A Fortune's Texas Reunion Read online

  “I wasn’t speeding,” she told the sheriff when she thought she could speak without vomiting again. “I wasn’t texting on my cell.” She had no idea if her phone had remained inside the car. But he definitely hadn’t found it when he’d been traipsing all over taking his pictures. She felt certain he’d be examining it for God knew what if he had.

  “My whole life is on my phone,” she said, more to herself than to him. “If it’s not still in the car—” She broke off, shaking her head.

  “Nobody’s whole life should be on a cell phone,” the sheriff said dismissively before he walked away from her, heading toward the wrecker. She could see him talking into that small speaker thing attached by a strap to his shoulder as he went.

  She made a face at the back of him. It was childish but it still made her feel a tiny bit better. Leaning against the rail, she sipped the water and studied him as he spoke with the driver. Charlie, he’d called him.

  Unlike Charlie, the sheriff was tall. Her brothers were tall, too, so it was easy enough to peg the man as several inches past six feet. Her brothers tended more toward wiry builds, though. The sheriff was stockier. Broader. Not heavy. More like a quarterback than a runner. All broad shoulders, narrow hips and muscular—

  Her mouth felt cottony and she swished more water around, turning to spit it out again.

  When she straightened, he was approaching her again. It was easier to focus on the tear in his shirt than it was his face, with its square jaw and slashing eyebrows.

  “Here.” He extended a small pink purse and she snatched it greedily, flipping it open to find her wallet still tucked safely inside.

  She extracted her driver’s license and held it up. “Check me out,” she challenged. “You’ll learn I do have a perfect driving record. I have a respectable job with Fortune Investments as the director of public relations. I own my own home and I have never gotten so much as a ticket for jaywalking!” She slid a business card free as well and barely managed to keep from tossing it in his face. “My cell phone number is on there. You want to know what I was doing on my phone for the last twenty-four hours, feel free to contact my provider. I’ll agree to whatever you need.”

  His fingers brushed hers as he took the license. “Charlie was able to get into your glove compartment, if I have your permission to look at the contents.”

  Oh, for crying out loud. She rubbed her aching temples. “Yes, you can look at the contents. I’ve been trying to tell you I don’t have anything to hide.”

  He walked back to the wrecker again.

  Her eyes burned and she swiped her nose. She was not going to cry again.

  Her purse might have contained her wallet and a few business cards, but there was little else in it, and certainly not her phone. She closed her eyes, trying to remember where it had been in the car. Lying on the passenger seat with her sandals? Tucked in the console?

  Her stomach churned as she tried to think. She’d taken one call that morning from her assistant, Julie, about the media campaign they were launching. After that, her phone had remained silent as she’d neared Paseo and the campground where the wedding guests were being lodged.

  The campground was one of the selling points she’d used with her folks when she’d told them that she, too, wanted to attend the wedding, along with her siblings. In Georgia’s case, not only was she attending the nuptials, but she was also actually going to stand up in the wedding party. Even though none of them had ever even met the bride or groom.

  That fact was only one of the interesting aspects of this whole wedding business. It was Gerald and Deborah’s desire to bring together all the branches of the overgrown Fortune tree. They were showing it again and again with the incredible task of mounting a large wedding in such a small town. Once they’d known Georgia and her brothers and sisters were coming—even though their father flatly refused—they’d asked if one of them would be part of the wedding party. They wanted someone from each family to be represented.

  Georgia had basically drawn the short straw at that point because—as her sisters Savannah and Belle liked to point out—Georgia had the most practice at being a bridesmaid.

  Nineteen times, in fact.

  For her dad’s sake, she’d pitched the whole thing as a lark. A summer getaway, camping under the Texas sky for a few weeks before the launch of the new campaign. For herself, she’d mostly thought it would be highly entertaining to be part of the wedding for a man who was actually her father’s half brother.

  Of course, her father didn’t believe anything about the situation was the least bit entertaining. He certainly didn’t appreciate the fact that he might be somewhat similar to his half brother. Gerald Robinson of Texas had been born Jerome Fortune of New York. It was only after his father, Julius, died that he’d remade himself as Gerald, far, far away from his true family. He’d even gone so far as to fake “Jerome’s” death, presumably to be good and sure nobody came looking for him.

  Georgia’s father, Miles, on the other hand, had been born Miles Melton in Louisiana. He was just one of Julius’s illegitimate sons with various women other than his wife. Aside from her father, there were at least three more that she knew of: Kenneth Fortunado, who hailed from Houston, David Fortune from Florida and Gary Fortune from New York. Other than those few details, she had no real knowledge of the relationships—or lack of—that they’d had with Julius while he’d been alive.

  As for her dad, when he’d finally divulged the truth last Christmas to his family that they were, in fact, related to the famous Fortunes after all—something he had been denying all of Georgia’s life—he’d admitted that he’d only taken on his father’s name when he’d been a young college graduate as an “up yours” against the man who’d never acknowledged him.

  The similarities between Miles and Julius ended there, though.

  Miles had married Georgia’s mom when he was only a year older than Georgia was now. They’d had seven children together and were the only truly happy couple Georgia had ever seen.

  Gerald, on the other hand, had inherited Julius’s penchant for infidelity. For the last few years especially, the scandal sheets had chronicled the tech mogul’s indiscretions. How he’d cheated on his society wife, Charlotte. How he’d produced even more illegitimate children than Julius had.

  Then, when the news had broken a couple years ago about Robinson’s real identity, the media hounds had gone into a feeding frenzy. It would have died down eventually. When a fresher scandal hit the light of day. That’s the way scandals always worked.

  But the flames were fueled all over again by Gerald and Charlotte’s highly acrimonious divorce when word got out that he’d actually dumped her in favor of marrying his first love, Deborah Fortune, who wasn’t really a Fortune at all, but had assumed the name herself when she’d given birth to Gerald’s triplet sons nearly forty years ago. Before Gerald had even married Charlotte.

  It was either the worst of reality-television-style trashiness, or the most outlandishly romantic story in modern-day history.

  Georgia, nineteen times a bridesmaid, didn’t expect that Gerald’s marriage to Deborah would be any more successful than his first one. But she definitely expected the whole scene to be pretty entertaining.

  Particularly since she had a not-so-private fascination with reality TV.

  Plus, she came from a family of seven kids but had never had cousins. Now that she knew that she did, she was unabashedly curious to meet them.

  So, with a brand-new car she’d worked hard to buy and a chance for the first vacation she’d taken in years, what else was a girl to do but plan a road trip?

  It was all perfect.

  In planning, at least.

  Reality had turned out to be something entirely different.

  The winch was whining again and she realized her car—what was left of it—was being pulled onto the back of the tow truck.

  She pushed away from the guardrail and hurried toward the two men standing beside the vehicle. “What about the rest of my stuff? My suitcase is in the trunk.”

  “Only thing I could get at was this, miss.” The short man wiped a greasy hand on the front of his overalls before he handed her the small overnighter. “It’ll take more equipment than I’ve got here to get that trunk open. Don’t you worry none, though. Once I do, I’ll get your stuff to you wherever you’re at.”

  She clutched the overnighter against her. It held her toiletries and not much more. Except for the yoga gear she’d tossed in it that morning, all of her clothes were inside the suitcase.

  She felt shaky all over again.

  The sheriff must have noticed because he wrapped his hand around her arm. “You need to sit down again.”

  She preferred the weedy highway shoulder than the back of his SUV, but she never had the chance to tell him, because an ambulance pulled up then. The sheriff turned her over to the two people who hopped out of the boxy white vehicle. One male. One female. Both young and harried-looking, though they didn’t act it as they took charge of Georgia and settled her on the wide back bumper. They introduced themselves. Sean and Sarah.

  “My mother’s name is Sarah,” she told them faintly and closed her eyes again, resting her head on the vehicle behind her. She answered their questions while they tended to her cuts and scrapes and produced a cold pack that she pressed against her forehead.

  She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she heard a familiar voice calling her name.

  She looked up to see her brother Austin jogging toward her. He was the oldest of her siblings and she always teased him that he’d come out of the womb wearing a suit and tie.

 
But now, he wore a T-shirt and blue jeans, his dark hair looked like it had been combed with a garden rake and even from a distance she could see the concern in his brown eyes.

  No amount of willpower kept her tears away then.

  She dropped the ice pack and ran into his arms. It was comforting. Familiar. And if she’d never felt that utter sense of security in the sheriff’s embrace, she never would have known it wasn’t there in her own brother’s.

  “Damn,” he muttered as he took in the mangled mess of her vehicle. “What the hell happened, Georgia?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Austin. I was driving along, everything was fine and then bam! Everything was out of my control. I couldn’t steer, I couldn’t brake and I was crashing through the guardrail and—” She closed her eyes against the terrifying memory of the engine suddenly screaming, then turning quiet as she soared over brush and through trees, turning in one long, slow somersault—

  She realized she was sweating and dug the heels of her palms against her closed eyes until the images faded. “All I could think was that Daddy was right.” She finally dropped her hands and looked up at him. “I should have gone on the family plane with the rest of you. I should have stuck with my old car—it was perfectly good—instead of spending a fortune on a sports car like that—”

  He exhaled an oath and kissed her temple. “Stop. You’d been waiting months for that car. Accidents happen. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

  “I want to get away from here.”

  “Felicity’s waiting at the campground,” he said. “She’s making sure the travel trailer you’ll be using is all set for you.”

  “How did you know what happened?” When she’d set up her emergency account with the car dealer, she’d listed him as the person to contact.

  “The sheriff’s office sent someone out to the campground to find me.”

  She rubbed her temples. “You didn’t get a text or some automatic notice from R-Haz that my vehicle was in an accident?”

  “Nope.”

  She looked around her brother at the man in question, only to see that he was heading their way. “Watch out,” she warned Austin. “He might have rescued me from my car, but he’s got a beef against ‘those Fortunes.’” She air-quoted the term.

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  She spread her hands wordlessly.

  Pax stopped a few feet away. “You’re the brother? Austin?”

  “I am.” Austin kept an arm protectively around Georgia’s shoulder but extended his other. “Austin Fortune. I appreciate what you did for my sister. She says you pulled her out of that.” He nodded toward the mangled vehicle now fixed in place atop the flatbed. Charlie had a broom and a bucket and was sweeping up debris where she’d gone through the rail.

  The dusty brim of the sheriff’s hat cast most of his face in shadow, but Georgia still felt his gaze roving over her as he briefly shook her brother’s hand. “Sheriff Price. I’m glad she wasn’t hurt more badly than she was. And that nobody else was involved. I’m not issuing a citation, since she didn’t commit any offenses—”

  “Big of you.”

  He ignored her. “That could change if under the course of investigation new information comes to light.” He was still holding his boxy metal clipboard and he slid a business card free, handing it to Georgia.

  She automatically took it, annoyed with the way she shivered when her fingertips brushed his. “There isn’t any new information,” she assured him. She glanced down at the card.

  “That’s Charlie’s card,” he said, pointing out what she’d just realized.

  Why had she thought he might want her to have his number?

  Thankfully unaware of her thoughts, he was continuing. “You’ll want to arrange things with him when it comes to getting the rest of your personal belongings. And you’ll want to keep the accident report when you deal with your auto-insurance folks. If you want Charlie to contact them for you, I can tell him to go ahead. Don’t know if they’ll want to send someone to see the vehicle in person or not. It’s a given it’ll be totaled, though.” He tore off a carbon copy of the report he’d made and folded it in thirds before extending it.

  “Since my phone is MIA, I’d appreciate him making that call.” She plucked the report from his grasp. No shivers, no way, no, ma’am.

  “She can come with me now?” her brother asked.

  “Address of the urgent care in Amber Falls is on the back of the report. Might want to get her checked out for good measure. But as long as she’s got clearance from Sean and Sarah, I’ve got no reason to keep her.”

  At the mention of their names, Sean waved a thumbs-up. “She’s good, Sheriff. Lucky as hell, that’s for sure.”

  Which was what Georgia needed to remember.

  “Let me get the air-conditioning going in the SUV,” Austin told her. “Then we’ll get you out of here.” He squeezed her shoulder gently before jogging across the highway.

  She looked toward the sheriff.

  No matter how his attitude had changed when he’d learned she was a member of the Fortune family, he had saved her from the car.

  She stuck out her own hand. “Thank you for your help, Pax.” She wasn’t sure what devil made her use his name. Maybe the same devil that made her curious to see the circus that the coming wedding was sure to be.

  But the devil got more than she bargained for when Pax tapped his thumb against his hat brim and pushed it up an inch before he slowly closed his hand around hers. His fingers were long, his palm warm. “Glad to be of service—” he waited half a beat “—Georgia.”

  Something in her chest went tight. His emerald eyes were once again soft and warm and vaguely mossy.

  She moistened her lips and slowly pulled her hand away.

  It was probably a good thing that he was biased against people with her last name. Everything else about him would just make for complications.

  She preferred short, simple and uncomplicated.

  Moistening her lips again, she grabbed her little purse and overnighter from where they sat on the ground near the ambulance.

  Aside from it, the tow truck and the sheriff’s SUV, there was only one other vehicle sitting on the side of the road, and Georgia immediately started to cross the road toward it.

  “Whoa, there.” A hand grabbed her arm, hauling her up short, and she jerked, looking up at Pax.

  Her heart simply thudded. That’s all there was to it. And it had nothing to do with the car accident. It was all him.

  “Better watch where you’re going,” he said mildly, and she realized that a fast-moving car was approaching.

  It slowed only minimally as it passed them, and only when it was gone again did Pax let go of her arm.

  She hugged her meager belongings to her chest. “You’re right. I had better watch where I’m going.” Then she finally managed to pull her eyes away from his and she jogged across the once-again empty two-lane highway to her brother’s rented SUV.

  Chapter Three

  The only thing missing from the travel trailer was a big soaker tub.

  Georgia turned away from the otherwise well-equipped bathroom and stared down the length of the so-new-it-sparkled trailer.

  She knew it wasn’t a concussion befuddling her brain, because Austin had insisted on taking her to the urgent care in Amber Falls for a proper exam. She had a lot of superficial abrasions and would be sore for a while, but a concussion had been definitively ruled out.

  “I think there are nicer appliances in this thing than I have in my town house,” she told Felicity.

  The other woman grinned. Before becoming her brother’s girlfriend, she’d been Austin’s personal assistant. Georgia was hoping and praying that one day when they got down the aisle, they’d be one of the few to beat the odds. After the disaster of his first marriage, he deserved it.

  “The trailer we have is a mirror image,” Felicity told her. “And check this out. Even though Marcia—she’s the wedding coordinator I was telling you about—has arranged group meals and activities every day until after the wedding, look what they still did.”