Fortune's Perfect Match

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.