A Fortune Wedding Read online

  Lyndsey, oblivious, was still talking about names. “What about Veronica? Or Cissy? That’s the name of the nurse at the obstetric center. I think it’s cute. Speaking of the center, I got my checkup and the doctor said everything’s going just great with my pregnancy. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.”

  And with her smiling at him, how could he tell her that she was wrong, that there was everything to worry about? That when he thought about the future, what he saw were obstacles and chaos. To her, though, the path forward was crystal clear—they’d marry, move out, start a family and everything would be wonderful.

  “I still think we should tell my mom,” he said.

  “And we will, when the time’s right, but think about what she’s been through, Josh. Why give her one more thing to worry about?” Lyndsey argued, twining her fingers around his. “If we hold off, it’s not going to affect us. We’re set for money now that you’ve inherited, so let a couple months go by. I’ll look around for a nice place to buy, and you can tell her when we’re ready to move out. She’s not going to stand in our way now that your dad’s gone. Anyway, you’re eighteen, you’re an adult.”

  He sure didn’t feel like one, though. What he felt like was that little kid on the roller coaster, sick about what he’d done and scared stiff about what lay ahead.

  “Thanks for driving,” Frannie told Roberto as he helped her into the cab of his truck.

  “No problem.”

  It was strange, she thought, as he circled around the front of the truck, but it felt for all the world like a date, with him coming to pick her up and opening the door for her and driving. Except that instead of going out to a movie or dinner, they were headed to San Antonio to compare notes with her brother Ross on a murder investigation.

  Too much to think about. In the weeks that had passed since the Spring Fling, she’d discovered that the only way to stay sane was to simply not look at too much at any one time. Focus on the details, worry about what was directly ahead of her.

  Except that what was directly ahead of her just then was Roberto.

  “All set?” he asked as he opened the door and got in.

  Focus on what was directly ahead of her, not the look of his lean, long-fingered hands on the wheel, not on the jitters that ran through her stomach every time he got just a little too close. Because letting him get closer would be dangerous. If he could dominate her thoughts so effortlessly without even a touch, if she ever let him get truly in she’d be lost. She’d already had a taste of it that night at his apartment, that mindless, drugging wonder. Anything more could be fatal.

  Roberto snapped on his seat belt. “You know where we’re going, right?”

  Straight toward the hazard signs, if she didn’t watch out. “East,” she said. “Straight to San Antonio.”

  Don’t think, she reminded herself, instead focusing on the glossy blue hood of his truck. “So why did you drive all the way out from Denver? Why not fly?”

  “I figured the truck would come in handy for hauling materials when I was working on Red.” He started the engine. “Plus, I hate being crammed into airplanes.”

  “I can imagine.” It wasn’t just his height. He’d grown into a man since she’d known him before, with solid width of shoulder, heft of muscle. Even the cab of the truck seemed too small for him, though perhaps it was more force of personality than mere physical size that made her think so. There was a power to him, an assurance that he hadn’t had at twenty. And underlying all of it, a smoldering sexuality that was fueled by confidence and intensity as much as by looks. She hadn’t noticed it back when she’d been seventeen—maybe it hadn’t existed yet—but it was there now, and as a woman, she found it impossible to ignore.

  Focus on what was directly ahead.

  “Anyway, the drive here from Denver isn’t bad,” Roberto was saying. “It took maybe seventeen hours, counting stops.”

  “You drove straight through?”

  He coasted past the guard shack, raising a hand to his friend. “I like to get where I’m going.”

  “I’ll say. I guess you’re one of those goal-oriented types.”

  “I tend to stay pretty focused on what I want.” He flicked a glance at her. “Don’t say you weren’t warned.”

  There was heat in those dark eyes, heat that ran through her and took her by surprise. She swallowed. “Seventeen hours is a long time to spend in a car on your own.”

  “I didn’t mind,” Roberto said. “It gave me time to think.”

  “About what?”

  “Lots of things. Coming back, for one. What’s going on with my family. Projects at work.” He accelerated onto the highway. “Seeing you.”

  Less than a week had passed since they’d reconnected. It seemed more like a decade. Frannie turned to study his profile. “Would you ever have looked me up if we hadn’t run into each other?”

  “I doubt it. As far as I was concerned, things were still status quo. But Red Rock isn’t that big and I figured that if I came back, there was a better-than-average chance I’d run into you.”

  From the time she’d heard he was in town, she’d simultaneously dreaded seeing him and wondered what it would be like. “Was it what you expected?”

  “Not even close. I thought that after all this time, it just wouldn’t matter anymore. But it did. You did. It felt like we’d just been out riding half an hour before.”

  “I know. It’s so strange. It’s been almost twenty years, but it feels like yesterday. I have to keep reminding myself that we don’t know each other anymore.”

  “You know me.”

  “How can I?” Her throat tightened. “I don’t even know what happened to you last month, let alone a decade ago.”

  “Ask,” he invited. “You said it yourself, we have to get to know each other again.”

  Nerves skittered in her stomach. “I also said there was too much going on.”

  “Nothing’s going on right now. We’re just driving.” He nodded at the passing hills. “Ask and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  With so long a time, it was hard to even figure out where to start. “What do you do with yourself? How do you spend your time?”

  “I’ve got a horse. I ride some.”

  “What kind?”

  “A big bay quarterhorse. I call him Rocky.”

  “For the mountains?”

  “For his attitude, mostly.” His voice was amused. “He’s a good match for me when I’m in a mood.”

  “I’ve got a little chestnut mare named Daisy that I keep out at the Double Crown,” she said. “Too bad Rocky isn’t here, we could race.”

  He was already shaking his head before she got the words out. “No way, I remember how you race.”

  “How long are you going to hold that against me?”

  “How long you got?”

  “Sore loser,” she said, smiling. “So what do you do when you’re not riding?”

  “Mostly, I work.”

  “That’s right, building your empire. Why construction? What made you go there?”

  Roberto shrugged. “It was easy to find a job and I was good at it. Besides, I’m not all that crazy about being stuck inside all day.”

  He never had been, Frannie thought. There was something reassuring about the notion that a part of him she had once known hadn’t changed.

  “You must be good at it to have made such a success of yourself.”

  His teeth flashed. “I guess you’ll find out, won’t you?”

  She’d taken him on without question to do the work on her house. For a person who was trying to take control of her own life, she hadn’t done the best job with her first decision out of the gate. “I suppose if I were smart, I’d have gotten a couple more estimates for the work at my house,” she mused aloud. “Compare prices and pick the middle one. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

  “Depends. If you want it done right, forget price and pick the person who’s going to do the best job.
”

  “And are you the best?”

  His grin widened. “Give me a couple of weeks and you’ll see for yourself.”

  This time, the heat was definite. Frannie reached out for the air-conditioning vent.

  “So that’s it, Rocky and work?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Nothing else? Nothing personal?”

  His lips twitched. “What are you asking?”

  Odd that she would find it so difficult. “Did you ever…Are you—”

  “No,” he cut in. “Never married, no kids.”

  She’d noticed the lack of rings, but it was a relief, even so. “Nothing?”

  “I had girlfriends, but they were never permanent.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I wasn’t,” he said frankly. “It was always kind of a relief when things blew up and I found myself back on my own. I guess I’m like a junkyard dog, too territorial. Or maybe I’m just a self-absorbed son of a bitch.”

  “I doubt that that’s true, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Anyway, it takes two people to make a relationship fail.”

  “Yeah? Is that how it went with you and Lloyd?”

  With her and Lloyd, none of the usual rules applied. Except one. “We never should have gotten married in the first place. I knew it from the start. I never should’ve agreed.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Because I—” The words caught in her throat. “Because I was pregnant.”

  He didn’t reply right away, letting the silence be a balm. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, his voice quiet.

  Her chin went up. “I’m not. How could I be? Otherwise, I wouldn’t have Josh.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.”

  She shook her head, warding off his pity. “Things happen. I figured it out about a month after we left Red Rock. I told Cindy, just because I didn’t know what else to do. She brought me back to confront Lloyd.”

  A moment passed. “And you’re sure it was his?” The words were a little too careful.

  “Oh, yes,” Frannie said aridly. “He and his parents insisted on a DNA test after he accused me of sleeping around with everyone in town. But he knew it wasn’t true and there wasn’t much he could say once we got the results.”

  “It must have been hell for you.”

  She looked out the window, flashing back to that long ago chaotic fall. “I remember being twisted inside out, waiting to hear the answer. And even though I thought you’d run away, even though I hated you, I still kept thinking and hoping the baby would be yours. But it wasn’t. And the next thing I knew I had Lloyd’s ring on my finger.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself, cold now. “It’s funny, I used to imagine sometimes that everything had turned out differently, that you and I were together, that Josh was ours. But then I’d remember how it ended between us.” She swallowed. “It was like having a bruise that never healed. I’d get really good at not touching it, but every so often I’d forget and…”

  The pain would be there, just as sharp as it had always been.

  “It’s history now.” Roberto’s voice was soft. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is what we do from here on out.”

  But what she did from there on out could possibly be as perilous for her as anything that had come before. She didn’t want to go from one man to another, dependent physically, emotionally, financially. It would be so easy to fall under Roberto’s sway, like she had with Lloyd. And what would be left of her when it was over? She’d been through it once and she didn’t think she could survive it again.

  And so she turned to the window and watched the hills roll by.

  “I’m not sure what to tell you,” Ross Fortune said as he led Frannie and Roberto across his living room to the couch.

  He was prickly, Roberto diagnosed—not happy about what he no doubt interpreted as somebody questioning his work. “Anything you can tell me is probably more than I know,” he replied.

  “It’s not a territorial thing, Ross. There’s a lot at stake. It would be good for us to know the details.” Frannie’s voice was firm, her expression soft.

  Ross gave Roberto the kind of assessing look any brother would recognize. “Lloyd was a guy with plenty of enemies, I’m sorry to say, Frannie. How many of them disliked him enough to want him dead is another matter. So far, I’ve got no traction in working it out, and neither have the cops.” He paused as they sat. “Can I get you something to drink? I can’t offer you a whole lot—I haven’t been spending a lot of time here lately.”

  “Anything,” Frannie said.

  Roberto watched Ross walk into the kitchen. The guy was rangy, solid enough to look like he could take care of himself if he had to mix it up. Darker hair than Roberto would have expected from Frannie’s brother, and long enough to show he didn’t give much of a hang about looks, which also netted him points in Roberto’s book.

  “I gotta say, you got my hopes up when they hauled you in, Roberto,” Ross called over from the kitchen. “I figured that got Frannie and Josh off the hook. Too bad it was a washout.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” Roberto said drily.

  There was a hint of humor in Ross’ voice. “Glad to have you out, but I’d be even more glad if they’d find out who really did it.”

  Frannie looked out at the lights of the Riverwalk outside the window, her fingers twisted together in her lap. Roberto reached out and put his hand on hers.

  “The problem is, I still can’t put together a picture that means anything.” Ross walked in with a glass of water for Frannie along with beers for Roberto and himself. “I’ve been asking questions, and nobody—” he stopped for a beat, eyes on their hands “—seems to know anything.”

  “Even the cops?” Roberto asked, amused when Ross handed him the beer from the side that made him take his hand from Frannie’s to grasp it.

  “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? I’ve got a source in the department.” He took a chair facing them.

  “Right.”

  “I’m going to assume I can trust that whatever I tell you won’t be passed along,” Ross said, eyes on Roberto. When Roberto gave a fractional nod, he continued. “First of all, Frannie’s vase wasn’t the murder weapon at all. Right blood type, wrong DNA.”

  Roberto nodded. “I kind of figured that was the case. And the crowbar I found?”

  “A match across the board—tissue, hair DNA,” he said over the sharp intake of breath from Frannie. “It was the weapon that killed Lloyd. They pulled a couple of latent prints from it, a finger and a partial thumb, but they don’t match anyone in the database. And they can’t figure out where the damned thing came from.”

  “From the back of the Fortune Foundation booth,” Frannie said, a look of strain about her mouth. “We used it when we put up the tent. I think they dropped it at the back before they draped the tarps over the frame.”

  Ross sat up. “The cops found the vase under the table at the very back of the booth, half-under the tarp. Somebody behind the tents could have shoved the vase out of the way and grabbed the bar as a better weapon.”

  Frannie’s fingers clenched the couch cushions until her knuckles turned white. “Not Josh,” she whispered. “Please.”

  “We don’t even know if his fingerprints are on the bar,” Ross reassured her. “All we really have is a fight between him and Lloyd and witnesses who could place him with the vase.”

  Roberto stirred. “There’s something else you should know. About a week and a half before the murder, my cousin Isabella was talking to a guy in a bar.” He exhaled. “She’s pretty sure it was Lloyd.”

  Frannie turned to stare at him and he ached for her. “It was just a short conversation in a bar, Frannie, nothing more. But the thing is Lloyd got a call while she was there, a call that turned into a pretty nasty fight. She says Lloyd called the person he was talking to Josh.”

  Ross leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, fingertips together. “H
earsay. It wouldn’t stand up in court. But cases are made of details and right now there are a lot of them adding up against Josh.”

  “He can’t have done it, Ross.” There was a note of entreaty in Frannie’s voice.

  “I don’t want to think it, either, but we’re starting to get a lot of information and sooner or later we’ve got to do something with it. Eventually, Lily and Roberto’s cousin are going to have to talk to the cops. Eventually, you are.”

  “Ross, he’s my son.” Her voice shook.

  “I know. That’s why I’ve been holding off and I’ll keep doing that. But I can’t do it forever, Fran.”

  “Which means we’ve got to start finding some answers,” Roberto said. Beside him, Frannie’s breath sounded unsteady. “Hey,” he said softly, “it’s going to be okay.”

  “How can it be?”

  He took her hands in his. “It will be. Trust me.”

  He held her gaze and suddenly everything fell away and it was just the two of them, bound together. The moment spun out and he let her fear dissipate through him, gave her back all the hope he had. “Trust me,” he whispered again.

  She blinked and shook her head, then rose. “I’ll be right back.”

  If he’d ever seen courage, it was in the set of those fragile shoulders, Roberto thought, watching her walk away. He turned to see Ross Fortune studying him.

  “You were at the Double Crown the summer before Frannie married Lloyd, weren’t you?”

  Roberto nodded. “For a while.”

  “And then you lit out and stayed gone.”

  “I had my reasons.”

  “Lloyd Fredericks made Frannie’s life hell, and it hasn’t gotten any better with him dead. She doesn’t need any more trouble.”

  “I’m not planning on giving her any.” Roberto kept his voice even.

  “She also doesn’t need a hit-and-run.”

  Irritation pricked at him. “You’re making some pretty big assumptions based on zero data.”

  “I’m watching out for her.”