The Texan's Baby Bombshell
“I’m alone,” she said hoarsely.
“You’re not alone.”
Finally, Laurel Hudson has been found—and no one is more relieved than her ex, Adam Fortune! But reuniting Laurel Hudson with her son will be harder than anyone realizes. An accident has left her with amnesia, and he’s got several days and two thousand miles—in extremely close quarters—to help his former fiancée remember their baby boy...and how much more they truly share!
New York Times Bestselling Author Allison Leigh
MEET THE FORTUNES!
Fortune of the Month: Adam Fortune
Age: 31
Vital Statistics: The restaurant manager is six foot three with dark brown eyes, a cleft chin and a famous last name…but not the pedigree.
Claim to Fame: This good-hearted Fortune recently discovered he was a bone marrow match for baby Linus—but he had no idea why.
Romantic Prospects: He’s already had his heart broken twice. What are the odds that the third time’s the charm?
“Laurel doesn’t remember me, not really. Though she told the nurses at the hospital that I looked familiar, she has forgotten everything we once were to each other. And she certainly doesn’t remember that she had a baby.
“Of course I’m hoping she gets her memory back. But when that happens, if that happens, she’ll remember how things ended between us. And then I might lose her forever. I won’t give up, though. No matter what it costs me…I owe Linus that much.”
THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS: RAMBLING ROSE
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Rambling Rose, yet another town that has been turned on its ear by the Fortunes of Texas!
Rambling Rose is a place where people care.
That particular fact in action is what lands the town’s newcomer, Adam Fortune, on the national news one summer night. And it’s a good thing, too, because across the country, a woman who can’t remember her own name sees him on the news and knows he means something to her.
Laurel Hudson just can’t imagine how much that something turns out to be.
A road trip, a baby and a lot of memories ensue. Some sweet. Some painful. But at the end of Adam and Laurel’s journey is the same thing that had also been at the beginning. And this time, fortunately, they are a little older. A lot wiser. And they know to grab on, together, to that most precious thing of all.
Love.
Allison
The Texan’s Baby Bombshell
Allison Leigh
Though her name is frequently on bestseller lists, Allison Leigh’s 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 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
A Promise to Keep
The Fortunes of Texas: The Rulebreakers
Fortune’s Homecoming
The Fortunes of Texas: The Secret Fortunes
Wild West Fortune
The Fortunes of Texas: All Fortune’s Children
Fortune’s Secret Heir
The Fortunes of Texas: The Lost Fortunes
Fortune’s Texas Reunion
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
This book is dedicated to the extraordinary Susan Litman and Marcia Book Adirim. Your minds are simply fierce!
Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Excerpt from Coming to a Crossroads by Marie Ferrarella
Prologue
“I’m never going to be able to thank you enough for what you’re doing for my son.” The man raked shaky fingers through hair that already looked well-raked. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost Linus, too.”
Adam Fortune didn’t know exactly what to say. He and his brother had participated in the recent donor drive just like everyone else in town had. It was a way of showing they were in Rambling Rose to stay. He’d never expected to actually be a match. “Glad to help.” What was an overnight stay in a Houston hospital compared to what Eric and Linus Johnson had been going through? Linus was only a baby. “Still can’t believe how many possible matches came up during the drive.”
“Possibles are only possibles. You’re the ideal match. Thank God.” Eric’s voice was shaky through the surgical mask he wore. He also wore a protective gown and booties over his clothes and shoes. “I’d shake your hand—hell, I’d give you a hug if I could—but they warned me against any contact before I came in here.”
Here was Adam’s hospital room.
He’d checked in a few hours ago. Every nurse who’d been in to take blood or his temperature or a dozen other things had all said what a wonderful thing he was doing. He’d been getting uncomfortable with all the attention. He was donating bone marrow to help a very sick baby. Not once had it crossed Adam’s mind to refuse when he’d been a match.
“I mean, seriously,” Eric went on. “Anything you need. Anything.”
Adam almost said, “Forget it,” but thought better of it. For him, this had taken a week of time out of his life with the lab tests and exams that had been necessary. For Linus, diagnosed with aplastic anemia, it was a matter of survival.
He started to reach for the water on his bedside but remembered the nurse had emptied it. Just in case he forgot himself and took a drink. He was in that period of no food and no drink before surgery. “That news crew who was following me around last week get in touch with you, too?”
Eric nodded. “Talked to them on the phone. Linus’s medical team has had us basically sequestered the past few weeks while he gets prepped for today. Last thing I wanted to do is interviews, but if the story gets someone else to join a donor registry or do a drive like you folks in Rambling Rose did, it’s the least I can do. I can remember when the town was barely a dot on the map. Grown a lot in the last year. Otherwise, I couldn’t say I would have expected the drive to yield enough results to matter. Yet,” his voice cracked slightly. He cleared his throat. “It’s still astonishing,” he managed.
He paced across Adam’s room and looked out the window. “Life’s full of twists. First, I find my son way out there in Rambling Rose after his mother wrote—” He broke off, not finishing that thought. “But then I find the man who’s going to save his life lives there, too? What were the odds?”
Adam had no response for that. He knew the man was raising Linus on his own. Even though Adam had only moved to Texas a couple months earlier, he’d still heard the story about the newborn who’d been abandoned at the pediatric center in R
ambling Rose. Seemed like more than a “twist” to him. He wasn’t sure how he’d have reacted in Eric’s shoes.
Almost as if Eric heard his thoughts, he turned and pinned his solemn gaze on Adam. “We were engaged, you know. Linus’s mother and me.” He made a sound. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I don’t talk about it much.”
Adam had just met the guy. By tomorrow, Adam’s bone marrow would be doing its thing inside Linus. It would be something that connected them for life. Nevertheless, he wasn’t necessarily comfortable hearing Eric’s confidences.
But people had to pour out their guts sometimes. He’d learned that in college when he’d tended bar. “Easier talking about the past than worrying about the future,” he hazarded. Just because Adam was a good match for Linus didn’t guarantee the transplant would be successful. Only time would tell that.
“Maybe.” Eric paced to the opened door. Beyond the room, the nurses’ station was busy with staff coming and going. “If she’d only just told me she was pregnant in the beginning instead of disappearing like she did.” He exhaled roughly and paced back to the window once more. “It’s a mistake to think people don’t keep secrets from each other. Even when you love someone. And I was certain she loved me, too.”
Familiar story.
Adam made a commiserating sound. The minute hand on the wall clock ticked audibly. Less than two hours to the procedure. He’d be back in Rambling Rose tomorrow morning. Back to perfecting the IPA he’d been experimenting with for the last month.
“We’d set the wedding date. Was going to be a week before Christmas. We’d picked a place.” Eric suddenly sent Adam a look. “You know what a hassle that all is?”
Adam shrugged. “Never married.”
“If you ever decide to, go to the courthouse. A lot simpler.” Eric tugged at the gown tied around him. “Then last summer, not even a month after we’d finally gotten that settled, she tells me she needs more time. More space.”
Also familiar words. “I’ve been on the receiving end of that conversation,” Adam admitted. “More than once.”
Eric gave a sympathetic wince above the white mask covering his mouth. “Blows.”
Adam smiled humorlessly. “From the same girl.”
Eric whistled. Or as much a whistle as the mask allowed. “Damn.”
“Tell me about it.” Adam shifted on the bed. The whole reason he’d left Buffalo was to get away from the memories there. Rambling Rose had simply been a convenient escape.
“I realized something was bothering her—deeply—but she wasn’t telling me what. When I look back, I can see there were signs of it.”
“She hasn’t tried contacting you at all?”
“Just one letter that her parents passed on to me. That’s how I learned she was pregnant. But since then?” The other man’s expression darkened. “I’ve learned a lot of things,” he said cryptically, “but not what happened to her. If she were able to contact me, she would have. I’m sure of that much. She can’t have been thinking straight when she left Linus. She wasn’t irresponsible. If I could have her back—” He broke off and paced again.
Adam felt for the guy. “I don’t know that many people in your position who would be so forgiving.”
“It’s hard to forget a woman like her,” Eric said, his voice grim. “Not that I didn’t try at first. But that only lasted a few months, and then I started looking for her. Retracing her steps. She was in Virginia with her parents last fall. From what it sounds like, she left them just as abruptly as she left me. A disagreement or something, I’m sure, though her parents didn’t say that when we spoke on the phone. But I know they didn’t get along. She hadn’t even been sure she wanted them at our wedding. When I told them she was missing, they weren’t even alarmed. Said she’d probably gone to Europe. That was her usual style.”
He made a rough sound. “They knew she’d left me, so it’s pretty likely they weren’t telling me everything they knew. It was weeks later when I received a box in the mail from them. Stuff that she’d left behind when she visited them.” He shook his head slightly. “The letter she wrote to me was in her things. She’d never mailed it. Didn’t even finish it, but the truth was still there. What I thought was the truth, anyway. She was pregnant. I don’t know how her parents didn’t realize, but like I said—it’s a mistake to think people don’t keep secrets.”
Adam frowned. “Do they know about Linus? His condition?”
Eric looked away. He shook his head. “I lost her,” he muttered. “I wasn’t going to chance a fight with them over my son, particularly after finally finding him. And yeah,” he added flatly, “I know that makes me sound like a first-class bastard.”
“I think it makes you sound like a dad,” Adam said quietly.
Eric’s shoulders lowered. He rolled his head around and squeezed the back of his neck. “Maybe.” He raked his hair. “You said forgiveness, but the truth is I wasn’t exactly happy when she put on the brakes. I’m not stupid. I suspected there was someone else but then when I learned about Linus?” His hands rose, a volume of helplessness. “I realize now I shouldn’t have let her go so easily last summer. She’d always kept her own apartment, so it wasn’t as though she didn’t have anywhere to go. But then in July, she quit her job at the art museum.” He shook his head again. “Laurel loved that job. She was the art museum.”
Adam went still.
Everything went still.
Even the minute hand on the clock on the wall seemed to cease its tick.
“I’m rambling.” Eric paced back to the doorway, looking out. “Clock is crawling.”
“You said Laurel quit her job. At the art museum. Here in Houston.”
“Yeah. That’s how we met. Through the museum.”
Adam’s sense of doom made it hard to breathe. How many Laurels could there be working at art museums in Houston? “You’re not talking about Laurel Hudson, are you?”
The other man’s shoulders stiffened under the gown tied behind his neck.
And Adam knew. Even before Eric turned to give him a sharp look. He knew.
There was a frown on Eric’s face visible above the mask. “Yes. Laurel Hudson. You knew her?”
It took Adam a while to get the words out. But even though it did, he could see realization dawning in the other man’s eyes. “I knew her,” Adam said hoarsely.
More than that, he’d loved her, too.
Chapter One
“Mr. Fortune?”
Adam shot out of the thinly padded waiting room chair so fast that it bounced against the pale green wall behind him.
Nobody noticed or cared. He’d been the only one occupying the sparsely furnished waiting room of Seattle’s Fresh Pine Rehabilitation at eight o’clock in the evening.
The clinic director had an apologetic smile on her comfortably lined face. “I’m sorry you had to wait, Mr. Fortune.” Her handshake was firm and brief. “I’m Dr. Granger.”
“Call me Adam.” Ever since he’d received the call from Dr. Mariel Granger three days ago, it had been a toss-up which emotion had rocked him most.
Relief. Impatience. Pain.
Now, so very close to Laurel, impatience definitely had the upper hand. But expressing it with Dr. Granger wasn’t going to solve anything.
If not for her persistence in reaching him, no one would have known that Laurel was even alive.
Despite the mess waiting in Texas, the fact that she was alive took precedence.
Fortunately oblivious to his thoughts, the director gestured toward the doorway behind her. “When the guard called me, I turned right around and drove back. My office is this way. Seattle traffic, you know. I’m guessing your flight was delayed?” She glanced up at him as they headed along the wide corridor. It was carpeted so their footsteps were silent.
“In Denver,” he said. “Mechanical problems
.” All of the doors they passed were closed. Hiding whether it was offices or patient rooms on the other side.
The notion that Laurel was behind one of the doors made his mouth dry and his chest ache.
“Here we are.” Dr. Granger turned into the opened doorway of a cramped office and took one of the chairs situated in front of the desk. She gestured to the second.
His molars clenched, but he lowered himself into the chair.
Something in her eyes flickered as she watched him. “Are you still experiencing pain?”
He almost laughed. Pain? Which kind? “Hoped it didn’t show.”
She smiled knowingly. “I’ve been a donor, myself. Give yourself time. Those little aches will pass. Bone marrow donation is entirely rewarding even without finding yourself the subject of a national news story the way you did.” She patted his arm in a way that reminded him of his mother. “But, if not for that story, we still wouldn’t know Lisa’s—sorry, it’s hard to break the habit—Laurel’s identity. It’s anyone’s guess how long it would have taken for her to show some improvement if she hadn’t reacted to your face on the news last week.”
He eyed her closely. “Has she remembered anything—” He broke off, because Dr. Granger was already shaking her head, her forehead knitting.
“I’m sorry. Not beyond knowing you were familiar to her for some reason. But it was enough of a reason for me to reach out to you the way I did. Learning that you recognized her in return? I can’t tell you how helpful you’ve already been, particularly when no other family has stepped forward in all this time. You must have been good friends. College, you said?”
“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate, quashing the stab of guilt he felt. He hadn’t told Dr. Granger about Laurel’s parents. Nelson and Sylvia Hudson were still ensconced in the Virginia plantation home where Laurel had grown up. Eric had confirmed it.
And, despite the strained situation, he’d agreed with Adam. Bringing her parents into things just now was the quickest way to lose track of Laurel. Again.