Her Lone Star Cowboy
Auteur
Marie Ferrarella
Lezers
16,9K
Hoofdstukken
37
Prologue
“Hello, Chloe, are you still there?”
Chloe Elliott’s hand tightened around her landline’s receiver as she heard the caller’s deep male voice asking her the same question again.
Was she still there?
Part of Chloe felt like answering the question by simply hanging up. She’d had enough disappointments in her twenty-six years to last a lifetime, why would she set herself up for yet another one?
But there was this other part of Chloe, the part that needed to believe that good things could happen, that they still did happen. That was the part that had been instrumental in making her get out of bed every morning even after Donnie, the husband she’d adored, had been killed while serving in Afghanistan after they had been married for only an incredibly short two years. That was also the part that had decided to make her gather her courage together and to try to get to know her father’s family.
The father who had, up until just recently, been a complete mystery in her life.
Ever since she could remember—until she’d gotten married—it had been just her mother and her. There had been no other family members to speak of, and that had been just fine with her. Filling in the blanks for herself, Chloe assumed that her father had been her mother’s high school sweetheart who’d been killed in a car accident before he could marry her nineteen-year-old mother.
Because that had been her belief since forever, Chloe hadn’t been prepared to learn that her father was actually tech giant Gerald Robinson. And even more, that for years now he’d been living under an assumed name. Gerald Robinson was in fact Jerome Fortune, one of the famous Texas Fortunes, no less. Neither had she been prepared for the eight legitimate Robinson offspring, giving her half siblings she’d never known she had.
And that didn’t even begin to take into account the various illegitimate offspring the man had left scattered in his wake, as well.
All in all, it had been a great deal for her to take in and process.
Realizing that the man on the other end of the line, Graham Fortune Robinson, the third of Gerald’s eight children, was still waiting for a response, Chloe answered quietly, “Yes, I’m still here.”
Chloe could almost hear the pleased smile in her half brother’s voice as he continued. “You might not remember me, but we met at that big family dinner at Kate Fortune’s ranch.”
How could she not remember? Chloe thought. She remembered everything about that evening, which had come about when Keaton Fortune Whitfield had contacted her out of the blue to tell her that he was her half sibling and invited her to come. And just like that, she’d gone from having no living relatives, now that her mother was gone, to having so many of them that she needed a scorecard just to keep track of them all.
She remembered how frightened and excited she’d been, walking into that huge mansion that evening. She’d harbored such great hopes.
Hopes that had been completely dashed when she’d met Sophie Fortune Robinson, her father’s youngest daughter. At least his youngest legitimate daughter, Chloe silently amended. Everything had gone downhill from there when she’d introduced herself to Sophie. The latter had looked utterly appalled to meet her, and if looks could’ve killed, Chloe definitely wouldn’t be alive to take this phone call right now.
Not that she could really blame Sophie, Chloe thought. It had to be quite a shock to find out that the man she had thought of as her father all those years had a completely other identity that she knew nothing about.
“Yes, I remember you,” Chloe finally responded to Graham’s comment.
She recalled that Graham had been the handsome, energetic young rancher and businessman whom Kate Fortune had tapped to run Fortune Cosmetics for her. It was obvious that the reserved woman had been quite proud of him.
“I know this must seem strange, my calling you out of the blue like this,” Graham said.
“No stranger than finding out after all these years that my father was Gerald Robinson,” Chloe replied, wondering where all this was going.
After that family dinner, she would have bet that that was the last time she would ever see any of those people again. And, to be quite honest, the run-in with Sophie had left a bad taste in her mouth. She’d decided to keep her distance from the Fortunes, especially since her mother had never had an interest in reuniting with her father.
“If I remember correctly, you have a degree in counseling, don’t you?” Graham was saying.
She was surprised that anyone even noticed her that night—other than thinking of her as an interloper. After all, how else would anyone regard their father’s bastard child? Chloe thought ruefully.
“Yes, I do,” she said uncertainly, waiting for Graham to get to the point—and wondering if, once he did, she was going to regret it.
“I know this might seem unusual to you,” Graham continued.
Unusual doesn’t begin to cover the half of it, Chloe thought.
“—but I’m calling with a job offer.”
“A job offer?” Chloe echoed, stunned. “But you run Fortune Cosmetics. And I don’t know anything about cosmetics, other than what I have in my medicine cabinet.”
She heard Graham laugh. “You won’t have to. Have you ever heard of Peter’s Place?”
“Of course I’ve heard of it. That’s a therapeutic ranch for troubled teenaged boys.”
“Right.” He sounded pleased with her answer. “Currently, my wife, Sasha, is the only counselor there. Because of a recent, rather generous donation from the Fortune Foundation, we’re going to be expanding Peter’s Place. I’ve been doing double duty running the ranch as well as helming Fortune Cosmetics. Frankly, between that and taking care of a baby plus our eight-year-old daughter, I’m spread pretty thin. I—we,” he amended, including his wife, “could definitely use a bigger staff. Now, I realize that you’re just starting out, but I’ve got a good feeling about you, Chloe. I’d like you to come down to Peter’s Place for an interview—it’ll pretty much just be a formality. And while you’re here, you can take a look around the ranch—that is, if you’re interested,” he tagged on. It was clear from the way he spoke that he really hoped she was.
Life had robbed her of some of her optimism, making her suspicious of things that seemed to be too good to be true—which was why Chloe didn’t immediately jump at the offer, the way she might have only a few years ago.
“Like you said, I’m just starting out. Why would you be offering this to me?” she wanted to know. “It sounds like you could hire anyone you wanted to.”
“I know. And that’s what I thought I was doing,” he told her. “I’ve made inquiries about you, Chloe. According to my sources, you’re talented and you have a way with people. And,” he added most significantly, “because you’re family.”
You’re family.
Chloe felt a funny little sensation in the pit of her stomach. For most of her young life, it had been only her mother and her against the world. And then she’d married Donnie, only to have him taken from her all too soon two years ago. There was a part of her that was starving to be part of a family, even as part of her distrusted that feeling and the invitation she was being tendered.
Still, because there was that hunger to be part of something greater than just herself, to be accepted into a family, Chloe heard herself asking, “When would you like me to come down?”
