The Fortunes of Texas: Whirlwind Romance

“If you have such a problem with my family’s money, why did you even ask me out tonight?”

“I told you I found you interesting,” Max said.

“The front page of the newspaper is interesting.”

“And because I can’t look at you without wanting you.”

Emily’s lips parted, but her suddenly addled brain couldn’t begin to frame a response.

“But that’s just about sex,” he added.

“Ah,” she said faintly. “Sex.”

“And the hitch isn’t just your money,” he went on, sounding dogged.

“My family’s money,” she corrected.

“You’re also my boss’s sister-in-law. So, like it or not, sleeping with you isn’t … smart.”

“Put that way, I suppose it probably isn’t.”

She froze when he slid those blunt-tipped, warm fingers over the back of her hand.

“Problem is—” his fingers slowly inched upward “—I usually make a habit of doing things that aren’t smart.”

Dear Reader,

Opposites attract. Everybody says so. But aside from that initial wham, when one thing instinctively draws close to another, what keeps them together?

Is it merely physical? Sometimes. But what happens if it’s not? When it’s something deeper? Something underneath the physical where two individuals sense they’re not opposites at all, but entirely similar, sharing the same needs, harboring the same desires, striving for the same goals?

That’s the question Max Allen and Emily Fortune are dealing with, and I thank you for joining them as they discover that what really matters to them isn’t their differences or their plans … it is each other.

Allison Leigh

About the Author

There is a saying that you can never be too rich or too thin. ALLISON LEIGH doesn’t believe that, but she does believe that you can never have enough books! When her stories find a way into the hearts—and bookshelves—of others, Allison says she feels she’s done something right. Making her home in Arizona with her husband, she enjoys hearing from her readers at Allison@allisonleigh.com or PO Box 40772, Mesa AZ 85274-0772, USA.

Fortune’s
Perfect Match
Allison Leigh

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For my dad.

Still my favorite pilot.

Prologue

December

Jesus loves me, this I knoooow …

The verse of the lullaby that her mother used to sing circled around and around inside Emily Fortune’s head.

Tears squeezed out from her tightly closed eyes. She’d closed them because of the dust and debris, but she knew if she opened them again, she would still be there in the dark.

Alone.

Jesus loves me, this I know …

She inhaled on a sob that ended in a choking cough.

She didn’t know what had happened.

One minute they had all been walking through the airport. Her brothers up ahead while Emily tried to catch up to her mother—

She coughed through another choking sob. Where was her mother? Had the world collapsed on her, too? On all of them?

They’d been visiting Red Rock for Wendy’s wedding.

More tears burned from the corners of Emily’s eyes. Wendy. Her baby sister, who’d looked so beautiful and happy—finally, finally, happy and settled—as she’d exchanged vows with Marcos during their Christmas Eve wedding.

Had all of Red Rock collapsed? Were Marcos and Wendy and their baby that she was carrying lost, too?

Jesus loves me …

Emily covered her mouth, coughing again. Crying.

She wasn’t a crier. She was a planner. A doer. Even her father admitted that about her. He’d often said that’s what made her so valuable at her job at FortuneSouth.

But the only thought in her mind right then was that she was going to die.

Her feet were trapped. Numb. She could barely breathe. Couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face. All she could hear were the screams inside her head that she couldn’t even gather enough strength to let out.

What did it matter if she’d focused her whole life on becoming valuable to the family business?

She was going to die there, never knowing what had hit the family, never knowing if any of them were safe or not. She’d die, never feeling the joy that had been in her little sister’s face as she said “I do” to the man she loved. She would never know how it felt to have the proof of that love growing inside her.

She’d never hold her daughter in her arms, rocking her to sleep the same way that Emily’s mother had rocked her. She’d never calm a cranky, infant son with a lullaby. Never … never … never—

She coughed again as more dust suddenly collapsed onto her, sending off another round of shouting inside her head.

This was to be her only future, then. Ended beneath the rubble of a small, regional airport in southern Texas.

More dirt fell.

Even though there was no point, she curled her arms around her head. Light appeared beyond her eyelids. Beyond her arms. But there was no sense of peace coming over her. No sense of welcome.

Had she lived her life so wrongly that she wouldn’t even have that? Just this choking, oppressive aloneness? No future?

She curled her arms tighter around her face. She tried to find the comforting lullaby again … but even the childhood song that had been circling over and over inside her head had deserted her.

And then she heard another shout. Not inside her head at all. Hands clutched her arms, pulling them away from her head. She stared, squinting against the light and the dust still clouding the air, seeing only the shape of a fireman’s hat above her.

“What—” She broke off, coughing again.

He didn’t seem to notice. “Get me some help here,” he yelled, moving away from her.

She heard more voices. Realized that there were a lot of voices. Yelling. Some screams. She swiped her hands down her face. Squinted at her hands. All she could see was black. She tried to push herself up until she was sitting, but could only raise herself a few inches. There was a tangle of metal pressing against her entire right side.

“Hold on there.” Another voice found her. A different voice. Deeper. Gentler. Hands brushed against her, levering the metal off of her. A row of attached chairs from the airport’s waiting area, she realized.

She tried to focus on the rescuer’s face, but everything seemed blurry. Covered in gray. But his eyes … his eyes were blue. She latched desperately on to that blue gaze. “What happened?”

“There was a tornado.” His hands circled her arms. Pulling, she realized.

“My feet.” She couldn’t utter more than that. Her throat had closed again; tears came harder.

He immediately stopped pulling. Shifted away from her vision. She wanted to call him back. She managed to push herself up a few inches and saw the man, gesturing at the fireman. Her strength gave out and she fell back. She could feel sobs clawing at her chest.

“Come on now.” The voice was back. “You made it this far.” He closed his hand around hers, squeezing gently. “You’re pinned by something, but they’re gonna get you out.” The dust covering his face creased into lines around his mouth as he smiled. “You’ve got a future just waiting for you to live it.”

Chapter One

June

“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m not flying back to Atlanta tomorrow just to handle one meeting. It’s completely unnecessary.” Emily’s hand tightened around her cell phone and she gave Wendy a rueful grimace. “I’ll join in by conference call.”

Even through the phone line, she could feel her father’s irritation. John Michael Fortune had always expected his employees at FortuneSouth Enterprises to give him more than a hundred percent of their attention, and his children who worked for him were no exception. “There’s no reason for you to still be in Red Rock,” he stated. “It’s June, for God’s sake. Wendy had that baby months ago. I think even she might have learned how to heat a bottle and change a diaper by now.”

Emily winced. She held the phone closer to her ear and hoped to heaven that Wendy—who was sitting in a lovely white glider near the nursery’s window—couldn’t hear. And even though tiny MaryAnne had been born in February, she’d still been early.

Emily focused on the baby’s perfectly shaped head as Wendy slowly rocked and nursed.

That’s what mattered, she thought to herself. “There’s nothing on my plate that I can’t handle long-distance,” she said into the phone. And there wasn’t. She was the director of advertising for their telecommunications company, and whether John Michael gave her many accolades or not, she knew she was doing her job well.

Business was booming, after all.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” her father muttered, still clearly dissatisfied. “Ever since that tornado, nobody’s been the same. And you, with this baby nonsense—”

“People died in that tornado, Dad,” Emily cut him off, not wanting to hear the rest. They’d all been the lucky ones, but there were others who hadn’t been so fortunate. Emily had ended up with only a sprained ankle. Her mother, thankfully, only a broken wrist. “It’s sort of a life-changing experience, you know.”

She heard his enormously frustrated sigh. “Fine,” he snapped. “Conference into the meeting this time. But I’d better see your face on Friday at the first Connover meeting.”

For a fleeting moment, Emily was tempted to ask what the unspoken “or else” was, but she fought the urge. Yes, she was bristling at the iron hand of her father’s management, but that didn’t mean she didn’t still respect his position both as her father and as the head of FortuneSouth. “I’ve already got the charter flight scheduled to be there,” she promised. “Say hello to Mother for me.”

“Say hello yourself,” he returned bluntly. “She’s missing all of you a lot these days, since it seems half her family is deserting Atlanta for Red Rock.”

Emily’s grip tightened on the phone again. She talked to her mother regularly, and John Michael knew it. Like her father, her mother didn’t entirely understand Emily’s actions these days, but, typically, she’d been far less critical about it. “I love you, Dad.”

“Friday,” he returned.

She sighed and hit the end button on her phone. Even under the best of circumstances John Michael wasn’t an affectionate soul. She looked over at Wendy. “Do you ever wonder what on earth attracted our parents to each other enough in the first place to get married and have six children together?”

Wendy smiled a little impishly. “Frankly, Em, I don’t want to think too much about Mom and Dad getting busy making babies.” She leaned down to kiss her daughter’s perfectly pink forehead. “I prefer to think we were all immaculately conceived.”

Emily smiled, too, though it took some effort. Her gaze fell on the cheerful hand-painted flowers bordering the walls. “Maybe I should start looking into that method, myself.” She plucked a stuffed white rabbit off a gleaming white shelf and bent its long ears. “Considering how everything else I’ve tried so far to become a mother has been a bust.”

Wendy deftly adjusted her nightgown as she shifted the baby to her shoulder. “Honestly, Em. Only you would come out of a tornado with a spreadsheet in her head that lays out every possible way to become a mommy. Did you ever consider just trying to meet a man first?” She patted MaryAnne’s back and was quickly rewarded by a decidedly indelicate little burp. She grinned and stood up from the glider.

“You’re sounding surprisingly old-fashioned. These days, I hardly need a man in my life to become a mother.” Emily reached out for her niece. “Let me take her.”

Wendy surrendered the baby happily enough. “Far be it for me to suggest that you won’t handle being a single mother as admirably as you handle your career, but I am a mother now. And I’m here to tell you that I can’t imagine doing this without Marcos.”

Emily sighed a little. “I’m thirty years old. If there were a Marcos out there for me, I’d have found him by now.”

Wendy lifted her eyebrows. “Really? Where? In the offices of FortuneSouth? That’s pretty much where you’ve spent all of your time since … forever!”

“I’m not at FortuneSouth now, am I?” Emily reasoned. “And I’m not looking for romance, anyway. Romance has never led anywhere. But raising a child? That’s another story. I’m going to be a mother. Pure and simple.” Emily jiggled MaryAnne and smiled as her niece chortled happily. “Isn’t that right, sweetie peetie? Auntie Emily is going to get a baby.”

“Romance for you has never gone anywhere because you’ve never made room for it to go anywhere.”

“I’ve dated plenty of men!”

“Yeah. Maybe once. Twice if they were lucky. How many have you loved more than your job?”

Emily rolled her eyes. “None of them were anywhere near as interesting as my job. And most were more interested in what I could do for them, than in what we could be together.” She grinned good-naturedly. “Besides, I figure there are a finite number of good men out there and you and Jordana have already snapped up this family’s allotment of them.”

Wendy just shook her head and seemed to see the wisdom in changing the subject. “Speaking of Jordana. What time are you going over to Tanner’s office today?”

Tanner Redmond was the newest addition to the Fortune fold, having recently married their sister. “I said I’d be there by three. But I’m meeting with the adoption attorney again at eleven.”

“Then before you go, I’m gonna go grab a shower while the grabbin’s good.” Wendy strode out of the nursery, her scarlet nightgown flowing behind her.

Maybe Emily was the only one with spreadsheets in her head, but Wendy was the only one whose vivid personality was enough to eclipse even scarlet-colored silk. Emily held up MaryAnne until they were nose-to-nose. “Your mama sure found her place, didn’t she?” There’d been times when the entire family had wondered if their wild young Wendy would ever settle anywhere.

MaryAnne kicked her bare little feet, her cheeks rounding as she opened her mouth in a gummy grin, and Emily felt such a wistful longing inside her that she could hardly bear it. She cuddled the baby close, carrying her out of the nursery. “This time next year, you’ll have a new cousin,” she told her niece. “And you’ll be great friends and won’t ever argue over who gets to play with which doll like your Auntie Jordana and I did.” There was only a year separating Emily and Jordana. By the time their live-wire baby sister, Wendy, had come along several years later, they’d both been in elementary school.

Now, both Wendy and Jordana were well into making families of their own and Emily was the odd one out. “Not for long, though, right?” She jiggled MaryAnne as she walked through her sister and brother-in-law’s home.

She’d been up and showered for hours already; the early-to-rise habit sticking even though she’d been away from home base in Atlanta for nearly three months now. She’d already toyed some more with the mock website that she wanted to show Tanner, dealt with a few minor crises with her staff at FortuneSouth and saved a bunch of real estate listings she was interested in looking into on her cell. And as soon as Wendy was finished showering, Emily would meet with the adoption attorney she’d been working with for the past few months. If that meeting ended up as fruitless as all the others she’d already had, then she’d confirm her appointment next week with the gynecologist to go forward with a second insemination attempt. After that, she’d head out to Tanner’s office for the brief duty-meeting with Tanner and his marketing guy.

She didn’t particularly mind the meeting. It had sort of been her own fault, anyway, because she’d happened to mention that the website for his flight school was a little … dry. Fortunately, her new brother-in-law hadn’t been offended. Instead, he’d asked her to come in and discuss the matter, as well as kick around some marketing and advertising strategies for increasing the flight school’s business. Of course, she’d said she would. He was Jordana’s brand-new husband and the father of the baby they were soon expecting, so how could Emily refuse?

Besides, she liked Tanner.

And even though she’d come up with the mock site herself—something she had some fun doing, even though the technical end wasn’t particularly her area of expertise—it didn’t mean she was particularly interested in discussing business with anyone any more than she was interested in her own duties with FortuneSouth these days.

For the first time in her life, Emily’s eye was not only on business. She’d realized what mattered and one way or another, she was going to become a mother.

Not because she was trying to keep up with her sisters. But because it was the one thing she’d come out knowing, after that horrible day when the tornado had ripped through the Red Rock airport, seemingly bent on changing all of their lives.

She was thirty years old. She was alive. She wanted to be a mother. To give all the love inside her that she had to give to a child, the same way she’d always known her mother loved her.

And she wasn’t going to waste any more time.

Max Allen eyed the plain watch on his wrist and held back an oath while he picked up his pace, crossing the tarmac from the Red Rock Regional Airport’s terminal to the hangar that housed Redmond Flight School. Admittedly, he wasn’t looking forward to the meeting that his boss, Tanner Redmond, had set up with his sister-in-law. But that didn’t mean he wanted to be late for it.

After a month, he still had a hard time believing that he was even working for Tanner as his assistant. Which meant he also needed to swallow the obvious fact that his boss figured he needed some help and had asked him to meet with Emily Fortune.

Best thing Max could do was forget about all the reasons he wasn’t qualified to handle any sort of sales and marketing for the flight school, and learn anything and everything he could from the high-powered advertising executive.

He skirted a slow-moving fuel truck, absently giving the driver, Joe, a wave, and broke into a jog to cross the last fifty yards. Not a smart move, he realized, when he pushed through the door to the business office and cool air-conditioning wafted over him, reminding him that it was a hot June afternoon out there.

Not only was he running late, but he was going to look like he’d been running late, too.

Through the window of Tanner’s office, he could see the back of a blond head. The woman had already arrived. Naturally.

He shoved his hand through his hair and blew out a deep breath. Hell with it. The lady would just have to put up with him the way he was. Sweating, unqualified and all. Before long, Tanner would probably realize the error of his ways and Max would be out of the job, anyway.

At least he had the animals at the Double Crown where he still worked part-time as a ranch hand. They didn’t have to bother seeing beyond his checkered past; all they cared about was getting their feed and water when they needed. And he was pretty sure that Lily Fortune would let him go back to full-time, even though the woman had been one of the ones to encourage Max to take a chance with the flight school gig when Tanner had offered it.

He reached out and pushed open Tanner’s office door, his gaze focused on his boss’s face. “Sorry I’m late.” Might as well get the obvious out of the way first. “I got hung up talking to the maintenance supervisor.” Though the airport was up and running again, repairs were still going on from the damage caused by the December tornado.

Tanner didn’t look unduly worried. “No problem.” He gestured toward the woman sitting in front of his desk. “Emily Fortune,” he introduced. “This is—

“You,” the woman interrupted as she rose.

Max focused on her, then, and her obvious surprise. She was stepping away from the leather chair she’d been sitting in, her hand extended toward him. She was wearing a black jacket and matching pants that only accentuated her slender figure, and her pale blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She looked expensively professional and even though there was no dirt covering her face and no debris tangling in her hair, the green eyes staring back at him through narrow, black-framed glasses were definitely the same ones he remembered.

He must have stuck his own hand out automatically, because her smooth, warm palm met his, her long fingers clasping his in a no-nonsense way and jolting his attention away from that mossy green.

“It was you at the airport that day,” she was saying in a smooth voice that held a trace of a Southern drawl. “Wasn’t it?”

He nodded and managed to find his voice somewhere. Even though he’d figured out that day at the airport who she was, he’d been hoping that she wouldn’t remember him. “You look like you came through it pretty well.”

She smiled a little, then looked down and he realized he was still holding her hand. He quickly let go.

“I was lucky,” she said. “Just a sprained ankle.”

“So, I’m guessing you two have met.” Tanner sounded amused.

Emily looked away from Max to his boss. She’d tucked her hands in the pockets of her blazer, Max noticed, and that abrupt swell of pleasure he’d felt at first dimmed. Probably not used to touching the lower class unless she was being pulled from beneath a collapsed roof by one.

“He rescued me after the tornado,” she was telling his boss. Her gaze slid toward Max. “But we never did get around to introductions.” She smiled again, and tucked-away hands or not, Max felt another jolt.

“It was the rescue workers who pulled you out,” he reminded.

“Yours was the voice that kept me going,” she countered. “I’ll never forget it.”

He didn’t want her gratitude. He’d done what anyone would have done. There was no point in admitting that he hadn’t forgotten it, either. If she’d been just an average girl, maybe. But she’d turned out to be a Fortune. One of the FortuneSouth Fortunes.

They had money and class and first-class educations followed by first-class careers.

Way, way out of his league.

So he’d stuck the moments they’d shared while she’d clung desperately to his hand and stared into his eyes while a halfdozen rescue workers lifted what seemed half a building off of her in a box and tried not to think about it. Only now, as a favor to her new brother-in-law, she was supposed to teach Max how to do his job.

He looked at his watch. “We should get to it, I guess.”

Her confident smile seemed to falter a little. She looked back at Tanner. “He’s right. Time’s money and all that.” She pulled her hands from her pockets. “I know you didn’t ask me to,” she told Tanner, “but I toyed around with some website ideas. I can show you that, and then we’ll take a look at the marketing materials you’re using now and we can go from there.”

“Actually,” Tanner said, pushing back from his desk, “that all sounds great, including the website stuff, but I’m going to have to leave all that for you and Max to go over.” He rounded the desk. “I’m going with Jordana to her O.B. appointment.” He gestured at the small, round conference table in the corner of his room. “Make yourselves comfortable here, if you want. I know there’s more room there than in Max’s office.” He squeezed Emily’s shoulder as he passed by. “If you want a tour of the place, Max can give you one. He knows every nook and cranny around here by now. Right, Max?”

Max nodded, but as his boss left the office, he couldn’t help wondering what Tanner was thinking, leaving it all in Max’s lap.

“Why don’t we start with the tour, then? It would help if I can get a little bit of a feel for this place.” Emily was looking at him, her eyebrows lifted a little. If she had any suspicion that her expertise would be wasted on someone like Max, at least she didn’t show it.

“Sure.” He stepped out of her path so she could exit the office. “Do you know anything about flight schools?”

She laughed a little, and the sound seemed to send heat straight down his spine. “Not a single thing,” she admitted as she walked past him. “You’re the expert, here.”

He grimaced. Evidently, Tanner hadn’t told his sister-in-law much at all. Maybe she’d have refused to help if she knew how unqualified he was. “I’ve only been working for Tanner for a month,” he said. There was no point in putting any varnish on it. The truth was what it was. He’d started out—officially—on a part-time basis, but just a few weeks ago, Tanner had asked if he’d be willing to take on more.

Max still had a hard time believing it.

“I don’t know diddly-squat about marketing,” he told her.

She stopped in her tracks and looked at him. “Tanner said you are his marketing assistant.”

He hated titles. Mostly because they’d only ever pointed out that he was low-man on the totem pole, which he’d been perfectly aware of. “Assistant … whatever,” he said. “The marketing stuff is just a priority right now. A long time before he actually hired me, though, I was mopping floors and cleaning toilets around this place.” She might as well know that truth, too. “Did anything and everything, pretty much, in exchange for flying lessons.”

Her head tilted slightly. The silky end of her ponytail slipped over her shoulder. “How’d you learn about the flight school in the first place?”

He shrugged. “Everyone around Red Rock’s heard of the flight school.” He had, even before the day he’d actually walked through the front door.

“But how,” she pressed. “Radio spots? Signage?” A faint smile played around the corners of her lips, which only meant he was studying them too closely for politeness. “Good old word of mouth?”

“Word of mouth.” He dragged his attention away from her mouth.

“Never underestimate the power of good word of mouth. It can make or break the success of any number of things,” she said. “You’re lucky, actually. You’ve got a unique perspective, Max.”

Again, he felt heat slide down his spine. “How?”

“You’ve already been your own prospective customer.” She turned again and headed along the tiled hallway that led from the front door of the business office to the rear that opened out into the hangar. “You know what brought you to Redmond Flight School.”

He was pretty sure that “desperation” wasn’t the angle that Tanner wanted them to promote. Fortunately, Emily was unaware of his thoughts as she continued.

“So now what you need to think about is what would have brought you here even more quickly.” She glanced at him.

“Money.” It was an obvious answer. One that hadn’t exactly applied to him at the get-go but sure had ever since.

She sent him a smile over her shoulder again, obviously not shocked by his blunt tone. “Part of your job, then, is to convince the masses that money isn’t the object. Learning to fly is.”

“If everyone knew how it felt to be up there, we wouldn’t need to advertise.” He reached past her to push open the heavy metal door and got a whiff of something soft. Almost powdery.

Nothing around the hangar smelled like that, including him. Which just left her.

He would have been happy to stand there a long while breathing in that completely feminine fragrance, but she was already moving through the door, that long ponytail of hers swinging.

If he’d ever thought anything was particularly sexy about a woman’s hair, it was only when it looked messed up from his hands tangling in it. But there was definitely something sexy about Emily’s swinging length of sleek, corn-silk blond. He wondered what it would look like flowing over her bare shoulders …

“That’s even better,” she said, stopping again to turn on her heel and face him. Beyond her glasses, her eyes were animated. “You’re already honing in on your messaging,” she said, thankfully oblivious to his wayward mind. “Show your prospective customer what it feels like.”

The palms of his hands were suddenly itching. He shoved them in the pockets of his blue jeans. “What it feels like,” he repeated, feeling about as dumb as a rock.

“Up there.” She waved her hand. “You said it yourself. If everyone knew how it felt to be up there.” She pulled off her glasses, folded them and tucked the earpiece down the front of her jacket, giving him the briefest of glimpses of something black and lacy beneath, which did not help his distraction any.

“So … show me around,” she invited. “My only contact with airports has been as a passenger.”

A first-class passenger, he figured, but kept the thought to himself. Maybe if he concentrated enough on describing everything to do with the physical layout of the flight school, he’d get his thoughts off of her physical layout.

“This area, obviously, is the classroom.” He pushed on a hidden partition halfway down the main wall. “We can break it up into three smaller classrooms with partitions like these.” He nudged the partition wall and it smoothly disappeared again. “They’re all new additions since the tornado. Just had the desks delivered a few days ago, in fact.”

Emily wandered among the empty chairs that looked reminiscent of her high-school days, complete with an attached desktop, and wondered fleetingly what Max had been like in high school. Probably football team captain and hotly pursued by all the cheerleaders.