Fortune Found

“I just really, really … like you …”

That made her feel a whole lot of things that were dangerous for her to be feeling.

Then he glanced up from his study of their hands intertwined and gazed into her eyes for a moment before he leaned just an inch or two closer, clearly aiming to kiss her.

But instead he paused, waiting as if tonight he wouldn’t do it unless she met him halfway, unless she let him know that it was something she wanted him to do.

She wished she didn’t. But wishing didn’t make it so. She wanted him to kiss her so badly that she couldn’t keep herself from drifting an inch or two forward herself, raising her chin almost imperceptibly but enough to give permission.

Permission he didn’t hesitate to accept …

Dear Reader,

Flint Fortune grew up with a bad opinion of marriage. In spite of that, he was crazy enough to try it once himself, with disastrous results. Since then he’s been convinced that marriage and family are not for him.

Jessie Hunt-Myers is a young widow who doubts that any man will ever be interested in taking on her and the four small children she’s raising on her own.

During the past six months, the tides seem to be turning for all of the Fortune family of Red Rock, Texas and, while Flint may think he’s not included in that, when he meets Jessie he can’t be so sure. But four—count them—four kids? That’s a whole lot to take on. And Flint just isn’t altogether sure he can do it. The problem is, he also doesn’t know how he’s going to walk away from the most wonderful woman he’s ever met.

I hope you enjoy this final installment in THE

FORTUNES OF TEXAS: LOST … AND FOUND. I

know I enjoyed writing it.

Happy summer reading!

Victoria Pade

VICTORIA PADE is a USA TODAY bestselling author of numerous romance novels. She has two beautiful and talented daughters—Cori and Erin—and is a native of Colorado, where she lives and writes. A devoted chocolate lover, she’s in search of the perfect chocolate-chip cookie recipe. For information about her latest and upcoming releases, and to find recipes for some of the decadent desserts her characters enjoy, log on to www.vikkipade.com.

Fortune Found

Victoria Pade

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Chapter One

“Iss him! Iss him! Iss Fwint, Mama!”

The announcement came from Jessica Hunt-Myers’s excited three-year-old son, Adam, when he dashed to the open bathroom door, poked his head in, then dashed out again.

“Let me guess,” Jessie said to her sister, her tone holding no shortage of suspicion. “That phone call a little while ago was from Flint Fortune, saying he was on his way. That’s why you stopped me from sanding the baseboards, rushed me into your bathroom and gave me this sudden makeover.”

Jessie stood with her hips resting on the countertop that surrounded the sink, facing her sister, Kelsey. Kelsey was wielding a fluffy blush brush and applying the powder to Jessie’s face much the way they’d played dress up with their mother’s makeup when they were little girls.

Kelsey gave her a wide-eyed smile. “This really is new stuff that I just wanted you to try because I thought you’d like it. And that clip does look better in your hair than it did in mine,” she said innocently.

Jessie rolled her eyes, not buying the innocent act for a second. “Kelsey …” she groaned. “First you try to match me with a guy you like yourself—the guy you ended up with—and now you’re trying to push his brother?”

Kelsey shrugged. “I kept the first one for myself. It seems only fair that I find you someone else to make it up to you,” she joked.

The first one had been Cooper Fortune and after unsuccessfully attempting to put Jessie together with Coop, Kelsey had succumbed to her own attraction to the man. They were now engaged, raising Cooper’s six-month-old son, Anthony, and had moved into the house next door to Jessie’s.

The house was in need of extensive remodeling, which was the reason Jessie and Adam—the youngest of Jessie’s four children—were at Kelsey’s house late that Sunday afternoon. Jessie was helping with some of the work.

The renovation was also why Cooper’s brother, Flint, was scheduled for an extended stay in Kelsey and Coop’s guest room.

An extended stay that was apparently about to begin.

“I don’t need—or want—to be fixed up with anyone,” Jessie said emphatically.

“It’s been two years since Peter died, Jess,” Kelsey cajoled gently.

“Two years, eleven days, three hours.”

Kelsey shook her head sadly. “And you need more in your life to distract you from still counting the days. The hours.”

“More in my life?” Jessie said with a laugh. “I have four kids, Kelsey. Mom and Dad retired to move in with me and lend me a hand because I have so much in my life—”

“Your kids will grow up, Mom and Dad will decide to travel or get a place in a retirement community the way they talked about before. And then where will you be, Jess? Alone—that’s where.”

“With a bathroom all to myself and a house that actually stays clean for five minutes and the possibility that I might never again run out of cookies …” Jessie said in a dreamy tone of voice, making light of the bleak picture her sister was painting.

“Alone,” Kelsey repeated direly.

“Ella is seven. Braden and Bethany are four. Adam is only three. It’ll be a long, long time before I have to worry about that.”

“But don’t you want someone for yourself again now?” Kelsey persisted. “Pete would have wanted—”

“Oh, don’t pull that one! I hate it when people say what Pete would have wanted.”

“Okay, then he wouldn’t have wanted you to end up old and alone,” Kelsey insisted, reversing it.

“I’m not ready,” Jessie said definitively. “And when I am, it will happen. Without your beating the bushes for a man for me.”

“I haven’t been beating the bushes. I just think that sometimes fate presents opportunities and I know that without a push, you won’t see what’s right in front of you. Even though Flint is pretty hard to overlook—or didn’t you notice how hot he is?”

“Are you having second thoughts?” Jessie goaded her sister, turning the tables to distract her.

It didn’t work.

“No! It’s because I’m so in love with Coop that I want the same thing for you. And because I’ve learned firsthand that these Fortune men are men worth having and I want you to have a man who’s worth having. The way Pete was.”

“You can’t be sure that Flint Fortune is a man worth having just based on his brother. You barely know Flint himself.”

That particular member of the famed Fortune family of Texas didn’t live in their small town of Red Rock where so many other Fortunes did, so he was a stranger to both Kelsey and Jessie. A stranger who had come into town when suspicions arose that an abandoned baby might have been his son, the baby who had proved instead to be Coop’s child. The fact that Flint Fortune was inclined now to help out his brother and spend a little time with the rest of the family he didn’t seem close to, didn’t mean he was any less of a stranger to Kelsey or to Jessie.

“Okay, maybe I don’t really know much about him,” Kelsey admitted. “But I know he’s Coop’s brother and a really, really, hot guy …”

“Hot is not enough to sell him,” Jessie persisted.

But it was the one thing Jessie couldn’t argue because it was the plain and simple truth. She’d met Flint at the party Lily Fortune had had at the Double Crown ranch to introduce baby Anthony to the whole clan. And while Jessie might not have become wide-eyed with instant hero-worship of Flint the way her youngest son had, she had certainly not been able to overlook how impossibly attractive the man was.

“And no matter how hot he is,” she said to her sister, “I’m not in the market for any man.”

Not that she had so much as the most remote hope that any man was likely to want a widow with four small children. And if she allowed for the possibility of having a man in her life and then got rejected by him because of her kids? That just wasn’t a door she wanted opened. For her kids or for herself.

Plus rejection also equaled loss, and putting herself or her kids in line for suffering the loss of another man was also not—absolutely not—something she was going to do.

“Adam already thinks Flint hangs the moon …” Kelsey reminded in a singsong intended to tempt Jessie.

“Well, Flint doesn’t hang the moon,” Jessie responded in the same singsong. “He’s just a guy in a world full of guys who I don’t have the time or the inclination to mess around with.”

“Look at yourself,” Kelsey implored, stepping back, taking Jessie by the shoulders and turning her to face the mirror. “You look fantastic. Don’t wait around until the lines come in and everything starts to sag and droop and shrivel up—”

“Thank you so much for that image of my future.”

Jessie scowled, then craned her head to get a better glimpse of her sable-colored brown hair in the back. “One way or another, this hair clip hurts and I don’t want it,” she said, taking it out and shaking her hair so it fell free around her shoulders.

“The blush is nice, though, isn’t it?” Kelsey said. “It’s a little sparkly.”

Jessie studied her face more closely in the mirror, wondering if her slightly pale skin or her brown eyes or her maybe-a-little-too-straight-and-thin nose really were good enough to get her another man …

But she shied away from even the thought of that and judged the blush alone. “Yeah, it’s nice.” Because it did accentuate her high cheekbones and give her a healthy glow.

“Now tuck your T-shirt into your jeans so your butt shows,” Kelsey said, as if that simple admission that the blush was nice had encouraged her.

“Kelsey—”

“Come on. Those aren’t your best jeans, but you still have a good rear end that can almost be seen in them.” Kelsey began to tuck in the back of Jessie’s T-shirt.

“Will you stop?” Jessie protested.

“No, I won’t!” Kelsey decreed. “It’s bad enough that you’re wearing a big old T-shirt with a slogan on it, at least tuck it in.”

“I beg your pardon! The kids gave me this T-shirt for Mother’s Day and I like it,” she said, looking fondly down at the front of it where a picture of all four kids mugging for a camera stared back at her from beneath lettering that proclaimed her the World’s Greatest Mom.

“I know—I helped them pick it out. But you were supposed to sleep in it, not wear it outside of the house,” Kelsey chastised.

“I can’t just sleep in it. One of them might think I’m not proud of it.”

It was Kelsey who rolled her eyes this time. “Just tuck it in at least, and come out and say hello to Flint.”

“I don’t suppose I have a choice because he’s out there.”

Well, she did have a choice about tucking in or not tucking in the T-shirt. And even though she assured herself that she was only doing it so she didn’t look like a slob, she unzipped her jeans, tugged the tails of the shirt down inside them and then zipped them up again.

“Happy?” she asked her sister as if she’d only done it to appease Kelsey.

But while Jessie had tucked in her T-shirt, Kelsey had produced a hairbrush from somewhere and was holding that out to her. “Now put this through your hair and I try this lipstick—”

“No lipstick!” Jessie refused. But she took the brush and swiped it through her hair just so she was presentable. Certainly not to impress Flint Fortune or any other man.

And for that same reason, just before she followed Kelsey out of the bathroom, she took one final glance at herself in the mirror.

And regretted that she hadn’t worn jeans that were slightly less baggy.

And a T-shirt that wasn’t so oversize she should only be using it for pajamas.

But truly, it was just because she didn’t like to meet anyone when she looked sloppy.

It had nothing to do with Flint Fortune himself.

Truly.

“See, Mom? I tol’ you—iss Fwint!”

“Yes, I see—F-l-int,” Jessie answered her son, correcting Adam’s pronunciation, before she focused her attention on the new arrival after Kelsey had welcomed him with a hug.

“Hi, Flint,” Jessie greeted the man whose presence seemed to command the living room where he stood, a full five-feet-eleven inches of pure masculinity.

“Hi. Jessie, right? You’re Kelsey’s sister?”

“She’s my sister all right,” Kelsey confirmed with great enthusiasm.

But to Jessie the question had sounded like a shot-in-the-dark guess and she thought that that indicated that she hadn’t made much of an impression on him.

He, however, was every bit as impossibly attractive as she recalled from the party.

Unlike her late-husband’s boy-next-door looks, Flint Fortune had a swarthy, staggering handsomeness. His hair and eyes were brown, like Pete’s. But unlike the lighter shades that her dearly departed husband had sported, Flint’s hair was a deep, rich, bittersweet-chocolate brown, and his eyes were also much, much darker—the color of espresso with flecks of gold. Unusual, penetrating eyes that somehow seemed to hint at hidden depth in the man himself.

Although she had no idea why she was noticing that.

It was Kelsey’s fault, Jessie decided, for putting thoughts of how hot this man was in her head.

But there was certainly no denying that he was hot. Hotter than hot. Above those unusual eyes were straight brows and a square forehead that was the perfect canvas to sport his slightly wavy, eminently touchable-looking hair. His nose was straight and well-shaped above full, provocative lips, and he had just the faintest dip in a chin that was hammocked between sharply drawn, granite jaws.

Add to that striking face broad shoulders that were barely contained by the Western-style shirt he was wearing with the sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular forearms and somehow-sexy wrists; narrow hips and long, thick legs that did great justice to the pair of jeans he was wearing, and there was no question that this was a formidably good-looking man.

But that didn’t change a thing as far as Jessie was concerned.

“Fwint has cowboy boots like me!” Adam announced, obviously taking in every inch of Flint. Much the way his mother just had, although she’d missed the boots. “Mine are home. I wanna go get ‘em!”

“Not right now you won’t,” Jessie intervened.

“But I wanna wear ‘em!”

“You can’t wear cowboy boots with your shorts. You can wear them another day, when it’s cooler,” Jessie said, eliciting a frown from her youngest before he bent over to study Flint’s feet more closely.

“Will my feets get big as Fwint’s feets?”

For no reason Jessie could fathom that made her wonder what Flint’s naked feet looked like. Which was not only totally bizarre, but seemed like something too personal for her to be thinking about at all and she curbed her wandering thoughts.

She also decided to curb her overzealous son who had risen from his close scrutiny to stand with one arm wrapped around the big man’s left leg and the side of his tennis shoe-clad foot against Flint’s to compare them.

“I’m sorry,” Jessie muttered, dragging Adam away from the grip that was more familiar than he should have been having with any stranger and firmly holding him against the front of her own thighs. “This must be some kind of new phase. He’s never been so …” She wasn’t sure how to say that her son seemed enthralled with this man. She settled on “… so taken with anyone before.”

“I like ‘im,” Adam announced matter-of-factly. “I wanna do what he doos.”

“Seems like Adam has decided you’re his role model, Flint,” Kelsey contributed with a pointed glance at Jessie, inspiring another eye roll from Jessie.

But undaunted, Kelsey said, “Coop is working in the basement. Jess, why don’t you and Adam take Flint up and show him the room that’ll be his while he’s here so I can go get my other favorite Fortune man and tell him his brother is finally back?”

Jessie shot her sister an I’ll-get-you-for-this glance. But she couldn’t refuse the request without appearing rude, so she had to concede.

Refocusing on Flint’s cover-model face, she said, “What will eventually be the actual guest room is down here. But right now it’s full of paint cans and supplies, so Kelsey was thinking you could take the extra bedroom upstairs.”

“I’ll show you,” Adam offered, breaking free of his mother’s grip to run for the stairs in the entryway.

“I guess we should follow our leader,” Flint said with a sexy half smile, apparently amused by her son.

“If we don’t he’s liable to drag you upstairs himself,” Jessie said.

“There’s not much to him, that could do him some damage,” Flint joked. Then he leaned over and picked up the suitcase he must have brought in with him, and said, “After you.”

Had her sister not pointed out the fact that she wasn’t wearing her most flattering jeans, Jessie was convinced that the way her rear end looked in them wouldn’t have crossed her mind. Or the fact that she had Flint Fortune directly behind her on the stairs.

Now she was far more conscious of where his eyes might be as they climbed the steps. And of what he might be thinking if he was at all interested in checking her out—which he probably wasn’t. But if he was, could he tell her butt wasn’t bad despite the baggy jeans?

But those were not thoughts she wanted to be having. And trying to elude them, she finished the second half of the stairs at a quicker pace.

Adam was waiting for them at the landing, his father’s brown eyes watching eagerly for Flint.

The moment Flint reached the top, Adam said, “Iss over here,” and made a dash for the bedroom beside the nursery where Anthony was napping.

Jessie and Flint again trailed her son into the small bedroom that had yet to be decorated but contained the necessities—a double bed, a nightstand complete with a lamp and a dresser upon which was an old television set.

“We live there!” Adam announced excitedly. He was standing at one of the bedroom’s two windows and pointing to the house next door.

“Ah, right. Coop mentioned that.”

Jessie appreciated that Flint indulged the little boy by setting his suitcase down and joining Adam at the window.

“See?” Adam said when Flint got there. “Tha’s my mom’s window. You can see ‘er when she puts on her ‘jamas and stuff.”

Out of the mouths of babes …

It was an innocent-enough comment, so there wasn’t anything to actually be embarrassed by. And yet Jessie felt some heat rise in her cheeks. Possibly because she was picturing the kind of scene Adam was unwittingly portraying.

Or possibly because it seemed as if Flint might be, too, because he turned a disarmingly devilish smile to her.

“That’s why we pull our shades when we undress, Adam,” Jessie lectured. “So no one can see us when we put on our pajamas.”

“But you could wave to each other,” Adam persisted. “Cuz wookit, tha’s yur room, Mama, I kin see it!”

“Yes, that’s my room,” Jessie acknowledged.

“And we’ll be sure to wave to each other. Every night,” Flint assured, barely suppressing a grin.

“Oh, definitely,” Jessie agreed as if she, too, could joke about it when the truth was that she was having a silly schoolgirl image of peering at the handsome man just across the way.

“An’ wookit down there,” Adam said then, oblivious of the exchange between the adults. “Tha’s my gramma and grampa cookin’ on the barber-cue, and tha’s Ella an’ Braden an’ Beth’ny playin’ wis the hose—you kin see them all, too.”

“I can,” Flint said.

“And if Gramma and Grampa are cooking that means we’d better get home for dinner,” Jessie said, using the information to make her escape.

“Can Fwint come?”

“Aunt Kelsey has other plans for Flint’s dinner tonight.”

“Can I come back after dinner?” the tiny child asked hopefully.

“After dinner you need a bath, so no. You’ll see Flint again soon.”

“As I understand it, we’re all going to be working on the house this week, buddy, so we’ll probably see a lot of each other.”

Jessie recognized the expressions that crossed her son’s face as he decided whether to throw a tantrum or be appeased. In the end he drew an exaggerated breath, sighed it out with great effect and said a very reluctant, “Okay.”

“Come on, let’s get going,” Jessie said, seizing the moment before he changed his mind and threw the tantrum anyway.

“And Adam?” Flint added as the little boy trudged from the window to his mother. “I’ll be wearing tennis shoes like yours tomorrow, so don’t worry about the boots.”

Jessie laughed lightly at that and said, “Thanks, that saves me a fight tomorrow morning.”

“I thought it might,” Flint said with yet another smile, this one understanding and yet still so engaging.

Engaging enough that a split-second elapsed while Jessie stared into that smile, into those unique eyes of his and forgot everything.

Then Adam yanked her back to reality by taking her hand and tugging her downward while he stood on his tip-toes to whisper, “He called me buddy. Tha’ means we’re frien’s.”

“That is what it means,” Jessie confirmed, appreciating that Flint had taken some care with her son’s feelings. Telling herself that that was all she was appreciating about the man.

And all she intended to appreciate about him.

Chapter Two

Flint woke Monday morning to the sound of children’s voices outside, a baby fussing in the next room, water running somewhere nearby and a sprinkler whoosh-whoosh-whooshing in the distance.

Definitely not the quiet of his apartment on the outskirts of Denver.

Then his brother Cooper’s voice drifted to him from somewhere close by, reminding him that he was in Texas. In Red Rock.

Where his mother was born and raised. Where a chunk of his extended family lived. Where his mother had brought him, his two brothers and his sister to visit growing up—usually because she’d wanted to get rid of her kids while she went on yet another honeymoon, or because she needed to finagle money out of some of that extended family between husbands or jobs or cities or any of the other flights of fancy that were always in play with Cindy Fortune.

Flint opened his eyes and recognized the tidy spare bedroom of the house his brother had just moved into. Where he was taking a slight hiatus from his own work to help fix up the place and spend some time with Coop, his newly discovered son, Anthony, and new fiancée, Kelsey, and with he and Coop’s other brother Ross and their sister, Frannie, who also lived in Red Rock.