Fortune's Proposal (8 page)

 

They ate their late supper of salad and spicy enchiladas and chased it down with the most delicious caramel cake that Deanna had ever tasted in her life. But she strongly suspected that the only reason Jeremy and Drew did any justice to the meal was because they didn't want to disappoint Isabella.

Then, while they were eating the decadent dessert that Evie had left for them, J.R. returned. Lily had finally gone to bed, he reported, primarily because William's brother Patrick and his wife, Lacey, had come to the Double Crown and Lacey had been able to convince her cousin-in-law that she simply had to get some rest.

“Would she take a sedative?” Jeremy asked.

“I doubt it,” Isabella cautioned.

“Given the state she was in, let's hope that doesn't become necessary,” J.R. told him.

“Is anyone staying with her?” Deanna asked.

“Lacey,” J.R. said. “For tonight at least. She and Patrick have a brief trip they're leaving on tomorrow that they can't postpone.” J.R. leaned back in his seat at the head of the table. Isabella sat adjacent to him and their hands were linked on top of the table. “I don't think any of us want her to be alone right now. Fortunately, there are enough family members around town that we can keep that duty covered without too much effort.”

“I could go tomorrow,” Isabella offered immediately.

J.R. eyed her. “You look more tired than I feel,” he
said. “Frannie's already said she'll go over tomorrow. You can all work out details then.”

Deanna quickly focused on the bright yellow-and-orange linen napkin on her lap, folding it in fourths. If Isabella was right, she had a good reason to look tired right now.

“Lily doesn't look like the type to appreciate being babysat.”

They all turned to look at Drew. He hadn't said a word at the table to anyone other than Deanna sitting beside him, when he'd told her they'd craft a media release before morning.

“She's not,” Isabella agreed after a moment. “She'd hate feeling coddled. But right now, I know she's more focused on William than she is on herself.” She stood and began reaching for plates.

Deanna rose to help. She was more than a little surprised when the others did, too. Even Drew.

Since the man didn't even order his own lunch at the office if he could avoid it, she wasn't exactly used to seeing him carrying dirty dishes anywhere, much less to the kitchen sink, where he began rinsing them, as well as the others that were quickly stacked beside him before J.R. disappeared to take care of some ranch matters and Jeremy went off to return yet another call from his service.

“I'll finish up in here,” Deanna offered to Isabella, who looked ready to shoo Drew out of the way, and was relieved when the other woman accepted, even subsiding to her husband's none-too-subtle efforts before he'd left that she retire for the night.

“Tomorrow is going to be a better day,” she said before she left the kitchen.

Which left Deanna alone in the room with Drew.

And the last time they'd been alone—

She cut off the treacherous thoughts.

It was harder than it should have been, though, and only by mentally pulling on one of her ugly suits as a paltry armor against the feelings inside her did she find the strength to move naturally next to him as if she hadn't thrown herself at him the way she had.

But her gaze still kept straying to his sinewy forearms below the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt. “I can do that,” she told him a little more abruptly than her “act natural” act called for.

“So can I.” He stuck a plate under the running water and rinsed it. Water sluiced over his bronzed wrist. “I did have a mother, you know.” He set the plate aside. “You can load the dishwasher.”

Too bemused to form an argument, Deanna figured out the latch on the fancy dishwasher and opened the door. Bending over, she began loading the rinsed items inside. But not even that action was familiar, since her modest apartment didn't possess even a nonfancy variety.

“Did you have regular chores as a kid, then?” Her gaze had automatically started to rise when she spoke, but it went dead still when she found her eyes nearly on a level with his rear.

One of the plates clattered as it slid into its slot too quickly and she carefully redirected her gaze from the painfully excellent cut of his custom-tailored trousers over those glutes and was grateful that he couldn't see her.

“We all had chores.” His hand moved and a water glass appeared almost in front of her nose. Mindful that it probably wouldn't tolerate the same carelessness as the plate, she carefully lifted it out of his hand as he
continued. “Inside the house and out,” he was saying. “Until he got old enough that he realized the payment wasn't worth the chore, I used to bribe Darr into taking most of mine.”

She straightened. “That sounds more like the man I know,” she said wryly and caught a wisp of a smile around his lips. The first in hours.

And no matter what sort of mess she was in, she still felt as if she'd won some great prize at the sight.

“I didn't mind the yard work so much,” he admitted. “It was outside at least.” He looked at the window above the sink, but all that was visible were their own reflections against the darkness outside.

It was strange enough to be standing alongside him working on the dishes, much less to see their images in that windowpane.

It was far too…domestic.

Particularly when she couldn't stop thinking that, sooner or later, they were going to be sleeping in the same bedroom again.

Same bedroom.

Same bed.

She bent over the dishwasher rack again, fitting another plate into place, only this time she was careful to keep her eyes focused where they belonged. “If, uh, if you want me to, I could draft the media release for you. Maybe a few versions for you to look at.” She'd done so dozens of times before for him; just not ones that dealt with such a serious, personal matter.

“Did you have to do chores?”

She straightened again. “What? Oh. Yeah.” All of them, pretty much, since Gigi had usually been incapable of it. “Most kids do.” She took the last dish from him and placed it in the rack, then closed the door and
went out of the kitchen, back to the dining-room table where she took her time gathering up the colorful woven place mats and napkins before carrying them into the kitchen in hope that he would lose his sudden curiosity about her childhood.

He was standing where she'd left him, only he'd turned his back to the sink and his arms were crossed over his chest. His brooding gaze tracked her movements as if he were trying to calculate something while she brushed off the place mats and left them stacked on the island. She carried the cloth napkins into the laundry room next to the kitchen that she'd noticed earlier, but eventually, she couldn't pretend there was any more busywork.

He was still studying her when she stopped next to the granite-topped island again. She felt like a bug on the end of a pin, and didn't care for it at all. She lifted her hands. “What?”

“When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?”

She hadn't known what was ticking around in his mind, but she certainly hadn't expected that. He couldn't have chosen a question that would have surprised her more.

She blinked and shrugged a little. “I don't know. A ballerina for a while. Isn't that what all little girls want to be?”

“After you were older than five,” he drawled.

“What did you want to be when you were five?” she returned tartly.

“A fireman, but I grew out of that. Obviously, Darr didn't.” His lips twisted. “He always did have a hero complex.”

She wrapped her fingers around the wrought-iron
back of one of the bar stools. “You admire him.” Despite his dark humor, she'd seen that already for herself.

“Not everybody has what it takes to run into a burning building when everyone else is trying to get out of it.”

“I guess that's true. I've never really thought about it before,” she admitted. And as nice as she considered his younger brother to have been, she was much more fascinated with what made Drew tick. It didn't seem to matter that part of her knew it wasn't wise to indulge such a fascination at all. “So after the fireman, what'd you want to be?”

“I was asking you that question, remember?”

She exhaled. “Fine. I wanted to be a pilot. You?”

“President of Fortune Forecasting.”

“Even when you were a kid?” She was surprised. She'd always suspected he'd gone into the family business because it had been expected, not because it was something at which he'd turned out to be exceptionally good.

“Even then.” His gaze was steady. “What stopped you from being a pilot?”

Her hands twisted around the wrought iron and the band of the engagement ring dug into her finger.

She didn't know what was spurring Drew's sudden interest, but the sooner it ended, the more comfortable she'd feel. “Money. More specifically, the lack of it. So, about that press release?”

“If you had the money now, would you still want to become one?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why all the questions, Drew?”

“Just trying to get to know my fiancée better.”

She squelched her response just in time. For all they knew, given his father's disappearance, her position as his fiancée could well turn out to be unnecessary after all.

And in comparison to what he was going through, the reason behind her desire to be a pilot seemed utterly unimportant. She unwound her fingers from the wrought iron and rubbed her reddened palms down the sides of her jeans. “Because I realized even if I could fly off to be like my father, it still wouldn't have brought him back home to me.”

His gaze stayed steady on her face and she mentally braced herself for yet another intrusion into her life.

But after a moment, all he did was unfold his arms and push away from the edge of the farmhouse-style sink. “Draft up whatever you think the release should say. I'll look at it when I get back. You can send it first thing in the morning.”

Her wits felt scattered trying to keep up with him. “Where are you going?”

“Out.”

He scooped a set of keys off the rack of them by the kitchen door before quietly letting himself out into the night.

Feeling abruptly spent, Deanna could only stand there and watch him go.

D
eanna was talking on the phone in J.R.'s office. He'd kindly offered it for her and Drew's use after their stay in Red Rock quickly lengthened from four days to ten when she heard the slam of a door elsewhere in the house.

Drew and Jeremy must be back from town where they'd gone to see Darr at his fire station, because Isabella didn't make that much noise and J.R. was out at Lily's.

Ten days had passed since William's disappearance.

Ten torturously slow days.

And ten even more torturously…slow…nights.

She couldn't marshal her pulse that sped up just from knowing that Drew was in the house, but she could still pretend. So she focused on the task at hand—namely
her telephone conversation with Fortune Forecasting's L.A.-based Human Resources director.

“Send a hard copy of the proof overnight,” she finished telling Chelsea. “I'll let you know if there are any changes by the end of tomorrow, and if not, you can sign off on the brochure and get it into production.” Fortune Forecasting had long been scheduled to be part of a three-day job fair in Los Angeles later that week, and the brochure was part of the printed collateral that was to be made available there. Drew had been scheduled to give a speech at the event, but she'd already arranged a replacement—a professional baseball player that Drew was friends with who was a popular figure on the motivational circuit.

She heard another door slam and a raised voice. J.R.'s. She could easily distinguish now the differences in his voice compared with Drew's and Jeremy's.

She glanced at her watch. It was the middle of the day. She still had at least a dozen calls to return on Drew's behalf, and more than twice that many emails to attend to. But the sound of J.R.'s voice when she'd thought he was going to be gone all afternoon was unusual enough that when she hung up with Chelsea, she left the office and went to investigate.

She found them all in the great room, including Drew. Even Isabella had come out of her workroom where she had a loom on which she wove her amazing tapestries and blankets.

What surprised Deanna most, though, was the sight of Lily Fortune.

She hadn't seen the woman since the day of her non-wedding, although Deanna knew that in addition to J.R., Isabella and Jeremy had been regular visitors out to her ranch. She couldn't hazard a guess whether Drew
had been. Aside from knowing that he—along with his brothers—had visited every police station, hospital and morgue in half the state, he never said where he was going when he disappeared from the hacienda every evening or what he was doing when he went.

All Deanna knew was that for the past ten days, every evening after supper—which Deanna had continued helping Isabella to prepare since that first night—he left the house and didn't return until after Deanna was in bed and asleep. Or at least pretending to be asleep.

And when morning dawned and she did wake, he'd be gone again, leaving only the impression of his head on the pillow as proof that he'd ever been there at all.

He couldn't have made it more plain that he wasn't interested in chancing any more close encounters of the intimate kind upon waking.

She looked from him to Lily, who was pacing back and forth in front of Jeremy near the windows. She was wearing jeans and a button-down plaid shirt with her hair braided down her back and couldn't have looked more different than the bride she'd been, yet she still possessed the same indefinable, elegant strength that Deanna couldn't help but admire.

“Ross has news,” Isabella told Deanna quietly. “He was on the road when he called and Molly's Pride was closer than Lily's place, so he's coming here to meet with us all at once.”

Deanna felt queasy. Ross was Drew's investigator cousin. And if he felt compelled to deliver his news to Lily in person…

She looked back at Drew. He'd sprawled in one of the oversize chairs that filled the space, his long, jean-clad legs crossed at the ankles. But she knew the lazy-looking position was deceptive. She could feel the tension ema
nating from him from across the room. Could see it in the lines bracketing his lips and the long fingers that were silently drumming against the leather arm of the chair.

Even though she'd spent plenty of time with Drew's family, she nevertheless still felt like an intruder. But she also knew that only she and Drew would know the reason why, so she made herself cross the room and perch on the ottoman that was near his chair. “Are you all right?”

His gaze slanted toward her. “Peachy.”

Her lips tightened. Just sitting near him made her feel shaky inside, but that didn't mean she enjoyed his sarcasm. “I was only asking,” she said under her breath.

“I know.” He drummed his fingertips again. “Sorry.”

She chewed the inside of her lip and managed not to close her hand over his restless one. He was wearing a brown shirt that was the same color as his eyes. She assumed he must have borrowed it from his brother because it wasn't one that had been hanging in their closet.

They'd already stayed nearly a week longer than they'd originally planned. Isabella had offered the use of their washer and dryer, which Deanna had by necessity taken up. She should have laundered Drew's things as well, but something had stopped her.

Washing his clothes, strangely enough, seemed even more personal than sleeping on opposite sides of the same bed.

She looked down at her folded hands. She'd grown accustomed to the feel of the diamond ring on her finger, but she still hadn't grown used to the sight of it there. It
had been jarring from the first moment he'd slipped it on her finger. It was still jarring now.

And frightening considering the pang of…longing…that was only increasing by the day.

“Everything set for the job fair?”

She nodded, glad of the distraction, even though she was vaguely surprised that he remembered it. As large an event as it was, she'd been handling all of the arrangements for it all along. His only involvement was to have been his scheduled “motivational” rah-rah session. “Chelsea said they're expecting over five thousand people,” she told him. It would be a well-orchestrated zoo.

“It's the first year you'll miss it.”

She lifted her shoulder, again surprised that he'd realized that. “Chelsea and her department have things well in hand. They won't miss me.” And the organizers handling the half dozen companies being represented at the fair wouldn't, either. They cared about missing Drew, but had been slightly mollified by the celebrity athlete she'd been able to produce.

“Hmm.” His fingers continued drumming.

“Do you need this back?” She pulled his BlackBerry out of the pocket of her sweater and held it out. She'd been using his phone to handle all of the business calls rather than J.R. and Isabella's house line.

“Any emergencies at the office that I don't know about and need to?”

“No.” Aside from the employees' anxiety caused by William's disappearance and the media's attention that had been deflected for the most part by the press release they'd issued, everything at Fortune Forecasting was at least running smoothly.

“Then, no, I don't need it.” He shook his head, and because she knew she still had plenty of use for it, she slid it back into her pocket.

Her own cell phone was still turned off and shoved inside her purse. She'd listened to her mother's numerous voice mails. And she'd sent her an email that she was in Texas with her boss…on business. Not that Gigi had bought that story, which she'd told Deanna in a long voice message immediately after. Gigi didn't live under a rock, after all. She, too, had heard the news that William Fortune was missing. And she'd archly suggested that Deanna make “good use” of her time with her boss during his hour of need.

Deanna had been furious enough to return that call, but the results had been typical—Gigi accusing Deanna of abandoning her when she needed her most, and Deanna feeling guilty. So she'd told her mother to find a counselor and not to call her again until she had.

Since then, her voice mailbox had been unusually empty. Deanna still couldn't decide if that was progress or not.

A doorbell chimed and everyone jumped.

Isabella quickly hurried out of the room and just as quickly returned with Ross Fortune on her heels.

His brown gaze traveled the room, landing on Lily, who'd gone stock-still at the sight of him, holding her arms around her waist.

Everyone else rose to their feet, waiting…

“His car's been found,” he said bluntly.

Jeremy moved next to Lily, as if he were afraid she might collapse. But all she did was pale. “And?” Lily's chin was lifted, but she looked braced for anything.

Ross looked only marginally better than his cousins
did. His brown hair was rumpled and he had the same weary lines creasing his face. “And there's no sign of William.” His voice was careful and Deanna caught the look that passed between him and the other men.

Her stomach sank and she looked toward Isabella and was grateful that the other woman had sat down again. Deanna was certain that Isabella hadn't yet confided her suspicion to her husband. And because Isabella hadn't shared with Deanna that it had been a false alarm, she assumed that her hostess's suspicion was probably even closer to certainty now.

“Where was the car?” Lily asked. She was still standing upright, but her voice had gone thin.

“Outside of Haggarty.”

Deanna started at the name of the town. She remembered Darr mentioning it the day of the wedding. He'd said an accident had occurred near there.

A fatal accident.

Lily made a sound then and covered her mouth with her hand. A moment later, she seemed to crumple.

Jeremy leaped forward, catching her in his arms before she collapsed right to the floor.

Isabella cried out, jumping out of her chair and rushing to them.

“She fainted. She needs to lie down,” Jeremy said tersely. “I have smelling salts in my medical bag.”

“Take her to our bedroom. It's the closest. I'll bring your bag.” Isabella practically ran out of the room, leading the way for Jeremy to carry the tall woman out of the room.

Deanna watched them go. Her heart was thudding so hard she could feel it inside her head. She didn't even realize that she'd reached out for Drew's hand until she felt his fingers curl around hers in response.

“The police aren't tying that other accident together with William's.” When they were gone, Ross answered the question that nobody had asked but everybody had thought. “Yet.” His voice was grim as he looked from J.R. to Drew. “The other car had no signs of collision with another vehicle. They found no debris that didn't come from the car where it ran off a curve and collided with several trees before going down the embankment, so the authorities over there still maintain that it was a single-car accident. William's Mercedes, on the other hand, is at the bottom of an embankment some distance away. It's heavily shaded by trees and brush. The only reason it was found at all was because of a couple who were hiking back in there over the weekend. It's not a popular spot at all.”

“I want to see the car,” Drew said abruptly. J.R. nodded.

“So do I,” Ross agreed. “I also want to talk to the police in Haggarty and interview the couple who found the car. And I want to do it as soon as possible while everything is fresh in their mind.”

“Then let's go,” Drew said immediately.

“J.R.?”

J.R. turned to see Isabella walking back into the room. “How's Lily?”

“She's coming around already. Jeremy wants her to lie down for a while, though. Her blood pressure is up and he's threatening her with a sedative if she doesn't behave.” Her liquid-brown gaze flickered over Deanna and Drew, then back to her husband. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

J.R. gave a quick frown, but went to her immediately and followed her out of the room.

“Do you know how badly damaged Dad's car is?” Drew asked Ross.

His cousin shook his head. “The investigators were heading out to the site when I got the call from my contact at the Haggarty P.D., so there's no official information yet. I want to get there soon while there's still enough daylight left to see things for myself. We've already had rain since the accident, so who knows what evidence will be left to find after so many days.”

J.R. returned in time to hear the tail end of Ross's comment. “You and Drew can go. I've got something else I need to take care of.”

“More important than finding out where the hell Dad's gone?” Drew demanded. He gave Deanna an impatient look when she made a faint sound and squeezed his hand.

“Right now, yes,” J.R. returned evenly. “I'm taking my wife into town to see her doctor.”

Drew swore under his breath. “Sorry, man. Is she all right?”

“She thinks she's pregnant.”

Deanna exhaled. Thank goodness.

“If she is, I'm not taking any chances with her.”

Drew was nodding. “Of course.” He clapped a hand on his brother's shoulder. A faint smile had mercifully replaced the drawn lines on his face. “A baby, huh? That would be some good news around here about now.”

J.R. looked a little pale beneath his bemused expression, but he nodded. “That's for sure.”

Ross was smiling, too. “Going to have to get used to the idea of you changing diapers,” he drawled.

“Well, first, we need to make sure nothing happens this time,” J.R. said. He headed out of the room again.
“Call me with whatever you find, though,” he added before he left.

“This time?” Ross looked at Drew, who shook his head.

“Isabella had a miscarriage several months ago,” Deanna provided quietly. Because J.R. had opened the door, and Isabella herself had said that it wasn't really a secret, she didn't feel too much like she was divulging a confidence.