom’s window. You can see ‘er when she puts on her ‘jamas and stuff.”
Out of the mouths of babes …
It was an innocent-enough comment, so there wasn’t anything to actually be embarrassed by. And yet Jessie felt some heat rise in her cheeks. Possibly because she was picturing the kind of scene Adam was unwittingly portraying.
Or possibly because it seemed as if Flint might be, too, because he turned a disarmingly devilish smile to her.
“That’s why we pull our shades when we undress, Adam,” Jessie lectured. “So no one can see us when we put on our pajamas.”
“But you could wave to each other,” Adam persisted. “Cuz wookit, tha’s yur room, Mama, I kin see it!”
“Yes, that’s my room,” Jessie acknowledged.
“And we’ll be sure to wave to each other. Every night,” Flint assured, barely suppressing a grin.
“Oh, definitely,” Jessie agreed as if she, too, could joke about it when the truth was that she was having a silly schoolgirl image of peering at the handsome man just across the way.
“An’ wookit down there,” Adam said then, oblivious of the exchange between the adults. “Tha’s my gramma and grampa cookin’ on the barber-cue, and tha’s Ella an’ Braden an’ Beth’ny playin’ wis the hose—you kin see them all, too.”
“I can,” Flint said.
“And if Gramma and Grampa are cooking that means we’d better get home for dinner,” Jessie said, using the information to make her escape.
“Can Fwint come?”
“Aunt Kelsey has other plans for Flint’s dinner tonight.”
“Can I come back after dinner?” the tiny child asked hopefully.
“After dinner you need a bath, so no. You’ll see Flint again soon.”
“As I understand it, we’re all going to be working on the house this week, buddy, so we’ll probably see a lot of each other.”
Jessie recognized the expressions that crossed her son’s face as he decided whether to throw a tantrum or be appeased. In the end he drew an exaggerated breath, sighed it out with great effect and said a very reluctant, “Okay.”
“Come on, let’s get going,” Jessie said, seizing the moment before he changed his mind and threw the tantrum anyway.
“And Adam?” Flint added as the little boy trudged from the window to his mother. “I’ll be wearing tennis shoes like yours tomorrow, so don’t worry about the boots.”
Jessie laughed lightly at that and said, “Thanks, that saves me a fight tomorrow morning.”
“I thought it might,” Flint said with yet another smile, this one understanding and yet still so engaging.
Engaging enough that a split-second elapsed while Jessie stared into that smile, into those unique eyes of his and forgot everything.
Then Adam yanked her back to reality by taking her hand and tugging her downward while he stood on his tip-toes to whisper, “He called me buddy. Tha’ means we’re frien’s.”
“That is what it means,” Jessie confirmed, appreciating that Flint had taken some care with her son’s feelings. Telling herself that that was all she was appreciating about the man.
And all she intended to appreciate about him.
Chapter Two
Flint woke Monday morning to the sound of children’s voices outside, a baby fussing in the next room, water running somewhere nearby and a sprinkler whoosh-whoosh-whooshing in the distance.
Definitely not the quiet of his apartment on the outskirts of Denver.
Then his brother Cooper’s voice drifted to him from somewhere close by, reminding him that he was in Texas. In Red Rock.
Where his mother was born and raised. Where a chunk of his extended family lived. Where his mother had brought him, his two brothers and his sister to visit growing up—usually because she’d wanted to get rid of her kids while she went on yet another honeymoon, or because she needed to finagle money out of some of that extended family between husbands or jobs or cities or any of the other flights of fancy that were always in play with Cindy Fortune.
Flint opened his eyes and recognized the tidy spare bedroom of the house his brother had just moved into. Where he was taking a slight hiatus from his own work to help fix up the place and spend some time with Coop, his newly discovered son, Anthony, and new fiancée, Kelsey, and with he and Coop’s other brother Ross and their sister, Frannie, who also lived in Red Rock.
He’d be spending time with some of the other extended family, too, but for a change that didn’t strike him as such a bad thing.
In the last five months the Fortune family had seen a lot of turmoil that was hopefully beginning to settle down. Turmoil that still came with a whole lot of questions that had yet to be answered because the current head of the family—his Uncle William—had suffered a head injury in a car accident and remained in the throes of amnesia, unable to answer those questions.
But surprisingly to Flint, in the course of all the madness, he and his siblings had learned that they really weren’t considered the black sheep of the Fortune family the way they’d always thought they were. That they were actually thought of as valued members of the group in spite of their mother and the haphazard way she’d raised them. In spite of the fact that none of them had been quite as brilliantly successful as their cousins.
So for once Flint was happy to be in Red Rock, even if all the noise had cost him his last half hour of sleep.
Because it was impossible for him to doze off with the racket outside, he conceded to it, sat up and swung his feet to the floor.
Which left him facing the window aimed at the house next door. The house young Adam had pointed out to him yesterday when he’d first gotten here. Jessie’s house.
That had to be where all the voices were coming from.
For the sake of decency, Flint dragged on his jeans from the day before and a white undershirt. Then he stood and went to the window. The drapes left a gap that gave him a view of the other house even from bed. Now he used a single index finger to nudge them open a few inches more so he could better see out.
Yep, a whole passel of kids were running around in the backyard, where it looked like parts for a swing set or a jungle gym were being delivered.
Flint couldn’t have cared less about that. But he stayed at the window, his gaze drifting up to the one directly across from his.
Jessie’s curtains were open this morning. They hadn’t been when he’d checked last night before he’d gone to bed before closing his own drapes as far as they would go. But there was no sign of Kelsey’s sister, then or now.
He had to laugh a little, though, when he thought about what young Adam had said the day before and the fact that those curtains had been so steadfastly closed last night to ensure that he hadn’t been able to see Jessie put on her pajamas, or even just smile and wave when she saw him.
Too bad.
He wouldn’t have minded getting a glimpse of that petite body, with the great rear end that had tantalized him all the way up the stairs and the hint of firm breasts hidden beneath that oversize T-shirt.
The weird thing was that he also wouldn’t have minded just seeing her wave to him. And for that he had no explanation.
What was he, some schoolboy hoping for just a look at the girl next door? Just a raise of her hand to acknowledge him?
He hadn’t felt like that since he was thirteen. He’d actually stood there for at least half an hour last night hoping she would appear. And here he was again this morning.
She was something to look at, he told himself as consolation for how dumb it seemed.
Not that he hadn’t seen—up close and personal—plenty of women who were something to look at. But a pretty woman was always something to look at. And Kelsey’s sister? She was more than just pretty. A lot more.
When he’d first seen her yesterday, he’d recalled, instantly, the first moment he’d seen her.
She was the woman from Lily’s party who had caught his eye over and over again, long before he’d finally been introduced to her.
Jessie—he’d barely learned her name and he hadn’t had the chance for more than that at the time.
Then all of a sudden yesterday, there she’d been again, in the living room downstairs.
She was lovely. Downright beautiful, actually. Even in baggy jeans and that World’s Greatest Mom T-shirt. Beautiful, but in an approachable kind of way. Natural and artless. And without any indication that she was even aware of her looks.
She had the silkiest hair he’d ever seen—chestnut brown and so shiny that it glistened as it fell to below her shoulders around a face that no man could ignore. Her skin was fresh and flawless, interrupted by only a small, adorable dot of a beauty mark just below the corner of her left eye.
And those eyes, big, round, cocoa-brown, they had the softest look to them. They glimmered a little—they were almost dewy. He’d had trouble glancing away from them.
Until his own gaze had slid down her straight, thin, well-shaped nose to those lush, exquisite lips. Slightly full but not too full. Petal pink. Just the right shape. Perfect whether she was smiling or talking or doing nothing at all with them. Perfect for kissing …
Not that he’d ever know if that was true, he reprimanded himself, shoving aside the thought by altering his view from her bedroom window to her backyard again.
Four kids.
Four!
A mom—however beautiful—who had been widowed somehow and left to raise them on her own. That was a situation shouting for him to stay away.
He was happy for his own three siblings—all married or engaged. But for himself? Marriage wasn’t in the cards.
He’d tried it once, and once was enough. More than enough to confirm what he’d seen of marriage growing up and watching his mother do it again and again. Complicated and difficult and costly. Something that could too easily deteriorate into a very, very ugly situation—that was what marriage was to him, and as far as he was concerned, it didn’t have anything to recommend it.
And the fact that Jessie had four kids?
Flint wasn’t a kid person. One of the worst pieces of news he’d ever received in his life had come last month when word had gotten to him that Anthony might be his. He hadn’t had the foggiest idea what he was going to do if that was true. And he’d never experienced the kind of relief he’d known when the baby had turned out to be Cooper’s instead.
I’m just not dad material, he thought, remembering Kelsey’s comment about how Adam had chosen him as a role model and not even feeling as if he could be that. He didn’t have any idea how to be either of those things. How could he when his own father had barely had anything to do with him, when none of his mother’s other men—husbands or not—had ever hung around long enough to be either of those to him? When he hadn’t spent enough time with the Fortunes to have found that in Red Rock either?
Plus he liked his freedom. He liked coming and going as he pleased. He was enjoying his life the way it was now and he didn’t want to change anything.
And when it came to women? There was no shortage of them—never had been. Not even when he made it clear that he had a strict no-strings policy. That he liked to keep things light.
Which didn’t mean kids. Or the extra responsibility, the extra burden of worrying about those kids ending up feeling the way he and his sister and brothers had felt every time another man had come into their mother’s—and consequently their—lives. Every time they even began to get accustomed to those same men and then watched them walk out the door.
It was something he never wanted to inflict on any child, let alone four of them.
So Jessie was a no-go for him. However beautiful she was, with four kids who could end up getting hurt in the shuffle he’d learned so well as a child himself, she was strictly, totally, completely, one-hundred-percent off-limits, regardless of how beautiful she was. Or how doe-soft her eyes were. Or how kissable her lips might be, or how much he’d wanted to reach up and run his fingertips over her cheek to find out if her skin was as smooth as it looked …
Then, suddenly, there she was—in the yard with all her kids.
And just as suddenly all those kids seemed to fade into the background as he honed in on her as if she were out there alone, her hair drinking in the morning sunshine and reflecting it.
She was wearing better-fitting jeans today, with a tank top tucked into the jeans. And when she leaned over to check a tag on whatever it was that had been delivered, her well-shaped backside was impossible for him not to look at.
Flint’s hand actually tingled with the urge to cup that great little bum, and suddenly being a good role model was the last thing on his mind. Only Jessie was. And the fact that in just a while she was scheduled to come over here and work …
Knock it off! he commanded himself, refocusing his eyes, making sure his view again took in those four kids running around, climbing on things, making a ruckus.
She has four kids, he told himself once more, firmly, sternly, determined to brand it into his brain so that he never lost sight of it.
But then she stood up straight again, turned enough to be in profile, slipped her hands into the rear pockets of those jeans and this time it was the sweet, sweet swell of her breasts that made his hands ache to touch.
But it didn’t matter, he swore to himself. She was a no-go.
And he meant it. If he had to dredge up every lousy memory he had of his own childhood to stick to it, that’s what he’d do.
But one way or another he wasn’t getting involved with The Mom Next Door.
“I don’t think I know your last name—or is it Hunt, like Kelsey’s?”
It was not easy for Jessie to be in her sister’s laundry room, sharing the painting duties with Flint late Monday afternoon after he and Cooper had returned from buying supplies for that day’s project.
The space was small—only big enough for a side-by-side washer and drier with enough room in front of them to open their front-loading doors. And if Flint had seemed to fill Kelsey’s entire living room the day before with his mere presence, it was nothing compared to the laundry room.
In close quarters, alone, with a potently attractive man—how was she supposed to keep her mind on painting, let alone small talk?
There was nothing Jessie could do but try to make the best of it. And because Flint was going to be her sister’s brother-in-law, she decided she might as well get to know him.
“I’m Hunt-Myers,” Jessie answered, hoping it wasn’t unduly belated and also hoping that the fact that she’d been climbing to sit cross-legged on the tarp covering the drier so she could paint the wall behind it offered a reason for the delay. “I hyphenated when I got married. I guess it was a way of maintaining some independence and then it stuck.”
They’d begun painting at the door, gone in opposite directions but were now both working on the long wall behind the appliances. The lower half of the wall was tiled and so didn’t need paint, and unlike Jessie, Flint was tall enough to reach the half above the appliances just by leaning over the washing machine.
He was dressed in a pair of old, ragged, torn jeans, and an equally as worn chambray shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. They were clearly work clothes and yet they still managed to look good on him—and to accentuate his every asset. Assets that Jessie was all too aware of when his well-shaped rear end, or muscular jean-encased thighs, or broad shoulders or expansive chest were always mere inches away from her.
“What about you?” she countered. “You and Coop are both Fortunes, but you’re Fortunes on your mother’s side, aren’t you?”
“We are,” he said amiably. “My mother never took any of her husband’s last names. Maybe she knew none of her marriages would last.”
Beyond the fact that Cindy Fortune was not well thought of, Jessie knew nothing about Flint and Cooper’s mother. But even though she was curious—especially about that comment about multiple marriages—it seemed beyond the realm of small talk to ask for details. So with the name-related questions answered, she opted for moving on.
“You live in Denver, right?” she said then.
“Right. Just outside of the city itself.”
“Do you have a house or—”
“I rent an apartment. I like to have a home base, but not with roots that are too deep. If I end up with a neighbor I don’t like, or the grass looks greener somewhere else, I want to be able to pack my stuff and move on without much fuss. That’s what I grew up with, and I guess it stuck.”
“The Fortune family are staples around here—ranchers, businessmen, philanthropists—they’re pillars of the community. But you grew up rootless?”
“Oh, yeah,” he answered with a mirthless laugh.
But again he didn’t offer an explanation beyond that and again Jessie thought that to push him for more might be prying.
He didn’t let there be an awkward silence, though, before he said, “What about you? Do you own the place next door?”
“I do,” she answered, liking that he didn’t put her in a position of quizzing him, that he asked questions of his own. Although she tried not to think that he might actually be interested in her, and told herself he was likely just being polite.
“Owning a house of our own was my late-husband’s and my biggest goal when we got married,” she went on. “It took us five years of saving, but we celebrated our fifth anniversary by moving into that house.”
“And you’re still there after how long?”
“Eight years.”
“That’s an eternity to me. You must be all about deep roots.”
“Stability is important to me.”
“And family, too, I’m guessing—because your parents live with you and now you have Kelsey right next door.”
“You could definitely say I’m all about family,” she confirmed. “I don’t know what I would do without them.”
“That’s nice,” he said just when she was wondering if he was approving or disapproving of her closeness to her family. But he sounded as if he honestly did think it was nice and she wondered if he regretted that he wasn’t closer to his own family.
But again he kept their chat going by saying, “It was you who gave Coop the heads-up when this place became available, wasn’t it?”
“It was. That’s how it all came about so fast.”
“And they’re renting with an option to buy, right?”
“With the first three months rent-free because none of this work is being hired out.”
“That’s a big change for Coop, too—that putting down roots thing. But he seems really happy.”
“I think he is. I know Kelsey is.”
“Good for them!” Flint decreed. “And Kelsey is okay raising Anthony?”
“She is. I don’t think she would love him any more if he were her own.”
Jessie knew that Anthony was the product of an earlier relationship Cooper had had with a woman named Lulu. There were many questions about Anthony turning up in Red Rock at the same time Flint and Cooper’s Uncle William had had his car accident in January. Ultimately Anthony had been linked to the Fortunes through a small gold medallion that had been draped around his blanket-cocooned little body by a fragile chain. A medallion that had been traced back to Cindy Fortune’s children, narrowing the possibilities for Anthony’s father to Cooper or Flint.
“I’m really glad it all worked out for them the way it did,” Flint said. “It looks like Anthony will have a good home.”
“Were you disappointed that he wasn’t yours?” Jessie asked.
Flint laughed spontaneously. “No,” he answered forcefully. “I was a wreck thinking he might be mine and wondering what I was going to do with him if he was. I can’t even keep plants alive. Believe me, this was a much better way for things to turn out.”
“What would you have done if he’d been yours?” Jessie ventured, challenging him just a bit.
He laughed again. “I probably would have cried like a baby myself,” he joked.
Jessie smiled at the wall she was painting, amused by the thought of the man she’d been thinking of as supermacho quaking at the mere possibility that he might be a father.
“I would have stepped up,” he said then, without hesitation, winning him points. “But I’m afraid poor Anthony would have suffered for it.”
Jessie laughed at him. “Well, I know you travel for work and that would have made it a lot more complicated, so you’re probably right—it’s for the best that things ended up the way they did.”
But what she didn’t know was much about his work and that seemed like another avenue for conversation, so she said, “You’re in sales, aren’t you?”
“Buying and selling, yeah.”
“What is it that you buy and sell?”
“I buy Western-themed arts and crafts and novelty items, and I sell them to gift shops and galleries and some private clients all across the country.”
That piqued her interest. “When you say that you buy arts and crafts and novelty items, do you mean from manufacturers or—”
“I have accounts with some wholesale houses that bring up trinket-type things from Mexico. But whenever I can I buy from artists and craftsmen. I like to deal in the unique and original more than in the mass-produced stuff.”
“Do you work for a company or something?”
“The business is mine. But business sounds more … I don’t know, corporate than I am. I’ve just come up with a name—Fortune Fine Arts and Crafts—because I’m in the process of having a website set up so I can do more selling over the internet. But really, I’m just a middleman—I hunt down stuff to sell, usually buy it outright myself and then resell it at a profit. Or sometimes I find a gallery or shop that will let me place a piece there and if it sells, the money gets split three ways—between whoever produced it, whoever’s shop or gallery it was sold from, and me.”
“That would make you an agent or an artist’s representative, then, wouldn’t it?”
“Again, sounds a lot fancier than I am. What I am is an old-fashioned horse trader. Except that I don’t deal in horses, I deal in brass sculptures of horses and kachina dolls and hand-sewn moccasins and tribal headdresses and authentic totem poles.”
“Hmm. I never considered that there would be a market for tribal headdresses or totem poles.”
“They aren’t my best sellers, but they’re fairly popular for decorating hunting and fishing lodges and hotels that want a rustic appeal.”
“And I guess you can’t call yourself a totem pole seller,” she teased him a little.
“That’s why we just say that I’m in sales,” he concluded, pleasing her with the fact that he’d grasped her gentle gibe.
“Is the goal of the new website to reduce the amount of travel you have to do?” she asked.
“I guess potentially it could, but the traveling doesn’t bother me. I don’t have anything tying me down, and I like getting around, seeing the country. The life of a traveling salesman suits me.”
Their painting met at the center of the wall behind the washer and drier then, and while Flint stepped back to survey their handiwork, Jessie used one final application of her roller to blend that meeting line seamlessly.
And with that, she sat back and looked around, too.
“That didn’t take long,” she admitted, thinking that the time had actually seemed to fly.
“Apparently we work well together,” Flint said just as Adam burst through the door with an excited, “Hi, Fwint!”
“Hi, Adam,” Flint greeted the three-year-old with a mirroring of Adam’s enthusiasm. “Where’ve you been today?”
“He’ppin my grampa wis our new junger gym. We digged howes for plantin’ the powes so it don’t fauw over.”
“They dug holes to cement the poles into the ground so the jungle gym doesn’t fall over,” Jessie translated. “Sometimes the L’s come out and sometimes they just don’t.” Then to her son, she said, “What are you doing here now?”
Before Adam answered that Jessie heard the voice of her oldest daughter, Ella, calling for Adam.
“We’re in the laundry room, El,” Jessie called back.
The seven-year-old bounded in, much the way Adam had except rather than joyfully having discovered Flint, the much more serious Ella scowled at her brother. “Gramma said you could only come with me if you held my hand, and you didn’t!”
“I had to find Fwint,” Adam answered as if his sister should have known that.
“Ella, you remember Flint, don’t you? Coop’s brother?” Jessie interjected, both to remind her daughter of her manners and to avoid a fight between her oldest and youngest.
“I remember,” was all Ella said to Flint because she was still more intent on wrangling with her brother. And to Adam she goaded, “Flint. His name is Flint.”
“Okay, okay,” Jessie said before war broke out. “What’s up, El?”
“Gramma says it’s almost dinnertime and she needs a pan she can’t find to cook. Can you come home and show her where it is?”
“I think I can probably do that. We’re finished here, aren’t we?” Jessie said, trying not to analyze why she was sorry that that was true, and why she was also sorry to be pulled away so suddenly.
“Looks finished to me,” Flint confirmed.
To Ella, Jessie said, “You can tell Gramma I’ll come home as soon as I wash out these paint things.”
“Come on, Adam, let’s go,” Ella said as if she’d just been given the upper hand.
“Ouw go wis Mama when she goes.”
“Adam …” Ella said in the warning tone she always took when she was in the mode of oldest-child-as-boss.
This time it was Flint who stepped in before a fight broke out. To Jessie, he said, “I’ll take care of the cleanup, go ahead and go home.”
Jessie laughed. “Be careful. I’m the mother of four—I don’t get offers for other people to cleanup too often and I never turn them down when I do.”
That made him smile back at her—a wide grin that showed perfect white teeth and drew ever-so-appealing lines around the corners of his mouth. And the very fact that his smile made her flush was a phenomenon Jessie didn’t want to delve into.
“Go,” he urged with a nudge of that sexy, slightly dimpled chin.
“If you’re sure …”
“I’m sure. It’s nothing.”
So he’s not only hot, but he’s also a nice guy, Jessie thought, remembering the previous day’s conversation with her sister.
But that, too, wasn’t something she should be caring about and she decided that before she started to actually like this guy, she’d better go home where she belonged.
“Okay, I’ll take you up on that, then,” she announced, scooting around on the drier so that she could get down.
But that set the tarp into motion and it began to slide, taking her with it until Flint lunged forward to catch her.
And in a split second Jessie found herself with Flint Fortune’s handsome face scant inches from hers, his arms on either side of her, his hands flat against the tarp but so close to her rear end that she thought she could almost feel them.
And her own hands somehow clasped to his powerhouse shoulders to catch herself.
Wide-eyed, she stared into his dark eyes and wasn’t quite sure whether it was the near fall from the drier or Flint that had stolen her breath. But one way or another, for a moment she was frozen there, so close that they could have kissed had either of them moved an inch.
And why that went through her mind, she had no idea.
“Mama?” Ella said with some shock in her voice.
It took Jessie a moment to remember herself, to breathe, to veer away from Flint and pull her hands from shoulders she was enjoying the feel of much too much …
“Whoops,” she said feebly.
“Mama aw-most fawed off—tha’s funny,” Adam said with a giggle.
“Thanks for the catch,” Jessie muttered, leaning as far back from Flint as she could.
But still he stayed where he was, anchoring the tarp, looking into her eyes, while a much more intimate smile slowly spread agile lips. So intimate that it made something skitter across the surface of Jessie’s skin—a sensation she hadn’t had in longer than she could remember.
“No problem,” he said in a voice that had a deeper, almost sensual timbre.
Then he pushed off the drier and took hold of the tarp from behind her. “Okay, now slide off,” he advised.
Under the watchful eye of two of her children, Jessie did, wondering at the scowl that had come onto Ella’s pretty, freckled face as the little girl glared at Flint as if he’d done something wrong.
“Okay, we better get going before Gramma sends more troops,” Jessie said in a tone she hoped sounded normal. Inside, though, she was a jumble of excitement and confusion and something that seemed to remind her she was a woman—a feeling she hadn’t experienced in a very, very long time.
As she guided her kids out of the laundry room she couldn’t help glancing back just once because she thought she could feel Flint watching her.
He stood with his hips leaning against the front of the drier, his arms crossed over his wide chest. And he wasn’t merely watching her—there was something else in those eyes that almost seemed appreciative …
Why that again set off that tingling-across-the-surface-of-her-skin feeling, that reminder that she was a woman, she didn’t know.
She only knew that it needed to stop.
And it needed not to happen again.
She was a mother, first and foremost, and she couldn’t let herself be distracted from that. She already had her hands full.
And yet just the thought of having her hands full made her mind wander back to the feel of Flint’s rocksolid shoulders.
And whether she wanted to admit it or not, she’d liked the way they’d felt.
Chapter Three
Flint stood high atop his brother’s roof early Tuesday morning. He was supposed to be checking for loose shingles. Instead he was so intent on watching Jessie cross from her backyard into Cooper’s through the connecting gate that he was late in realizing that a car had pulled up in front of the house.
Only when Jessie had disappeared from sight was Flint’s attention drawn in the opposite direction, just as his other brother Ross was getting out from behind the wheel.
“Hey, down there! This is a surprise!” Flint called.
No one had said anything about Ross coming by today, or about his bringing their uncle William and William’s fiancée, Lily. But there they all were.
“I have some news,” Ross yelled back as he closed the driver’s side door.
Growing up, Ross, the oldest of Cindy’s children had looked out for his siblings and in that same vein, Flint saw him making sure that the elderly couple got safely out of his car as Flint climbed down the ladder and met them at the front porch.
William and Lily were supposed to be married in January. The match between William and his late-cousin Ryan’s widow had been kept quiet until they’d both felt the family could accept their relationship. The relationship that had come about despite the fact that William and Ryan had been close, despite the fact that Lily had adored her husband until his death six years before from a brain tumor. Two years ago, the also-widowed William and Lily had found their way to each other, and what had begun as a family connection turned into a friendship that had blossomed into love.
Their wedding had been set for January first—a New Year’s Day celebration. But William had never made it to the church. There had been speculation that he’d run off with another woman, that he’d been kidnapped, that any number of things had caused him to leave Lily at the altar voluntarily or involuntarily. His car had been discovered days later, having gone off a road near the neighboring town of Haggerty, almost completely concealed in a wooded ravine. William was nowhere around.
For months it hadn’t been known where he was, or whether he was dead or alive. Then, just a few weeks ago, he was located living on the streets in Haggerty, suffering from amnesia, not even aware of who he was.
Since being returned to Red Rock, to his family, to Lily—who had always believed William would return to her—he was getting better at recognizing the people who cared about him. And because he had a particular soft spot for Anthony—for no reason anyone could explain—Flint knew that whenever she got the chance, Lily liked to expose William to the baby in hope that something about Anthony was reaching William’s deeply buried recollections and helping to draw them to the surface.
“I don’t know what news you have, but it’s good to see you all,” Flint greeted the small group. “How are you feeling, Uncle William?”
“A little like I’m walking through a fog, but okay,” the older man answered, still sounding slightly befuddled.
“I thought it might be better if I brought Lily and Uncle William with me rather than tell what I have to tell twice,” Ross said then.
“Sure. Why don’t we go inside?” Flint suggested, ushering the threesome up the porch steps and hollering “We have company,” as he went in behind them all.
From upstairs came Coop, and from the kitchen at the rear of the house came Kelsey and the newly arrived Jessie.
And while Flint had no explanation for it, he only had eyes for Jessie, whom he said good morning to.
More greetings made the rounds and then Kelsey got everyone out to the picnic table in the backyard for coffee because no single section of the house could comfortably seat so many at once yet.
“I’m glad to see you back with us, Flint,” William said as they all settled. “I do remember that you were leaving after Anthony’s party for a business trip.”
“And I’m glad to see that you know who I am,” Flint teased his uncle.
With a nod in the direction of Jessie, William added, “And this beauty? She must be your wife?”
They were sitting beside each other—at Kelsey’s suggestion. But Flint was slightly discouraged by this lapse in his uncle’s recall.
“No, this is Jessie, Kelsey’s sister,” Flint explained as if it were no big deal that William had made the mistake. “I’m not married anymore.”
As if to get past William’s lapse, Lily jumped in then to ask where Anthony was.
“Coop just put him down for his morning nap,” Kelsey answered. “But you can look in on him later if you want.”
After a drink of his coffee, Ross took the lead. “I had a call from the police today,” he began.
As a private detective, Ross was the family’s closest link to law enforcement. He’d done all he could to try to find William when he was missing, as well as to look into the whereabouts of Lulu Carlton—Anthony’s birth mother—for Cooper.
After having it confirmed that Anthony was Coop’s son, Coop had done the math—he’d been involved with Lulu at the time Anthony would have been conceived. He hadn’t had any idea that she was pregnant when they’d broken up and he’d left her in Minnesota, but Ross had discovered that she’d come to Texas.
Ross had also discovered that there had been a car accident near where William’s car had gone off the road, on the same day William had disappeared, that a woman had been killed in that accident but that without identification, she was in the Haggerty morgue, listed as a Jane Doe.
The time lapse between when Jane Doe’s accident had been reported and when William’s car had been discovered in the ravine days later had raised questions about whether the two incidents were related. No one had yet to answer those questions. But the coincidence had made Ross suggest that Cooper take a look at Jane Doe.
Sure enough, Coop had identified her as Lulu Carlton and provided his son’s mother with a proper burial.
In the course of all that, Ross had had several dealings with state and local police, so it was no surprise that news coming through those same channels that involved the Fortune family would still go to Ross first.
“It seems,” he was saying, “that the man who was working at the church as the groundskeeper in January was arrested for stealing a car and robbing a convenience store in Dallas a couple of days ago. His name is Charlie something-or-other. He wasn’t alone, he had that Courtney woman with him—the one who brought Anthony to Max Allen—”
“Max Allen?” William asked, obviously lost.
Lily placed a reassuring hand over William’s where it rested on the picnic table. “Remember you met him—he’s Kirsten’s brother?”
“Oh, that’s right—that pretty girl my son Jeremy is going to marry. Max is her brother.”
“Right,” Ross confirmed. And apparently because William was drawing a blank, he explained what everyone else knew. “Courtney was Max Allen’s old girlfriend. She showed up on his door with Anthony, saying he was Max’s baby. Max didn’t believe her, and it was because he brought Anthony to the attention of the authorities that we figured out that Anthony belongs to Coop.”
“Ah,” William said.
Because the older man seemed to have grasped that, Ross continued. “Police in Dallas came down pretty hard on both the church’s former groundskeeper and this Courtney, looking for prior bad acts. Courtney broke down, gave enough information for the cops to use as leverage with the groundskeeper and—between the two of them—got the whole story. Apparently the groundskeeper found Anthony on the back doorstep of the church on what would have been the wedding day.”
“And all this time we’ve been thinking that Anthony must have been in the accident with Lulu? That someone took him from the scene?” Coop said.
Ross shrugged. “No one knew where else he might have come from.”
“But now it seems as if Lulu left him at the church?” Flint asked.
“We’re thinking that maybe she saw the announcement of Uncle William and Lily’s wedding somewhere, and thought that if she left him there that day, one of us would find him. That when we saw the medallion strung around him, we’d figure he belonged with us.”
“But none of us did find him,” Coop put in.
“So the groundskeeper took him,” Ross went on, “and pawned Anthony off on this Courtney woman. She actually got attached to the baby, which was why she wanted to make sure he got to someone she thought might do right by him when it occurred to her that she couldn’t keep him herself. That was when she went to Max Allen.”
“And if I’m remembering right,” Kelsey interjected, “First Courtney claimed that Anthony belonged to her and Max, then her story changed and she swore Anthony was her son with the groundskeeper.”
“Right. But like I said, Max Allen got suspicious,” Ross repeated. “And thanks to that and the medallion that these two less-than-upstanding citizens didn’t take from Anthony, we were able to do the DNA test that connected him with Coop.”
“We’re so lucky this worked out the way it did,” Coop said, choking up.
“It could have been so much worse,” Kelsey said.
“But he ended up with the two of you,” Flint reminded to soothe his brother and Kelsey’s fears before they got unduly out of control with what might have been.
“Anthony ended up with his family,” William confirmed victoriously. “That’s all that matters.”
“That and that we have you safely back, too,” Lily put in, squeezing William’s hand on the picnic table.
“Even if my memory is full of more holes than Swiss cheese,” William joked.
They all laughed at that before assuring the older man that everything would come back in time—what Flint knew was just wishful thinking at that point.
Then, to Kelsey, Lily said, “We shouldn’t keep you when you have so much work to do. Maybe we could just take that little peek at Anthony while he’s sleeping and we’ll get out of your way.”
“I know I could use a peek at him,” Coop said, still sounding unnerved by the thought of the complicated path his son had taken to get to him.
As everyone stood up from the picnic table, Kelsey turned to Flint and said, “Don’t get back on the roof. I have jobs for you to do with Jessie today.”
That brought a jab of Jessie’s elbow into Kelsey’s ribs that made Flint wonder if Jessie was unhappy with the prospect of working side by side with him.
But as Jessie began to gather empty coffee cups to take into the house, he hoped that that wasn’t the case.
And not just because the morning sunshine glistened off her hair like spun copper.
But because as home repairs went, doing them side by side with her took all the chore out of it for him.
“When I says g’night to my grampa I kisses his cheek. But Grampa says that when other mens says g’night they pro’bly shakes han’s.”
And with that explanation, Adam held out his tiny hand for Flint to shake.
Jessie watched Flint fight to keep from laughing, smiling instead as he accepted Adam’s outstretched hand and shook it. “Good night, Adam. Sleep tight.”
“Tha’s what my mama says,” Adam exclaimed before he ran off to join his brother, sisters and grandparents as they all went in the rear door of Jessie’s house.
“Your son cracks me up,” Flint said, releasing the laugh he’d been so obviously holding in.
Jessie smiled at Flint’s comment as she watched her youngest disappear inside.
The day had ended the way it had begun—at a picnic table. Only tonight it was the picnic table in Jessie’s backyard where she, her four kids, her parents and Kelsey, Coop, Anthony and Flint had all shared the grilled chicken that Jeannie Hunt had prepared for dinner.
It was nearly nine o’clock now, however, and much the way the rest of the day and evening had gone, Kelsey had orchestrated things so that she and Coop took Anthony home at the same time that Jack and Jeannie Hunt were dispatched to put Ella, Braden, Bethany and Adam to bed, leaving Jessie and Flint sitting directly across from each other at the picnic table. Alone.
“They’re all great kids,” Flint added. “And every one of them looks like you. Especially Ella—she’s a miniature version of you.”
“I can see their father in each of the kids in small ways,” Jessie answered Flint’s observation, trying to hide her embarrassment at her sister’s less-than-subtle manipulations to put them together. “She’s also taller than I was at her age, and lanky, the way Pete was. And when she frowns—”
“Which she seems to do a lot,” Flint remarked. “Especially when she sees me.”
“I’m sorry about that. I know she’s sort of treating you like the enemy. There was something about your catching me when I nearly fell off the drier yesterday …” Something that had also imprinted every tiny nuance on Jessie’s brain to relive over and over again. “Well, whatever it was, Ella didn’t like the look of it and you seem to be getting the full blame. I think she’ll get over it in a day or two, but for now—”
“I’m not the guy who just kept you from falling, I’m the guy who got too up close and personal with her mom.”
Up close and personal enough for Jessie to smell the clean, woodsy scent of his cologne. To see even more clearly the flecks of gold that illuminated his dark eyes. To have felt those steely shoulders in the grip of her own hands …
She swallowed hard, feeling as breathless as she had in the moment.
“Anyway, give her a day or two, and Ella will probably come around,” Jessie finally managed to say when she’d dragged herself out of her split-second reverie.
Flint didn’t respond to that, instead he went on with what they’d been talking about before. “And the twins, they seem like the spitting image of you, too. How do they look like their dad?”
“Their coloring is all Pete—the lighter hair and eyes. And Adam has Pete’s smile and his turned-up nose.”
Flint nodded, but his eyes were on her intently the whole time, as if he were gauging his words before he said, “Do you mind if I ask how he died?”
Not when it was asked so gently, so compassionately, so mindful of it being difficult for her to talk about.
She sighed. “It was an accident at a building site. A faulty crane, a dropped girder …” But she couldn’t bring herself to go into the details, so she said, “We were both working for the same construction company—I ran the office, Pete was the electrical foreman, so he was in the field most of the time. Sometimes I had paperwork that would take me into the on-site office—that was always set up in a trailer that stayed on a big job—”
“Were you there when it happened?” Flint asked, his frown lines deep with horror on her behalf.
“I was,” she said, her voice cracking even though it was barely above a whisper. “Thankfully I didn’t see it, but I heard workman shouting, running, yelling for someone to call for an ambulance, which I did before I ever left the trailer or knew it was Pete I was calling for …”
“I’m so sorry,” Flint said with heartfelt sympathy.
“He literally never knew what hit him, which was a blessing, I think. And I didn’t have to see him—the owner of the company kept me away until they had Pete in the ambulance. I rode to the hospital holding his hand …”
Okay, she couldn’t talk about that without breaking down, and she didn’t want to break down. She’d done more than her share of crying. So she swallowed hard and said, “Things are pretty much a blur for me from there.”
“That’s probably a blessing, too, in this case.”
“I know my folks were at the hospital by the time I got there. Kelsey wasn’t living in Red Rock then, but she wasn’t far away and she was at home with the kids by the time my folks brought me back. Telling them was the hardest thing I’d ever done.”
“This was how long ago?”
“A little over two years.”
“Were the kids even old enough to understand?”
“Adam was only a baby, so no. He doesn’t even remember Pete except through pictures and stories I’ve told him. Braden and Bethany were two and a half, so they didn’t really get it either. For a long time they just kept asking where Daddy was, when he was coming home, and we’d have to tell them all over again, try to help them understand—”
“But Ella, she was five, right?”
“Right. She knew exactly what was going on, poor thing.” And that, too, brought the sting of tears to Jessie’s eyes. But in two years she’d learned well how to hold them at bay. “Ella went back and forth between her own grief and putting up a strong front. Half the time she played parent—helping with the other kids, making an attempt to look after me …”
“Ross.”
Jessie raised her eyebrows at Flint in question to his oldest brother’s name.
“Ross did that in my family,” Flint explained. “We all took care of each other, but it was Ross who led the way, who played parent.”
Again Jessie wasn’t sure exactly why that had been necessary, but not knowing the details, she assumed that it had something to do with his mother’s overall less-than-stellar reputation.
“I suppose,” Jessie said then, “that that’s what’s going on now, too—Ella is feeling protective. And maybe a little territorial.”
“So we’re being pushed and pulled,” Flint said then with a knowing smile.
Jessie thought she knew what he meant, but she didn’t want to assume too much so she merely repeated, “Pushed and pulled?”
“Ella wants to pull you away, to keep you to herself. But there’s a lot of pushing going on with Kelsey, and now Coop and tonight your parents, too …”
“I know, I’m sorry,” she apologized for the second time. “I was hoping maybe you hadn’t noticed the not-so-veiled attempts at matchmaking.”
Flint laughed again and Jessie wished she didn’t like the sound of it as much as she did.
“You thought I hadn’t noticed that we’re being dispatched to paint rooms together, to go to the store together, to do everything they can possibly get us to do together? That seating arrangements always put us side by side—”
“And now this—” Jessie interjected, raising both hands in the air and glancing around “—getting everybody out of here so we’re alone.”
Flint grinned that great grin that drew such sexy lines on his handsome face. “Yep, I noticed. Impossible not to. It seems to be a conspiracy.”
“But Kelsey is the mastermind.”
“I think her intentions are good,” Flint allowed.
“Oh, they are,” Jessie was quick to confirm. “She just wants what she thinks is best for me.” And it was a compliment to Flint that Kelsey thought he was it.
“The two of you are really close, aren’t you?”
“She’s not only my sister, she’s also my best friend.”
“And your folks, have you all always lived together?”
“No, they retired about the same time I lost Pete. They’d both worked for a small, independent paper company. They had planned to sell their house and do some traveling when the time came, but instead they moved in here with me to help get me through the loss and to lend a hand with the kids. They’ve been a godsend. Between them and Kelsey moving back to Red Rock eight months ago, I don’t think I could have made it without them. But the matchmaking … all I can do is say I’m sorry.”
Flint smiled again, not seeming perturbed by what her family—and his brother—were doing.
“It’s not so bad,” he said in a tone that seemed as if it might have held some innuendo, except that Jessie thought she was too out of practice with men to be sure. “I just don’t know how that roof is going to get fixed if I don’t get up there and give Coop a hand with it.”
“I’ll try again to reason with Kelsey,” Jessie said as Flint got to his feet, apparently ready to follow Kelsey and Cooper home.
Jessie stood, too, and without thinking about it, began to walk with Flint to the gate that connected her backyard to Kelsey’s.
“Maybe instead of that,” he said along the way, “we should give them a little of what they want.”
Jessie didn’t have any idea what he was talking about that time. “Give them what they want?”
“Maybe we should pretend to go on a date together, come back and say we just didn’t click. Maybe then they’d relax.”
An instant wave of dejection—or maybe rejection—washed through her at the thought that Flint had decided they didn’t click. That decision shouldn’t have been jarring—after all, they didn’t need to click beyond the friendly superficialities that were already in effect. There was no reason for anything more than that.
And she didn’t want there to be anything more than that, Jessie reminded herself. This was strictly a distant, siblings-of-in-laws relationship.
And yet it was somehow demoralizing to hear that Flint didn’t think they clicked …
Especially when she was so intensely aware of him in every way.
She hid her feelings behind what she hoped was nothing more than a curious expression and as they reached the gate, said, “A pretend date?”
Flint opened the gate, stood in the opening and turned to lean one shoulder against the six-foot-high side post so that he was facing her. “We’ll go out alone, have dinner someplace innocuous—Not Red, where all eyes would be on us.”
Red was the local restaurant owned by the Mendoza family, who were extremely close friends of the Fortunes. They even had family ties with them now that the Mendozas’ son, Marcos, was engaged to Wendy Fortune—a member of the Atlanta branch of the Fortune family who had only recently come to Red Rock.
“All eyes would definitely be on us at Red,” Jessie agreed.
“So we’ll go somewhere else. How about that barbecue place outside of Austin that Coop and Kelsey were talking about tonight?”
“They seemed to like it.”
“Then we’ll come home, I’ll say you’re great but there just weren’t any sparks. You can say I’m a big jerk if you want—”
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?
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