Fortune's Woman / A Fortune Wedding: Fortune's Woman

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.