Fortune's Just Desserts

The idea terrified her. She hadn’t a clue how to wait tables. Were they pulling her leg?

“A waitress,” Wendy repeated, looking from one face to the next and then back again.

They had to be kidding, right? She wasn’t cut out for that kind of job. And it looked like Marcos Mendoza thought the same thing.

Well, she’d be damned if she let herself prove him right.

Unable to hold it in any longer, Marcos threw up his hands in complete exasperation. He leaned in closer to his aunt, whispering into her ear, “I told you this wasn’t going to work.”

But rather than finally agree, as he’d fully expected, María Mendoza patted his arm reassuringly with a look brimming with complete trust.

“And I told you, you just have to give it enough time, Marcos.”

Marcos frowned and shook his head. “I doubt there’s that much time in the universe,” he informed his aunt.

“Think of it as a challenge, then,” María coaxed softly. And firmly.

The look in the older woman’s eyes told him that his aunt wasn’t about to change her mind. He was stuck with this. Stuck with Little Miss The-World-Owes-Me-a-Living and there was no getting out of it, short of quitting. And he wasn’t about to cut off his nose to spite his face.

Marcos studied Wendy for a long moment. The young woman probably had no idea what it was like to be hungry, or to want something so badly you put aside every penny you earned in order to save up for it. Looking at her, he figured it was safe to say that she probably hadn’t known anything but instant gratification all her life.

The word gratification shimmered in his mind’s eye, suggesting other things, things that had nothing to do with Red. Gratification of a completely different variety.

Marcos shook off the thought and silently ordered himself to get back on track.

When he was at Red, nothing existed beyond its doors. And there was nothing more important than keeping the place running well and its patrons happy.

And if he had to bend Miss Rich-and-Doesn’t-Give-a-Damn into a pretzel to keep accomplishing that, then Marcos sincerely hoped for her sake that she was flexible because he intended to do just that.

“Come with me,” Marcos said crisply. “I’ll show you where your locker is and then we’ll see about getting you a uniform.”

Although, glancing at her up close and personal, he doubted whether a uniform that would fit the particular requirements of her figure was anywhere on the premises. He was going to have to put in a special order.

It was starting already.

Wendy fell into place beside him. “So I’m definitely going to be a waitress?”

“Yes,” he answered tersely, “You’re still going to be a waitress.”

But, with any luck, you won’t be one for long, he added silently, for once tapping into his rather limited supply of optimism.

Chapter Two

April

“Hell of a mess, isn’t it?” Andrew Fortune commented to his older brother, Jeremy, who was throwing a travel bag with a few essentials into the back of the car they were taking on their rather abbreviated road trip. It was a trip born of necessity, not pleasure.

Drew, Jeremy knew, was referring to the situation their entire family found themselves in. He laughed shortly, getting into the passenger seat.

“Hey, just because our last name’s Fortune doesn’t necessarily mean that the kind of fortune we’re going to run into is always going to be good.”

“I’d settle for half-good,” his newlywed brother said. “As a matter of fact, thinking back on things, I don’t know about you, but I’d settle for just some peace and quiet for a change.”

Drew was anxious to get started—and even more anxious to get back. He was also afraid that this trip might not turn out the way they hoped that it would.

“If that happened, you’d probably go stir crazy in a week,” Jeremy predicted with a short laugh. And then he grew serious. Their father was seventy-five. When last seen, he’d been in great shape. Maybe he still was. In any event, it wasn’t going to take two of them to bring him back. If that was their father the sheriff in Haggerty had found. “Listen, I can make this trip alone. You can stay behind and keep your blushing new bride company. You’ve only been married for a couple of months. These are the good times, or so they tell me. For all we know, this trip might just be a wild-goose chase. No need to drag you away.”

Drew wasn’t about to be swayed. “Deanna understands,” he assured Jeremy, referring to his wife. “She wants to see the old man back where he belongs as much as I do. As much as we all do,” he amended.

“You’ve got a good woman there,” Jeremy commended, then murmured under his breath, “And with any luck, so will I. Soon.”

Drew knew that Jeremy was referring to Kirsten Allen, the woman who had managed to wedge herself into his physician brother’s heart. They had recently gotten engaged. “Maybe you should be the one to stay here,” he suggested.

“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Jeremy told him. If this man they were going to check out turned out to be their missing father, they would most likely need a doctor, and that would be him.

“You ready?” Drew asked, his hand poised to turn the key in the ignition.

“Let’s go,” Jeremy gestured toward the open road.

The sheriff had responded to the missing person bulletin they had posted and said that he might have found their father in town. They’d almost given up hope when they’d found their father’s sedan, abandoned and smashed, so this was definitely a turn for the better.

“Think that homeless man really is Dad?” Jeremy did his best not to sound as nervous as he felt.

Drew hated getting his hopes up, but at the same time, he needed to be optimistic. “Sure looked like it might be from that photo the sheriff emailed. A lot less dapper and pretty disheveled, but that definitely looked like Dad’s face to me. Anyway, Lily’s sure it’s him,” he added, referring to the woman his father was supposed to have married the day he disappeared, leaving a churchful of confused and concerned people in his wake.

Formerly married to Ryan Fortune, their father’s cousin, the still exceedingly attractive Lily Cassidy Fortune had turned to William in her grief when her husband died of a brain tumor six years ago. Their friendship slowly blossomed into something more. But now the wedding was on hold—indefinitely.

Drew glanced at his older brother, looking for some insight. The sheriff had said that the homeless man was distraught, saying over and over again that he needed to find his baby. “What do you think all that talk about looking for his baby might mean?”

Jeremy hadn’t a clue, although, he reasoned, it might have something to do with his amnesia. Maybe the last thing William Fortune had seen before he lost his memory was the baby they had since discovered. A baby whose origins was shrouded in as much mystery as their father’s sudden disappearance.

“The only baby we’ve seen recently is the one that was found by the groundskeeper at the church around the same time Dad disappeared,” Jeremy commented. Currently, he and his fiancée, Kirsten, had temporary custody until the baby’s parents could be located. There was talk that one of the Fortune men might have fathered the child, but he couldn’t see how that actually connected to his father. Right now, there were far more questions floating around than answers.

Shaking his head, Jeremy laughed shortly. “Wouldn’t it be something if the baby turned out to be Dad’s?”

Drew frowned. “Don’t be an idiot, Jer. Dad’s a one-woman man and he picked Lily. There’s no way he would have fathered another woman’s baby.”

Jeremy inclined his head, conceding the point. But there was still a glaring question left. “So why did he disappear?”

“Hell if I know.” Out of town now, he stepped down on the accelerator, picking up speed. “When he gets his memory back, we’ll ask him.”

“If he gets him memory back,” Jeremy cautiously qualified.

Trust Jeremy to ground him in reality. “Yeah, there’s that, too,” Drew conceded. “For Lily’s sake, I hope this guy does turn out to be Dad and that his memory loss is just temporary.”

Amnesia was a tricky condition, and if William was in fact suffering from it, there was no knowing how long it would last—or if it would ever clear up.

“Amen to that.”