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A powerful first love... An explosive secret...
The Fortunes of Texas: The Rulebreakers continues!
Dr. Everett Fortunado is sitting on the biggest secret to hit Texas—but nothing’s more shocking than finding Lila Clark working for the Fortunes. Years ago a teen pregnancy forced her to give up their baby...and Everett. Lila’s not one for second chances, but that won’t stop Everett from trying. Because this time around, he knows the meaning of family. And he wants his—with Lila!
USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred and seventy-five books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.
Also by Marie Ferrarella
Engagement for Two A Second Chance for the Single Dad Meant to Be Mine Twice a Hero, Always Her Man Dr. Forget-Me-Not Her Red-Carpet Romance Dating for Two Wish Upon a Matchmaker Ten Years Later… Do You Take This Maverick?
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk
The Fortune Most Likely To…
Marie Ferrarella
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-474-07735-4
THE FORTUNE MOST LIKELY TO…
© 2018 Harlequin Books S.A.
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk
To
Susan Litman,
with thanks
for her
patience
Contents
Cover
Back Cover Text
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Extract
Prologue
It was time that he finally faced up to it. He had never gotten over her.
Sitting on the sofa in his living room, Dr. Everett Fortunado frowned as he looked into the glass of expensive whiskey he was sipping. The single glass, two fingers, was his way of winding down. Not from a hectic day spent at his successful, thriving medical practice, but from the stress of terminating yet another less-than-stellar, stillborn relationship.
How many failed relationships did that make now? Ten? Twelve? He wasn’t sure.
He’d honestly lost count a number of years ago.
Admittedly, the women in those incredibly short-lived relationships had all become interchangeable. Now that he thought about it, none of them had ever stood out in his mind. And, if he was being honest about it, Everett couldn’t remember half their names.
As for their faces, well, if pressed, he could give a general description, but there again, nothing about any of them had left a lasting impression on his mind. Strictly speaking, he could probably pass one or more of them on the street and not recognize them at all.
A mirthless laugh passed his lips. At thirty-three he was way too young to be on the threshold of dementia. No, that wasn’t the reason behind this so-called memory loss problem. If he were being entirely honest with himself, he thought, taking another long, bracing sip of whiskey, this cavalcade of women who had been parading through his life for the last thirteen years were only poor substitutes for the one woman who had ever really mattered to him.
The only woman he had ever been in love with.
The woman he had lost.
Lila Clark, the girl he’d known since forever and had barely been aware of until he suddenly saw her for the first time that day in Senior English class. Though a straight A student, Everett had found himself faltering when it came to English. Lila sat next to him in class and he’d turned to her for help. She was the one responsible for getting him through Senior English.
And somewhere along the line during all that tutoring, Lila had managed to make off with his heart. He was crazy about her and really excited when he found out that she felt the same way about him. Not long after that, they began making plans for their future together.
And then it had all blown up on him.
When he’d lost her, his parents had told him that it was all for the best. They had pointed out that he was too young to think about settling down. They wanted their brightest child to focus on his future and not squander his vast potential by marrying a girl from a working-class family just because he’d gotten her pregnant. To them it had been the oldest ploy in the world: a poor girl trapping a rich boy because of his sense of obligation.
But Lila really wasn’t like that. And she hadn’t trapped him. She’d walked out on him.
Everett sat on the sofa now, watching the light from the lone lamp in his living room play across the amber liquid in the chunky glass in his hand. He would’ve given anything if he could go back those thirteen years.
If he could have, he wouldn’t have talked Lila into giving up their baby for adoption.
Because that one thing had been the beginning of the end for them.
He’d been at Lila’s side in the delivery room and, even then, he kept telling her that they were doing the right thing. That they were too young to get married and raise this baby. That they could always have more kids “later.”
Lila changed that night. Changed from the happy, bright-eyed, full-of-life young woman he’d fallen in love with to someone he no longer even knew.
And that was the look in her eyes when she raised them to his. Like she was looking at someone she didn’t recognize.
Right after she left the hospital, Lila had told him she never wanted to see him again. He’d tried to reason with her, but she just wouldn’t listen.
Lila had disappeared out of his life right after that.
Crushed, he’d gone back to college, focusing every bit of energy entirely on his studies. He’d always wanted to be a doctor, ever since he was a little boy, and that became his lifeline after Lila left. He clung to it to the exclusion of everything else.
And it had paid off, he thought now, raising his almost-empty glass in a silent toast to his thriving career. He was a doctor. A highly successful, respected doctor. His career was booming.
Conversely, his personal life was in the dumpster.
Everett sighed. If he had just said, “Let’s keep the baby,” everything would have been different. And his life wouldn’t have felt so empty every time he walked into his house.
He wouldn’t have felt so empty.
Blowing out a breath, Everett rose from the sofa and walked over to the liquor cabinet. Normally, he restricted himself to just one drink, but tonight was different. It was the anniversary of the day Lila had ended their relationship. He could be forgiven a second drink.
At least, he told himself, he could fill his empty glass, if not his life.
Chapter One
“Your problem, brother dear,” Schuyler said after having listened to him tell her that maybe he’d made a mistake talking Lila into giving up their baby all those years ago, “is that you think too much. You’re always overthinking things and making yourself crazy in the process.”
“Says the woman who always led with her heart,” Everett commented.
“And that seems to be working out for me, doesn’t it?” Schuyler asked.
He could hear the broad smile in her voice. It all but throbbed through the phone. Everett had no response for that. All he could do at the moment was sigh. Sigh and feel just a little bit jealous because his little sister had found something that he was beginning to think he never would find again: love.
“By thinking so much back then about how everything would affect your future,” Schuyler went on, “I think you blew it with Lila. You were so focused on your future, on becoming a doctor, that you just couldn’t see how badly she felt about giving up her baby—your baby,” she emphasized. “And because you didn’t notice, didn’t seem to feel just as badly as she did about the adoption, you broke Lila’s heart. If it were me, I would have never forgiven someone for breaking my heart that way,” Schuyler told him.
“Thanks for being so supportive,” Everett said sarcastically.
This was not why he’d called his sister, why he’d lowered his guard and allowed himself to be so vulnerable. Maybe he should have known better, he thought, about to terminate the call.
“I am being supportive,” Schuyler insisted. “I’m just calling it the way I see it. I love you, Ev, and you know I’m always on your side. But I know you. I don’t want you to get your hopes up that if you just approach her, she’ll fly back into your arms and everything’ll be just the way it was back then. Not after thirteen years and not after what went down between the two of you back then. Trust me, Lila is not going to get back together with you that easily.”
“I know that and I don’t want to get back together with Lila,” he insisted defensively. “I just want to talk to her.” Everett paused because this next thing was hard for him to say, even to Schuyler, someone he had always trusted implicitly. Lowering his voice, he told his sister, “Maybe even apologize to her for the way things ended between us back then.”
He could tell from Schuyler’s voice that she felt for him. But she was far from optimistic about the outcome of all this. “Look, Everett, I know that your heart’s in the right place, but I really don’t want to see it stomped on.”
“No worries,” Everett assured her. “My heart is not as vulnerable as you think.”
What he’d just said might have been a lie, but if it was, it was a lie he was telling himself as well as his sister.
He had a feeling that Schuyler saw it that way too because he could hear the skepticism in her voice as she said, just before she ended their call, “Well, I wish you luck with that. Maybe Lila’ll listen to reason.”
* * *
Maybe.
The single word seemed to throb in his head as Everett decided to find out as much as he could about Lila and what she was doing these days.
It had all started two months ago when he’d taken the day off, gotten another doctor to cover for him and had driven the 165 miles from Houston to Austin to pick up his sister, Schuyler. At the time, he was supposed to be bringing Schuyler back home.
Given to acting on impulse, his younger sister had initially gone to Austin because she had gotten it into her head to track down Nathan Fortune. The somewhat reclusive man was supposedly her cousin and the ever-inquisitive Schuyler was looking for answers about their family tree. The current thinking was that she and the rest of their brothers and sisters were all possibly related to the renowned Fortune family.
It was while Schuyler was looking for those answers that she decided to get closer to the Mendoza family whose history was intertwined with the Fortunes. She managed to get so close to one of them—Carlo Mendoza—that she wound up completely losing her heart to him.
Confused, unsure of herself for very possibly the first time in her life, Schuyler had turned to the one person she was closest to.
She’d called Everett.
Listening to his sister pouring out her heart—and citing her all uncertainties, not just about her genealogy investigation but about the direction her heart had gone in—he had decided he needed to see Schuyler and maybe convince her to come home.
But Schuyler had reconciled with her man and decided to stay in Austin after all. Everett returned home without her. But he hadn’t come away completely empty-handed. What Everett had come home with was a renewed sense of having made a terrible mistake thirteen years ago. And that had come about because while he’d been in Austin, he had run into Lila.
Sort of.
He saw Lila entering a sandwich shop and it had been a jarring experience for him. It had instantly propelled him back through time and just like that, all the old feelings had come rushing back to him, saturating him like a huge tidal wave. At least they had in his case. However, he’d been struck by the aura of sadness he detected about her. A sadness that had not been there when they were in high school together.
He’d thought—hoped really—that when he got back to Houston, back to his practice, he’d be able to drive thoughts of Lila back into the past where they belonged. Instead, they began to haunt him, vividly pushing their way into his dreams at night, sneaking up on him during the day whenever he had an unguarded moment.
He began wondering in earnest about what had happened to her in all those years since they’d been together. And that sadness he’d detected—was he responsible for that? Or was there some other reason for its existence?
He felt compelled to find out.
Like everyone else of his generation, Everett turned to social media in his quest for information about Lila Clark.
He found her on Facebook.
When he saw that Lila had listed herself as “single” and that there were only a few photographs posted on her page, mainly from vacation spots she had visited, he felt somewhat heartened.
Maybe, a little voice in his head whispered, it wasn’t too late to make amends after all.
Damn it, Everett, get hold of yourself. This is exactly what Schuyler warned you about. Don’t get your hopes up, at least not until you talk to Lila again and exchange more than six words with her.
Who knows, she might have changed and you won’t even like Lila 2.0.
Everett struggled to talk himself out of letting his imagination take flight. He tried to get himself to go slow—or maybe not go at all.
But the latter was just not an option.
He knew he felt too strongly about this, too highly invested in righting a wrong he’d committed in the past. Now that he’d made up his mind about the matter, he needed to make Lila understand that he regretted the way things had gone thirteen years ago.
Regretted not being more emotionally supportive of her.
Regretted not being able to see the daughter they had both lost.
Still, he continued to try to talk himself out of it for two days after he found Lila on Facebook. Tried to make himself just walk away from the whole idea: from getting in contact with her, from apologizing and making amends. All of it.
But he couldn’t.
So finally, on the evening of the third day, Everett sat down in front of his computer, powered up his internet connection and pulled up Facebook. Specifically, he pulled up Lila’s profile.
He’d stared at it for a full ten minutes before he finally began to type a message to her.
Hi, Lila. It’s been a long time. I’m planning on being in Austin soon. Let’s have lunch together and do some catching up. I’d really welcome the chance to see and talk with you.
Those four simple sentences took him close to half an hour to settle on. He must have written and deleted thirty sentences before he finally decided on those. Then it took him another ten minutes before he sent those four sweated-over sentences off into cyberspace.
For the next two hours he checked on that page close to a dozen and a half times, all without any luck. He was about to power down his computer for the night when he pulled up Lila’s Facebook page one last time.
“She answered,” he announced out loud even though there was no one around to hear him.
Sitting down in his chair, he read Lila’s response, unconsciously savoring each word as if it was a precious jewel.
If you’re going to be here Friday, I can meet you for lunch at 11:30. I just need to warn you that I only get forty-five minutes for lunch, so our meeting will be short. We’re usually really swamped where I work.
Everett could hardly believe that she’d actually agreed to meet with him. He’d been half prepared to read her rejection. Whistling, he immediately posted a response.
11:30 on Friday sounds great. Since I’m unfamiliar with Austin, you pick the place and let me know.
After sleeping fitfully, he decided to get up early. He had a full slate of appointments that day. Best to get a jump on it. But the minute he passed the computer, he knew what he had to do first.
And there, buried amid approximately forty other missives—all of which were nothing short of junk mail—was Lila’s response. All she’d written was the name of a popular chain of restaurants, followed by its address. But his heart soared.
Their meeting was set.
If he’d been agile enough to pull it off, Everett would have leaped up and clicked his heels together.
As it was, he got ready for work very quickly and left the house within the half hour—singing.
* * *
The second Lila hit the send button on Facebook, she immediately regretted it.
What am I thinking? she upbraided herself. Was she crazy? Did she actually want to meet with someone who had so carelessly broken her heart? Who was responsible for the single most heart-wrenching event to have happened in her life?
“What’s wrong with you? Are you hell-bent on being miserable?” she asked herself as she walked away from her computer. It was after eleven o’clock at night and she was alone.
The way she was on most nights.
Maybe that was the problem, Lila told herself. She was tired of being alone and when she’d seen that message from Everett on her Facebook page, it had suddenly stirred up a lot of old memories.
“Memories you’re better off forgetting, remember?” she demanded.
But they weren’t all bad, she reminded herself. As a matter of fact, if she thought back, a lot of those memories had been good.
Very good.
For a large chunk of her senior year and a portion of her first year at community college, Everett had been the love of her life. He’d made her happier than she could ever remember being.
But it was what had happened at the end that outweighed everything, that threw all those good recollections into the shadows, leaving her to remember that awful, awful ache in her heart as Emma was taken out of her arms and she watched her baby being carried away.
Away from her.
She’d wanted Everett to hold her then. To tell her that he was aching as much as she was. That he felt as if something had been torn away from his heart, too, the way she felt it had for her.
But all he had said was: “It’s for the best.” As if there was something that could be described as “best” about never being able to see your baby again. A baby that had been conceived in love and embodied the two of them in one tiny little form.
Lila felt tears welling up in her eyes even after all this time, felt them spilling out even though she’d tried hard to squeeze them back.
She wished she hadn’t agreed to see Everett.
But if she’d said no to lunch, Everett would have probably put two and two together and realized that she hadn’t the courage to see him again. If she’d turned him down, he would’ve understood just how much he still mattered to her.
No, Lila told herself, she had no way out. She had to see him again. Had to sit there across from him at a table, making inane conversation and proving to him that he meant nothing to her.
That would be her ultimate revenge for his having so wantonly, so carelessly, ripped out her heart without so much as a moment’s pause or a word of actual genuine comfort.
“We’ll have lunch, Everett,” she said, addressing his response that was posted on her Facebook page. “We’ll have lunch, and then you’ll realize just what you lost all those years ago. Lost forever. Because I was the very best thing that could have ever happened to you,” she added with finality.
Her words rang hollow to her ear.
It didn’t matter, she told herself. She had a couple of days before she had to meet with him. A couple of days to practice making herself sound as if she believed every syllable she uttered.
She’d have it letter-perfect by the time they met, she promised herself.
She had to.
Chapter Two
Half the contents of Lila’s closet was now spread out all over her bed. She spent an extra hour going through each item slowly before finally making up her mind.
Lila dressed with great care, selecting a two-piece gray-blue outfit that flattered her curves as well as sharply bringing out the color of her eyes.
Ordinarily, putting on makeup entailed a dash of lipstick for Lila, if that. This morning she highlighted her eyes, using both mascara and a little eye shadow. She topped it off with a swish of blush to accent her high cheekbones, smoothed her long auburn hair, then sprayed just the slightest bit of perfume.
Finished, she slowly inspected herself from all angles in her wardrobe mirror before she decided that she was ready to confront a past she’d thought she’d buried—and in so doing, make Dr. Everett Fortunado eat his heart out.