Kitabı oku: «The Baby Chase»

Kate Fortune’s Journal Entry

Together at last! I’ve missed my whole family so much over the past months. It’s nice to finally be able to share in their happiness. Many things have happened in their lives. Several weddings have taken place, many babies have been born and estranged couples reunited. I’m glad that some of my special gifts worked their magic and brought each child and grandchild love and joy. It’s been a rollercoaster ride, but I wouldn’t have missed it for all the world. I can’t wait to see what the next fifty years bring!

A LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR

Dear Reader,

I was tantalized by the whole concept of our FORTUNE’S CHILDREN series from the very beginning. We all had fun developing our different suspense and danger elements, but the heart of each story is linked to the Fortune family. Although the Fortunes amassed a giant financial dynasty, the true legacy they passed on to each other was wealth of a different kind. This is a family who knows what love is, and who sticks together through thick and thin.

The series ends with Rebecca’s love story. She’s not one to be impressed with champagne and a candlelit dinner. She wants babies. She wants a hearth and home. She learned the power of love from the nest of her own family, and there’s no way she’s willing to settle for less. Her hero despairs that she’s a hopeless romantic…but I tend to see her as a hard-core realist. It takes a tough, strong cookie to fight for what really matters, and she believes in families.

Me too.

I hope you enjoy The Baby Chase and am enclosing my best wishes to you and all your families—

The Baby Chase
Jennifer Greene

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my fellow PT’ers…who else would have put up with all the petunias? Thanks from my heart for all the support.

JENNIFER GREENE

lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and two children. Before writing full-time, she worked as a teacher and a personnel manager. Michigan State University honored her as an “outstanding woman graduate” for her work with women on campus.

Ms. Greene has written more than fifty category romances, for which she has won numerous awards, including two RITA^® Awards from the Romance Writers of America in the Best Short Contemporary Books category, and a Career Achievement award from Romantic Times.

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.

REBECCA FORTUNE: The nurturing and loving author is still single, but she wants to be a mother. She’s decided she will do anything to have a baby—even if she has to seduce the man who won’t accept her for who she is….

GABRIEL DEVEREAX: The wary private detective doesn’t believe in love or family. But after one steamy night of passion with Rebecca, he hadn’t counted on what would happen next—he was about to become a father!

KATE FORTUNE: With the Fortunes reunited, matriarch Kate is encouraged by the fulfillment and happiness in her children’s and grandchildren’s lives. Is Kate destined for a romance of her own now that the family crisis is resolved?

STERLING FOSTER: Kate’s attorney and closest confidante has stood by her through decades of family turmoil. Was it just professional loyalty or is there something more to the sparring relationship between Kate and this charming man?

LIZ JONES — CELEBRITY GOSSIP

Staff writer

In an unprecedented comeback, the Fortune family is back—and stronger than ever! Their mighty cosmetics empire has launched a new youth formula that women around the world are buying by the case, which firmly reestablishes Fortune Cosmetics as the number one international makeup company.

The Fortune family has also broken into the media business. They’ve purchased a television station as well as this very newspaper. There have been no staff changes except for one—Liz Jones has been relieved of her column. According to Kate Fortune, “There’s no room in a serious paper for a rumor-spreading gossipmonger.”

This is the last week for the column to run. For those still interested in celebrity gossip, you may want to try The Tattletale. From now on, this section will be “Kate’s Korner,” featuring helpful tips on matchmaking, planning your wedding, raising your babies and home-decorating ideas.

We hope you enjoy the new direction of the column. Happy reading!

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

Epilogue

One

The entire view offended Rebecca Fortune. It was a dark and stormy night—how trite was that? Lightning speared the midnight sky, haloing a big, gaudy, ostentatious mansion that looked like a fake set in a grade B Hollywood movie. Worse yet, she was about to break into the mansion.

Rebecca wrote mysteries. She’d thrown her heroines into every dangerous situation her devious mind could come up with—and her imagination was considerable. But she’d throw her word processor in the trash before forcing a heroine into a stupid, clichéd plot setting like this.

Rain sluiced through her curly red hair, dribbled down her neck and splashed off her eyelashes. She was shivering all the way down to her squishy wet sneakers. March was usually chilly in Minnesota, but the whole day had been unseasonably warm, almost springlike. Before leaving home, she’d heard the storm forecast, but her raincoat was a neon yellow slicker—hardly suitable burglar attire—so she’d dressed for success in a black sweatshirt and black jeans. Both were clinging to her like soggy glue.

She must have been more miserable sometime. She just couldn’t remember when. Her extensive experience with crime—including a wide range of burglary techniques—had been acquired in her nice, safe, warm office, in front of a keyboard and all her research books. Reality was proving to be a teensy bit more difficult than theory.

She’d thought she’d planned this out so well.

The tall iron fence protecting the property was locked, but she’d just vaulted the fence. That was no sweat. Right after Monica Malone’s murder, police and investigators had swarmed around the place. Now, though, there was little chance of anyone discovering her. The house was as closed up and quiet as a tomb, totally deserted—no sign anyone had lived or been around in weeks.

She’d brought a backpack full of helpful tools. The mansion had five outside entrances. Rebecca had tried a skeleton key on all the doors—she’d bought the key from one of her writers’ catalogs—and that had been when things started going wrong. The key didn’t work on any of the locks. She’d also brought a crowbar, because every resourceful heroine she’d ever written had found some use for a crowbar. Not her. She’d circled the whole blasted house, checking every window on the first floor. None of them were boarded up, but they were all locked tight. All she’d managed to do with the crowbar so far was chip some paint.

There were a dozen other tricks and tools in her backpack—her writing research had prepared her well for a life of crime. But as yet, none of them had been worth spit, and the pack weighed a ton, biting into her shoulder blades. The sky was a black growly mass of moving clouds, and thunder rumbled close enough to make the whole earth shudder—or maybe that was just her, shivering hard. Any sane woman, she told herself, would give up.

Unfortunately, Rebecca had always been rotten at giving up on anything that mattered to her. Some said she was stubborn to the point of being relentless. Rebecca preferred to think she took after her mother, Kate, who never failed to have the guts and character to do what she had to do.

This was something Rebecca had to do. There were certainly other people trying to clear her brother of the charge that he’d murdered Monica. But they weren’t getting anywhere. No one outside the family really believed in Jake’s innocence.

Her lips firmed with resolve, she tramped through the wet, spiky grass around the circumference of the house again. There had to be a way in. And, somehow, she had to find it.

A wild, gusty wind tore at her hair. When she lifted a hand to push the hair from her face, spears of lightning caught the sparkle of gold on her wrist. The charm bracelet belonged to her mother, not her, and a dozen turbulent, traumatic memories suddenly flashed in Rebecca’s mind.

She’d almost lost her mom. The whole world had believed that Kate Fortune had died in a plane crash—no one had known she’d fought off a kidnapper and had survived the crash, only to be lost in the jungle for months—and Rebecca’s heart still clenched tight when she remembered the tears, the fear, the love that had colored her recent emotional reunion with her mom. She’d taken the charm bracelet from the sculpted arm that had displayed it in the Fortune’s office the day Kate was discovered missing…. She’d added her own charms once Kate’s will had been read and each family member had received the charm that had represented his or her own birth. Rebecca had needed the connection the bracelet represented, and her mother hadn’t let her give it back once she returned.

For Rebecca the charm bracelet was a talisman, a symbol of what family meant, and the links of love and loyalty that bound them all.

She rubbed those gold links now. Maybe her mother had founded a financial dynasty, but Kate loved children and believed in family before all else. She’d passed those unshakable values on to Rebecca. And right now was a heck of a time to be thinking about babies, but she was thirty-three, and babies pounced in her mind at any excuse these days. Her personal biological clock didn’t seem to care that she was single, with no Prince Charming on the immediate horizon. She wanted a baby. She’d always wanted children and a family. No matter what exotic directions the rest of the Fortune clan had taken, she was a hopelessly nurturing homebody type. And now it seemed she was the last of the family to settle down. Even her nieces had kids!

Rocking a baby came naturally to her. Cat burglary sure didn’t—and a sudden shiver of fear snaked up her spine. The storm didn’t scare her. And she wasn’t spooked by the big old deserted mansion, even if it was a murder site.

The shiver of fear was motivated solely by love. She wanted so badly to come through for her brother, and she was scared of failing. Somewhere in that house, there had to be clues, information, evidence—something that would clear Jake’s name. Dozens of people had had outstanding reasons for killing the old bat, including quite a few in her own family. Monica had been an evil, greedy, selfish woman, and she’d done her damnedest to destroy the Fortune family for more than a generation. A two-year-old could have found suspects with motives.

The problem was that Monica had almost cost Jake everything that mattered to him, so he had a prizewinning motive, too. More to the point, he’d been at the scene of the murder and a ton of physical evidence pointed to him. Neither the cops nor the family’s investigators had turned up another suspect. Neither had the staff of lawyers on her brother’s team. No one seemed to regret that the aging Hollywood film star was dead, but neither did anyone believe in Jake’s innocence.

In her heart, Rebecca knew her brother couldn’t, wouldn’t, kill anyone—no matter what the provocation. But she was afraid that unless she found proof that another suspect had done the deed, no one else would.

So far, she hadn’t run across an alarm system, or any indication that one was turned on. The doors were all locked, and the first windows were not only latched and locked, but built casement-style, with small square panes made of leaded glass. Even if she broke the glass, the panes were too small for her to gain entry. With rain dribbling down her cheeks, she discounted the rose trellis—she was a lightweight 115 pounds, but the trellis looked beyond rickety. A huge silver maple spread a hoopskirt of branches in the yard, but no branches were close enough for her to leap to the east roof—unless she suddenly developed wings.

She could try the trellis if she had to. First, though, she circled the house again, crouching low, battling the bushes in the flower beds to shine a flashlight over one basement window at a time.

The prickers of a flowering almond snagged at her clothes like a witch’s fingers, stabbing and clawing. Mud sucked at her sneakers. She broke a nail on a window frame. A splinter lodged in her finger, and the nuisance thing bled. The deluge finally quit, but she was so damp and cold that miserableness was only a matter of degree by that time, anyway.

Finally, though, her flashlight zoomed on a window frame that appeared both uneven and cracked. She battled a bosomy lilac bush for the space to crouch down, and ran her palm across the uneven frame. The window wasn’t latched. It just seemed to be painted shut.

It opened out, and didn’t look big enough for a ten-year-old to crawl through, but no matter. Rebecca figured this was as close to manna from heaven as she was likely to get.

She reached behind for her backpack, and juggled it and the flashlight to find her crowbar again. Twice she probed and pulled with the crowbar, but it was almost impossible to get leverage in the narrow space between the blasted wet lilac bushes. The muddy, mucky ground refused to help her out with some traction. On the third try, though, she finally managed to wedge the crowbar under the ledge, and the window squeaked and creaked open.

Rebecca hunkered back on her heels and scratched her chin. So. It was open. But the opportunity made her feel as if she were holding a winning lottery ticket without a way to collect the loot. The window opened out, creating an even tinier space to crawl through than she’d first guessed. She was built lean, but not that lean.

Hesitantly she aimed the flashlight through the opening. Spatial relationships weren’t exactly her strength, but it sure looked like a hundred feet down to the concrete basement floor. Nothing to break her fall. Stephen King could have set a book down in those gloomy, eerie shadows. The light didn’t illuminate anything but ghostly corners and dank concrete walls.

She was probably going to kill herself if she tried this.

On the other hand, this appeared to be her only way in—and backing down certainly wasn’t an option. Her bones would just have to squish small enough to fit, and that was that.

She zipped the flashlight into the backpack, and dropped the pack inside.

It fell with a clattering thud. A long way down.

She swallowed a lump of fear thicker than tar, then moved. Shimmying on her back, trying to ignore the mud seeping into her sweatshirt, she poked her feet in first, then her legs, then wriggled her fanny in. Then came trouble. Her hips wedged in the opening, and suddenly she couldn’t move. At all. In or out.

Cripes, there were times she’d groaned about not having enough hips to fill out a pair of jeans. Now she wished she’d had three less cherry doughnuts this week. Her fanny seemed stuck. No kidding, no joke, seriously stuck.

She briefly considered crying. Actually, she didn’t really want to cry. She just wanted to be home. In a hot, soaking, sybaritic rose-scented bath, maybe with a glass of chablis, maybe reading some of the thick files of research information she’d picked up lately on sperm banks and fantasizing about babies.

Fantasizing about babies was tempting. Just not real helpful right then. Moving in either direction hurt, but lying still was just as untenable—her spine was screaming objections at being trapped in this contortionist position. It’d be nice if a hero would wander by to help, but that didn’t seem real likely. Being crawled on by earthworms seemed far more likely…and that did it. The mental picture of the worms in that flower bed being close enough to crawl on her was mighty powerful incentive to move.

She sucked in a breath, swung her legs up, and pushed in hard.

The push worked. Sort of. She was still alive when she crash-landed on the concrete floor, but that measure of success was hardly worth applause. On the route down, she’d cracked her forehead on the window frame, and both her breasts had been squished and scraped. She landed on a hip and a wrist. The basement was darker than tar, with a dank, damp, mildewy smell. Wouldn’t matter if she were in the Taj Mahal; she hurt too much to care. Stars danced in front of her eyes in a real dizzy tango. She wasn’t positive it was possible to break a fanny—she’d certainly never seen one in a cast or in traction—but she was damned scared she’d done it.

To add insult to injury, a light suddenly flashed in her eyes.

The obnoxious glaring light came from a bald light bulb in the middle of the basement room.

And to top off the worst debacle she’d ever gotten herself into, the man standing by the light switch, shaking his head, was familiar. Painfully familiar. So was his unmistakably gravelly tenor.

“I thought at least ten kids were breaking into the place. You made enough noise to wake the dead. I should have known it was you. Dammit, Rebecca, what the hell are you doing here?”

Rebecca squeezed her eyes closed. “At the moment, I’m sitting here with forty-seven broken bones, feeling sorry for myself. Please, God, make this a nightmare, and when I wake up, try and fix it so he’s someone else. Make him a Russian spy. Make him a serial killer. Make him anyone but Gabe Devereax.”

Not that she was willing to open her eyes to check, but that dry, gravelley tenor seemed to be coming closer. “You’re damn lucky it’s me—and at least I have a logical reason for being here. Did you leave your brain at home? You could have killed yourself—or gotten yourself killed—and you look worse than an alley cat who’s been in a street fight.”

“Thank you for sharing that with me. I’m dying of pain and injuries, and all you can do is yell?”

“I’d yell a lot louder if I thought it’d do any good. For God’s sakes, you’re soaked and covered with mud and it looks like you’re growing branches in your hair. If that isn’t witless, I don’t know what is. Quit fighting me, dammit. I’m just trying to see if you’re hurt.”

“I already know I’m hurt.” But her pride was now smarting a dozen times more than any of her other scrapes and bruises. Gabe had stalked over and hunched down. Keeping her eyes closed and practicing denial had worked pretty well—until she felt his big strong hands feeling her up. Her eyes shot wide open then.

There were times and places when Rebecca wouldn’t mind a guy feeling her up—at a fantasy level, she might even have entertained Gabe in that role—but not when she was being handled like a sexless sack of sugar. Merciless fingers probed and poked her ankles, trailed up her calf, bent her knee, lifted her arms, rotated her wrists…. She said “ouch” several times. Either he wasn’t paying attention or he didn’t believe her.

Possibly she’d have felt less resentful if he didn’t look so good. Heaven knew how Gabe had gotten in the house, but she already knew he was resourceful. Spit. He was the best. That was why she’d convinced her family to have him look into her mother’s disappearance. And although he hadn’t come up with much in that case, he’d been more successful with some other family cases over the past few years. But now she had to look like something a dog would bury, and there wasn’t a rip or a tear or a smudge of dirt on him. His clipped dark hair looked fresh-brushed, his square jaw fresh-shaved. His galloping shoulders stretched the seams of a long-sleeved navy T, but the shirt was tucked nearly into jeans. His boots didn’t even look muddy.

Rebecca didn’t know him well. She wasn’t sure it was possible for a woman to know a man’s man like Gabriel Devereax well—but they’d crossed paths before. Several family members had already noted that they got along about as well as a snake and mongoose. Not only didn’t Rebecca object to Gabe, she was the one who’d originally researched PI firms and urged her family to hire him. She knew, better than anyone, that Gabe had an unbeatable reputation and credentials. She respected him completely. But when her family had trouble, Rebecca was hardly going to take the back seat and let someone else drive.

Gabe appreciated advice about as much as poison ivy. What she called help, he called interference. Anyone with the most basic concept of family would understand that love and loyalty required her involvement. Trying to explain that to Gabe was like drilling a hole in granite. He had a handsome head, but there was a lot of stone between those ears.

Even if there was no love lost between them, Rebecca could hardly fail to notice certain details about that handsome head. He was thirty-eight, and he looked it. The square-boned jaw, the scar on his right temple, the brush strokes of character lines bracketing his eyes and mouth, all spoke of a man who’d lived hard. He was no boy. There was energy in that rugged face, vital, virile energy, and a never-back-down determination stamped in all those lonely lines on his brow.

Personally, Rebecca thought a woman would have to be an eensy bit bonkers to risk taking on any man as tough and closed up as Gabe Devereax…but the man did have the deepest, darkest, sexiest eyes she’d ever seen. At the moment, it was impossible to ignore those eyes, because they were aggravatingly, relentlessly focused on her face. He cupped her chin with a knuckle, and examined her face for injuries, with as much personal interest as he’d have shown a bug under a microscope.

“I think you’re going to live,” he announced. “Although it’s pretty hard to tell for sure under all that dirt.” Because he was looking straight in her eyes, she didn’t instantly realize where his right hand was. Smoother than a card cheat’s, his palm had sneaked under her sweatshirt. His hand was warm, volatilely, evocatively warm, and skimming an electric path over her ribs.

“Hey.” She moved faster than a 747 to push him away, but the ox wouldn’t be pushed.

“Oh, don’t get your liver in an uproar. If I were going to make a pass, you’d know it. Trust me, sex is only on my mind ninety percent of the time. You got a hell of a scrape here—and no, I’m not looking to see how far it goes up—but I want you to cough.”

“Cough? I don’t need to cough—”

“Well, we can just drive you to the emergency room and get those ribs x-rayed, but somehow, I didn’t think you’d cotton to that idea. If it didn’t hurt when you coughed, I might—might—be more reassured that rib isn’t cracked, but hey, if you want to go get an X ray—”

She coughed. Exuberantly.

“You sure that didn’t hurt?”

“Positive. And you can quit trying to threaten me, Gabe. It’d take you and the marines to get me anywhere near any stupid emergency room. I’m perfectly fine. I just had the wind knocked out of me.”

“Yeah?” Gabe removed his hand, but he stayed hunched over her. “You’ve got a goose egg on your forehead, bloody scrapes all over the place, and you’re so damned wet you’re probably gonna catch pneumonia. The water’s turned on upstairs, so we can at least clean up the cuts, but there’s no telling if we’ll find anything for you to dry off and warm up in. How bad’s that forehead hurting? You dizzy? Seeing anything double?”

If the blasted man had any manners, he’d give her the chance to answer, but no. Obviously, Gabe wasn’t going to take her word on anything, because he reached over and cupped her jaw so he could examine that goose-egg bump again. Fingertips feathered her hair back so that he could get a better look. Once he was finished playing doctor, his eyes met hers.

Rebecca wasn’t sure what happened then. He couldn’t have held her gaze for more than a few seconds, but the scowl disappeared from his brow. There was something in his expression. Something she’d never have expected. Something more than exasperation, something beyond Gabe Devereax’s hopeless compulsion to take charge of anything in his path. She was so wet and bedraggled that road kill would have to look more appealing. Yet there was something in those deep, dark eyes that punched the accelerator in her pulse.

If Gabe had even noticed she was a woman, he hadn’t let on before. Suddenly she was having trouble breathing. Gabe was a vital, virile, potent masculine package—easy enough to enjoy sparring with, when there’d been absolutely no threat or thought of his noticing her in any personal way. She wasn’t…easy around Gabe. Not as a woman. On the other hand, likely the fall had addled her brain. There couldn’t have been a sillier time to feel a power surge of hormones, and common sense told her she was imagining that look in his eyes.

Still, her pulse engine was revving harder than a jalopy with no muffler when Gabe’s expression abruptly changed. The scowl that popped back between his brows was even darker and more critical than the one before. He rocked back on his heels and then sprang to his feet. “Maybe you don’t need a doctor. But let’s see how you do when you try to stand up.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. I’m perfectly fine.” She ignored his hand and promptly scrambled to a standing position. A bad mistake. The lump on her forehead instantly throbbed; her breasts and wrist smarted like fire, and now she knew for sure her fanny was broken. If threatened at knifepoint, though, she wouldn’t have admitted feeling wobbly to Gabe. “How did you get in the house, anyway?”

“The way most people do. Legally.” His tone was dry. “Eventually the estate’s going on the market, but it’s been closed up until all the probate tangles are over with. I called Monica Malone’s lawyer. Gave him my credentials, told him I believed there had to be more evidence in the house connected to the lady’s murder, and asked if he’d mind if I looked around personally. He gave me the key.”

“That’s it? That’s all you had to do to get a key?” It seemed so unfair.

“Now, Rebecca, everyone can’t be gifted with a writer’s imagination and fondness for high drama. Some of us even tend to do things the simple, normal, boring way—you know, by using basic common sense and logic?”

“Amazing. I could swear we had this exact same conversation before.”

“Yeah, we did. It didn’t get through to you then, either.” He shifted past her to close the gaping basement window. “We’ll get you cleaned up, and then you’re going home.”

“Only in your dreams, cutie. I didn’t just risk life and limb to disappear on your orders.” She was pretty sure no one had ever dared to call Gabe Devereax “cutie” before. The epithet seemed to startle, then amuse, him. For all that he was a hopelessly overbearing macho type—and probably untrainable, from a woman’s standpoint—he’d always had a redeeming sense of humor.

“Speaking of orders—as I’m sure you know—I’m here on your family’s. As outlandish and outrageous as it sounds, they actually trust me to follow through with this investigation all by myself. Can you imagine? Just because it’s my job and I’ve got over ten years of experience and professional qualifications behind me?”

Rebecca reached down for her backpack of tools. God, he was sassy. She might have been tempted to laugh—if the subject wasn’t so serious. “I trust you, too, Sherlock,” she said honestly. “You’re wonderful at what you do. But it isn’t your brother who’s been charged with murder. It’s mine. And I love him. And until his name is cleared, I can’t just sit home and knit booties. Did you find anything in the house so far?”

“I haven’t had the chance to look around. I’d just turned the key when I heard all hell breaking loose down here. Now, of course, I don’t know why I didn’t immediately guess it was you.” His face was in shadow when he scrubbed a tired hand over it. “Rebecca, listen to me.”

“I’m listening.” But she admitted it warily.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been here. I assume you know I’ve been on the job from the day your brother was charged. I was here during the cops’ investigation, and after, when the yellow tape went down, I combed this place from stem to stern. This is my third run-through. So far, every shred of evidence points to Jake being guilty.”

“I know.” The knowledge was like a needle in her chest.

“Love and objectivity don’t mix. I know you want to help your brother. But I’m not putting you down when I say you’d be better off at home, knitting those booties. You could get hurt, messing around with this.”

Her gaze scanning the shadows, Rebecca vaguely noted a behemoth of a furnace, pipes, dampness seeping into the foundation walls—and the bottom edge of some wooden stairs, leading up. She heard Gabe, but what she heard in his voice only magnified her resolve. He would do his job. She’d never doubted that. But he didn’t believe in Jake’s innocence, any more than the police did.

She paused a second before aiming for the stairs, and pushed a fistful of tangled curls off her face. “You’re right about my not being objective. I have no interest whatsoever in being objective. If you’ll remember, Gabe, I’m the one who first tracked down your PI agency for the family, when my mother was in that plane crash.”

“I remember.”

She nodded. “No one believed that Kate was alive. No one believed she could be. And I wanted you hired, because you’re the best, and I always respected that you could do certain things that I can’t. But when you took on that job, you didn’t believe me about my mother being alive. You were no different than everyone else. Who was right that time, Devereax?”