Cowboy in Disguise

Author

Allison Leigh

Reads

17.1K

Chapters

Author

Allison Leigh

Reads

17.1K

Chapters

🌸 Clean & Wholesome

Chapter One

“I thought you didn’t eat bread anymore.”

Arabella Fortune jumped guiltily and used the corner of her napkin to cover the roll she’d dropped in her lap, where it sat next to two others just like it. She looked from the empty bread basket to meet her brother’s laughing eyes.

“More bread?”

At the question, she swiftly looked from Brady to the handsome owner of the deep voice. His name badge said Jay Cross and he’d been attending to their table throughout the birthday party for her nephew. She picked up the basket, smiling into his deep green eyes.

“Yes, please.” She sounded breathless and didn’t really care. “If it’s not too much trouble.” Jay was gorgeous. And every time their fingers brushed—when he’d given her a fresh napkin after she’d dropped hers, when he’d refilled her water glass, when she handed him the bread basket for the third time—there was an undeniable zing.

And she knew he’d felt it, too. Right from the start. The way his gaze had zipped to hers...and clung...had made her certain of it.

He had long fingers. She didn’t know if they were smooth or calloused, though he had a raised scar over one knuckle, long and whitish against his tanned skin, that made her think he didn’t spend all of his time on a catering crew.

His smile widened and his gaze was as warm as a caress when he took the basket from her. “No trouble at all.” His fingers grazed her hand and she felt butterflies take flight inside her. That brush of his fingers had to be deliberate. “I’ll be right back.” He walked away with the basket in hand.

“Why are you staring at that wader?”

Arabella heard her brother’s grunt of laughter and she pulled her attention away from Jay to focus on Tyler’s four-year-old face. Since Brady had been left guardian of his best friend’s twins the year before, she’d become adept at telling the two boys apart. “Was I staring?” she asked innocently.

Tyler nodded earnestly. “At his butt.” His young voice was piping clear. “The wader’s butt.”

“It’s waiter. Not wader,” Brady corrected almost absently. He was busy trying to keep Toby—the more rambunctious of the two children—from unbuttoning his shirt because he was too hot. It wasn’t really too warm inside the hotel restaurant where the party was being held. It was January. Back home in Buffalo, they’d be under a few feet of snow, but here in Rambling Rose, the balcony doors were thrown open and the occasional breeze that flowed in was beautifully balmy. The other two occupants of their table—her brothers Kane and Joshua—obviously felt the same. As soon as they’d finished their entrées, they’d taken refuge from Toby’s and Tyler’s unrelenting chatter at the bar set up near the balcony and they both had their shirtsleeves rolled up.

“Not another button,” Brady warned Toby before looking back at Tyler. “And don’t say butt,” he directed.

“At his bottom,” Tyler revised obediently. But he still had a glint in his eyes. He might be the more sensitive of the two, but like Toby, his genetic makeup seemed to be half mischief.

As the only girl among five protective older brothers, handling the four-year-old variety of male was almost a breeze. She leaned closer to Tyler. “D’you want to go outside for a few minutes?”

He nodded so hard he nearly fell out of his chair.

She looked to his twin brother, placed on her other side between her and Brady in a relatively successful attempt at helping them behave during the family event. “D’you want to go outside for a few minutes, Toby?” The restaurant, Roja, was located in the brand-new Hotel Fortune and though she hadn’t had a chance to see much besides her hotel room, she was sure there would be someplace where the kids could work out their wiggles.

Toby was out of his chair before she even finished speaking, and hung on to the back of Brady’s while he bounced on his bare feet.

Brady looked resigned at this latest discovery. “When did you take off your shoes and socks?”

The little boy shrugged innocently.

Arabella hid a laugh and slipped off her seat, prepared to dive under the table to retrieve the items. But she’d forgotten all about the rolls she’d snuck away in her napkin and they bounced onto the carpet like a cascade of ping-pong balls.

Brady gave her a look that, lately, had been reserved for his young charges. “Subtle, Airhead.”

She crossed her eyes at him and ducked under the floor-length tablecloth, dashing the rolls out of sight along with her, and fished out Toby’s shoes and socks then backed out again on hands and knees.

A pair of shining black cowboy boots met her eyes.

She looked up the long legs encased in black pants and felt her face heat at the laughter in Jay’s eyes as he set the fresh bread basket on the table. “Can I help you up?” He extended his long-fingered hand down toward her.

The scarred knuckle hovered near her nose and those fluttering wings inside her took flight all over again.

She placed her palm in his.

Oh, hello. Forget zing. Palm-to-palm meant full-on heart palpitations.

She didn’t even know how she got to her feet without catching her high heels in her maxi-length dress. Maybe she just floated upward, borne on the delight of his hand clasping hers. Regardless, she found herself standing a little closer than was probably appropriate for the moment—her nephew Larkin’s first birthday party. But she just couldn’t make herself put a few more inches between them.

She looked up, then up some more, until her eyes met Jay’s.

She’d already noticed how green they were. But standing so closely now, she could see the circle of yellow around his pupils. The spokes of darker color that radiated out to the deep green edges of his irises.

She realized he was still holding her hand. Was, in fact, grazing his thumb ever so lightly over the back of her hand.

She also realized that both Tyler and Toby were bouncing around her, impatient for the promise of an escape from the party. And that Brady was giving Jay a narrow-eyed stare. As was Brian who’d joined their brothers Kane and Joshua at the bar. Fortunately, Adam—the eldest of her siblings—was busy with Laurel and their little boy across the room or she had no doubt his suspicious glare would be trained her way, too. Instead, he and Laurel were talking animatedly with their folks.

Catherine Fortune was smiling and nodding. Gary Fortune, however, had the same sour look on his face that he wore whenever he was faced with any of the extended members of the Fortune family. One might think discovering you had half-brothers out in the world that you’d never known about would be exciting. Not for Gary, though. Arabella knew for a fact that if not for Larkin—whose very survival had been in question not even six months earlier—her dad would sooner choke than have anything to do with “those” Fortunes.

The ones who had money.

More than they had, anyway.

The ones who had success.

Also more than Gary figured they had.

But Larkin was his first grandchild. And the baby was now thriving. He’d made it to his first birthday. His parents—her brother Adam and Laurel—were together. Finally. Those blessings had provided enough impetus for her dad to put aside his usual animosity, at least long enough to come to Texas for the party.

Brady nudged her from behind. “You going to let the guy get back to his job anytime this century?”

She looked into those green, green eyes again and reluctantly tugged her hand free of Jay’s. “I was just going to try to find a place outside for these two to get some fresh air before the cake is served.”

“I want cake,” Toby and Tyler both said, nearly in unison. “Cake, cake, cake!”

“Run off some energy, you know, before we give them a sugar rush,” she added above their chanting.

Jay’s smile widened. “There’s a perfect place downstairs. I can show you a shortcut.”

Fluttering galore. “That’s so sweet of you.” She ignored the muffled sound of disgust that came from Brady and swept Toby up in her arms. He could put on his shoes and socks outside.

“Ten minutes,” she told Brady, warning him with her glare not to embarrass her. He still rolled his eyes at her the same way he’d been doing for all of her life.

She ignored him and turned with the boys to follow Jay’s extremely perfect backside out of the room.

As soon as they’d passed through the door he held open for them, he let it swing closed and the chatter and music from inside went hushed.

She felt a quick dart. “Are you sure this is okay? I didn’t intend to take you away from your work.” Not that she wasn’t going to enjoy it while she could.

His dark brown hair was short. Thick. Light caught in the glossy strands as his head dipped slightly toward hers. “Job of the day is to take care of the Fortunes,” he said conspiratorially. He really did have the sexiest deep voice. “You’re a Fortune, so...” He touched her elbow lightly, directing her into a waiting elevator.

She couldn’t help her shiver any more than she could help the laugh that escaped. “I’m not one of those Fortunes, though, so I’m not sure this counts.”

The elevator car was narrow, long and tall and had padded walls. He punched the ground floor button. “I didn’t know there were a these and a those.”

Her smile widened. If he’d been waiting on the table where her parents sat, he might have thought differently.

The elevator lurched softly as it stopped and the doors opened again. Jay led them through a back corridor made even narrower by tall racks sitting on one side, then pushed through another door into the fitness center. They crossed the spacious room and stepped through another door and outside onto a grassy area.

The music and laughter from the party upstairs carried easily down to them.

Toby was squirming so much she set him down on the grass. “Put these on before you move an inch,” she ordered, handing him the shoes and socks.

Tongue sticking out between his teeth, he quickly pulled on the socks. The heels weren’t in the right spots, but he didn’t seem bothered by it as he worked on the shoes. She knew better than to offer help. He had an independent streak a mile wide. Meanwhile, Tyler crouched down and began running a car she hadn’t even known he’d had along the cobbled pavers next to them.

She looked up at Jay. “Thanks for this.” She gestured at the boys. “My brother’s their guardian.”

He looked surprised. “Sorry, I thought they were yours.”

She shook her head. “Nope. No kids. Not married.” She felt her face flush.

His smile widened.

Butterfly wings fluttered inside her chest. “So, uh, how long have you worked at Hotel Fortune?”

“Almost a month now. They’re good folks here. Those Fortunes. Hey, pard, want a little help there?” He crouched alongside Toby who was still struggling with his shoelaces.

Toby duly considered the matter, then to her amazement, he shot out his small foot.

“Always had trouble with laces, myself,” Jay told the boy with a grin. “So my granny kept buying me cowboy boots. Just like these.” With a wink, he wiggled the toe of his boot and Toby giggled. “My mama, though, she said I couldn’t play baseball wearing boots so she taught me like this.” He stretched out Toby’s laces in a slightly exaggerated way. “Cross ’em over in an X,” he sang softly, “pull ’em down and now what’s next?”

Tyler came over to see. “Bunny ears.”

“Right,” Jay agreed. “Only my mama called them donkey ears. Cross ’em over in an X,” he repeated, in the same deep singsong drawl, “pull ’em down and now what’s next? Donkey ears—” he nodded encouragingly when both boys shouted the answer “—get all crossed up. Make ’em do a somersault. Now that’s done, what else is left? Pull ’em tight and kiss an elf.”

The boys wrinkled their noses and hooted. “Kiss an elf!” Toby stuck out his other foot and wiggled it back and forth. “Do it again!”

“All right,” Jay agreed, catching the toe of Toby’s shoe. “But you do the laces this time.”

Unspeakably charmed, Arabella watched them as Toby grabbed his shoelaces.

Jay started singing again. “Cross ’em over in an X...” He trailed off, as the twins took over the words, easily remembering the simple, catchy tune while Toby’s fingers tried to replicate the motions. Jay straightened then and his eyes seemed to linger on her face.

She raised her eyebrows at him. “Kiss an elf?”

“Mom was—is—a piano teacher.” His smile was so easy. So sexy with that slash of a dimple that appeared beside his mobile lips. “She never claimed to be a lyricist.”

Shoes successfully tied, Toby hopped to his feet and even though Arabella would have loved to linger a little longer with Jay, she knew she shouldn’t keep him. “Thanks for showing us the shortcut down here.” Already the two imps were chasing each other around the grass, burning off some of their never-ending energy.

“My pleasure.” He gestured at the hotel. “Afraid you’ll have to use the main elevator to get back upstairs. The door we came out doesn’t open from the outside.”

“What time do you get off work?” The words blurted out of her and she flushed. Not just because of the impetuous question, but because of the slow look he sent her way.

“Jay.” Another one of the servers from the party stuck her head out of the door, obviously looking for him. “Need you upstairs, dude.” She stood there holding the door open, pointedly waiting.

Jay offered Arabella a slightly pained shrug. “Sorry.”

“No.” Arabella waved her hand. “I’m sorry for keeping you.” She moistened her lips. “We can, uh, we can talk later.” She was practically stuttering.

She really wasn’t good at this. Inside her head, she pictured herself all smooth and maybe even a little sophisticated and sexy. Reality, though, fell far short.

Fortunately—miraculously—Jay didn’t seem any more bothered by her awkwardness than Toby was by his backward socks. “That sounds good,” he said and she was pretty sure it wasn’t her imagination that his deep voice seemed to go even deeper.

“See you later, pardners,” he told the boys as he went back inside. “Make sure you run enough to make room for birthday cake.”

Arabella let the boys run around a little longer than the ten minutes she’d promised Brady. But since she could see him upstairs in the restaurant through the opened balcony doors, she figured he wasn’t too anxious.

Which was fortunate because the butterflies fluttering madly inside her veins needed to burn off some energy as badly as the boys did.

Lights were coming on around the property when she herded the twins back inside through the main entrance and upstairs.

Fortunately, they were just in time to see Larkin smashing his way through his truck-shaped birthday cake, earning oohs from the twins who raced to the table and onto Catherine’s and Gary’s laps—proof that they were perfectly normal little boys despite the tragedy of their parents’ deaths last year.

Arabella spotted Jay and he jerked slightly when she touched his sleeve, but his smile was warm as ever. “Hello again.”

Aware of his responsibilities there, she snatched up an unused coffee cup from the abandoned guest table next to them. “Fill me up?”

One of his dark eyebrows peaked. “With coffee?”

“Are you offering anything else?”

His eyes didn’t let go of hers as he tilted his coffee carafe over her cup. “That depends.”

“On what?”

He shook his head slightly as if he were as bemused as she. “Arabella.”

She moistened her lips. “Yes?”

“I’ve never met an Arabella before.”

Her heart had climbed into her throat and she felt almost dizzy. “Is that a good thing?”

His dimple flirted into view. Just for a moment before disappearing again. He set the carafe aside. “I’ve really liked meeting you, Arabella. A lot.” He took her free hand in his. His thumb stroked over her wrist. She knew he had to be able to feel the insane thrumming of her pulse. “And I get off at ten.”

Choruses sang inside her head. “Okay,” she managed almost soundlessly.

“But I think you should know that—”

A huge screech rent the air just then, and they both jerked. A horrible rumbling juddered up from the floor as the balcony and everything on it fell away.

In the horrified void that followed, a balloon of dust rose silently in its place.

Then a woman screamed.

Followed by another.

And suddenly people ran.

Kids cried.

Jay shoved Arabella to one side just in time to avoid a chair flying toward her and she stared numbly at the cause as Brady vaulted across the room to scoop up Toby and Tyler.

She lost sight of Jay then in the melee while Callum—one of those Fortunes who’d built the hotel in the first place—ushered guests off the second floor.

Arabella gasped when her dad grabbed her arm in an iron grip.

“I knew it was a bad idea coming here.” He had her mother’s hand in his other and Catherine stumbled over a spilled tray of dishes trying to keep up with him.

“Daddy!” Arabella pulled on his hand, slowing him long enough to notice her mom. She was glad at least to see the true dismay in his face when he helped her mom to her feet. But that didn’t stop him from shackling Arabella’s wrist again as if she were a wayward toddler and joining the exiting guests.

Outside, the sound of sirens ought to have been reassuring—help was on its way—yet it only seemed to add to the horror.

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Where’s Wiley?”

“Was it a bomb?”

“Dear God, Grace was—”

“The mayor’s here. She can—”

The voices swirled and Arabella saw a mountain of rubble where only minutes earlier, Toby and Tyler had been running around the bushes below the balcony.

Nausea assaulted her and she looked away, numbly letting her father pull her and her mother even farther away from the scene. He hustled them into the car he’d rented at the airport in Houston. He was muttering to himself the whole while, but Arabella barely heard.

The evening wasn’t cold, but her teeth chattered hard as she looked out the back car window as her dad drove away from the hotel. Emergency lights flashed as one vehicle after another turned into the parking lot, tires squealing. She knew her brothers were safe. They’d all been inside Roja and well away from the balcony when she’d been talking with Jay.

I think you should know that...

“Gary, surely the entire hotel isn’t collapsing! Shouldn’t we—”

“No,” her dad said flatly, cutting off whatever her mother had been going to suggest. “We’re going straight back to New York where we belong.”

Jarred from her stupor, Arabella envisioned her overnight bag still sitting on the foot of her bed. Because the party was being held right there in the hotel, she’d seen no reason to take her purse to the party. “Dad, our luggage—”

“Can be sent to us. It’s the least those Fortunes owe us.”

“Maybe, but I’m still not going to be able to get on a plane without ID! And that’s still in my hotel room.” In his present mood, she knew he wouldn’t welcome any comments from her, but if they drove all the way to Houston only to have to turn around again, he’d be even more furious.

“Don’t you know better than to go anywhere without your ID?” He obviously didn’t expect an answer because he was swearing under his breath as he turned around and started back to the hotel.

She hadn’t gone anywhere until he’d dragged her out of the hotel. But she was pretty sure pointing that out wouldn’t earn her any points.

“How many times have I told Adam that moving to Rambling Rose would be nothing but bad news? Kane’s no better. That family just invites trouble. I told you about that wedding,” he said to Catherine, repeating words that Arabella had heard again and again over the past few years. “Deranged women. Kidnapping. Car chases. Now this? Those Fortunes are cursed!”

Her mother’s voice was meant to be soothing. “That was years ago. What happened at your brother’s wedding in Paseo—”

“Gerald Robinson is not my brother,” Gary snapped. “How many times have I told you that?”

Julius Fortune’s copious spreading of his gene pool said otherwise. Arabella kept that thought to herself, too. She’d never met Julius, who had fathered not only one legitimate son—Gerald—but at least four illegitimate ones, including her father. Everything she knew about the wealthy philanderer who’d died before she was even born was what she’d gained via the internet and snippets of gossip from her brothers.

When they arrived back at the hotel, the number of fire engines and police cars had doubled.

“Oh, dear,” Catherine fretted as they slowed for a stretcher being rolled toward the opened rear doors of an ambulance. She fumbled with her purse—she hadn’t left hers in their room—and pulled out her cell phone. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” she kept moaning under her breath as she dialed.

Arabella could see her mother’s hands trembling and felt another wave of nausea. “Send text messages, Mom,” she advised, knowing that her brothers were likely to respond more quickly to a text than a phone call. For there was no question that Catherine Fortune was checking on her boys.

After waiting for the stretcher to be loaded, her dad pulled as close to the hotel entrance as the congestion of vehicles allowed. The second the wheels stopped rolling, Arabella unsnapped her safety belt. “I have my room key.” She pulled it from her bodice where she’d tucked it and held it up.

Her father plucked it right out of her fingertips. “Stay here,” he ordered, and got out of the vehicle.

“I’m twenty-five years old,” she grumbled but he’d already slammed his door shut. “I’m capable of retrieving my own damn luggage.”

“Don’t swear,” Catherine said, holding her phone to her ear. “It’s unbecoming of a young lady. Oh, why won’t Adam answer his phone? Maybe Kane.”

“I told you, Mom,” Arabella said with a sigh. “Text.”

Her mother clucked her tongue and redialed. “I don’t like texting. You know that.”

And her brothers didn’t like getting dragged into lengthy conversations with their mother that inevitably went nowhere.

It wasn’t that they didn’t love her. But Arabella also knew her brothers were frustrated with the chip their father had on his shoulder against the rest of the world—and of late, those Fortunes—and their mother’s support of her husband no matter how unreasonable his attitudes were.

Was it any wonder that Arabella had spent most of her childhood with her nose buried in the books she loved? It was so much more pleasant losing herself in the excitement of a mystery or the throes of a love story than dwell on her overprotective big brothers, her old-fashioned mother and her perennially disgruntled father.

She pushed open her car door and got out.

“Arabella, where are you going?”

“Just to see what’s happening.” She childishly crossed her fingers where her mother couldn’t see and started weaving around cars to get closer to the side of the hotel where the action was most concentrated.

Arabella spotted Jay at once.

He stood on the far side of the debris. Yellow police tape already cordoned off the area. He was looking in her direction and she lifted her hand, hoping he would notice, but she got jostled aside by the arrival of a television crew headed by a helmet-haired woman who was clearly ready to bat her pathway clear with her big microphone.

“Focus on that pile of debris and crushed landscaping,” she was ordering her cameraman. “And cut back to me in five, four, three—”

Arabella looked toward Jay again.

But he was gone.

Disappointment sagged inside her.

I think you should know that...

What had he intended to say?

...I do believe in love at first sight. With you, Arabella.

Her arm was grabbed again, this time from behind.

“I told you to stay in the car,” Gary said tightly. “You want to get hurt out here?”

“The person who got hurt was on that stretcher we saw.” She craned her neck, trying to find Jay again.

“Police,” Gary muttered, obviously not listening. He was practically frog-marching her back to the car. “Everywhere.”

“Doing their job, it looks like to me.”

“Yeah and those Fortunes give them plenty to do.” Her dad pushed her into the back seat and tossed her overnighter in after her. “Just watch. They’ll buy their way out of this latest trouble. That’s what people like them do.” He slammed her door shut and got behind the wheel while Arabella was trying to untangle her high heel from where it had punctured her hem. “Who would have thought that Arabella would be the one to show the most common sense? She’s perfectly happy in New York. Not trying to act like some hifalutin Fortune.”

“Gary,” her mother started again. “If you just gave them a chance, maybe—”

“I don’t want to hear it, Catherine.”

Neither did Arabella. She closed her eyes, envisioning Jay’s brilliant green ones. Remembering the touch of his hand on hers.

I think you should know that...