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Available in April 2010 from Mills & Boon^® Special Moments^™

Fortune’s Woman

by RaeAnne Thayne &

A Fortune Wedding

by Kristin Hardy

Reining in the Rancher

by Karen Templeton &

His Brother’s Secret

by Debra Salonen

Healing the MD’s Heart

by Nicole Foster &

Welcome Home, Daddy

by Carrie Weaver

The Bravo Bachelor

by Christine Rimmer

The Nanny Solution

by Teresa Hill

An Ideal Father

by Elaine Grant

Not Without Her Family

by Beth Andrews

FORTUNE’S WOMAN

“I’m not the kind of man you need, Julie. I wish I could be. You have no idea how much.”

“How did you become such an expert on what I need?”

“It’s my job to understand people. I have to be able to read people, to understand their motivations, their personality types.”

“And what’s my personality type?”

“You’re a nurturer. A natural healer. You take people who are hurting and broken and you try to fix them.”

“And you don’t want to be healed.”

Ross bristled. “I’m not broken.”

“Aren’t you?”

A FORTUNE WEDDING

“We were so young,” Frannie whispered. “What we were feeling wasn’t real. It would never have worked.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Maybe this is all about another chance.”

“How can we have another chance? I’m not the same person I was. Neither are you.”

“You think so?” Roberto murmured. “Let’s find

out.”

And he leaned in to press his mouth to hers.

Nearly two decades had passed and she’d forgotten a million and one things in that time. But she remembered his kisses, oh, she remembered his kisses.

Fortune’s Woman

By

RaeAnne Thayne
A Fortune Wedding

By

Kristin Hardy

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Fortune’s Woman

By

RaeAnne Thayne

RaeAnne Thayne finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books have won numerous honours, including two RITA^® Award nominations from Romance Writers of America and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times BOOKreviews magazine. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website at www. raeannethayne.com.

Chapter One

What was the punk doing?

Ross Fortune stood beside a canvas awning–covered booth at the art fair of the Red Rock Spring Fling, keeping a careful eye on the rough-looking kid with the eyebrow bolt and the lip ring.

The kid seemed out of place in the booth full of framed Wild West art—photographs of steely-eyed cowboys lined up on a weathered fence, tow-headed toddlers wobbling in giant Tony Lamas, a trio of horses grazing against a stormy sky.

Yeah, he might be jumping to conclusions, but it didn’t seem like the sort of artwork that would interest somebody who looked more wannabe rock star than cowboy, with his inky black hair, matching black jeans and T-shirt, and pale skin. But as Ross watched, the kid—who looked on the small side of maybe fourteen or fifteen—thumbed through the selection of unframed prints like they were the most fascinating things in the world.

Ross wouldn’t have paid him any attention, except that for the past ten minutes he couldn’t help noticing the kid as he moseyed from booth to booth in the gathering twilight, his eyes constantly shifting around. The punk seemed abnormally aware of where the artist-vendor of each booth stood at all times, tracking their movements under dark eyelashes.

Until the western photographs, he hadn’t seemed much interested in whatever wares the artists were selling. Instead, he had all the tell-tale signs of somebody casing the place, looking for something easy to lift.

Okay, Ross was rushing to judgment. But something about the way the kid’s gaze never stopped moving set all his alarm bells ringing. Even after the crowds started to abate as everybody headed toward the dance several hundred yards away, the kid continued ambling through the displays, as if he were searching for the perfect mark.

And suddenly he must have found it.

As Ross watched, the kid’s gaze sharpened on a pink flowered bag somebody had carelessly left on a folding chair.

He moved to take a step forward, his own attention homing in on the boy, but just at that moment somebody jostled him.

“Sorry,” muttered a dark-haired man in a Stetson who looked vaguely familiar. “I was looking for someone and wasn’t watching where I was going.”

“No problem,” Ross answered. But when he looked back, the kid was gone—and so was the slouchy flowered bag.

Adrenaline pumped through him. Finally! Chasing a shoplifter was just what he needed right now.

He had been bored to tears all day and would have left hours ago and headed back to San Antonio if he hadn’t been volunteered by his family to help out on security detail for the Spring Fling, which was Red Rock’s biggest party of the year.

At least now, maybe he might be able to have a little something to relieve the tedium of the day so he couldn’t consider it a complete waste.

He stepped out of the booth and scanned the crowd. He saw his cousin J.R. helping Isabella Mendoza begin to pack away the wares at her textiles booth down the row a ways and he saw the Latino man in the Stetson who had bumped into him standing at a corner of a nearby watercolor booth.

He also spied his despised brother-in-law, Lloyd Fredericks, skulking through the crowd, headed toward a section behind the tents and awnings, away from the public thoroughfare.

No doubt he was up to no good. If Ross wasn’t on the hunt for a purse snatcher, he would have taken off after Lloyd, just for the small-minded pleasure of harassing the bastard a little.

He finally spotted the kid near a booth displaying colorful, froufrou dried-flower arrangements. He moved quietly into position behind him, his gaze unwavering.

This had always been his favorite moment when he had been a detective in San Antonio, before he left the job to become a private investigator. He loved that hot surge of energy before he took down a perp, that little thrill that he was about to tip the scales of justice firmly on the side of the victim.

He didn’t speak until he was directly behind the boy. “Hey kid,” he growled. “Nice purse.”

The boy jumped like Ross had shoved a shiv between his ribs. He whirled around and shot him a defiant look out of dark eyes.

“I didn’t do nothing. I was just grabbin’ this for my friend.”

“I’m sure. Come on. Hand it over.”

The boy’s grip tightened on the bag. “No way. She lost it so I told her I’d help her look for it and that’s just what I’m doin’.”

“I don’t think so. Come on, give.”

“You a cop?”

“Used to be.” Until the politics and the inequities had become more than he could stomach. He didn’t regret leaving the force. He enjoyed being a private investigator, picking his own cases and his own hours. The power of the badge sometimes had its privileges, though, he had to admit. Right now, he would have loved to be able to shove one into this little punk’s face.

“If you ain’t a cop, then I got nothin’ to say to you. Back off.”

The kid started to walk away but Ross grabbed his shoulder. “Afraid I’m not going anywhere. Hand over the bag.”

The kid uttered a colorful curse and tried to break free. “You got it wrong, man. Let me go.”

“Sure. No problem. That way you can just run through the crowd and lift a few more purses on your way through.”

“I told you, I didn’t steal nothin’. My friend couldn’t remember where she left it. I told her I’d help her look for it so she could buy some more stuff.”

“Sure kid. Whatever you say.”

“I ain’t lyin’!”

The boy wrestled to get free, and though he was small and slim, he was wiry and much more agile than Ross had given him credit for. To his chagrin, the teenager managed to break the grip on his arm and before Ross could scramble to grab him again, he had darted through the crowd.

Ross repeated the curse the kid had uttered earlier and headed after him. The punk might be fast but Ross had two major advantages—age and experience. He had chased enough desperate criminals through the grime and filth of San Antonio’s worst neighborhoods to have no problem keeping up with one teenage boy carrying a bag that stood out like a flowery neon-pink beacon.

He caught up with him just before the boy would have slipped into the shadows on the edges of the art fair.

“Now you’ve pissed me off,” Ross growled as he grabbed the kid again, this time in the unbreakable hold he should have used all along.

If he thought the boy’s language was colorful before, that was nothing to the string of curses that erupted now.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ross said with a tight grin. “I’ve heard it all before. I was a cop, remember?”

He knew he probably shouldn’t be enjoying this so much. He was out of breath and working up a sweat, trying to keep the boy in place with one arm while he reached into his pocket with the other hand for the flex-cuffs he always carried. He had just fished them out and was starting to shackle the first wrist when a woman’s raised voice distracted him.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing? Let go of him right this minute!”

He shifted his gaze from the boy to a woman with light brown hair approaching them—her eyes were wide and he briefly registered a particularly delectable mouth set in sharp, indignant lines.

He thought she looked vaguely familiar but that was nothing unusual in a small town like Red Rock, where everybody looked familiar. Though he didn’t spend much time here and much preferred his life in San Antonio, the Fortune side of his family was among the town founders and leaders. Their ranch, the Double Crown, was a huge cattle spread not far from town.

The Spring Fling had become a large community event, and the entire proceeds from the art festival and dance went to benefit the Fortune Foundation, the organization created in memory of his mother’s cousin Ryan, that helped disadvantaged young people.

Ross was a Fortune, and even though he was from the black-sheep side, he couldn’t seem to escape certain familial obligations such as weddings and funerals.

Or Spring Flings.

He might not know the woman’s name, but he knew her type. He could tell just by looking at her that she was the kind of busybody, do-gooder sort who couldn’t resist sticking her lovely nose into things that were none of her business.

“Sorry. I can’t let him go. I just caught the kid stealing a purse.”

If anything, her pretty features tightened further. “That’s ridiculous. He wasn’t stealing anything! He was doing me a favor.”

Despite her impassioned words, he wasn’t releasing the boy, not for a moment. “I’m sure the Red Rock police over at the security trailer can sort it all out. That’s where we’re heading. You’re welcome to come along.”

He would be more than happy to let her be somebody else’s problem.

“I’m telling you, he didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Then why did he run from me?”

The slippery kid wriggled more in his hold. “Because you wouldn’t listen to me, man. I tried to tell you.”

“This is my purse!” the woman exclaimed. “I couldn’t remember where I left it so I asked Marcus to help me find it so I could purchase some earrings from a folk artist on the next row over.”

Ross studied the pair of them, the boy so wild and belligerent and the soft, blue-eyed woman who looked fragile and feminine in comparison. “Why should I believe you? Maybe you’re in on the heist with him. Makes a perfect cover, nicelooking woman working together with a rough kid like him.”

She narrowed her gaze, apparently unimpressed with the theory. “I’ll tell you why you should believe me. Because my wallet, which is inside the bag, has my driver’s license and credit cards in it. If you would stop being so cynical and suspicious for five seconds, I can show them to you.”

Okay, he should have thought of that. Maybe two years away from the job had softened him more than he wanted to admit. Still, he wasn’t about to let down his guard long enough for her to prove him any more of a fool.

He tossed the purse at her. “Fine. Show me.”

Her look would have scorched through metal. She scooped up the purse and pawed through it, then pulled out a brocade wallet, which she unsnapped with sharp, jerky movements and thrust at him.

Sure enough, there was a Texas driver’s license with a pretty decent picture of her—a few years younger and with slightly longer hair, but it was definitely her.

Julie Osterman, the name read under her picture. He gazed at it for a full ten seconds before the name registered. He had seen it on an office door at the Foundation, next to his cousin Susan’s. And he must have seen her there, as well, which explained why she looked slightly familiar.

“You work for the Fortune Foundation, don’t you?”

“Yes. I’m a counselor,” she tilted her head and looked more closely at him. “And you’re Ross Fortune, aren’t you?”

He should have recognized her. Any good cop—and private investigator—ought to be more tuned in to that sort of thing than the average citizen and be able to remember names and faces.

“I don’t give a crap who you are,” the wriggling teenager in his grip spat out. “Let go of me, man.”

He was still holding onto the punk, he realized. Ross eased his grip a little but was reluctant to release him completely.

“Mr. Fortune, you can let go anytime now,” Julie Osterman said. “It all happened exactly as he said. He was helping me find my purse, not stealing anything. Thank you so much for your help, Marcus! I’m so relieved you found it. You can go now.”

Ross pulled his hand away, surrendering to the inevitable, and Marcus straightened his ratty T-shirt like it was two hundred dollars’ worth of cashmere.

“Dude’s a psycho,” he said to no one in particular but with a fierce glare for Ross. “I tried to tell you, man. You should have listened. Stupid cop-pig.”

“Marcus,” Julie said. Though the word was calm enough, even Ross recognized the steel behind it.

Marcus didn’t apologize, but he didn’t offer more insults, either. “I got to fly. See you, Ms. O.”

“Bye, Marcus.”

He ambled away, exuding affronted attitude with every step.

When he was out of earshot, Julie Osterman turned back to him, her mouth set in those tight lines again. He was so busy wondering if she ever unbent enough to genuinely smile that he nearly missed her words.

“I hope you haven’t just undone in five minutes here what has taken me weeks to build with Marcus.”

It took him a few more seconds longer than it should have to realize she was wasn’t just annoyed, she was fuming.

“What did I do?” he asked in genuine bewilderment.

“Marcus is one of my clients at the Foundation,” she said. “He comes from, well, not an easy situation. The adults in his life have consistently betrayed him. He’s never had anyone to count on. I’ve been trying to help him learn to trust me, to count on me, by demonstrating that I trust him in return.”

“By throwing your purse out there as bait?”

“Marcus has a history of petty theft.”

“Just the kind of kid I would send after my purse, then.”

She fisted her hands on her hips and the movement made all her curves deliciously visible beneath her gauzy white shirt. “I wanted him to understand that when I look at him, I see beyond the mistakes he’s made in the past to the bright future we’re both trying to create for him.”

It sounded like a bunch of hooey to him but he decided it might be wise to keep that particular opinion to himself right now, considering she looked like she wanted to skin him, inch by painful inch.

“Instead,” she went on in that irritated voice, “you have probably just reinforced to a wounded child that all adults are suspicious and cynical, quick to judge and painfully slow to admit when they’re wrong.”

“Hey, wait a second here. I had no way of knowing you were trying for some mumbo-jumbo psychobabble experiment. All I saw was a punk lifting a purse. I couldn’t just stand there and let him take it.”

“Admit it,” she snapped. “You jumped to conclusions because he looks a little rough around the edges.”

Her hair was light brown, shot through with blond highlights that gleamed in the last few minutes of twilight. With those brilliant blue eyes, high cheekbones and eminently kissable mouth, she was just about the prettiest woman he had seen in a long, long time. The kind of woman a man never got tired of looking at.

Too bad such a nice package had to be covering up one of those save-the-world types who always set his teeth on edge.

“I was a cop for twelve years, ma’am,” he retorted. “When I see a kid taking a purse that obviously doesn’t belong to him, yeah, I tend to jump to conclusions. That doesn’t mean they’re usually wrong conclusions.”

“But sometimes they are,” she doggedly insisted.

“In this case, I made a mistake. See, I’m man enough to admit it. I made a mistake,” he repeated. “It happens to the best of us, even ex-cops. But I’m willing to bet, if you asked anybody else in the whole damn art fair, they would have reached the same conclusion.”

“You don’t know that.”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re right. I completely overreacted. The next time I see somebody stealing your purse, I’ll be sure to just watch him walk on by.”

The angry set of her features eased a little and after a moment, she sighed. “I hope I can convince Marcus you were just being an ex-cop.”

Despite his own annoyance, he could see she genuinely cared about the boy. He supposed he could see things from her point of view. He had a particular soft spot for anybody who tried to help kids in need, even if they did tend to become zealots about it.

“I can try talking to the kid if that would help,” he finally offered, though he wasn’t quite sure what compelled him to make the suggestion. Maybe something to do with how her eyes softened when she talked about the punk.

“I appreciate that, but I don’t think—”

A woman’s frantic scream suddenly ripped through the evening, cutting off whatever Julie Osterman had intended to say.

Julie’s heart jumped in her chest as another long scream echoed through the fair. She gasped and instinctively turned toward the source of the sound, somewhere out of their view, away from the public areas and the four long rows of vendor tents.

Before she could even draw a breath to exclaim over the noise, Ross Fortune was racing in the direction of the sound.

He was all cop now, she couldn’t help thinking.

Hard and alert and dangerous.

She was too startled to do more than watch him rush toward the sound for a few seconds. It always managed to astound her when police officers and firefighters raced toward potentially hazardous situations while people like her stood frozen.

She knew a little about Ross Fortune from her friend Susan, his cousin. He had been a police officer in San Antonio but had left the force a few years ago to open his own private investigation company.

He was a trained detective, she reminded herself, and she would probably do wise to just let him, well, detect.

But as another scream ripped through the night, past the happy laughter of the carnival rides and the throbbing bass coming from the dance, Julie knew she had to follow him, whether she was comfortable with it or not.

Someone obviously needed help and she couldn’t just stand idly by and do nothing.

Ross had a head start on her but she managed to nearly catch up as he darted around the corner of a display of pottery she had admired earlier in the evening.

Probably only ten seconds had elapsed from the instant they heard the first scream, but time seemed to stretch and elongate like the pulled taffy being sold on the midway alongside kettle corn, snow cones and cotton candy.

She ran after Ross and stumbled onto a strange, surreal scene. It was darker back here, away from the lights and noise of the Spring Fling crowd. But Julie could still tell instantly that the woman with the high-pitched scream was someone she recognized from seeing her around town, a blowsy blonde who usually favored miniscule halter tops and five-inch high heels.

She was staring at something a dozen yards away, illuminated by a lone vapor light, high on a power pole. A figure was lying motionless on the ground, faceup, and even from here, Julie could see a dark pool of what she assumed was blood around his head.

A third person stood over the body. It took Julie only a moment to recognize Frannie Fortune Fredericks, a frequent volunteer at the center.

And Ross’s sister, she remembered with stunned dismay that she saw reflected in his features.

Frannie was staring at her hands. In the pale moonlight, they shone much darker than the rest of her skin.

“It’s her. She killed him!” the other woman cried out stridently. “Can’t you see? The bitch killed my Lloyd!”

Her Lloyd? As in Lloyd Fredericks, Frannie’s husband? Julie looked closer at the figure on the ground. For the first time, she registered his sandy-blond hair and those handsome, slightly smarmy features, and realized she was indeed staring into the fixed, unblinking stare of Lloyd Fredericks.

This couldn’t be happening…

Ross quickly crossed to Lloyd’s body and knelt to search for a pulse. Julie knew even before he rose to his feet a moment later that he wouldn’t have been able to find one. That sightless gaze said it all.

That was definitely Frannie’s husband. And he was definitely dead.

Ross gripped his sister’s arm and Julie noticed that he was careful not to touch her blood-covered hands. How did he possibly have the sense to avoid contaminating evidence under such shocking circumstances? she wondered.

“Frannie? What’s going on? What happened?”

His sister’s delicate features looked pale, almost bloodless, and she lifted stark eyes to him. “I don’t…It’s Lloyd, Ross.”

“I can see it’s Lloyd, honey. What happened to him?”

The screaming woman wobbled closer on her high heels. “She killed him. Look at her! She’s got blood all over her. Oh, Lloyd, baby.”

She began to wail as if her heart were being ripped out of her cosmetically enhanced chest. Julie would have liked to be a little sympathetic, but she didn’t fail to notice the other woman only began the heartrending sobs when a crowd started to gather.

Ross turned to her. “Julie, do you have a phone? Can you call 911?”

“Of course,” she answered. While she pulled her phone out of her pocket and started hitting buttons, she heard Ross take charge of the scene, ordering everybody to step back a couple dozen feet. In mere moments, it seemed the place was crawling with people.

The 911 operator had just answered when Julie saw a pair of police officers arrive. They must have been drawn to the commotion from other areas of the Spring Fling.

“This is Julie Osterman,” she said to the 911 dispatcher. “I was going to report a…an incident at the Spring Fling but you all are already here.”

“What sort of incident?” the dispatcher asked.

Julie was hesitant to use the word murder, but how could it be anything else? “I guess a suspicious death. But as I said, your officers are already here.”

“Tell me what you know anyway.”

The woman took what little information Julie could provide to relay to the officers, who were pushing the crowd even farther back.

When she hung up the phone with the dispatcher, she stood for a moment, not sure what to do, where to go. She disliked this sort of crowd scene, the almost avaricious hunger for information that seemed to seize people when something dramatic and shocking occurred nearby.

She wanted to slip away but it didn’t feel quite right, especially when she had been one of the first ones on the scene. She supposed technically she was a witness, though she hadn’t seen anything and knew nothing about what had happened.

Julie scanned the crowd, though she didn’t know what she was seeking. A familiar face, perhaps, someone who could help her make sense of this shocking development.

In the distance, she saw someone in a black Stetson just on the other side of the edge of light emanating from the art fair. He made no move to come closer to investigate the commotion, which she found curious. But when she looked again, he was gone.

“Oh, Lloyd! My poor Lloyd.”

The woman who had alerted them with her screams was nearly hysterical by now, standing just a few feet away from her and gathering more stares from the crowd. Julie watched her for a moment, then sighed and moved toward her.

Though she wanted to slap the woman silly for her hysterics—whether they were feigned or not—she supposed that wasn’t a very compassionate attitude. She could at least try to calm her down a little. It was the decent thing to do.

She reached out and took the other woman’s hand in hers. “Can I get you something? A drink of water, maybe?”

“Nooooo,” she sobbed. “I just want my Lloyd.”

Lloyd wasn’t going to belong to anyone again—not his pale, stunned-looking wife and not this voluptuous woman who grieved so vociferously for him.

“I’m Julie,” she said after a moment. “What’s your name?”

“Crystal. Crystal Rivers. Well, that’s not my real name.”

“Oh. It’s not?” she asked, with a perfectly straight face.

“It’s my stage name. I’m a dancer. My real name is Christina. Christina Crosby.”

“How about if I call you Chris?”

“Christy. That’s what people call me.”

Julie offered a smile, grateful that their conversation seemed to soothe the woman a bit—or at least distract her from the hysterics. “Okay, Christy. What happened? Can you tell me? All I know is that we heard you scream and came running and found him dead.”

“I’ll tell you what happened. She killed him. Frannie Fredericks killed my Lloyd.”

Chapter Two

Julie frowned as the woman’s bitter words seemed to ring through the night air.

She still couldn’t quite believe it. She had always liked Frannie. The woman seemed to genuinely care about her volunteer work at the Foundation and she had always been friendly to Julie.

She supposed no one could really see inside the heart of someone else or know how they would respond when provoked, but Frannie had always seemed far too quiet and unassuming for Julie to accept that she had murdered her husband.

“How can you be so certain? Did you see her do it?”

“No. He was already dead when I came looking for him.” She sniffled loudly and pulled a bedraggled tissue from her ample cleavage. “We were supposed to meet here and take off to my place after his obligations at the stupid Spring Fling. He didn’t even want to come, but Lloyd had business tonight he had to take care of.”

Business at the Spring Fling? Who on earth tried to conduct business at a community celebration?

“What kind?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Something important. Someone he had to talk to, he said. Maybe Frannie. Maybe he told her he was going to divorce her for me. I don’t know. I just know she killed him. Now watch—her brother Ross and the rest of the Fortunes are going to cover it all up. They think they own this whole damn town.”

Julie shifted, uncomfortable with the other woman’s antagonism. She liked and respected all the Fortunes. Susan Fortune Eldridge was one of her closest friends and she adored Lily Fortune, who was the driving force behind the Fortune Foundation that had been founded in memory of her late husband.

“Ma’am? Are you the one who found the body?”

Julie turned and found Billy Addison, a Red Rock police officer with whom she had a slight acquaintance through the Foundation.

“I did,” Crystal waved her scarlet red nails like she was rodeo royalty riding around the arena. “My poor Lloyd. Have you arrested Frannie Fredericks yet?”

“Um, not yet. Let’s not jump the gun here, miss. We’re going to be taking statements for some time now. I’m going to need to ask you a few questions.”

“Anything. I’ll tell you whatever you need to know. But I don’t know why you need to ask anybody anything. It’s plain as my nose job that Frannie did it. Look at her—she’s got blood all over her.”

She let out a dramatic sob, more for effect than out of any real emotion, Julie thought, with unaccustomed cynicism.

“Lloyd was going to leave her skinny butt,” Crystal said. “She knew it and that must be why she killed him. That’s what I was just saying.”

“Do you know that for a fact, ma’am?” the officer asked her.

“I know they fought earlier today. On the phone. I was with Lloyd and I heard the terrible things she said to him. She called him a two-faced liar and a cheat and said as how she wasn’t going to put up with it anymore.”

“How did you hear her side of the conversation?” the officer asked. “Was she on speaker phone?”

Crystal gaped at him. “Um, maybe. I don’t remember. Or maybe she was just talking real loud.”

Or maybe the conversation never took place, Julie thought. She didn’t know what to believe—but she did know she shouldn’t be hearing any of this. Any affair between Lloyd Fredericks and Crystal Rivers was not something she wanted to know any more about.

She stepped away to leave the police officer to the interview. Still, Crystal wasn’t exactly being unobtrusive. Her words carried to Julie as she walked through the crowd.

“I just know Frannie made my poor Lloyd’s life a living hell. And now her brother’s going to cover it up. Watch and see if the Fortunes don’t all circle the wagons around her. You just watch and see.”

The Fortunes were a powerful family in Red Rock. But most of the ones she had met through the Foundation were also decent, compassionate people who cared about the community and making it a better place.

The family also had its enemies, though—people who resented their wealth and power—and Julie had a feeling Crystal wouldn’t be the only one who would whisper similar accusations about the Fortunes.

What a terrible way for the Spring Fling to end, she thought as she made her way through the crowd. The event should be a celebration, a chance for everyone in town to gather and help raise money for a worthy cause. Instead, one life had been snuffed out and several others would be changed forever, especially those in Lloyd’s family.

Julie knew the Frederickses had a teenage son. Josh, she thought was his name. If she wasn’t mistaken, he was friendly with Ricky Farraday Jamison, her boss Linda’s son, even though Ricky was a few years younger than Josh.

Had anyone told him yet? she wondered. How terrible for him if he were somehow drawn to the scene by the commotion and the crowd and happened to see his father’s body lying there. It was a definite possibility, even though the police were widening the perimeter of the scene, pushing the crowd still farther back.

Perhaps proactive measures were called for. Someone should find the boy first before he could witness such a terrible sight.

Ross Fortune seemed the logical person to find his nephew. She sighed. She really didn’t want to talk to him. Their altercation seemed a lifetime ago, but she would still prefer not to have anything more to do with the man.

If she had her preference, she would escape this situation completely and go as far away as possible. It reminded her far too much of another tragic scene, of police lights flashing and yellow crime tape flipping in the wind and the hard, invasive stares of the rapacious crowd.

She had a sudden memory of that terrible day seven years earlier, driving home from work, completely oblivious to the scene she would find at her tidy little house, and the subsequent crime tape and the solemn-eyed police officers and the sudden terrible knowledge that her world had just changed forever.

She didn’t think about that day often anymore, but this situation was entirely too familiar. Then again it would have been unusual if the similarities didn’t shake loose those memories she tried to keep so carefully contained.

She didn’t want Frannie’s son to go through the same thing. He needed to be warned, whether she wanted to talk to his uncle again or not. She started through the crowd, keeping an eye out for the tall, gorgeous private investigator.

In the end, he found her.

“Julie! Ms. Osterman!”

She followed the sound of her name and discovered Ross in a nearby vendor booth with his sister and the Red Rock chief of police, Jimmy Caldwell.

Frannie Fortune was slumped in a chair while her brother hovered protectively over her. She looked exactly as Julie imagined she had looked that day seven years ago. Frannie’s lovely, delicate features were stark and pale and her eyes looked dazed. Numb.

She wanted to hug her, to promise her that sometime in the future this terrible day would be just an awful memory.

“I told you, Jim,” Ross said. “I was talking to Ms. Osterman just a row over when we heard a scream. We were the first ones on the scene, weren’t we? Besides the other woman.”

Julie nodded.

“You’re the one who called 911, right?” the police chief asked her.

“Yes. But your officers were on the scene before I could even give the dispatcher any information. Probably only a moment or two after we arrived,” she said.

The police chief wrote something in a notebook. “Can you confirm the scene as you saw it? Lloyd was on the ground and Frannie was standing over him.”

“Yes.” She pointed. “And the other woman—Crystal—was standing over there screaming.”

“You didn’t see anyone else? Just Frannie and Crystal?”

Julie nodded. “That’s right. Just them.”

“Frannie? You want to tell me what happened before Ross and Ms. Osterman showed up?”

She lifted her shell-shocked gaze from her blood-stained pants to the police chief. “I don’t know. I was looking for…I just…I found him that way. He was just lying there.”

“Tell him, Frannie,” Ross insisted. “Go ahead and tell Jim you had nothing to do with Lloyd’s death.”

“I…I didn’t.”

Jimmy scratched the nape of his neck. “That’s not a very convincing claim of innocence, Frannie. Especially when you’re the one standing here over your dead husband’s body with blood on your hands.”

Ross glared at him. “Frannie is not capable of murder. You have to know that. You’re crazy if you think she could have done this.”

The police chief raised a dark eyebrow that contrasted with his salt-and-pepper hair. “This might not be the best time for you to be calling names, Fortune.”

“What else would you call it? My sister did not kill her husband, though she should have done it years ago.”

“Appears to be no love lost between the two of you, was there?”

“I hated his miserable, two-timing guts.”

“Maybe you need to be the one coming down to the station for questions instead of Frannie here.”

“I’ll go any place you want me to. But I didn’t kill him any more than my sister did. I’ve got an alibi, remember? Ms. Osterman here.”

“He’s right. He was with me,” she said.

“Lucky for you. Unfortunately, by the sound of it, Frannie doesn’t have that kind of alibi. I’m going to have to ask you to come with me to the station to answer some questions, Frannie.”

“Come on, Jimmy. You know she couldn’t have done this.”

“You want to know what I know? The evidence in front of me. That’s it. That’s what I have to go by, no matter what. You were a cop. You know that. And I’m also quite sure this is going to be a powder keg of a case. I can’t afford to let people say I allowed the Fortunes to push me around. I have to follow every procedure to the letter, which means I’m going to have to take her in for questioning. I have no choice here.”

Ross glowered at the man but before he could say anything, another officer approached them. He was vibrating with energy. Julie imagined in a quiet town like Red Rock, this sort of situation was the most excitement the small police force ever saw.

“We found what might be the murder weapon, sir,” the fresh-faced officer said. “I knew you would want to know right away.”

“Thanks, Paul,” the chief tried to cut him off before he said more, but the officer didn’t take the hint.

“It was shoved under a display table in one of the tents and it’s got what appears to be blood on it. I’ll have CSU process it the minute they show up. Take a look. What do you think, sir?”

All of them followed the man’s pointing finger and Julie could see a large, solid-looking ceramic vase. When she turned back, she saw that Frannie Fredericks had turned even more pale, if that was possible.

“What’s the matter?” Ross asked her.

She shook her head and looked back at her blood-stained slacks.

“Do you know anything about that vase?” Jimmy Caldwell asked her, his gray eyes intent on her features.

When Ross’s sister clamped her lips together, the police chief leaned in closer. “You have to tell me, Frannie.”

She suddenly looked trapped, her gaze flitting between Jimmy Caldwell and her brother.

“Fran?” Ross asked.

“It’s mine. I bought it from Reynaldo Velasquez,” she finally whispered. “I wanted to put it in the upstairs hallway.”

Ross muttered an expletive. “Don’t say anything else, Frannie. Not until I get you an attorney. Just keep your mouth shut, okay?”

She blinked at her brother. “Why do I need an attorney? I didn’t do anything wrong. I just bought a vase.”

“Just don’t say anything.”

“In that case,” the police chief said, “I guess we’ll have to continue this conversation at the police station.”

“You don’t have nearly enough to arrest her. You know you don’t.”

“Not yet.” The police chief’s voice was grim.

“Josh. You have to find Josh,” Frannie said suddenly. She clutched her brother’s arm. “Find him, Ross. Get him away from here.”

He looked taken aback by her urgency. “I’ll look for him.”

“Thank you, Ross. You’ve always taken care of everything.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then clamped it shut again.

“Let’s go, Frannie,” the police chief’s voice wasn’t unkind. “I’m sure it will be a relief to you to get away from this crowd.”

“Yes,” she murmured.

The police chief slipped a huge navy windbreaker over her blood-stained clothing, then wrapped his arm around her shoulders. By all appearances, it looked as if he were consoling the grieving widow but Julie saw the implacable set to his muscles, as if he expected the slight woman to make a break for it any moment.

Ross watched after them, his jaw tight. “This is a fricking nightmare,” he growled. “Unbelievable.”

“Do you need help finding your nephew? I was coming to find you and suggest you look for him. It would be terrible for him to stumble onto this scene without knowing the…the victim was his father.”

He muttered an expletive. “You’re right. I should have thought of that before. I should have gone to look for him right away.”

“I’ll help you,” she said. “We can split up. You take the midway and I’ll head to the dance.”

He blinked at the offer. “Why would you want to do that? You’ve already been dragged far enough into this.”

He wouldn’t get any arguments from her on that score. She would much rather be home in her quiet, solitary house than wandering through a crowd looking for a boy whose world was about to change forever.

She shrugged. “You need help.”

He eyes widened with astonishment, and she wondered why he found a simple offer of assistance so very shocking.

“Thanks, then,” he mumbled.

“No problem. Do you have a picture of Josh?”

“A picture?”

“I can’t find him if I don’t know what he looks like,” she pointed out gently.

“Oh right. Of course.”

He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, and she was more charmed than she had any right to be when he opened an accordion fold in the wallet and slid out a photograph of a smiling young man with dark-blond hair, brown eyes and handsome features.

“I’m almost certain I’ve seen him around at the Foundation but the picture will help immensely,” she said. “I’ll be careful with it.”

“I have more,” Ross answered.

“We should exchange cell phone numbers so we can contact each other if either of us finds him.”

“Good idea,” he said. He rattled off a number, which she quickly entered into her phone, then she gave him hers in return.

“Now that you mention cell phones, it occurs to me that I should have thought of that first,” Ross said. “Let me try to reach Josh on his phone. Maybe I can track him down and meet him somewhere away from here.”

She waited while he dialed, impatient at even a few more moments of delay. The longer they waited, the more likely Josh would accidentally stumble onto his father’s body and the murder scene.

After a moment, Ross made a face and left a message on the boy’s voice mail for him to call him as soon as possible.

“He’s not answering. I guess we’re back to the original plan. I’ll cover the midway and you see if you can find him at the dance.”

“Deal. I’ll call you if I find him.”

“Right back at you. And Ms. Osterman? Thank you.”

She flashed him a quick smile, though even that seemed inappropriate under the circumstances. “Julie, please.”

He nodded and they each took off in separate directions. She quickly made her way to the dance, though she was forced to virtually ignore several acquaintances on her way, greeting them with only a wave instead of her usual conversation. She would have to explain later and hope they understood.

She expected Ross’s call at any moment but to her dismay, her phone still hadn’t rung by the time she reached the dance.

Country swing music throbbed from the speakers and the plank-covered dance floor was full. Finding Josh in this throng would be a challenge, especially when she knew him only from a photograph.

She scanned the crowd, looking for familiar faces. Finally, she found two girls she had worked with at the Foundation standing with a larger group.

“Hey, Ms. O.” They greeted her with a warmth she found gratifying.

“Hey, Katie. Hi, Jo. I could use your help. I’m trying to find a boy.”

“Aren’t we all?” Jo said with a roll of eyes heavily framed in mascara.

Julie smiled. “A particular boy, actually. It’s kind of serious. Do either of you know Josh Fredericks?”

“Sure,” Katie answered promptly. “He’s in my algebra class. He’s kind of cute, even if he is super smart.”

“Have you seen him lately? Tonight?”

“Yeah. It’s weird. Usually he doesn’t go two inches away from his girlfriend but I saw him by himself earlier, over by the refreshments. I think that was a while ago. Maybe an hour. He might have ditched the place by now.”

“Thanks,” she answered and headed in the direction they pointed.

She found Josh right where Katie had indicated, standing near the refreshment table as if he were waiting for someone. She recognized him instantly from the picture Ross had provided. He was wearing a western-cut shirt and a black Stetson, just like half the other men here, and she could see his dark-blond hair and brown eyes like his uncle’s.

She didn’t know whether to feel relief or dismay at finding him. She did not want to have to explain to him why she was searching for him. She quickly texted Ross that she had located his nephew at the dance and waited close by, intending only to keep an eye on him until Ross arrived to handle things.

He looked upset, she thought after a moment of observing him. His color was high and he kept looking toward the door as if waiting for someone to arrive.

Did he already know about his father? No, she couldn’t imagine it. Why would he linger here at the dance if he knew his father had just been killed?

After two or three minutes, Josh suddenly looked at his watch, then set down his cup on a nearby tray.

Rats. She was going to have to talk to him, she realized, as he started heading for the door. She waited until he walked out into the much cooler night air before she caught up to him.

“Are you Josh?”

He blinked a little, obviously startled to find a strange older woman talking to him. “Yeah,” he said slowly, not bothering to conceal his wariness.

“My name is Julie Osterman. I work at the Fortune Foundation with your mother’s cousin Susan.”

“Okay.” He took a sidestep away from her and she sighed.

“Josh, this is going to sound crazy, I know,” she began, “but I need you to stay here for a minute.”

“Why?”

She couldn’t tell him his father was dead. That job should fall to someone closer to him, someone with whom he had a relationship. “Your uncle is looking for you,” she finally answered. “He really needs to talk to you. If you can hang around here for a minute, he should be along any time now.”

She hoped.

“What’s going on?” His gaze sharpened. “Is it my mom?”

“Your mom isn’t hurt. Ross can explain everything when he gets here?”

“No. Tell me now. Is it Lyndsey? She was supposed to meet me here but she never showed and she’s not answering her phone. Is she hurt? What’s going on?”

“Josh—”

“Tell me!”

She was scrambling for words when a deep male voice spoke from behind her.

“It’s your dad, Josh.”

Chapter Three

She turned with vast relief to see Ross walking toward them, looking tall and solid and certainly strong enough to help his nephew through this.

The boy’s features hardened. “Did he hurt Mom again? If he did, I’ll kill him this time, I swear. I warned him I would.”

“You might not want to say that too loudly,” Ross said grimly. “Your father is dead, Josh.”

For all his bravado just seconds before, the teenager’s color drained at the words.

“Dead? That’s crazy.” Even as he spoke, Julie thought she saw something flicker in his brown eyes, something furtive, secretive.

“It’s true,” Ross said. “I’m sorry, Josh.”

The boy gazed at him blankly, as if he wasn’t quite sure how to respond.

“What happened?”

Ross cleared his throat. “We don’t know for sure yet.”

“Did he have a heart attack or a stroke or something? Was he hit by a bus? What?”

Ross sighed. His gaze met Julie’s for a moment and she saw indecision there as he must be weighing just how blunt he ought to be with his nephew.

She would have told him to be as honest as possible. Josh would find out all the gory details soon enough. In a town like Red Rock, the rumors would fly faster than crows on carrion. Better for him to hear the news from his family than for them to all dissemble about the situation, which he would probably find condescending and demeaning.

Ross must have reached the same conclusion. “It’s too early to say anything with a hundred percent certainty but it looks like he was murdered.”

“Murdered?” Josh blinked at both of them. “You’re kidding me, right? This is all some kind of a sick joke. People in Red Rock don’t get murdered!”

“I’m afraid it’s no joke,” Julie said, her voice soft with compassion.

“Who did it? Do they have any suspects?”

Ross’s gaze met Julie’s again with a wordless plea for help and she thought how surreal it was that just an hour ago they were wrangling over her purse, and now he was turning to her to help him through this delicate family situation.

It was hard enough telling Josh his father was dead. How were they supposed to tell Josh that his own mother was the prime suspect?

“They’re still investigating,” Ross said after a moment.

Josh pulled off his Stetson and raked a hand through his hair. “This is crazy. I can’t believe it,” he said again. “Where’s my mom? How is she taking this?”

“Uh, that’s the other thing I needed to talk to you about,” Ross said.

Fear leapt into his dark eyes and he turned to Julie with an accusation in his eyes. “You said my mom wasn’t hurt!”

“She’s not,” Ross assured him. “It’s just…Frannie had to go to the police station to answer some questions.”

Josh obviously wasn’t a stupid boy. He quickly put the pieces together. “Mom had to go for questioning? They think she killed him?”

“Josh—”

The color that had leached away at the news of his father’s death returned in a hot, angry flush. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! If she had it in her to kill him, she would have done it years ago.”

If Julie hadn’t worked with troubled youth on a daily basis for the last five years, she might have found his bitterness shocking. Instead, she found it unutterably sad.

“They’re only questioning her. She’s not under arrest,” Ross said. “I’m sure they’ll figure out soon enough that your mom is innocent.”

“What about his girlfriend? Are they questioning her? Or his last girlfriend? Or the one before that? I could give them a whole damn list of suspects!”

“I’m sure they’ll question as many people as they can,” Julie said. Unable to help herself, she laid a comforting hand on the boy’s arm. Though by all appearances he despised his father, her heart ached at the pain she knew still waited for him down the road. Losing a parent was traumatic for anyone, no matter what their relationship.

Josh didn’t flinch away from her touch, but he remained focused on his mother and her predicament.

“I should go to her,” he said after a moment. “She’s going to need me.”

Ross couldn’t seem to look away from that soft, comforting hand Julie placed on his nephew’s arm. There was no good reason he could figure out that the sight should put a funny little ache in his chest.

He cleared his throat. “I promise, the police station is no place for you right now, Josh. You have to trust me on this.”

He, however, needed to get his butt over there as soon as possible to find out what was happening with the investigation. He was torn between dueling obligations, one to his sister and one to his nephew during this difficult time.

“I’ll be eighteen in two weeks, Uncle Ross. I’m not a child anymore.”

“I know that. But I’ve spent most of my adult life in police stations and I can tell you the best place for you is at home. I’ll go check on your mother.”

“I want to see her.”

“She won’t be able to talk to you, son. Not if she’s being questioned.”

“Well, I can at least tell them that I know she couldn’t have killed Lloyd,” Josh answered.

His loyal defense of his mother struck a chord with Ross. It reminded him far too much of the way he used to stick up for Cindy, making excuses to the other kids when she would stay out all night drinking or would bring a new man around the house or, worse, would entirely forget about them all for a weekend binge.

The difference there was that he had foolishly been trying to protect an illusion, while Josh’s efforts were on behalf of an innocent woman.

“Everything’s going to be okay. Trust me. She’s only being questioned. I’m sure she’ll be home in a short time. Why don’t you head on home and get some rest? You’re going to have a lot to deal with in the coming days.”

“I should be with her,” Josh said stubbornly.

Julie again reached out to Josh and Ross saw that once more her quiet touch seemed to soothe him. “The absolute best way you can help your mother right now is to give her one less worry. You were the only thing she thought about as they were taking her in for questioning. She insisted that your uncle watch out for you and that’s just what he’s trying to do. As he said, you have to trust him right now to know what’s best, okay?”

Her words seemed to resonate with Josh. He looked between the two of them and then sighed. “I guess.”

Ross was astounded and more gratified than he wanted to admit that she would come to his defense like this, especially after their altercation earlier in the evening. That encounter and his own honest mistake over the purse had been a fortuitous meeting, he thought now. He didn’t know what he would have done this evening without her.

The thought sparked an idea—a nervy one, sure, but one that would certainly lift a little of the burden from his shoulders.

“Josh, could you hang on here for a second while I talk to Ms. Osterman?”

His nephew looked confused but he nodded and Ross stepped a few paces away where they could speak in relative privacy.

“Look, I do need to get to the police station to see how things are going with Frannie, but I don’t want to send Josh to his empty house alone. This is a huge favor to ask when I’m virtually a stranger to you and you’ve already done so much, but do you think you could stay with him for a while, while I check on my sister?”

As he might have expected, Julie’s soft blue eyes widened with astonishment at the request. “But wouldn’t you rather have someone in your family stay with him? Your cousin Susan, maybe?”

Susan would come in a heartbeat, he knew, and like Julie, she specialized in troubled adolescents. But he hated to ask the Fortune side of the family for anything. It was an irrational reaction, he knew, but for most of his life his particular branch of the family had always been the needy ones.

He didn’t know how many times the Fortunes had bailed Cindy out of one scrape or another, before they had virtually cut ties with her out of frustration that nothing ever seemed to change.

Even though he loved and admired several members of his extended family, Ross preferred to handle things on his own when he could. And when he couldn’t, he much preferred asking somebody who wasn’t a Fortune for help.

“They’re all going to be busy with the last few hours of the Spring Fling. Plus, now they’re going to have to deal with damage control after Lloyd’s murder.”

It was bad public relations for the festival, especially since this was the second time a dead body had been found while the town celebrated. A few years earlier, an unidentified body turned up at the Spring Fling. The town had only just started to heal from that.

Her forehead furrowed for a moment and then she nodded. “In that case, of course. I’ll be glad to stay with Josh as long as you need.”

For one crazy moment, he longed to feel the soft comfort of her touch on his arm, though he knew that was ridiculous.

“Thanks a million. It won’t be long. I’m sure I’ll be taking Frannie home in just a few hours.

He had been far too optimistic, Ross thought an hour later as he stood in the Red Rock police chief’s office.

“Come on, Jimmy. This is a mistake. You have to know that. There’s no way on earth Frannie killed Lloyd.”

“You were on the job long enough, you know how it works. We just want to talk to her but she’s not saying a word. She’s shutting us down in every direction. I have to tell you, that makes her look mighty guilty.”

A white-coated lab tech pushed open the door. “Chief, I’ve got those results you put the rush order on.”

“Excellent. You’re going to have to excuse me, Ross. Why don’t you go on home? There’s nothing more you can do here tonight.”

“I’ll stick around. Somebody’s going to need to drive Frannie home when you’re done with this little farce here.”

Jimmy opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. “I can’t make you leave. But if you really want to help your sister, tell her to cooperate with us. The quicker she gives us her side of the story, the quicker we can wrap this up.”

Ross had been a cop for a long time, trained to catch subtle nuances in conversation. He didn’t miss the way the police chief phrased his words. Wrap this up was a far cry from send her home.

Something about this whole thing gave him an ominous feeling. He suddenly guessed he was in for a long night.