Fortune Found (4 page)

Flint nodded, but his eyes were on her intently the whole time, as if he were gauging his words before he said, “Do you mind if I ask how he died?”

Not when it was asked so gently, so compassionately, so mindful of it being difficult for her to talk about.

She sighed. “It was an accident at a building site. A faulty crane, a dropped girder…” But she couldn't bring herself to go into the details, so she said, “We were both working for the same construction company— I ran the office, Pete was the electrical foreman, so he was in the field most of the time. Sometimes I had paperwork that would take me into the on-site office—that was always set up in a trailer that stayed on a big job—”

“Were you
there
when it happened?” Flint asked, his frown lines deep with horror on her behalf.

“I was,” she said, her voice cracking even though it was barely above a whisper. “Thankfully I didn't see it, but I heard workman shouting, running, yelling for someone to call for an ambulance, which I did before I ever left the trailer or knew it was Pete I was calling for…”

“I'm so sorry,” Flint said with heartfelt sympathy.

“He literally never knew what hit him, which was a blessing, I think. And I didn't have to see him—the owner of the company kept me away until they had Pete in the ambulance. I rode to the hospital holding his hand…”

Okay, she couldn't talk about that without breaking down, and she didn't want to break down. She'd done more than her share of crying. So she swallowed hard and said, “Things are pretty much a blur for me from there.”

“That's probably a blessing, too, in this case.”

“I know my folks were at the hospital by the time I got there. Kelsey wasn't living in Red Rock then, but she wasn't far away and she was at home with the kids by the time my folks brought me back. Telling them was the hardest thing I'd ever done.”

“This was how long ago?”

“A little over two years.”

“Were the kids even old enough to understand?”

“Adam was only a baby, so no. He doesn't even remember Pete except through pictures and stories I've told him. Braden and Bethany were two and a half, so they didn't really get it either. For a long time they just kept asking where Daddy was, when he was coming home, and we'd have to tell them all over again, try to help them understand—”

“But Ella, she was five, right?”

“Right. She knew exactly what was going on, poor thing.” And that, too, brought the sting of tears to Jessie's eyes. But in two years she'd learned well how to hold them at bay. “Ella went back and forth between her own grief and putting up a strong front. Half the time she
played parent—helping with the other kids, making an attempt to look after me…”

“Ross.”

Jessie raised her eyebrows at Flint in question to his oldest brother's name.

“Ross did that in my family,” Flint explained. “We all took care of each other, but it was Ross who led the way, who played parent.”

Again Jessie wasn't sure exactly why that had been necessary, but not knowing the details, she assumed that it had something to do with his mother's overall less-than-stellar reputation.

“I suppose,” Jessie said then, “that that's what's going on now, too— Ella is feeling protective. And maybe a little territorial.”

“So we're being pushed
and
pulled,” Flint said then with a knowing smile.

Jessie thought she knew what he meant, but she didn't want to assume too much so she merely repeated, “Pushed and pulled?”

“Ella wants to pull you away, to keep you to herself. But there's a lot of pushing going on with Kelsey, and now Coop and tonight your parents, too…”

“I know, I'm sorry,” she apologized for the second time. “I was hoping maybe you hadn't noticed the not-so-veiled attempts at matchmaking.”

Flint laughed again and Jessie wished she didn't like the sound of it as much as she did.

“You thought I hadn't noticed that we're being dispatched to paint rooms together, to go to the store together, to do
everything
they can possibly get us to do
together?
That seating arrangements always put us side by side—”

“And now this—” Jessie interjected, raising both hands in the air and glancing around “—getting everybody out of here so we're alone.”

Flint grinned that great grin that drew such sexy lines on his handsome face. “Yep, I noticed. Impossible not to. It seems to be a conspiracy.”

“But Kelsey is the mastermind.”

“I think her intentions are good,” Flint allowed.

“Oh, they are,” Jessie was quick to confirm. “She just wants what she thinks is best for me.” And it was a compliment to Flint that Kelsey thought he was it.

“The two of you are really close, aren't you?”

“She's not only my sister, she's also my best friend.”

“And your folks, have you all always lived together?”

“No, they retired about the same time I lost Pete. They'd both worked for a small, independent paper company. They had planned to sell their house and do some traveling when the time came, but instead they moved in here with me to help get me through the loss and to lend a hand with the kids. They've been a godsend. Between them and Kelsey moving back to Red Rock eight months ago, I don't think I could have made it without them. But the matchmaking…all I can do is say I'm sorry.”

Flint smiled again, not seeming perturbed by what her family—and his brother—were doing.

“It's not so bad,” he said in a tone that seemed as if it might have held some innuendo, except that Jessie thought she was too out of practice with men to be sure. “I just don't know how that roof is going to get fixed if I don't get up there and give Coop a hand with it.”

“I'll try again to reason with Kelsey,” Jessie said as
Flint got to his feet, apparently ready to follow Kelsey and Cooper home.

Jessie stood, too, and without thinking about it, began to walk with Flint to the gate that connected her backyard to Kelsey's.

“Maybe instead of that,” he said along the way, “we should give them a little of what they want.”

Jessie didn't have any idea what he was talking about that time. “Give them what they want?”

“Maybe we should pretend to go on a date together, come back and say we just didn't click. Maybe then they'd relax.”

An instant wave of dejection—or maybe rejection—washed through her at the thought that Flint had decided they didn't click. That decision shouldn't have been jarring—after all, they didn't
need
to click beyond the friendly superficialities that were already in effect. There was no reason for anything more than that.

And she didn't
want
there to be anything more than that, Jessie reminded herself. This was strictly a distant, siblings-of-in-laws relationship.

And yet it was somehow demoralizing to hear that Flint didn't think they clicked…

Especially when she was so intensely aware of him in every way.

She hid her feelings behind what she hoped was nothing more than a curious expression and as they reached the gate, said, “A pretend date?”

Flint opened the gate, stood in the opening and turned to lean one shoulder against the six-foot-high side post so that he was facing her. “We'll go out alone, have dinner someplace innocuous— Not Red, where all eyes would be on us.”

Red was the local restaurant owned by the Mendoza family, who were extremely close friends of the Fortunes. They even had family ties with them now that the Mendozas' son, Marcos, was engaged to Wendy Fortune—a member of the Atlanta branch of the Fortune family who had only recently come to Red Rock.

“All eyes would definitely be on us at Red,” Jessie agreed.

“So we'll go somewhere else. How about that barbecue place outside of Austin that Coop and Kelsey were talking about tonight?”

“They seemed to like it.”

“Then we'll come home, I'll say you're great but there just weren't any sparks. You can say I'm a big jerk if you want—”

Jessie laughed but didn't think it was wise to say that she already knew he wasn't a big jerk, so instead said, “I'll probably stick with the just-no-sparks thing, too.”

“And then they'll all have to give it a rest.”

Jessie considered the ruse. “I suppose you do have a point. If they think we gave it a try and it just didn't go anywhere, they'll have to accept it and back off.”

“Not that I don't enjoy working with you and talking to you…” Flint added with a small but genuine smile that convinced her that he actually did. Even if they didn't
click
.

“But that roof is in bad shape,” Flint went on, “and even with two of us it's going to be a big job. Unless you want to volunteer to work up there, then we can keep this going…”

“Mid-June Texas heat on a rooftop? I don't think so.”

“We do a date, then?”

“I guess we could give it a try,” Jessie agreed. “When?”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Okay.”

“I'll tell Coop and Kelsey as soon as I get inside. Hopefully they'll figure if we're seeing each other socially tomorrow night, they don't need to push things in the day and Coop and I can get started on the roof.”

“I'll keep my fingers crossed,” Jessie promised.

“And then we'll have our fake date—at seven?”

“Sure.”

“Ella's really going be mad at me after that, isn't she?” Flint asked.

“It's probably going to keep you blacklisted,” she confirmed.

“I'll have to get you home early to convince everyone that the date is a flop—maybe that'll help.”

And somehow the thought of making sure the date didn't last too long was also a bit of a downer.

But Jessie shooed that away. Flint was right, a short date was more likely to look like a failure. And that was what they were going for.

“Okay, then,” Jessie said. “We have a pretend date tomorrow night at seven.”

“For barbecue. And we'll just hope our plan works.”

Jessie nodded her agreement, and in the process her gaze caught on his face once more. On his smoldering eyes. On lips that were so, so supple…

And why she should suddenly wonder if pretend dates ended with good-night kisses, she had no idea. But that was exactly what she was wondering. Along with what it might be like to be kissed by Flint.

But the moment she realized that was what was going through her mind, she jolted herself out of it, telling herself that of course there wouldn't be a good-night kiss. The whole point of the fake date was to convince their families that they
didn't
click.

“Guess I'll see you tomorrow for work first, though,” Flint said then.

Which seemed like her cue to leave, so she said she would see him the next day and headed to her back door, pondering why she was looking forward to a date that was only for show.

“M
ama, you're so pretty!”

“Thank you, Braden,” Jessie said to her four-year-old son.

She was putting on the finishing touches for her pretend date with Flint on Wednesday evening by trying to force earrings into pierced lobes that hadn't been used since Pete's funeral. It had somehow drawn the attention of all four kids, who were sitting or lying on her bed to watch.

“You look good as Miss Osterman,” Bethany contributed, a compliment indeed because Miss Osterman had been the twins' twenty-two-year-old drop-dead gorgeous swimming instructor and Bethany had already announced that she wanted to look just like that when she grew up.
Who didn't?
had been what Kelsey and Jessie had answered with a laugh…

“You should stay home and eat with us,” Ella contributed morosely, frowning at Jessie in the mirror that Jessie was facing, the mirror that reflected the kids behind her as well. “Gramma is making us macaroni and cheese with the squiggly noodles.”

Oh, Ella, I'm sorry,
Jessie thought.
But when this is over you'll be able to relax…

“I wanna go,” Adam lamented before Jessie could think of what to say to her oldest daughter. “I wanna eat with Fwint.”

“No one's going but your mama,” Jessie's mother said, apparently having overheard Adam as she'd approached the room because her response came at the same time she appeared in the doorway. “Tonight is for your mama and Flint—grown-ups only. Now let her get ready and come downstairs—supper's ready.”

All four kids hopped up and Jessie turned from her dresser mirror to give Ella a hug as her oldest slipped off the bed.

“It'll be okay. You'll see,” she whispered.

Ella didn't answer her, obviously not convinced.

Jessie's mother waved fluttering hands at her daughter. “Go on, get back to what you were doing. He'll be here soon and I have a surprise dessert for Ella—her favorite.”

“Strawberry ice cream?” Ella said, barely enthusiastic.

“Strawberry ice cream with my special fresh strawberry sauce to put on top,” Jeannie Hunt said as she shooed the kids out and pulled Jessie's bedroom door closed behind them all, leaving Jessie alone.

And torn between hating Ella's obvious displeasure
about her spending time with Flint Fortune and trying to figure out her own feelings.

She
shouldn't
feel
anything
about this date. Certainly not excitement. Or anticipation. Or eagerness. She definitely shouldn't have butterflies in her stomach. And there was no way she should have needed to change her clothes three times before settling on the khaki slacks and red camp shirt that was very—
very
—fitted. No way she should have deep-conditioned her hair so it would have extra wave and shine when she wore it down.

All for a date that wasn't real. A date that was nothing but subterfuge, a ploy to get her family to stop pushing her and Flint Fortune together. Yet she
was
feeling excited and eager and there were butterflies in her stomach.

As if this were a real date.

And every bit of that also caused her guilt. Guilt for Ella's confusion and anger. And guilt over Pete, too…

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and wished what she'd wished a million times since that day she'd lost her husband—that everything hadn't gotten so complicated, so difficult.

This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. She was supposed to be married to Pete, living her life and caring for the kids with him, looking forward to growing old together.

She wasn't supposed to be raising four kids alone. She wasn't supposed to be
dating
—for real or not.

And she wasn't supposed to be feeling any kind of attraction for a man who
wasn't
Pete…

That was just so weird. And unsettling. It made Jessie feel as if she were being disloyal to Pete.

“But it's not a real date,” she told her reflection in
the mirror as she finally got one small hoop earring in and began to work on the second.

A fake date concocted to put an end to Kelsey's matchmaking. And once that was accomplished, Jessie reminded herself, she would again be free to put her energies into her kids. Which was what she was determined to do. Her family was her priority and nothing was going to change that.

And part of making them her priority meant that she was determined to be cautious about what—and who—she allowed into their lives.

Yes, Kelsey thought Flint was a decent guy and so far Jessie hadn't seen anything that said he wasn't. But he also wasn't from the best background—from what little Jessie knew.

Granted, she didn't know much, and she certainly didn't know any of the details, but she did know that Flint and Coop's mother had been married four times. That she'd had four children with three different fathers.

That had to have made an impression on Flint, and Jessie couldn't imagine that it had made a good one.

And because she knew, too, that Flint was divorced—though, again, without knowing any details—and he'd said himself that he was not to be tied down—she thought that it didn't speak well of his staying power and that that could potentially have come from his less-than-ideal background.

If there was one thing that Jessie was terrified of, it was feeling about someone the way she'd felt about Pete, and losing them. She just couldn't go through that again in any fashion—including divorce. She couldn't
risk that kind of loss for herself and she wouldn't risk it for her kids.

If she ever took a chance on another man, it would have to be with someone she knew without a doubt would never choose to leave her. Someone who would stick around through thick and thin.

That someone wasn't likely to be a man who was accustomed to seeing his mother go in and out of marriages, who already had a divorce of his own under his belt and was clearly a commitment-phobe.

“Not that it matters. You don't click with him, remember?” she told her reflection sarcastically.

That tone of voice would have made Pete laugh. And suddenly, as had happened many times since his death, Jessie had such a strong sense of him that it made her wonder if his spirit was there with her.

Watching her get ready to go out with another man.

Pete had liked the earrings she was struggling to put on. Maybe she shouldn't wear them.

But somehow, even in her sense that Pete was with her, she didn't feel as if she needed to change her jewelry.

And that was when—out of the blue—another thought occurred to her that actually seemed to bear the mark of her late husband.

Pete had always been an optimistic, upbeat person. Even in the most dire situations she'd never known him not to find the good that could come of anything. And while having a fledgling attraction to another man wasn't a dire situation, it struck her at that moment that maybe the good to come out of it was that feeling even the slightest attraction to someone new, someone other
than Pete, was a sign that she was becoming capable of moving on.

The idea gave her a twinge of guilt, too, but she knew taking that first step was an indication that she was healing. That healing meant regaining some emotional health and stamina and resiliency. It meant she was getting stronger. And strength—especially when she was raising four children—was exactly what she needed.

“So, wondering what the man looks like without his shirt on is okay?” she asked her reflection and the room in general.

When the question made her laugh a little, she decided it must be okay. That her secret appreciation of Flint's physical attributes were indeed a positive sign that she was coming out of her grief.

And since there was no danger of it going any further than that because he'd already let her know she didn't do anything for him, and because tonight's dinner was the beginning of the plan to get her sister and her sister's matchmaking minions to back off, Jessie decided she could look at the whole picture as a positive.

As just a reawakening, of sorts. Like the first blossoming of Texas bluebonnets in spring to mark the end of winter, feeling a hint of attraction to Flint Fortune marked the end of the emotional winter that had come over her with Pete's death.

It was nothing more than that.

So it was okay, she concluded. She could go on this pretend date with Flint, come home and get on with business as usual.

And if her heart skipped a beat when the doorbell rang and a moment later Braden called up the stairs, “Flint's here…”

It was just part of that secret attraction to the man that didn't really mean a thing.

And finally, firmly in that conviction, Jessie got the second earring in, took a last look at herself in the mirror, decided she was presentable enough and marched out of the room to meet her date.

 

The barbecue joint that Kelsey and Cooper had recommended was just outside Austin, so it didn't take Jessie and Flint long to get there.

Their conversation during the trip was merely about the best and worst barbecue they'd each had in the past, and about how to get to the place. But once they were seated at the round wooden table in the down-home roadside establishment that was part restaurant, part bar, part honky-tonk, Jessie knew it was time for a new vein of small talk.

And maybe coming up with some of that would keep her from admiring all that Flint could do to a plain pair of cowboy boots, a crisp white dress shirt and jeans that had made it impossible not to look at his rear end and his thighs every chance she got.

So she opted for satisfying one of the many pieces of curiosity she had about him and his family, and said, “Yesterday when William and Lily were at Kelsey's house someone mentioned the medallion Anthony wore when he was found. That keeps coming up—was it some kind of family heirloom or something?”

“You might say that. Not that we knew it until recently. There are four medallions—Ross, Coop, Frannie and I each had one, but we thought they were junk. We only learned recently from our mother—when we pushed her on the subject—that Uncle William gave
them to her to give to us. Apparently he told her to make sure we knew that they were important keepsakes that had been in the family for generations.”

“That isn't what she did?” Jessie asked.

“Not our mother,” he said, somewhat disparagingly. “We had to piece it together ourselves. We think that the medallions were Uncle William's way of trying to help us feel part of the family, to give us a sense of connection. Which would have been really nice for us all to know because we always thought we were the black sheep. But with my mother, that wasn't how they were presented to us.”

The drinks they'd ordered came and, with them, menus. But rather than looking at them yet, Jessie said, “How did she present them?”

“They were our Christmas gifts one year. We'd been left with a neighbor while Mom went off with her man-of-the-hour to Las Vegas the week before. She barely made it back for Christmas morning and our only presents were the medallions. I'm sure she'd forgotten all about getting us anything else and had taken out the medallions as a last-ditch effort to give us gifts. She told us they were from buried pirate treasure, which we believed at the time because we were all just little kids.”

“Were you happy to get them?”

“At the time? They weren't what any of us had wanted, but sure. If my mother is good at anything it's spinning a tall tale. For weeks we used them to play pirate. They were our gold doubloons.”

“But that didn't last?”

“You know how it is. Eventually the game got old, the medallions were stuck in drawers and as we grew
up we all just figured they were worthless trinkets that she'd picked up in Vegas before she'd rushed home that year. We didn't think they had any value. Certainly not that they connected us to the Fortunes.”

“But when Anthony showed up?”

“Ross saw the medallion and remembered them. Of course the baby wasn't Frannie's and Ross actually knew where his medallion was, so he wasn't ever in the running for Anthony's dad. But I couldn't find mine and neither could Coop—”

“Which initially meant that either of you could have been Anthony's father.”

“That's how it seemed, yeah.”

“And for you both there were multiple possibilities for women who could have come across your medallion and taken it?”

He had the good grace to smile sheepishly over his beer. “Anyone could have come across the medallions and taken them. But given that there was an almost-newborn with it strung around him, it was a good bet that a woman one of us had been involved with had taken it. About the same time the DNA results came back that cleared me, I found my medallion. I'm keeping it safer now. Coop got his back with Anthony, but when Uncle William saw it he seemed to recognize it and got agitated. He said it was his, so Coop let him keep it. Who knows, that might help get his memory to come back, too.”

“I hope something does,” Jessie said as the waitress returned to take their dinner order.

They both glanced quickly at the menu and ignored the recommendation of ribs, both choosing pulled pork sandwiches instead.

When the waitress had taken the menus and left, Flint settled back in his chair, leveled dark eyes on her and apparently took his turn at making small talk. “So tell me about yourself. Do you work?”

“Ha! You mean other than helping Kelsey get her house remodeled and decorated, wrangling four kids, doing a gazillion loads of laundry a week, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, driving car pool to a dozen different activities—”

He laughed. “I didn't mean to say you don't do plenty of work. I just meant—do you have a job on top of all that? You said you and your husband had worked at the same construction company.”

“I couldn't go on working there after the accident,” she confessed quietly. “There was life insurance on Pete and our mortgage was paid off with a death benefit rider on the house insurance, plus there was a settlement from the company, so I have some financial cushion. The first year after losing Pete it took everything I had just to get myself out of bed in the morning, just to take care of the kids—”