Wife Wanted

Oh, my! My son Jake accused of murdering Monica Malone! Whatever will the family do? I know, without a doubt in my mind, that Jake is innocent. That evil Monica has brought nothing but trouble for this family. I suspect she was at least partly responsible for my plane crash and supposed death. And I’m sure she wasn’t acting alone. So, I must still remain in hiding to catch the culprits. But how am I going to help Jake get out of this mess?

A LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR

Dear Reader,

First and foremost, FORTUNE’S CHILDREN is about a family. A big, adventurous, larger-than-life and very American family. A family with a loving, powerful, matchmaking woman at its head. What fun, I thought, when my editor offered me the opportunity to write one of the twelve books in the series. I love to write about families. So I was hooked.

But there was more: an ongoing mystery revolving around that loving, powerful, matchmaking woman at the head of the family.

And then my editor told me about the other authors who’d be participating: really terrific award-winning, top-selling authors. I’d be in such good company.

And best of all, my own contribution to the series would include a sexy single dad, an adorable lost little boy, a Saint Bernard dog with a heart as big as Lake Superior—and a woman on the verge of a whole new life.

I mean, honestly. How could I resist?

I couldn’t. And I didn’t. And it’s been every bit as much fun as I thought it would be.

I hope you enjoy Wife Wanted, too—as well as all the other books in the FORTUNE’S CHILDREN series.

Sincerely,

MILLS & BOON

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CHRISTINE RIMMER

came to her profession the long way around. Before settling down to write about the magic of romance, she’d been everything from an actress to a salesclerk to a waitress. Now that she’s finally found work that suits her perfectly, she insists she never had a problem keeping a job—she was merely gaining “life experience” for her future as a novelist. Christine is grateful, too—not only for the joy she finds in writing, but for what waits when the day’s work is through: a man she loves who loves her right back and the privilege of watching their children grow and change day-to-day. She lives with her family in Oklahoma. Visit Christine at her new home on the Web at www.christinerimmer.com.

Meet the Fortunes—three generations of a family with a legacy of wealth, influence and power. As they unite to face an unknown enemy, shocking family secrets are revealed…and passionate new romances are ignited.

NATALIE FORTUNE: The loving schoolteacher always helps those in need. However, an accident forces her to rely on her new tenant to care for her. And she soon finds that Eric Dalton’s tender touch is irresistible….

ERIC DALTON: The handsome single father can’t ignore the place Natalie has taken in his and his son’s hearts. He is falling in love with her, but is he willing to take a risk on marriage and make Natalie his wife…?

JAKE FORTUNE: Will he stand idly by and let Monica Malone take over Fortune Cosmetics? Or will he find a way to stop Monica—permanently?

JESSICA HOLMES: This desperate mother needs help to save her young daughter’s life. Will her newly found Fortune relatives come to her aid?

LIZ JONES—CELEBRITY GOSSIP

Monica Malone is dead! And Jake Fortune is the murderer! Yeah, yeah, he says he’s innocent. But come on, Jake. Weren’t you the last one to see her alive? Weren’t you arguing with her over a very personal—or perhaps financial—matter? Didn’t your own daughter see you drunk, and disheveled?

And you expect the good people of this fine city to believe you’re innocent? If you’re not guilty, then I’m Princess Di!

I’m sick and tired of the rich and their fancy, high-priced lawyers getting away with murder—literally. I hope they throw the book at you, Jake Fortune!

Contents

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

One

The ad in the Star Tribune had sounded like just what the doctor ordered:

Last-Minute Summer Rental: Spacious, comfy farm-style lakefront house on ten acres. Close to Twin Cities. Fifty-six foot houseboat included for those long, lazy days on the lake. Terms and length of stay negotiable. Call Bud at Walleye Property Mgement: 555-8972

Rick Dalton had seen the ad in Friday’s paper. He’d called the number right away and spoken with Bud Tankhurst, who told him that the lake in question was Lake Travis, and that the house was “A slice of the past with all the modern conveniences.” And that yes, the property was still available. The owner would be willing to show Rick the house and grounds and possibly discuss terms that Sunday, June 29, at two in the afternoon.

Rick and his son, Toby, left Minneapolis at a little after one on the appointed day. It seemed like no time at all before they were turning off the highway and onto the narrow, winding road that would take them to the farmhouse.

The countryside was just as Rick had hoped it might be: serene and lovely. Maples and ash trees loomed thick all around, so they drove through a tunnel of vibrant green. Rick rolled down his window to get a whiff of the fresh, moist air and to listen in on the songs of the birds and the steady drone of cicadas.

According to Bud Tankhurst, there were over fifty miles of shoreline in the many branches and inlets of Lake Travis. Eighty percent of that shoreline was privately owned, which kept the tourists to a minimum and meant that even though the lake was near the Cities, they saw few other cars on the road.

“Beautiful, isn’t it, son?” Rick asked, as if he actually might get an answer.

But of course there wasn’t one. A quick glance at Toby, in the passenger seat, reminded him not to get his hopes up. The five-year-old sat staring straight ahead, his thin face a blank.

Rick resisted the urge to ask, “Toby, did you hear me?” He’d asked that question too many times in the past six months. Silence had always been the answer.

Rick checked the numbers on the mailboxes as they passed driveways that wound off into the trees, presumably on their way to lakefront houses like the one he sought.

“Almost there,” he said, when the numbers neared the one Bud Tankhurst had given him. He tried to speak casually, to show no frustration with his son’s unwillingness to communicate. Dr. Dawkins, Toby’s psychiatrist, said that it was important to talk to Toby, to include him in conversations, whether Toby seemed to respond or not. Dr. Dawkins said that Toby did hear and understand, that he was improving steadily, and that with time and the right kind of attention he would be just fine. Sometimes Rick wasn’t so sure of that. But he followed the doctor’s orders anyway, as best he could.

Rick slowed the car when the mailbox with the address he sought loomed up on the right. “Here we are,” he said, as if the words mattered. He turned into the gravel drive, spotting a shingled roof through the thick branches of the trees.

Two hundred yards later, he pulled up in front of a two-story house with white clapboard siding on the bottom story and shingles on the dormers and touches of gingerbread trim at the eaves. Rose trees lined the white-pebbled walk to the front porch—a deep, inviting porch, furnished with white wicker armchairs and love seats. There was even a swing.

A good-size expanse of lawn surrounded the farmhouse. There were several lush trees planted in the lawn, their leaves fluttering in the slight breeze. Above, the sky was soft as a baby’s blanket, and as innocently blue. Behind the house lay the lake, which glittered invitingly in the afternoon sun.

“It’s perfect,” Rick said to Toby.

And just as he said that, someone inside the house decided it was time for a little rock and roll. Loud rock and roll.

Rick couldn’t help grinning. “So much for perfection.” He recognized the song: “Piece of My Heart.” It had been a favorite of a reclusive girl who roomed down the hall from him during his last year at college. The singer was Janis Joplin, a blues-rocker who had lived hard and died young and whose wild, rough life was there in every raw, impassioned note she sang.

Rick glanced at Toby, and found blue eyes just like his own watching him.

“Stay here. I’ll see what’s going on.” Rick had to raise his voice a notch to compete with the tortured wails that came from the house.

Toby granted his father a tiny nod. Or at least Rick thought he nodded.

But whether Toby had nodded or not, Rick knew it would be safe to leave him alone for a few minutes. Toby was emotionally unresponsive, but very well behaved. He might not acknowledge Rick’s instructions, but Toby always did what he was told.

From the house, competing with Janis’s agonized moans, came what sounded like the howling of a dog.

What the hell was going on in there?

Rick cast his blank-faced son one last reassuring glance and then went to find out.

By the time he’d lifted a hand to ring the doorbell, the dog inside was yowling as loud and hard as Janis. And Rick thought he could hear another voice, human and female, wailing right along with Janis and the dog. Of course, when he rang the bell, he got no answer. No one inside there could possibly hear anything over all the racket.

Rick tried the door; it was unlocked. He pushed the door inward on a foyer that smelled of sunshine and bees-wax. Without the door to muffle it, the screeching and howling swelled even louder.

Stepping inside, Rick moved toward the sound, which came from beyond a pair of open doors to his left. He halted between the doors, on the threshold of an old-fashioned front parlor.

He saw immediately that there was a stereo on the far wall, from which Janis’s voice was blaring. On the sofa across the room sat a Saint Bernard, its massive head tipped back, its throat working enthusiastically to produce an earsplitting approximation of doggy harmony.

The dog wasn’t the only one trying to keep up with Janis. Between the door where Rick stood and the sofa where the dog yowled, a shapely brunette dressed in a spangled forties cocktail dress and gaudy platform shoes wiggled and wailed. She wore a fringed lamp shade for a hat, and she was shrieking right along with Janis and the baying Saint Bernard. Rick leaned in the doorway, wondering with some amusement what she would do when she turned around and discovered him standing there.

It took a few moments to find out. The brunette was too involved in her performance to realize that she’d attracted an audience. But the dog noticed Rick right away. It lowered its huge head, gave a deep, soft woof, and got down from the couch. Tongue lolling, it circled the dancing, singing woman, then loped over to Rick and nuzzled his thigh with a large, wet nose. Rick granted the animal a quick scratch behind a giant-size ear.

The woman went right on singing her heart out. Rick watched the action. Though he had yet to see her face, she looked great from behind. Apparently the lamp shade obscured her view of the dog, because it took her a while to figure out that the animal was no longer sitting on the sofa, bellowing along with her. Readjusting her lamp shade, she shimmied around, no doubt wondering where the dog had gone. She froze in midscreech when she caught sight of Rick.

“Oh!” She whipped the shade off her head, her creamy skin flooding with agonized color. “How long have you been standing there?” She had to shout to be heard over the din Janis was making.

Rick did his best to stop grinning. “Long enough,” he yelled back.

She made a pained face. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

“I rang the bell, but—”

She waved a hand. “Never mind. I understand.” She trudged to the bare-bulbed floor lamp in the corner, where she spent a moment putting the shade back where it belonged. After that, she marched over and turned off the stereo.

She started apologizing as soon as the music stopped. “You must be my prospective tenant. Excuse us. We just… Well, Bernie begged me to play Janis, so I did. He loves that song.”

“Bernie,” Rick echoed. “That would be the dog?”

“Um-hm.”

“The dog can talk?”

“Not exactly. But he always gets his point across. When he wants to hear Janis, he brings me the CD.”

“A bright dog.”

“Extremely.”

Neither of them paid much attention as the dog in question wandered out the door, wagging his tail and panting. The woman swiped moist hair off her brow, drew her shoulders back and closed the distance between them, holding out her hand.

“I’m Natalie. Natalie Fortune.”

Rick took her hand. It was soft, a little hot from all that dancing and singing—and a nice fit in his. She smelled of clean sweat and soap and flowers. He introduced himself. “Rick Dalton.”

Still a little breathless, she put a hand against her chest. “And there’s a little boy, right?”

“Right.”

She looked down at their joined hands, and he realized that the handshaking was already done. He released her. She stepped back just a little and gazed up at him. She had the most gorgeous big brown eyes he’d ever seen. “I, um, understood that you were going to be here at two.”

He glanced at his watch. “I guess I’m a few minutes early.”

She smiled, still blushing a little. “And I let the time get away from me.” Her smile changed then; it became tender. “Hello.” She was looking beyond him.

Rick turned to see Toby hovering just inside the front door, his little mouth quirking shyly upward in response to Natalie Fortune’s greeting, his small hand resting companionably in the ruff of the Saint Bernard, which stood at his side.

Rick was stunned. His son had actually smiled.

Her ridiculous platform shoes clumping with each step, Natalie tramped right around Rick and across the hard-wood floor of the foyer to Toby, where she dropped into a crouch. The big dog took a hint from his mistress and plunked down on his hind quarters. Together, Natalie and Toby petted the dog.

“I see you’ve already met Bernie,” she said.

Toby nodded.

“And I’m Natalie. What’s your name?”

“Toby. His name’s Toby,” Rick supplied quickly.

Toby reached out shyly and touched one of the bangles on Natalie’s dress. A silvery laugh escaped her. In a vamp’s voice, she said, “You like? Come zeez way, my darlink.” Taking Toby by the hand, she rose. The Saint Bernard trailed behind as she led the boy back into the parlor, circling around the bemused Rick for the second time.

At one end of the sofa lay a huge old steamer trunk, its lid flung back, various articles of clothing spilling out. Natalie led Toby right to it.

“This trunk was my grandma Kate’s,” she announced. “It belongs in the attic.” She pantomimed wiping her brow. “Don’t ask me how I managed to get it down here. Boy, was it heavy!” She groaned. “And how I’ll get it back up is another thing.” She shrugged. “I’ll think of something. Later. But for right now, Bernie and I have been having fun. I found this fabulous dress in there.” She looked down at her bangles and beads and then up long enough to grant Rick a wink. “Not to mention these incredible shoes. And some of my grandpa Ben’s things are in here, too.”

She knelt by the trunk. Toby stood to her left, and the Saint Bernard dropped to his haunches on her right. “You see, Toby, this house was my grandma and grandpa’s ‘second honeymoon’ house.” She began pulling things from the trunk. “When they’d been married a long, long time and two of their kids were pretty much grown, they bought this house across the lake from their big mansion.”

She pulled out a flowered scarf, a wide-brimmed pink hat and a black patent-leather clutch purse, all of which she set on the floor. “Do you know why they bought it? I’ll tell you. They bought it because they realized they’d grown apart over the years and they needed to find each other again. This house was the perfect place for that. It was simple and quiet and comfortable and they both fell in love with it. And they hoped that they might fall in love with each other again when they stayed here.”

She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “And do you know what?” Toby was watching her, his small face rapt. “They did find each other again. Nine months after they spent one beautiful week here, my grandma had another baby.”

Natalie began dressing the Saint Bernard in the things she’d pulled from the trunk. “It’s true.” She slanted the wide-brimmed hat just so on the dog’s head. “After one short stay in this house, Grandma Kate had my aunt Rebecca, who is only a few years older than I am.” Natalie tied the flowered scarf around the dog’s neck and stuck the purse in his mouth. Then she clapped her hands in delight and declared, “He looks great, don’t you think?”

Toby actually nodded. The dog thumped his heavy tail.

Natalie looked up and caught Rick watching her. She flashed him a quick grin, then rose and advised Toby, “Go ahead without me. Bernie loves to play dress-up.” Bernie managed to bark in agreement without dropping the purse from his big, droopy jaws. “I’m going to show your father the house.”

She moved out from behind the trunk. “Ready for the tour?”

Captivated, Rick heard himself say, “Sure.”

She marched past him in her silly, glittery shoes. He fell in step behind her, but couldn’t resist one backward glance at his son, who was trying on a World War II army helmet and ducking to avoid Bernie’s affectionate tongue.

Natalie led him to the foyer and up the stairs first, explaining that the house had been thoroughly modernized four years before, that the kitchen had been remodeled and a bath and a half added.

“Now all the windows are double-paned.” She smiled over her shoulder at him. “And you’ll even have air-conditioning, for those hot summer days.”

Rick listened to her little sales pitch, but his mind was on what had happened in the parlor. As they reached the top of the landing, he couldn’t help remarking, “You have a way with kids.”

She shrugged her padded shoulders, and the beadwork on her dress glinted in the buttery sunlight that spilled in the window over the stairs. “Kids and dogs. What can I say?”

“Next you’ll be telling me you’re a kindergarten teacher.”

“First and second grade, actually. I teach at the school in town.”

“Town?”

“You came out from the Cities, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if you keep going on the road you took to get here, you’ll come to Travistown, around the far end of the lake. Population three hundred and forty. We have our own school, though a few grades always get combined, and we have a market, a hardware store and a couple of gift and clothing shops. And Walleye Property Management, of course.”

“Right. Bud Tankhurst is one of the agents there.”

“Bud Tankhurst is the only agent there. He owns it and he runs it. His wife, Latilla, does the books for him.”

“I see.” Her eyes really were the biggest, brownest eyes he’d ever seen. And her face was…familiar.

Her smooth brow furrowed. “Is Toby all right?”

Rick tensed. “What do you mean?” He knew he sounded defensive.

She leaned against the banister. “I mean, is something bothering him? He seems…too quiet. I don’t think he said a word just now.”

Rick looked away. He’d been in this woman’s house for ten minutes, max. She was a stranger. But she didn’t feel like a stranger. She drew him. And in ten minutes, she’d already accomplished the impossible: She’d made his little boy smile.

He met her eyes once more. “Both Toby’s mother and his maternal grandmother died several months ago. A car accident. Toby was in the car when it happened.”

Natalie made a small sound of distress.

“Toby hasn’t spoken since the accident.”

“Oh… I’m so sorry….”

“His mother and I were divorced. And I…hadn’t seen Toby in a while. That’s why I’m interested in this place. Toby’s doctor says Toby’s making progress, but that he would get better even faster if we had more time together, just the two of us. Time for Toby to learn for certain that he can trust me. And time for me to get to know him better. Does that make sense?”

Those big eyes were full of understanding. “Yes, it does. Perfect sense.” She came away from the banister. “Let me show you the rest of the house.”

He thought that he could stand here talking to her forever, but all he said was “Yes, that’s a good idea.”

She pushed the doors open on two small bedrooms and showed him the bath the rooms shared. “These will go with the rental.”

He looked across the hall at two closed doors. She caught the direction of his gaze and explained, “That’s my bedroom, a bath and a sitting room. There’s a master bedroom and a study downstairs, so I was hoping that maybe we could just leave my private rooms out of the arrangement—if it’s only going to be you and Toby.”

“I see.”

“I’d adjust the rent accordingly, of course.”

“If I take the place, that would be okay with me. There are more rooms than we’ll need, anyway.”

She led him back downstairs, through the study and the big master bedroom, with its private bath. There was also a spacious kitchen, a pantry and laundry room with a half bath. Between the parlor and the kitchen was a formal dining room. And branching off from the kitchen was a breakfast area and a big, open family room, which Natalie referred to as the great room.

Once Rick had seen it all, they settled at the breakfast table to talk things over. Natalie said she’d hoped to find a renter who would take the house “as is,” with all her furniture.

“That would be fine with me. But if we do this, I’d like to use the study for Toby’s bedroom. Sometimes he has nightmares, and I want to be close by.”

“I understand. I wouldn’t mind at all if you brought down one of the beds from upstairs.”

“Great.”

She was grinning. “I think this just might work out.” She braced her elbow on the table and propped her chin on her hand.