A Fortune's Children's Christmas

  “Put me down.”

  “I intend to.” Without much fuss he carried her to the couch and dropped her gently onto the lumpy pillows where he’d slept ever since she’d arrived. “Just take it easy.”

  “I can’t,” she admitted, still steaming. “It’s against my nature.”

  “Then think of this as a vacation.”

  She snorted, and he chuckled.

  “Make that a dream vacation.”

  “Right.” She couldn’t hide the sarcasm in her use of the word.

  “When’s the last time you were pampered?”

  Shifting on the couch so that she could watch him clear the table, she shot him a look she hoped looked scathing. “There’s a difference between being pampered and being held hostage.”

  “I’ll remember that,” he said drily, and the fact that he wouldn’t rise to the bait only frustrated her further.

  “I could call the police.”

  “Go right ahead,” he invited, obviously amused at her bluff. He crossed the room and sat on the battle-scarred coffee table directly in front of the couch. Resting his elbows on his knees, he stared hard and deep into her eyes. “I’m just trying to reason with you. You’re laid up. Your infant isn’t a week old, your Jeep is still out of commission, you live miles from town, and I’m the nearest neighbor you’ve got. It just doesn’t make any sense for you to go back and end up stranded.”

  She wanted to squirm away from his stare, but she was caught, trapped like a doe in headlights. Besides, though she was loath to admit it, he had a point—well, more than one—but it riled her nonetheless. “I could call Ray.”

  The corners of his mouth pulled down a bit. “Who’s Ray?”

  “Ray Mellon is a—was a friend of Aaron’s. He offered to help out when the baby came, but then Angela decided to come early, and Ray was in Phoenix visiting relatives. He’s due back tomorrow.”

  A muscle worked in his jaw, and the intensity of his gaze caused her blood to heat unexpectedly. “Then let’s talk about this when he gets back.”

  “Fine. I’ll go along with you, Fortune,” she said, bristling. “But we’ve got to have some kind of agreement…a deal…another one, one that you’ll honor, so that we get along and you quit trying to tell me what to do.”

  “You want a truce?”

  “I think it would be a good idea, yes.”

  His gaze shifted to her lips, and her breath was suddenly lost, caught between her throat and lungs. For a second she was certain he was going to kiss her. He leaned forward so close that she could feel his heat, see the pores of his skin beneath his whiskers. She licked her lips. “Deal.”

  She glanced up to his eyes and was mesmerized in their shadowy depths. Blue-gray. Erotic. Promising forbidden pleasures.

  For a second no one said a word, and she was conscious of the thudding of her heart.

  He looked away first and said something unintelligible under his breath. “I, uh, I’d better bring in some more firewood.” Rolling to his feet, he strode to the back porch. As the door slammed behind him, Lesley flung herself back on the couch and slowly let out her breath. Being that close to Chase was treacherous, and they’d just agreed she was cooped up here at least for a while.

  “Great,” she grumbled. What was she going to do? Being stuck in close proximity to a man who could stop her heart with one swift look was just plain crazy. And yet, secretly, a part of her was excited at the prospect. If she looked deep in her heart a part of her wanted to stay for a few more days. As much as she hated to admit it, she was getting used to Chase, this cabin and being together.

  “Stop it,” she warned herself. Those kinds of thoughts had to be tossed aside. Just because Chase Fortune was sexy as all get-out, tough as nails one minute and gentle the next, was no reason to fantasize about him.

  He just wasn’t the kind of man any sane woman would fall in love with.

  At that thought she froze. She wasn’t falling in love! Never again. Not with Chase Fortune or anyone else for that matter.

  But as she shot a glance to the window of the back porch and saw him swinging the ax, his profile in stark relief against the white backdrop of snow-laden fields and trees, she knew she was in trouble.

  Big trouble.

  Four

  “Happy New Year.” Lesley tapped the edge of her wineglass of Chardonnay to Chase’s. “It’s not champagne, but it’ll have to do.”

  “Thanks.” He offered her a fleeting smile but not much more. Seated on the floor in the living room, his back propped against the couch, one leg bent, the other stretched out halfway across the room, he stared at the fire.

  Refusing to be put off by his bad mood, Leslie tucked her knees to her chest and glanced at Angela sleeping soundly in her drawer-crib near the couch. Rambo had taken his usual spot under the table, and the ever present fire crackled merrily in the grate. “Here’s to next year, may it be filled with joy and prosperity.”

  “Amen.” He tapped the rim of his glass to hers again and shifted so that he was staring at her. His eyes were troubled, his body tense, but he cracked half a grin. “I’m all for the prosperity part.”

  “Me, too.” She met his gaze briefly, then looked away. The room suddenly seemed too close, creating an intimacy that caused her throat to go dry. She took a sip. The Chardonnay was cool as it slid down her throat, but still she felt uneasy.

  “So tell me about your husband,” he suggested, bringing up a subject that they’d both avoided. She swallowed hard. “What happened?”

  Her good mood vanished, and she twisted the stem of her wineglass nervously. “He had a heart attack while boating. Couldn’t get to a hospital in time.” Because his mistress didn’t know CPR. Quickly she took another swallow. She didn’t like to think about Aaron.

  “No, I mean, what happened to the marriage?” His voice was low and familiar, and for a second Lesley wanted to tell him everything about her complicated life. She hesitated, and he edged a little closer, so that his leg was only inches from her, his shoulder brushing hers as they were both propped against the couch. “You haven’t said as much, but I get the feeling that you weren’t happy.”

  “Oh. Well.” There was no reason to lie, she supposed. Chase deserved the truth. After all, he had saved her life. “It wasn’t a marriage made in heaven, if that’s what you mean.”

  He waited, and she drew in a long, ragged breath. How could she explain how youthful exuberance had slowly eroded to apathy, that she’d believed Aaron when he’d said the twenty-year difference in their ages wouldn’t matter. “He, uh, was quite a bit older and had been married before. No kids.” She twisted the wedding band she still wore on her right hand. “He’d been divorced a few years when we got married, and I thought, no, I believed that I loved him and he loved me and nothing else mattered. That was foolish, of course.” She shot Chase a glance and felt her cheeks wash with hot color. “Naive on my part. Eventually we lost sight of each other, and he found someone else. The trouble was, I was pregnant.”

  Chase’s eyes narrowed, his lips compressed and every muscle in his body seemed coiled, as if he was ready for a fight, but he didn’t say a word, just watched her through shadowed eyes.

  “We decided to try again, to piece the marriage together, because we were going to be parents. I thought that a baby would change everything.” She rolled her eyes at her own naiveté. “I guess I just wanted to think we could do it. We went to a few sessions of marriage counseling. Aaron told the counselor that it was over with the other woman, and I wanted desperately to believe him.” She laughed softly, but the sound was without any hint of mirth. “To make a long story short, it was never the same between us. Then, one day he went fishing. Supposedly alone. That’s when he died.” Her throat grew thick, and she stared at the fire, remembering the pain, feeling the heartache of betrayal all over again. “That was a lie, of course. He was with the same woman that he’d supposedly stopped seeing.” Lesley lifted a shoulder. She wasn’t going to dwell on Aaron
and his infidelity. “And that, as they say, was that. So now it’s just Angela and me.” And it was fine. The way it should be. She didn’t need a man in her life. Certainly not one who cheated on her.

  “Did you love him?”

  The question jolted her, though she’d asked it of herself a thousand times. “Aaron?” She thought for a moment. “In the beginning I thought I did. Now—” she shook her head at the complexity that had become her life; once, everything had been so clear “—I’m not so sure.”

  “Doesn’t matter, I suppose,” he said. “I think love’s highly overrated.”

  “Do you?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Sounds like the philosophy of someone who’s been burned.”

  “We’ve all been burned. It’s part of living.” He took a long sip from his wine, then, without glancing in her direction, said, “I think tomorrow, if you’re feeling up to it, you can go home.”

  “Thank you, oh, master,” she teased, but the joke fell flat.

  He didn’t so much as crack a smile. All day long his mood had eroded, and now, near midnight, he scowled darkly, wrestling with his inner demons.

  “What is it with you?” she finally asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You haven’t been yourself today.”

  “Sure I have.”

  “Oh, come on, Chase.” She wasn’t about to play word games. “Something’s eating at you, and I don’t think it’s a great, all-encompassing sadness because Angela and I are leaving.” She shook her head, her hair brushing the back of her sweater. “Nope. There’s something else.”

  Twirling the stem of his glass between the flat of each hand, he thought for a moment. “New Year’s Eve isn’t my favorite time of year.”

  “But it’s a time for new beginnings.”

  “Fine.” He rolled to his feet as if to dismiss the subject, but she was having none of it. Not when they’d been getting so close. “I don’t think the holidays are that big a deal.”

  “What is it with you?” she asked.

  He hesitated. “Let’s just say I’ve got some bad memories all tied up with tinsel and red ribbon, okay?”

  Lesley wasn’t about to be put off. This man had seen her naked, delivered her baby, cared for her and Angela for over a week, taken the time to tend to her stock and house. The least she could do was lend a sympathetic ear.

  “What happened?” she asked as he walked to the kitchen.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Why not?”

  He reached for his jacket, which was hung on a peg by the back door. “It’s private.”

  She’d pulled herself to her feet and gritted her teeth against a twinge of pain in her ankle. Anger propelling her, she hitched her way to the kitchen. “And having a baby and talking to guardian angels isn’t?”

  “Leave it alone, Lesley.”

  “Don’t put me off, Chase. If there’s anything I can do—”

  “There’s nothing, okay? End of subject.” Angrily he shoved his arms through the sleeves of his jacket and reached for his hat. “I’m gonna check on the calves. I’ll be back in a while.”

  “It’s nearly midnight.”

  He didn’t listen, just yanked open the back door and strode into the night. “You’re running from something, Fortune,” she said under her breath, and decided to wait for him.

  She fiddled around the kitchen, cleaning up, then folded clothes at the table. Nearly forty-five minutes passed and she was starting to get worried, when she heard him stomp up the steps to the back porch. A few minutes later he opened the door, and cold air rushed into the room, causing the fire to flare and the candles to flicker.

  “I thought you’d be in bed.”

  “I didn’t think our discussion was over.”

  “Sure it was.” He hung his coat on the peg, and she noticed that his skin was flushed with cold, the pupils of his eyes wide.

  “Because you say so.”

  “It does take two.”

  She saw red. “You know what your problem is?”

  “I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.”

  She elevated her chin to glare at him. “You’re always the cynic.”

  “Maybe I have a reason to be.”

  “Do you?” She didn’t believe it for a minute. “Why would anyone with the last name of Fortune be cynical? You can’t really believe you ever got a raw deal in life.” The words were out before she could call them back. “I mean—”

  “You mean that just because my last name is Fortune, everything in my life had to have been perfect.” His gaze cut like a laser.

  “Well, I—”

  “Sometimes things aren’t what they seem.”

  “No,” she said, wounded deep inside. “I suppose they aren’t.”

  He didn’t answer. Just snapped off the lights in the kitchen. Angela began to fuss, and Chase carried the baby in her bed into the bedroom. He said a gruff good-night to Lesley, and she tried to push aside their argument. She’d dug too deep, it seemed. Chase was a private man, and he wasn’t going to share any of his secrets with her.

  Chase was up before dawn. He hadn’t slept much, and his thoughts, damn them, had been all tangled up in Lesley and Angela. The thought of them leaving today bothered him, and as he rode the fence line, searching for the last five strays he hadn’t located, he experienced a jab of loneliness he hadn’t expected.

  “Get over it,” he told himself. Ulysses snorted and tossed his head; the day was bright and clear. He should have been ecstatic to be rid of his widowed neighbor and her daughter. But he wasn’t. For the first time since Emily’s death he felt a ray of hope, a warmth in his heart. “Idiot,” he growled, and pulled on the reins, urging Ulysses up a short ridge to a copse of pine. He sensed that something wasn’t right. His chest tightened. Ulysses balked, then half reared. Chase’s stomach lurched. He’d found the strays. All five of them. Dead.

  Happy New Year.

  After helplessly surveying the scene, he climbed back in the saddle. Clucking his tongue, he turned Ulysses back toward the ranch house. This was the hard part of ranching, one he never quite reconciled himself with. A nagging sense of guilt chased him down the ridge and back to the barn. He should have been able to save those animals.

  Lesley was waiting for him. Bacon was sizzling in a frying pan, hash brown potatoes warming on a side dish, biscuits steaming from a pan. She moved around the kitchen without much difficulty. She hummed as she worked, only looking up when he opened the door.

  “Perfect timing,” she said with a smile, as if their argument the night before had been forgotten. “Wash up and sit yourself down. I figured that since this was my last morning here, the least I could do was fix you—What happened?” Her smile disappeared.

  “I found the strays.”

  “Oh.” She shook her head. “They weren’t okay?”

  “Dead. All of them.” He tossed his gloves over the screen by the fire and unzipped his jacket.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I know, but—” Her throat felt thick, and impulsively she threw her arms around him. There was so much to him she didn’t understand, so much she wanted to learn. His arms wrapped around her, and he dragged her close, burying his face in the crook of her neck, not kissing her, but clinging to her. He smelled of horses and snow and leather. His body was warm and hard, and she sighed against him. “Sometimes it’s not easy.”

  “Sometimes it’s damned hard,” he replied, and, clearing his throat, let his arms fall to his sides. “You didn’t have to do all this,” he said, eyeing the breakfast.

  “I wanted to. You know, Chase Fortune, I owe you a lot, and there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  “Shoot.”

  She cleared her throat and forked the bacon onto a plate covered with a paper towel. As he watched, she deftly cracked three eggs and dropped them into the hot pan. “It’s about the water on my place.
”

  “Is there a problem?”

  She flipped the eggs, then reached into the cupboard. “There could be.” Handing him a chipped plate, she said, “Dish up. While it’s all still hot.”

  “Go on. What about your water?” He pronged several slices of bacon and a pile of hash browns.

  “I’ve got a well on my place, but it usually dries up around August, so I use the spring in the late summer and early fall. The spring fills a pond, and I’m able to pump enough water from it for the horses and myself.”

  “Is it enough?”

  “It’s never been a problem before, but—” Her shoulders stiffened a little as she added, “The spring starts here, on this place, then flows into my land. I have a lease for water rights that the previous owners signed with Aaron ten years ago. But it runs out in June. Aaron claimed that he had a verbal agreement to extend it for another ten years with the previous owner, but I’ve searched through all my papers and I can’t find anything in writing. So…I’d like to renegotiate with you. Otherwise I’ll have to drill another well, and the truth of the matter is that I can’t afford it this year, or probably next.”

  “We’ll work something out,” he said, picking up a couple of hot biscuits and dropping them onto his plate.

  “Good. I’ll call my attorney when I get settled at home again.”

  “You don’t have to call a lawyer.” He settled into a chair at the scarred table and noticed that she’d set out place mats, silverware and a tiny vase with a sprig of holly in it. She filled her plate and sat across from him. A whiff of her perfume floated over the scents of bacon grease and burning wood. He was getting used to being around her, listening to her talk to herself, watching the play of firelight burnishing her hair. He slathered a biscuit with butter and tried not to noticed that her sweater hugged breasts that were probably larger than usual due to the fact that she was breast-feeding. Though she was still a little plump in her mid-section, her figure was beginning to return. She was sexy and earthy and had started to fill a dark void in his soul. A void he’d decided to live with five years before.