Читать книгу: «Lassoed by Fortune»

Chapter One

Liam Jones leaned back in his chair, nursing his beer and listening to two of his younger brothers, Jude and Toby, talking about a third younger brother, Christopher, who had recently picked up and moved to the nearby town of Red Rock.

As he listened, Liam’s frown, already a fixture on his face from the beginning of this conversation, deepened, highlighting his increasing disapproval.

Christopher, apparently, at least in his eyes, had gone and sold his soul to the devil.

Liam’s initial intent in coming to the bar at the Horseback Hollow Grill with two of his brothers was to unwind a little. Instead as he listened to Toby and Jude, he found himself getting progressively more and more annoyed. The current discussion was merely a theme and variation of the same old thing; a topic that had taken center stage in his family for months now: his mother’s rediscovered wealthy siblings.

Liam had always known his mother, Jeanne Marie, had been adopted and, like her, he’d thought nothing of it. Countless people were adopted; it was no big thing. Just this past year his own brother Toby had taken in three foster children.

What made it such a big thing, not just in his eyes but in everyone else’s, was that it turned out his mother had been given up for adoption, along with a sister she hadn’t even known about until just recently, by none other than a member of the highly revered Fortune family.

And that little bit of news had turned all of their worlds upside down.

The ironic thing was that his mother might have very well gone to her grave not knowing a thing about her roots if her brother, James Marshall Fortune, hadn’t come poking around, telling her that she was not only his sister but that she, he and the sister she had previously known nothing about—a British woman named Josephine May—were actually triplets.

The whole thing sounded like something out of a movie and if it had been a movie, he would have walked out on it right in the middle. Specifically around the part where this “long-lost brother” of hers gave her a whole wad of money. That had been James Marshall’s way of “making it up to her” for having lived a life that hadn’t been embedded in the lap of luxury.

As if money could fix everything and anything.

Liam found the whole money thing offensive and degrading. He resented the offering of a “consolation prize” to make up for the fact that his mother had lived a life that James Fortune obviously felt was beneath her.

When his mother gave Fortune back his money, Liam had never been prouder of her. But then she’d gone and spoiled it all by turning around and asking him and his siblings to not just recognize these interlopers as their blood relatives but to actually take on their surname.

Oh, they’d still be the Jones family, but now they’d all be known as the Fortune Joneses.

The hell they would, Liam thought angrily as he took another swig of his beer, which by now was decidedly no longer cold. But he hardly noticed.

In all honesty, he had expected his six siblings to feel exactly the way he did and was utterly stunned to discover that the whole thing didn’t even begin to bother them as much as it did him.

In fact, it felt as if his brothers and sisters were dropping like flies around him, taking on the Fortune name and forgetting just who the hell they were to begin with: Deke Jones’s offspring.

Granted, their father wasn’t an emotional, verbally effusive man. But at the same time, he was a decent, hardworking man who had always made sure they had food in their bellies, a roof over their heads and more opportunity to make something of themselves than he had. Some men showed they cared by talking, others by doing. Deke Jones fell into the latter category.

Liam sensed that this rush to embrace the Fortune name was a slap in the face for his father, even though Deke had said nothing about it either way.

But the look in his eyes certainly did.

As the conversation continued to revolve around Christopher and his drastic move out of town, Liam found that his temper had been brought dangerously close to the edge and was about to flare.

“You know, it’s like he’s not even the same person anymore,” Toby observed about the absent member of their family. “When this whole thing started, Christopher hated the Fortunes as much as we did. Now he’s run off to Red Rock to work for them. I just don’t get it,” Toby, who at twenty-eight was the youngest of the three of them, confessed, shaking his head.

Jude shrugged carelessly. “Oh, they’re not so bad,” he told Toby, defending this newly uncovered branch of the family. Blessed with a keen survival instinct, he deliberately avoided looking in Liam’s direction. Jude knew what his thirty-two-year-old brother thought of all the Fortunes and the last thing he was looking for was a fight. He just wanted to impart the information he’d learned about these new relatives of theirs. After all, fair was fair.

“Gabriella knows them,” Jude went on, referring to his fiancée, “and she said that they’re good people who just got a raw deal, bad-mouthed by folks who’re just jealous of their success and their money.” He spared one quick, fleeting glance in Liam’s direction to see how he was taking this and then just as quickly looked away. “You know how some people are. They try to drag down anyone who’s doing better than they are, thinking that might somehow elevate them.”

Liam had heard enough. Fed up, he slammed his beer mug down on the table with such force, the sound reverberated loudly enough to garner him a few curious looks from people seated at the nearby surrounding tables, not to mention the attention of several other patrons.

“Oh, come on.” Liam ground the words out angrily. “Wake up and smell the coffee, guys. Anyone saying anything good about those people is just trying to cozy up to their fat bank accounts and their fancy circle of friends. The Fortunes use people. Anyone who thinks different is just fooling themselves.”

Toby felt that his brother was forgetting a very important point in all this. “But Mom says—” he began.

Liam waved his hand at his younger brother before the latter could say anything further.

“I love Mom, but she’s just being emotional right now and I don’t fault her for that. But I’m a ‘Jones’ boy. Not ‘Fortune Jones,’ just plain old ‘Jones’ and I’m proud of it, proud of the old man, of having a father who worked hard to make a life for himself and his family. And I’m not about to change the way I feel just because some rich guy comes along and tells us we’re the missing branch of his family. Who knows if he’s even telling her the truth, anyway?”

“Why would he lie about something like that?” Toby wanted to know.

“Hell if I know,” Liam answered with a shrug. “Who knows why people like that do anything? Maybe there’s something in it for them that we don’t know about yet.” Which, to him, was all the more reason why they should view the whole scenario suspiciously. That way, they wouldn’t be wide open if something did happen.

Jude gave him a steely look. “You’re reaching, Liam. It doesn’t matter what you feel or don’t feel. That doesn’t change any of the facts—and the facts are you’ve got Fortune blood running through your veins. We all do. Face it, big brother, you’re a Fortune.”

Liam held up his hand, as if to physically stop the flow of words that could only lead to a knock-down, drag-out argument between them. Clearly nothing was going to be resolved here by talking about those people.

Deep down in his soul, he really felt that if by some wild chance he and his family welcomed these people with open arms, the Fortunes would only wind up infecting them with their greed.

With that in mind, it was best just to change the subject and talk about something else.

“How much longer are you planning on hanging on to those Hemings kids?” he asked Toby. “I mean, don’t you think that five months is plenty?”

“Not really,” Toby answered. “I haven’t exactly figured out what I’m doing yet. But just so you know,” he told Liam, “I like having those kids around. They make me see things differently.”

Liam laughed shortly. That certainly wouldn’t have been the way he would have felt about having three children infiltrating every corner of his life.

“To each his own, I guess,” he told Toby. “As for me, I don’t like being responsible for anyone else but myself.”

“Yeah, we already know that,” Toby commented dryly. “That’s not exactly a news flash.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t go boasting about that too much,” Jude warned Liam. “The gods have a way of taking you down a peg or two if they think you’re being too happy—or too irreverent,” Jude pointed out. And then, as if not to leave Toby out, he couldn’t help commenting, “You know that being responsible for three kids can’t be doing much for your social life.”

“Why don’t you let me worry about my social life,” Toby told Jude in a laid-back tone.

Jude turned toward Liam. “Speaking of social life, how’s yours been lately? You seem a little...I don’t know, solitary these days,” he said. “I can remember a time when you had to beat girls off with a stick.”

“I do just fine, thanks, Jude.” He grinned. “I’ve learned not to beat them off anymore.”

Liam had always been devoted to working on his ranch from sunup to sundown—and then some.

“Just remember—both of you,” Jude said, looking from one brother to the other. “Don’t underestimate the value of having a good woman at your side.”

Liam drained his mug, setting it down again. He had to be getting back soon. As always, there was work to be done.

But he wasn’t ready to leave just yet. “God, Jude, ever since you got engaged to that little Mendoza girl, you’re acting whipped.”

“Don’t let Gabriella hear you call her a little girl,” Jude warned seriously. “She’s certainly more woman than you ever went out with—except for maybe that Julia Tierney.”

Something within Liam tensed at the mere mention of Julia’s name. It always did. Everyone had at least one person they thought of as “the one that got away.” Julia was his.

“He never went out with Julia,” Toby told Jude.

Jude looked a little confused. “I thought Liam asked every girl in his senior class out,” Jude said.

“He did ask,” Toby answered, keeping a straight face. “But Julia was the only one with the good sense to turn him down.” He turned his sharp blue eyes on Liam. “That wounded your fragile pride, didn’t it, big brother?”

“Shut up, both of you,” Liam ordered in a flat, emotionless voice. “And for the record, my pride’s not fragile and it wasn’t wounded. Not going out with me was Julia’s loss, not the other way around,” he informed his brothers in a no-nonsense voice.

He saw Toby’s mouth drop open and wondered why since he hadn’t exactly said anything earth-shattering or that novel for that matter. The next moment, both his brothers were scrambling to their feet, as if, belatedly, to show their respect.

“Funny, I remember it the other way around,” a melodic female voice behind Liam’s chair said.

Caught off guard, Liam swung around so fast he almost caused his chair to tilt and deposit him on the sawdust floor. He managed to steady the chair at the very last moment, preventing a spill and a great deal of embarrassment on his part.

The object of their conversation was smiling a greeting at his brothers.

* * *

Julia had stopped by the Horseback Hollow Grill with a definite agenda in mind. The Grill was the town’s only restaurant and she had just happened upon a situation that could very well enable her to bring a second eatery to the small town.

She had been looking at The Grill with fresh eyes, as if she’d never seen the place before, when she’d heard Liam Jones making a commotion as he banged down his mug. Curiosity had prompted her to move closer to his table to find out what was going on. Ordinarily she would have kept to herself, but she was feeling hopeful about her future for the first time in a long time, so she’d decided to indulge herself and find out what the man was carrying on about.

He had certainly changed a lot since their high school days, she couldn’t help thinking. His build had gotten way more muscular and his tan appeared to be permanent, no doubt from his days on the ranch. But what he had gained in looks, he had lost in temperament. From the little bit she had caught, he sounded as though he was well on his way to becoming a grumpy old man, not the exciting, wild-eyed bad boy she had known in high school.

“Hello, boys. How are you?” she asked, looking at Toby and Jude. Then, as they nodded, offering almost a synchronized chorus of “Fine, how are you?” she looked at Toby. Her blue eyes crinkled as she asked, “How are the kids, Toby?”

“They’re doing great, thanks for asking,” Toby told her, beaming.

She didn’t leave it there, although she knew she could have. But she was serious in asking after the children Toby had selflessly taken in—surprising a lot of people—and she wanted Toby to be aware of something.

“You’re doing a good thing, Toby, taking those children in like that,” she said warmly. “Kids need to feel wanted. It anchors them.”

* * *

So now she was dispensing child-rearing advice? Liam thought. Well that went with the territory, didn’t it? Julia had always acted as if she felt she was above him and, by association, above his family, as well.

“Since when did you start dabbling in child psychology?” Liam asked, acutely aware that the one girl in high school who had actually hurt his budding male ego was still going out of her way to ignore him. And even more acutely aware that no matter how much he tried not to let it bother him—it did.

“That’s not psychology, that’s just common sense, Jones—or should I say Fortune Jones?” she asked, the corners of her mouth curving as she looked at him.

“Might just be wiser not to say anything at all,” Liam countered.

Jude and Toby exchanged looks and pushed their chairs in against the table.

“I think that’s our cue to leave,” Jude said to his younger brother. He then tipped the rim of his hat to Julia. “Nice seeing you again, Julia.”

“Yeah, see you around,” Toby echoed his brother, tipping his own hat belatedly.

Liam waited until his brothers had walked out of the bar before he said, “If you’re expecting to hear the same from me, you’re going to have to wait until hell freezes over.”

Rather than be affronted, Julia smiled up at Liam. “I’ve never expected anything from you, Liam, except exactly what you delivered. Which was nothing,” she added after a beat in case there was any question as to her meaning.

He was not about to take the bait, he told himself. Instead he said mildly, “Been sharpening that tongue of yours, I see.”

Julia inclined her head. “I guess you just bring out the worst in me, Jones.”

He appeared unfazed by her assessment. “I didn’t know there was anything else to bring out,” he replied mildly.

“Is that why you asked me out that time in high school?” she questioned with a knowing smile. She had been more than a little attracted to him at the time, but he had always had all these simpering girls around him, ready to do anything he asked just to be with him. It had been enough to turn her completely off. There was absolutely no way she would have ever allowed herself to be part of an adoring crowd, a devoted groupie like the others. Liam had had a large enough ego back then without her adding to it.

“Anyone else would have realized that I’d asked you out because I didn’t want you to feel left out and wonder if there was something wrong with you. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“There’s a difference between being left out of a crowd and being superior to the crowd. You seemed to thrive on having all those girls fawn over you and, frankly, I never saw what all the attraction was so I never wanted to join that very limited club,” she informed him. There was no way in heaven she’d admit to being attracted to him then—and she was even more unwilling to admit that the attraction had never really faded away.

His eyes narrowed, pinning her down. “For someone who didn’t want to join the club, I sure caught you looking at me enough times,” he recalled.

“Yes, I looked at you,” she admitted. “But if you’d actually looked back at me, you would have realized that was pity in my eyes, not admiration.” She shook her head, her long, straight hair moving like a mesmerizing red cloud as it framed her face. “But you just assumed that all the girls were so crazy about you.”

This could go on for hours. Though he would have never admitted it out loud, they were pretty evenly matched and he wasn’t about to get the best of her any time soon. She might not have anything else to do—since she was obviously not rushing back to the grocery store she managed for her ailing father—but he had a ranch to run.

“I don’t have time for this,” he declared abruptly.

“You never did have time for the truth,” he heard her say as he turned his back on her and walked out of the bar.

It took Liam a while to cool down. Longer than the trip back to the ranch. Julia Tierney was the one person in town who could raise his blood pressure to dangerous heights with no effort at all.

She could also do the same thing to his body temperature.