A Fortune's Texas Reunion Read online

  Her vacation takes an unexpected turn

  It’s a Fortune family reunion! Society sweetheart Georgia Fortune is excited to make the trip to Paseo, Texas, but a roadside calamity almost sidelines her. Luckily, Sheriff Paxton Price comes to her rescue. The handsome officer quickly causes a disturbance...to her peace of mind. The sparks are legit, but will they last? Can a blue-collar cop and a blue-blooded daddy’s girl really have a shot?

  MEET THE FORTUNES!

  Fortune of the Month: Georgia Mae Fortune

  Age: 28

  Vital Statistics: Big blue eyes, long brown hair and an impressive bank account. She’s the director of public relations for Fortune Investments. Yes, those Fortunes.

  Claim to Fame: She’s been a bridesmaid nineteen times. She’s about to embark on time number twenty.

  Romantic Prospects: For all her experience walking down the aisle, Georgia has never come close to finding her own Mr. Right. She’s not sure he exists. And the guy she has her eye on now has made it perfectly clear how he feels about her famous family. It doesn’t bode well.

  “I agreed to be a part of Deborah and Jerome Fortune’s wedding party on a whim. We may be related by blood, but our family is nothing like theirs—no matter what Sheriff Paxton Price believes. I don’t even know why I care. Okay, so he’s tall and solid and dreamy. But if he’s going to jump to conclusions, then who needs him?

  “Well...maybe I do. Just a little. So maybe a little vacation fling with the man in uniform is what I need to get him out of my system...”

  * * *

  THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS:

  The Lost Fortunes: Family secrets revealed!

  Dear Reader,

  The Fortunes are back at it! A few years ago, when we first met Ben Robinson in Fortune’s Secret Heir, I never could have expected where the Fortune-Robinson clan would end up. Ben’s father, Gerald Robinson, wasn’t merely a self-made high-tech mogul. He turned out to actually be a Fortune heir named Jerome. Up until that point, he’d kept that secret from Ben and all of his offspring. Now, after nearly forty years of looking for happiness in all the wrong places, Gerald has finally found his way and is marrying his one true love, Deborah. But in typical fashion, he doesn’t go about doing that in a small way.

  Which is why people from one coast to another are converging on the tiny town of Paseo, causing a Texas-size headache for Sheriff Paxton Price. Pax would just as soon see the back side of all the people overrunning his hometown, until a tampered-with vehicle sends Georgia Fortune careening practically right into his arms. What’s a sheriff to do but protect a visitor in distress? What’s a man to do but fall in love when the perfect girl smiles into his eyes? Fortunately for Pax and Georgia, it doesn’t take them the next forty years to figure it all out...

  Come join the celebration!

  Allison

  A Fortune’s Texas Reunion

  Allison Leigh

  Though her name is frequently on bestseller lists, Allison Leigh feels her high point as a writer is hearing from readers that they laughed, cried or lost sleep while reading her books. She credits her family with great patience for the time she’s parked at her computer, and for blessing her with the kind of love she wants her readers to share with the characters living in the pages of her books. Contact her at allisonleigh.com.

  Books by Allison Leigh

  Harlequin Special Edition

  Return to the Double C

  A Weaver Proposal

  A Weaver Vow

  A Weaver Beginning

  A Weaver Christmas Gift

  One Night in Weaver...

  The BFF Bride

  A Child Under His Tree

  Yuletide Baby Bargain

  Show Me a Hero

  The Rancher’s Christmas Promise

  The Fortunes of Texas: The Secret Fortunes

  Wild West Fortune

  The Fortunes of Texas: All Fortune’s Children

  Fortune’s Secret Heir

  Visit the Author Profile page at www.Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  Click here to Join Harlequin My Rewards

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  In memory of my first

  real-life hero.

  I love you, D.O.D.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Excerpt from The Maverick’s Summer Sweetheart by Stacy Connelly

  Chapter One

  The car was upside down, resting on its crumpled hood.

  Sheriff Paxton Price was out of his departmental SUV and running down the steep embankment toward the site of the crash before he was even able to discern that particular fact.

  The only indication there’d been an accident at all was the way the guardrail on the side of the road had been mangled.

  “Ambulance needed, Connie,” he said into his shoulder mic, grabbing a spindly mesquite branch to keep it from slapping him in the face as his soles slid in the dirt. Twenty feet of prickly shrubs stood between him and the white car wedged against a gnarled snag.

  If it wasn’t for the dying tree, the car would have kept on going.

  “Not just Charlie’s wrecker. You got that, Connie? Send the ambulance, too.”

  “Ambulance is over in Amber Falls.” Connie’s response crackled badly, but in the two years since he’d come back to Paseo, he was used to the crappy transmissions by now.

  “Call ’em, anyway,” he barked. He wished to hell his brother Marshall didn’t have the day off. He was a paramedic with the Amber Falls Fire Department. The town was the closest of any size, which didn’t mean much when compared to tiny Paseo.

  “On it...riff,” Connie said through the crackling and Pax grabbed another shrub as he continued skidding his way down the embankment. He needed to slow his momentum before he shot beyond the wedged car and into the ravine.

  Dust clouded when he went down on his side like a kid sliding into home plate. Only this time, he wasn’t scoring a run for the Paseo High Panthers, but was avoiding slamming into the precariously perched sports car.

  He succeeded, though barely. Adrenaline pumping, he tossed aside his cowboy hat and scrambled on his knees to the crumpled side of the car. The windshield was in the dirt and a dead tree branch bisected the back window. He’d seen too many vehicular fatalities back in Dallas, where there was emergency medical assistance available at the crook of a finger. Here in Paseo?

  They had one ambulance covering an entire county. As Texas standards went, the county wasn’t large, but still...

  “Come on, come on.” He ducked to look through the broken passenger-side window. It was the only one accessible. The driver’s side was squarely jammed against the trunk of the decaying oak.

  His gut clenched. The driver was hanging upside down, held in her seat by the safety belt. Her light brown hair was long and tangled in the spent airbags, and glittered with shards of glass. She was young. And her eyes, her terrified and very much alive blue eyes, fastened on his. “Help.”

  He read the word on her pallid lips more than heard it, and lifted a staying hand when she started to reach out on
e of hers. “Don’t move, honey. This big ol’ snag is sturdy, but I don’t want to take any chances. I’ll get you out. Just hang tight, okay?”

  Tears were caught in her dark lashes, but her lips lifted ever so slightly. “Fine time for puns,” she whispered.

  “Atta girl.” There was no way the door would open. He didn’t even bother trying. “Are you hurt?” Aside from the scrapes and scratches, he couldn’t see any blood. But the deflated airbags were blocking most of his view. “Can you move your legs?”

  “I can wiggle my feet.”

  “Excellent.” He knew she couldn’t have been hanging there for more than thirty minutes because he’d seen that guardrail perfectly intact when he’d cruised by it earlier. But thirty minutes or less was still thirty minutes or less too long.

  And just because he couldn’t see serious bleeding didn’t mean there was none. She looked pale and limp and entirely helpless.

  “Do you know how long you’ve been here like this?”

  She made a sound that wasn’t much of an answer. Her eyelids fluttered and closed.

  “Stay with me, honey.” With one sharp swipe of his Maglite, he cleared the rest of the window glass and tossed aside the jagged piece of dead tree branch that had shattered it. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  She didn’t respond at first and he reached in, grasping one of her hands. “Come on, honey. Try to stay awake here. Talk to me.”

  Her fingers moved. A slight squeeze. Enough to make him breathe a little easier. “I’m here.” The words sighed out of her. She had a drawl, but not a Texas one. It was more Deep South with a twist. “You have a nice...voice. I don’t know what happened.” She opened her eyes again, blinking as if to clear her vision. “One minute I was singing along with Lady Gaga and the next—” She broke off, then pulled her slender fingers free, lifted her hand and fluttered it along the gray shoulder strap pinning her against expensive white leather. “My seat belt’s stuck. I couldn’t get it loose.”

  “Then it’s doing its job.” He pulled out of the window for a moment, grabbed his pocketknife and unbuckled his duty belt, letting it drop to the ground before he carefully reached through the window again with both arms and angled his shoulders so he could fit. “You from New Orleans?”

  “Shows that much?”

  The space wasn’t exactly built for a guy his size, but he’d been in tighter spots. “Louisiana license plate.” That and the distinct NOLA accent. “This your parents’ car?”

  She seemed to rouse herself a little. “No, but Daddy’s gonna have a fit, anyway. He didn’t want me driving out here in the first place. Wanted to double-check every safety system this car has before I started out.”

  There was a small R-Haz insignia on the dashboard. He hadn’t gotten a notice from the telematics company that her car was involved in an accident, so at least one of those safety systems had failed to do its job.

  “Protective, is he?” He gained another inch.

  “And then some. Ever since Savannah’s break-in he’s been worse than ever.”

  “Who’s Savannah?”

  “My little sister. One of them, anyway.”

  “How many sisters do you have?” He’d managed to squeeze partially through the window but he still wasn’t far enough to reach her well.

  “Uh, two. And a, uh, a bunch of brothers. I’m smack in the middle.”

  “Middle-child syndrome?”

  “Please.”

  He smiled at the way she rolled her eyes. She was making good sense, and he hoped that meant she didn’t have a concussion. “I have three brothers myself,” he offered conversationally. “No sisters, though, to my mother’s everlasting disappointment.” He stretched his arm across the interior of the vehicle and snagged the tips of his fingers around the headrest of her seat, so he could use it for leverage to heave himself halfway into the vehicle. He managed not to swear a blue streak when he got up close and personal with the gearshift as a result.

  “I’m gonna cut the belt and catch you, okay?” His voice was rougher than he wanted. He was a pickup-truck sort of guy over sports cars and the nauseating throbbing in his groin cemented the fact. He turned gingerly onto his side, earning another inch of leverage.

  She visibly trembled. “Maybe we should wait for more help.”

  “We could.” He exhaled again, blowing out his own pain as he concentrated on the alarm sharpening her dazed eyes. “It might be a while before help gets here, though, and I’d just as soon get you outta this little beast now. Not real comfortable for you hanging upside down, I’ll bet.”

  She shook her head slightly. “No,” she whispered. “I was afraid nobody was coming.”

  She looked like she was going to cry. “I’m here now,” he said steadily. “And I’ll stay right here with you until more help gets here. Can’t say I’m real comfortable with the position.”

  Understatement of the year.

  He looked into her eyes, willing her to keep her focus on him. “I’m Pax, by the way. I’m the sheriff around these parts.”

  She gave him a barely perceptible smile. “Georgia,” she murmured.

  Savannah and Georgia. He’d have teased her a little at that if not for the way her eyes had fluttered closed again. “Don’t pass out on me, Georgia.” He wrapped his fingers around her dangling arm, sliding down to her wrist where her pulse was fluttering.

  “I’m not gonna pass out.” She managed to sound offended. “My head is pounding.”

  “Expect you’ll have a lot of aches and pains. Considering everything, that’s not a bad thing right now.” It was awkward as hell, half inside the upside-down car and half out. At his angle, stretched the way he was against the headliner, the best he could do was let her land on him. The headrest of the passenger seat was digging into his ribs but at least it wasn’t endangering his prospects of siring kids one day. “So, unless you really insist on hanging there until backup arrives, I’m gonna cut the shoulder belt first, and then the lap. That all right with you?”

  “I’ll fall.”

  “I’ll catch you,” he promised. “Just tell me when you’re ready.”

  Her lips compressed. She closed her eyes again and gave a faint nod.

  Good enough for him.

  He reached up and slid the sharp knife between her snug purple T-shirt and the shoulder belt, then sliced through the belt.

  She gasped and her hands shot out, knocking against his head and shoulder. Several cubes of broken glass rained down on him. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry. You’re good, Georgia. There isn’t going to be anything graceful about this. I told you I’ll catch you. Just keep your hand on my shoulder if you can, and—” He reached again and wedged his hand against the leather seat, snapping through the lap belt. The second he did, her body started to fall and he pressed his free palm against her stomach long enough to fold the knife safely out of the way.

  Then she rolled down in a ball onto him, all long hair and trembling limbs.

  The second she made contact with him, she burst into sobs and buried her face against his throat.

  “It’s okay, honey.” He gently patted her back. She really was no bigger than a minute. “You’re gonna be fine.” He’d feel better about that assurance once she was actually checked out, but for now, she was lucid and showing the kind of normal reaction he’d expect. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Eventually, her sobs quieted. Her trembling settled. She finally lifted her head, and her eyes met his. “You saved me.”

  Discomfort that had nothing to do with gearshifts and awkward positions chugged inside his gut. She was a looker. No amount of puffy, red eyes could disguise that fact. He hadn’t felt such a visceral attraction to a woman since Whitney.

  Which was a good reminder to keep his mind where it belonged.

  “German engineering and adva
nced safety systems saved you,” he said gruffly. “Think you can slide out the window?”

  She angled her head, looking toward his legs still hanging outside from the knees on. She gave him a shaky smile. “In some places we’d need to be married before being this close. You’d better go first.”

  She didn’t give him a chance to argue the matter, because she was busy wriggling to one side of him. Doing so meant pressing her hand against his chest to gain enough leverage and he hoped she blamed his thumping heartbeat on adrenaline.

  He’d been a cop for eight years. A sheriff for nearly two. After what happened with Whitney in Dallas, he was too smart to let himself be derailed again by a pretty set of blue eyes.

  Still, it was a relief when Georgia was finally curled alongside him rather than sprawled over him, and he worked his way back out the window. First his leather belt caught on something, and then his shirt tore as he awkwardly got one shoulder, then the other, through the bent window frame.

  Finally, though, he was on his knees again in the dirt and he reached back in to her. “It might be easier for you if you come out headfirst.”

  She nodded and, far more deftly than he could have done, pivoted on the rear of her white shorts, then shimmied out the window. She was narrow. Slender. He had no trouble whatsoever catching her shoulders the second they cleared the metal and he lifted her free of the wreckage, moving her to the patch of dirt that had been scraped raw by the car.

  She exhaled, and slowly fell backward until she was sprawled flat on her back. She pressed her hand to her chest and stared up at the sky. Tears slid from her eyes down into her hair.

  He crouched beside her. “I’m just gonna check your arms and legs, Georgia. That all right with you?”

  She sniffed wetly and nodded.

  “You tell me if anything hurts.”

  “Everything hurts,” she mumbled. “I’ve never been in an accident before.”

  “You started out with a doozy.” He carefully worked his hands along her arms. She had a nasty scrape on her left shoulder and a small cut on her right wrist, but other than that, her skin was smooth and cool. A little too cool for the hot day, but she’d had a nasty shock. He moved to her feet and started at her ankles. More scrapes. More scratches. But no bones sticking out where they didn’t belong. Nothing that was starting to swell.