A fan-favorite from #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jackson, originally published in A Fortune’s Children Christmas in 1998.
Chase Fortune has one year to turn around a rundown ranch to inherit it from his great-aunt. But his careful plans go awry when he rescues his beautiful neighbor, Lesley Bastian, from a blizzard and helps her deliver her baby.
Lesley isn’t the staying type—she wants to get back on her feet as soon as possible so she can manage her own ranch. But fate and weather conspire to keep them together, and soon Chase must face the terrible choice between his home and his heart.
Originally published in 1998.
Angel Baby
LISA JACKSON
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
PROLOGUE
December
Minneapolis, Minnesota
“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas...”
The soloist’s voice was hardly audible over the clinking of champagne glasses, chatter of conversation and bubbling laughter that permeated the celebration at the Fortune Corporation headquarters.
Chase Fortune watched the festivities with a jaundiced eye. He was as out of place as a range mustang at Churchill Downs, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
He took a swallow from his stemmed glass of champagne and wished he was anywhere but at his great-aunt-Kate’s eightieth birthday bash in the middle of the heartland.
A twenty-foot Christmas tree decorated with twinkling lights and festive red ribbons stood in the center of the room, while an ice sculpture in the shape of an angel, complete with harp, wings and halo, was beginning to melt near the door. Liveried attendants checked engraved invitations against the guest list.
What a joke.
Chase yanked at the collar of his too-tight tuxedo, then drained his glass. Relatives that had skimmed in and out of his life over the years filled the cavernous room. Dressed in holiday finery and bearing expensive gifts that were to be donated to charitable causes, they were here to pay tribute to Kate Fortune, the gutsy, elegant matriarch of his family.
What he wouldn’t do for a cold bottle of beer, his dusty cowboy boots and a crowded, smoky tavern where you could watch a basketball game on the television mounted over the bar, grumble about the price of beef or hear the likes of Garth Brooks or Waylon Jennings from hidden speakers.
Instead he was here in the city, watching rain drizzle down the large windows, feeling his estranged sister, Delia’s, cold shoulder as she, dressed in shimmering red silk, made a point of avoiding him. Not that he really gave a damn.
The singer, a tall, willowy woman with dark hair, a skin-tight gold dress and a Santa cap stuck jauntily on her head caught the guest’s attention.
“Happy Birthday to you...” The crowd joined in and Kate Fortune, who’d been helped onto the slightly raised stage, smiled, her blue eyes sparkling youthfully despite the years that had propelled her into the category of elderly. Compact and aristocratic she laughed as the song was over, gave a short speech and began shaking hands and hugging her children, grandchildren and whatever other stragglers her huge family entailed.
Chase was in the last category. While the rest of the Fortune herd joined together, he was like the maverick calf, rough around the edges, wild at heart and not about to conform to whatever the rest of the Fortunes thought best. He had no use for the cosmetics company, stock options, business conglomerates or mergers.
So why the hell did you come here, if you didn’t care?
Leaving his empty glass on a silver tray, he shouldered open French doors leading to a covered veranda. The air was clean and fresh, rain washed and ice-cold. Traffic rushed by on the street two stories below, tires spraying water from puddles, engines thrumming. The lights of the city glowed brightly, lending a festive air to the night, and on the street corners, bells were being rung by volunteers asking for donations.
“I thought I saw you duck out here.”
Surprised, he turned and found that his great-aunt, a fur stole draped over her shoulders, had slipped onto the verandah. “I figured it might be a tad too crowded for you in there.” She cocked her head to the closed glass doors where the party was in full swing.
“A little, yeah.” He offered her a smile. “Happy birthday, Kate.”
She chuckled. “At my age each one is special, believe me.” Her eyebrows lifted as if at a private joke. “Who knows? This could be my last.”
He didn’t believe it for a minute. With her enthusiasm for life and energy, she’d probably outlive all her children and grandchildren. “I doubt it.”
“Do you?” She walked to the edge of the verandah and looked up at the skyscrapers. Misting rain touched her face and she blinked.
“How’d you manage to break away?”
“Oh, some privileges come with age,” she said, turning to face him. “Besides I told Sterling and Jake that I wasn’t to be disturbed. I think they can handle it.” Sterling Foster was Kate’s husband and attorney, the one man who had known she’d survived a plane crash eight years ago when she’d been the target of a failed murder attempt. Jake was her oldest son. “I wanted a few minutes alone with you, anyway,” she said earnestly, “because I have a proposition for you.”
“Sounds dangerous,” he teased.
“Maybe.” She chuckled again. “You have your father’s sense of humor.”
“I didn’t know he had one.” Chase wasn’t going to fall into the trap of thinking he was anything like his old man. At one time Zeke Fortune had held the world in his hand—loving wife, adoring children, money in the bank and the best damned ranch in Western Montana. He’d managed, by a mixture of circumstance, poor timing, bad luck and even worse judgment to lose it all. If there was one thing Chase wasn’t going to be, it was a loser in life. He’d lost enough already. More than anyone could possibly guess.
“Oh, Zeke had a colorful sense of humor.” She sighed sadly. “Life robbed him of it. Don’t let it do the same to you, Chase.”
He didn’t like thinking of the old man or of his own private hell. “You mentioned a proposition.”
“Mmm.” She placed both hands on the brick railing and didn’t seem to mind that gusts of wind plucked at her hair. “It’s a simple deal really. You know that some years ago I was supposed to have died and, while everyone thought I was situated comfortably on the other side of the pearly gates, I bequeathed to my heirs their part of the family fortune.”
Chase nodded. “I remember.”
“It turned out well, I think,” she mused. “In one instance, if you remember, I left my grandson Kyle a sizable ranch in Wyoming. Of course there was a catch to his inheritance—he had to stay on the ranch six months before it was his. He was a city boy at the time, and I think he silently cursed me for making him give up his ways, but it worked.”
Chase recalled all too vividly and, truth to tell, he’d been envious when he’d heard that his playboy of a relative had inherited the vast spread. But he’d been dealing with his own problems at the time. Unwilling to show any emotion, he shoved his hands into his pockets. “What’s this got to do with me?”
“I have a similar bargain for you.”
The muscles in the back of his neck tightened, just as they always did when he sensed trouble. “What kind of bargain?” he asked, and heard the suspicious edge to his tone.
“Don’t look at me like that. It’s nothing sinister, trust me. I have a new ranch in Western Montana, one that unfortunately is in need of some serious help in order that it stay afloat.” She
rubbed her hands together, the fingers of one massaging the knuckles of the other. “I’m not in the position to do it myself, obviously, and you’re the most likely person in this family to turn it around as it’s your line of work and, as luck would have it, in your neck of the woods.”
Chase didn’t believe in luck, but he wasn’t about to voice his opinion tonight.
“So, Chase, the deal is this—You’ll have one year to turn the place around, get it out of the red ink that it’s been mired in and show a profit. If you can do it by Christmastime next year, the ranch and everything that’s a part of it will be yours. If not, well, you’ll just have to give it up.”
He couldn’t believe his ears, but Kate, damn her, stared at him with all the intensity of a true Fortune. A mite of a woman, she was hard as nails and tough as tanned leather. And she had him. Oh, how she had him. “You’re serious?”
“Dead serious.”
His eyes narrowed skeptically, but he saw there wasn’t a hint of deception in her—just grit. Pure, Minnesotan grit.
“I ended up with the spread as payment for an old debt. Now you, Chase, have a chance to make it yours. What do you say?”
He started to speak but the French doors opened and a woman with blond hair in a French braid, bright blue eyes and a serious expression poked her head outside. She pinned Kate with an intense gaze. “Sorry to disturb you, Ms. Fortune, but there are a couple of reporters who want to speak with you.”
Kate touched her fingers to her hair. “In a second, Kelly. You’ve met my great-nephew Chase? Kelly Sinclair, my social secretary and Girl Friday.”
“Glad to meet you,” Kelly said with a half smile.
“Same here.”
Kate bundled her fur more tightly over her shoulders. “I’ll be there directly. Just give me a few more minutes.”
“I’ll handle them.” Kelly winked before slipping through the doors again.
Kate turned to Chase. Despite the lines around her eyes and mouth, she was a striking, straightforward woman. She elevated an eyebrow. “Duty calls, I’m afraid.” She tilted her head to the side, studying him as if she were trying to determine what he was made of. A horn blasted from the street below, and the distinctive notes of “Silver Bells” seeped through the windowpanes. “So, Chase, what do you say? Have we got a deal?”
He didn’t think twice. All his life he’d hoped to own his own place, and this, if she was sincere, was the chance of a lifetime. And it had come at a perfect time for him, at a crossroads in his life. “Yes, ma’am,” he said in an exaggerated drawl. “I don’t think I’m fool enough to pass this up.” It wouldn’t take him long to pull up stakes and move. Nothing was tying him down.
“Good.” She seemed relieved. “Sterling has the contract with him. I thought we should make it official.”
“Thanks.” He offered her his hand.
“Don’t thank me just yet, Chase.” She placed chilled beringed fingers in his palm. Her easy smile fell away. “There is something you should know.”
Brace yourself. You knew this sounded too good to be true and it is. Now, she’s about to let you know what the catch is. “What’s that?”
She dropped his hand and walked to the door. Pausing, as if to add a little drama to an already-tense night, she looked over her shoulder. “The ranch is the old Waterman place in Larkspur.”
Chase’s gut clenched. He held his empty glass in a grip that caused his knuckles to show white.
“It’s adjacent to—”
“Dad’s place.” Dozens of old, faded memories resurfaced—hot summer days bucking hay, the old tractor billowing black smoke in the clear blue sky; his mother’s insistence of prayers before each meal and starched shirts on Sundays; his twin brother, Chet, laughing as he swung out on the rope swing before dropping into the icy depths of the old swimming hole, and a grizzled, crippled dog named Beau. His mouth turned to sand as he recalled all too vividly how it had all changed: everything he’d trusted, everyone he’d loved had disappeared from his life, including his wife and child.
“Chase?” Kate’s smile was gone, her face sober as rain fell on the city below. “If this is too much for you—”
His head snapped up and his gaze drilled into hers. “I’ll do it,” he said without another moment’s thought. So what if he had to deal with a truckload of painful memories and face the bald fact that everyone he’d trusted in his life had run out on him?
He’d wanted his own place for years, an opportunity to prove that he was better than his old man, that he, Chase Fortune, could make good on his own. He didn’t have to rely on his last name to get him by. Kate’s offer was the chance of a lifetime. Besides, what did he have to lose? Nothing. Not a damned thing.
He opened the door and escorted her inside. “Just show me where to sign.”
CHAPTER ONE
“This storm is the worst to hit this part of the country in twenty years, and that’s goin’ some because we’ve had our share of bad ones. Power lines are down and roads are closed from Helena west, so stay home by the fire this Christmas Eve, pour yourself a cup of holiday cheer and keep listening to—” The DJ’s voice was lost over the crackle of static and a few faint notes of a country Christmas classic. Chase snapped the transistor radio off in disgust.
Merry Christmas, he thought sarcastically as he pulled on his gloves and down jacket. The cabin was warm and seemed, for the most part, to be weatherproof. On one end of the small cottage, a wood stove threw out heat from the kitchen, while a fire crackled hungrily in the river-rock fireplace in the living area. Aside from the cracks in the log walls and a few missing shingles in the roof, his new home in the foothills of the Bitterroot Mountains was cozy enough. Kerosene lanterns burned on the mantel and he’d draped the antlers mounted over the door with pine bows and mistletoe, his one concession to the season.
His dog, an old hound of no particular breed, whose once-black muzzle had grayed, lifted his head. “Let’s go, Rambo,” Chase ordered as he snagged his gloves from the screen in front of the fire. “We’d better feed the stock while we still can.”
With a thump of his tail and a soft woof, the dog climbed to his arthritic legs.
On the back porch Chase laced up heavy boots, plopped his hat onto his head, grabbed his shovel and headed to the barn. His barn if he could somehow turn a profit on this miserable Montana ranch in the next year. Rambo led the way as snow continued to fall relentlessly. Icy pellets driven by the wind stung Chase’s cheeks and drifted against the buildings. Chase was worried. Most of his best stock was penned in the barns and fields close to the house, but part of his herd was still unaccounted for, lost in the twenty thousand acres that climbed the surrounding hills and abutted the ranch where he’d grown up so long ago. Squinting, he glanced to the north, thinking he might see the neighboring ranch house through the heavy curtain of the blizzard. No way. He couldn’t see ten feet in front of him, much less a quarter of a mile.
He plowed through the knee-deep snow to the barn. Icicles dangled from the eaves, and the old door mounted on rollers was nearly frozen shut.
Inside, the cattle were restless, but Chase, with the aid of a battery-powered lantern, made short work of filling the mangers with hay and grain, then filling the water trough. Thankfully the pipes had been wrapped, and he’d let the water trickle relentlessly, flowing enough to keep the ice at bay.
He trudged from the barn to the outdoor shelter—a huge roof on poles that provided some protection for part of his herd—then with Rambo on his heels, broke a path to the stables where the few horses were housed and the odors of grain, dust and horses greeted him. The horses shifted and snorted, their ears flicking in his direction, liquid eyes watching him curiously while he tossed hay into their mangers.
As he scooped the last can of grain from the oat barrel, Rambo trotted to the door and gave off a soft woof. His old ears pricked up and he started whining and scratching at the door.
“What the devil’s got into you?” Chase, pul
ling on his gloves, opened the door and stared into the coming night. He couldn’t see anything other than the continual snow. “It’s nothing—” But there was something that wasn’t right, something out of place—the muted, steady blare of an automobile horn. Squinting, he stared through the blizzard, but saw nothing. Still the horn blasted.
“Great,” he growled. Just what he needed. His truck was four-wheel-drive, but the tires were bald, the transmission about shot and he doubted if he could make much headway in snow this deep. But a horse could. He turned, walked into the stables and saddled the largest gelding on the ranch. Part draft animal, the buckskin was strong and sure, not as quick as the quarter horses, but steady. “Come on, Ulysses,” Chase said, snagging a bridle from its nail on the wall, “it looks like you and I have work to do.” He flung a blanket and saddle over the beast’s broad back, then led Ulysses outside where the wind lashed. “You stay,” he ordered Rambo, but the dog ignored him and as Ulysses forged through the frigid powder, the old hound was at his heels, half jumping to keep up. All in all, it was a disaster.
Still the horn blasted, sounding louder as Ulysses plunged along the lane to the main road. Chase knew where they were by the position of trees that lined the drive of this broken-down ranch. Kate Fortune hadn’t been kidding. It would take a miracle for him to turn the place around in a year.
Ulysses snorted as the shape of a dark rig appeared in the otherwise white landscape. What kind of idiot had decided to go out Sunday driving in this mess, Chase wondered as he recognized the shape of a sports utility vehicle that had slid off the road and tipped into the ditch, mired deep to its axle.
Snow covered the windows. He climbed off the horse and pounded on the car with a gloved fist. The horn stopped.
“Is someone there?” A woman’s voice. It figured.
“Yeah.” He yanked on the passenger door and it opened with a groan. The interior light flashed on, and he was staring at a woman of considerable bulk crammed behind the steering wheel.