MEET THE FORTUNES!

For tune of the Month: Liam “Don’t Call Me Fortune” Jones

Age: 32

Vital Statistics: Six foot three of pure, unadulterated hunk

Claim to Fame: Strong will and stronger sex appeal. Never met a woman he couldn’t woo.

Romantic Prospects: Stellar —with just about anyone except Julia Tierney

“I’ve never met anyone so stubborn in my entire life. Every time Julia and I are together, we fight like an old married couple. Without benefits. She thinks the Fortunes and their friends the Mendozas are going to bring progress to Horseback Hollow. I just think they’re gonna bring trouble. Why can’t things stay the way they are? Why can’t Julia just admit that I’m right? Why can’t I stop thinking about her even when she isn’t here?”

* * *

The Fortunes of Texas: Welcome to Horseback Hollow!

Lassoed

by Fortune

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To

Susan Litman,

who somehow manages the monumental task of keeping all these stories straight while keeping us all in line.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Excerpt

Chapter One

Liam Jones leaned back in his chair, nursing his beer and listening to two of his younger brothers, Jude and Toby, talking about a third younger brother, Christopher, who had recently picked up and moved to the nearby town of Red Rock.

As he listened, Liam’s frown, already a fixture on his face from the beginning of this conversation, deepened, highlighting his increasing disapproval.

Christopher, apparently, at least in his eyes, had gone and sold his soul to the devil.

Liam’s initial intent in coming to the bar at the Horseback Hollow Grill with two of his brothers was to unwind a little. Instead as he listened to Toby and Jude, he found himself getting progressively more and more annoyed. The current discussion was merely a theme and variation of the same old thing; a topic that had taken center stage in his family for months now: his mother’s rediscovered wealthy siblings.

Liam had always known his mother, Jeanne Marie, had been adopted and, like her, he’d thought nothing of it. Countless people were adopted; it was no big thing. Just this past year his own brother Toby had taken in three foster children.

What made it such a big thing, not just in his eyes but in everyone else’s, was that it turned out his mother had been given up for adoption, along with a sister she hadn’t even known about until just recently, by none other than a member of the highly revered Fortune family.

And that little bit of news had turned all of their worlds upside down.

The ironic thing was that his mother might have very well gone to her grave not knowing a thing about her roots if her brother, James Marshall Fortune, hadn’t come poking around, telling her that she was not only his sister but that she, he and the sister she had previously known nothing about—a British woman named Josephine May—were actually triplets.

The whole thing sounded like something out of a movie and if it had been a movie, he would have walked out on it right in the middle. Specifically around the part where this “long-lost brother” of hers gave her a whole wad of money. That had been James Marshall’s way of “making it up to her” for having lived a life that hadn’t been embedded in the lap of luxury.

As if money could fix everything and anything.

Liam found the whole money thing offensive and degrading. He resented the offering of a “consolation prize” to make up for the fact that his mother had lived a life that James Fortune obviously felt was beneath her.

When his mother gave Fortune back his money, Liam had never been prouder of her. But then she’d gone and spoiled it all by turning around and asking him and his siblings to not just recognize these interlopers as their blood relatives but to actually take on their surname.

Oh, they’d still be the Jones family, but now they’d all be known as the Fortune Joneses.

The hell they would, Liam thought angrily as he took another swig of his beer, which by now was decidedly no longer cold. But he hardly noticed.

In all honesty, he had expected his six siblings to feel exactly the way he did and was utterly stunned to discover that the whole thing didn’t even begin to bother them as much as it did him.

In fact, it felt as if his brothers and sisters were dropping like flies around him, taking on the Fortune name and forgetting just who the hell they were to begin with: Deke Jones’s offspring.

Granted, their father wasn’t an emotional, verbally effusive man. But at the same time, he was a decent, hardworking man who had always made sure they had food in their bellies, a roof over their heads and more opportunity to make something of themselves than he had. Some men showed they cared by talking, others by doing. Deke Jones fell into the latter category.

Liam sensed that this rush to embrace the Fortune name was a slap in the face for his father, even though Deke had said nothing about it either way.

But the look in his eyes certainly did.

As the conversation continued to revolve around Christopher and his drastic move out of town, Liam found that his temper had been brought dangerously close to the edge and was about to flare.

“You know, it’s like he’s not even the same person anymore,” Toby observed about the absent member of their family. “When this whole thing started, Christopher hated the Fortunes as much as we did. Now he’s run off to Red Rock to work for them. I just don’t get it,” Toby, who at twenty-eight was the youngest of the three of them, confessed, shaking his head.

Jude shrugged carelessly. “Oh, they’re not so bad,” he told Toby, defending this newly uncovered branch of the family. Blessed with a keen survival instinct, he deliberately avoided looking in Liam’s direction. Jude knew what his thirty-two-year-old brother thought of all the Fortunes and the last thing he was looking for was a fight. He just wanted to impart the information he’d learned about these new relatives of theirs. After all, fair was fair.

“Gabriella knows them,” Jude went on, referring to his fiancée, “and she said that they’re good people who just got a raw deal, bad-mouthed by folks who’re just jealous of their success and their money.” He spared one quick, fleeting glance in Liam’s direction to see how he was taking this and then just as quickly looked away. “You know how some people are. They try to drag down anyone who’s doing better than they are, thinking that might somehow elevate them.”

Liam had heard enough. Fed up, he slammed his beer mug down on the table with such force, the sound reverberated loudly enough to garner him a few curious looks from people seated at the nearby surrounding tables, not to mention the attention of several other patrons.

“Oh, come on.” Liam ground the words out angrily. “Wake up and smell the coffee, guys. Anyone saying anything good about those people is just trying to cozy up to their fat bank accounts and their fancy circle of friends. The Fortunes use people. Anyone who thinks different is just fooling themselves.”

Toby felt that his brother was forgetting a very important point in all this. “But Mom says—” he began.

Liam waved his hand at his younger brother before the latter could say anything further.

“I love Mom, but she’s just being emotional right now and I don’t fault her for that. But I’m a ‘Jones’ boy. Not ‘Fortune Jones,’ just plain old ‘Jones’ and I’m proud of it, proud of the old man, of having a father who worked hard to make a life for himself and his family. And I’m not about to change the way I feel just because some rich guy comes along and tells us we’re the missing branch of his family. Who knows if he’s even telling her the truth, anyway?”

“Why would he lie about something like that?” Toby wanted to know.

“Hell if I know,” Liam answered with a shrug. “Who knows why people like that do anything? Maybe there’s something in it for them that we don’t know about yet.” Which, to him, was all the more reason why they should view the whole scenario suspiciously. That way, they wouldn’t be wide open if something did happen.

Jude gave him a steely look. “You’re reaching, Liam. It doesn’t matter what you feel or don’t feel. That doesn’t change any of the facts—and the facts are you’ve got Fortune blood running through your veins. We all do. Face it, big brother, you’re a Fortune.”

Liam held up his hand, as if to physically stop the flow of words that could only lead to a knock-down, drag-out argument between them. Clearly nothing was going to be resolved here by talking about those people.

Deep down in his soul, he really felt that if by some wild chance he and his family welcomed these people with open arms, the Fortunes would only wind up infecting them with their greed.

With that in mind, it was best just to change the subject and talk about something else.

“How much longer are you planning on hanging on to those Hemings kids?” he asked Toby. “I mean, don’t you think that five months is plenty?”

“Not really,” Toby answered. “I haven’t exactly figured out what I’m doing yet. But just so you know,” he told Liam, “I like having those kids around. They make me see things differently.”

Liam laughed shortly. That certainly wouldn’t have been the way he would have felt about having three children infiltrating every corner of his life.

“To each his own, I guess,” he told Toby. “As for me, I don’t like being responsible for anyone else but myself.”

“Yeah, we already know that,” Toby commented dryly. “That’s not exactly a news flash.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t go boasting about that too much,” Jude warned Liam. “The gods have a way of taking you down a peg or two if they think you’re being too happy—or too irreverent,” Jude pointed out. And then, as if not to leave Toby out, he couldn’t help commenting, “You know that being responsible for three kids can’t be doing much for your social life.”

“Why don’t you let me worry about my social life,” Toby told Jude in a laid-back tone.

Jude turned toward Liam. “Speaking of social life, how’s yours been lately? You seem a little...I don’t know, solitary these days,” he said. “I can remember a time when you had to beat girls off with a stick.”

“I do just fine, thanks, Jude.” He grinned. “I’ve learned not to beat them off anymore.”

Liam had always been devoted to working on his ranch from sunup to sundown—and then some.

“Just remember—both of you,” Jude said, looking from one brother to the other. “Don’t underestimate the value of having a good woman at your side.”

Liam drained his mug, setting it down again. He had to be getting back soon. As always, there was work to be done.

But he wasn’t ready to leave just yet. “God, Jude, ever since you got engaged to that little Mendoza girl, you’re acting whipped.”

“Don’t let Gabriella hear you call her a little girl,” Jude warned seriously. “She’s certainly more woman than you ever went out with—except for maybe that Julia Tierney.”

Something within Liam tensed at the mere mention of Julia’s name. It always did. Everyone had at least one person they thought of as “the one that got away.” Julia was his.

“He never went out with Julia,” Toby told Jude.

Jude looked a little confused. “I thought Liam asked every girl in his senior class out,” Jude said.

“He did ask,” Toby answered, keeping a straight face. “But Julia was the only one with the good sense to turn him down.” He turned his sharp blue eyes on Liam. “That wounded your fragile pride, didn’t it, big brother?”

“Shut up, both of you,” Liam ordered in a flat, emotionless voice. “And for the record, my pride’s not fragile and it wasn’t wounded. Not going out with me was Julia’s loss, not the other way around,” he informed his brothers in a no-nonsense voice.

He saw Toby’s mouth drop open and wondered why since he hadn’t exactly said anything earth-shattering or that novel for that matter. The next moment, both his brothers were scrambling to their feet, as if, belatedly, to show their respect.

“Funny, I remember it the other way around,” a melodic female voice behind Liam’s chair said.

Caught off guard, Liam swung around so fast he almost caused his chair to tilt and deposit him on the sawdust floor. He managed to steady the chair at the very last moment, preventing a spill and a great deal of embarrassment on his part.

The object of their conversation was smiling a greeting at his brothers.

* * *

Julia had stopped by the Horseback Hollow Grill with a definite agenda in mind. The Grill was the town’s only restaurant and she had just happened upon a situation that could very well enable her to bring a second eatery to the small town.

She had been looking at The Grill with fresh eyes, as if she’d never seen the place before, when she’d heard Liam Jones making a commotion as he banged down his mug. Curiosity had prompted her to move closer to his table to find out what was going on. Ordinarily she would have kept to herself, but she was feeling hopeful about her future for the first time in a long time, so she’d decided to indulge herself and find out what the man was carrying on about.

He had certainly changed a lot since their high school days, she couldn’t help thinking. His build had gotten way more muscular and his tan appeared to be permanent, no doubt from his days on the ranch. But what he had gained in looks, he had lost in temperament. From the little bit she had caught, he sounded as though he was well on his way to becoming a grumpy old man, not the exciting, wild-eyed bad boy she had known in high school.

“Hello, boys. How are you?” she asked, looking at Toby and Jude. Then, as they nodded, offering almost a synchronized chorus of “Fine, how are you?” she looked at Toby. Her blue eyes crinkled as she asked, “How are the kids, Toby?”

“They’re doing great, thanks for asking,” Toby told her, beaming.

She didn’t leave it there, although she knew she could have. But she was serious in asking after the children Toby had selflessly taken in—surprising a lot of people—and she wanted Toby to be aware of something.

“You’re doing a good thing, Toby, taking those children in like that,” she said warmly. “Kids need to feel wanted. It anchors them.”

* * *

So now she was dispensing child-rearing advice? Liam thought. Well that went with the territory, didn’t it? Julia had always acted as if she felt she was above him and, by association, above his family, as well.

“Since when did you start dabbling in child psychology?” Liam asked, acutely aware that the one girl in high school who had actually hurt his budding male ego was still going out of her way to ignore him. And even more acutely aware that no matter how much he tried not to let it bother him—it did.

“That’s not psychology, that’s just common sense, Jones—or should I say Fortune Jones?” she asked, the corners of her mouth curving as she looked at him.

“Might just be wiser not to say anything at all,” Liam countered.

Jude and Toby exchanged looks and pushed their chairs in against the table.

“I think that’s our cue to leave,” Jude said to his younger brother. He then tipped the rim of his hat to Julia. “Nice seeing you again, Julia.”

“Yeah, see you around,” Toby echoed his brother, tipping his own hat belatedly.

Liam waited until his brothers had walked out of the bar before he said, “If you’re expecting to hear the same from me, you’re going to have to wait until hell freezes over.”

Rather than be affronted, Julia smiled up at Liam. “I’ve never expected anything from you, Liam, except exactly what you delivered. Which was nothing,” she added after a beat in case there was any question as to her meaning.

He was not about to take the bait, he told himself. Instead he said mildly, “Been sharpening that tongue of yours, I see.”

Julia inclined her head. “I guess you just bring out the worst in me, Jones.”

He appeared unfazed by her assessment. “I didn’t know there was anything else to bring out,” he replied mildly.

“Is that why you asked me out that time in high school?” she questioned with a knowing smile. She had been more than a little attracted to him at the time, but he had always had all these simpering girls around him, ready to do anything he asked just to be with him. It had been enough to turn her completely off. There was absolutely no way she would have ever allowed herself to be part of an adoring crowd, a devoted groupie like the others. Liam had had a large enough ego back then without her adding to it.

“Anyone else would have realized that I’d asked you out because I didn’t want you to feel left out and wonder if there was something wrong with you. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“There’s a difference between being left out of a crowd and being superior to the crowd. You seemed to thrive on having all those girls fawn over you and, frankly, I never saw what all the attraction was so I never wanted to join that very limited club,” she informed him. There was no way in heaven she’d admit to being attracted to him then—and she was even more unwilling to admit that the attraction had never really faded away.

His eyes narrowed, pinning her down. “For someone who didn’t want to join the club, I sure caught you looking at me enough times,” he recalled.

“Yes, I looked at you,” she admitted. “But if you’d actually looked back at me, you would have realized that was pity in my eyes, not admiration.” She shook her head, her long, straight hair moving like a mesmerizing red cloud as it framed her face. “But you just assumed that all the girls were so crazy about you.”

This could go on for hours. Though he would have never admitted it out loud, they were pretty evenly matched and he wasn’t about to get the best of her any time soon. She might not have anything else to do—since she was obviously not rushing back to the grocery store she managed for her ailing father—but he had a ranch to run.

“I don’t have time for this,” he declared abruptly.

“You never did have time for the truth,” he heard her say as he turned his back on her and walked out of the bar.

It took Liam a while to cool down. Longer than the trip back to the ranch. Julia Tierney was the one person in town who could raise his blood pressure to dangerous heights with no effort at all.

She could also do the same thing to his body temperature.

Chapter Two

As was her custom six days a week, Julia came down from the small apartment above the store where she lived at exactly 7:00 a.m. to unlock the front door to the Horseback Hollow Superette, the town’s only grocery store, which had been in her family for several generations. It was also the only grocery store for thirty miles.

The store served its customers from seven until seven Monday through Saturday. On Sundays, the hours were somewhat shorter. However, since Julia did live just above the grocery store, she could always be reached in case someone had a “food emergency” of some sort—such as relatives showing up for a forgotten dinner just when the cupboard was bare.

Running the family business had not been what she’d envisioned doing with her life when she had been a senior in high school, but this was—at least for now—the plan that life seemed to have in store for her.

Twelve years ago she had been all set to go away to an out-of-state college with an eye out to someday perhaps owning her own restaurant. She’d loved to cook ever since she could reach the top of the stove without the benefit of using a stool. She could still remember the very first thing she had prepared for her parents: cinnamon toast. At four she’d been proud enough to burst at what she’d viewed to be a major accomplishment: toast buttered on both sides with a dusting of cinnamon.

Her parents had been nothing but encouraging and supportive from the start, telling her there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do or become if she set her mind to it.

And then, just like that, her world had come crashing down all around her.

Right before she was to leave for her first semester at college, her father had had a heart attack. For a while it was touch and go and the doctors weren’t sure if he would pull through. There was no way she could leave him or her mother at a time like that.

And even when her father began to come around, she found more than a ton of reasons that kept her right where she was. Between concern over her father’s health and trying to keep up her mother’s morale—not to mention because her parents needed the income to pay for her father’s medical bills—there was no way she could find the time to go away to school. Her family needed her too much and she’d refused to leave them high and dry.

Though they always had part-time help at the Superette, there was really no one else to keep things going. Math had always been her mother’s undoing.

So Julia had stayed on, putting her dream on hold—which sounded a good deal better to her than saying that she was giving up her dream—and doing what needed to be done.

Looking back now, that almost seemed like a lifetime ago to her.

With time, her father, Jack, had improved somewhat, although he was never again the hale-and-hearty man he’d been before the heart attack. And eventually, she’d seen the color come back into her mother’s face to the point that Annie Tierney no longer looked as if she was auditioning for the part of a ghost.

As for herself, she’d gone from being a carefree, whimsical young girl to being a practical, pragmatic young woman with the weight of the world occasionally on her shoulders.

But she managed. She always managed.

Those years had also seen her married and then divorced, neither of which happened with a great deal of emotion or fanfare. Marrying Neal Baxter, a local boy who had just returned to Horseback Hollow to practice law after getting his degree, seemed like the right thing to do at the time. She and Neal were friends and Julia had honestly believed that having a friend to go through life with was a smart thing to do.

But a few years into the marriage, a marriage that seemed to be built on little more than mutual respect and a whole lot of boredom, she and Neal came to the conclusion that they really liked one another far too much to be trapped in something that promised no joy to either of them.

So an uncontested, amicable divorce settlement was quickly and quietly reached. They each came away with whatever they had brought into the marriage.

It was a case of no harm, no foul, except that Julia had learned that dreaming about things you couldn’t have—such as a passionate marriage—really did hurt.

After that, the store became her haven, her home base. It was the one thing she could always depend on to be there. After a time her job became so ingrained she went about her day’s work routine practically on autopilot.

Before unlocking the door, she first prepared the store for customers. Produce was put out and carefully arranged in the appropriate bins. The breads, pastries and especially the doughnuts were baked fresh every morning—she saw to that even though it meant she had to get up extremely early to get the goodies to the store in time to arrange the display. It was her one creative outlet and she looked forward to the scents of sugar and butter in her kitchen each morning.

Aside from that, there were always a hundred different little details to see to and Julia kept a running checklist in her head at all times, making sure she hadn’t forgotten anything.

She did all this by herself and even, at times, found the solitude of the store comforting at that hour.

So when she saw her mother in the store, Julia was more than a little surprised. Her mother was sweeping the aisles, a chore Julia normally took care of just before opening, a full hour before she normally came in. Annie always arrived after having made breakfast for her husband.

Judging by her presence—not to mention the look on her mother’s face—something was definitely up.

Julia approached the problem—because there had to be a problem—slowly by asking, “Mom, what are you doing here?”

Looking far from her normally sunny self, Annie answered, “It’s my store. I work here. Or have you forgotten?”

“I know you work here, Mom,” Julia said patiently, “but you don’t come in until after eight. Everything okay with Dad?” she asked, suddenly concerned.

Julia realized that was the only thing that would make her mother break with her regular routine. Her mother was nothing if not a creature of habit. It was Annie who had taught her that a regular routine would give her life structure.

And she had been right.

If it hadn’t been for her routine, Julia was certain that the act of setting her goals and dreams aside would have crushed her spirit so badly she wouldn’t have been able to function and come through for her parents the way she had. She had taken everything over, becoming what her mother was quick to point out was not just her right hand, but her left one, as well.

Julia owed that to a well-instilled sense of structure, not to mention to a very keen sense of family loyalty.

“Your father,” Annie said, answering her question, “is the same as he was yesterday and, God willing, the same as he will be tomorrow. Well, but not perfect.” She paused to smile at her daughter. “But then, no man is ever perfect.”

It was a familiar mantra that her mother had uttered more than a handful of times.

What was different this time was the sadness around the edges of her smile. And the deeper sadness she could see in her mother’s eyes.

Taking the straw broom out of her mother’s hands, Julia leaned it against the closest wall. She then took both of her mother’s hands in hers and said, “Mom, if your face was hanging down any lower, you wouldn’t need that broom to sweep up all that imaginary dust you always see on the floor. You could use your chin. Now come clean. What’s wrong?”

Annie took a breath, apparently struggling to find the right words.

“It’s you.”

Julia stared at her mother. Whatever she’d expected to hear, it wasn’t that.

“Me?” she cried incredulously.

Her mother’s answer had succeeded in stunning her. How could she possibly be responsible for that look of utter devastation on her mother’s remarkably unlined face? Hadn’t she all but lived and breathed family and the business for twelve years now, leaving aside her own hopes and dreams?

In her view, that would have been cause for her mother to celebrate, not look as if someone precious to her had just died.

“Mom, how can you say that? What more can I do? I’m almost knocking myself out every day to make sure the store stays open and running,” Julia pointed out.

Her mother shook her head, her expression telling her that she just didn’t understand. “That’s just it, Julia. You shouldn’t have to be knocking yourself out. This is the time of your life that you should look back on fondly when you get to be my age. You shouldn’t be forced to feel like you worked your life away.”

“But I don’t feel that way, Mom,” Julia protested with feeling. Granted, there were times when she felt as if she did nothing but work, but for the most part, she did fine running the grocery store—not to mention putting out her baked goods in a little area that was set aside for the shopper who required a cup of coffee and a pastry to jump-start their morning.

Rather than look relieved, her mother looked as if she was growing agitated for her.

“Well, if you don’t, you should,” her mother insisted. “You should be resentful that your father and I stole twelve perfectly good years of your life away from you by allowing you to be here for us.”

Still holding her mother’s hands, Julia led her to a chair over in the corner, just behind the main counter, and knelt in front of her, looking directly into her mother’s kind, warm eyes.

“Mom, what’s this all about?” she asked gently.

“Maybe I’m seeing things clearly for the first time in years. This isn’t fair to you, honey,” she insisted, “making you work here day after day. You’ve sacrificed your education, your career, your marriage—”

“Hold it,” Julia declared, holding up her hand. “Back it up, Mom. First of all, I didn’t sacrifice my education. I can always go back to college. It would take a little doing, but it’s not impossible. Second, I do that. I can get a career going. And besides, the one I had my eye on back then didn’t ultimately require having a college degree so much as it required dedication—it still does,” she said, unlocking the front door, then walking back to her mother.

“And third, working here was not what killed my marriage. Mutual, soul-snuffing boredom did that.” Julia sighed, feeling a wave of sadness taking root. She had never failed at anything before, but it was about time she accepted the fact that she’d failed at marriage. “Neal and I should have never gotten married in the first place.”

“But Neal was such a nice boy,” Annie pointed out, protesting the whole idea that their marriage had been a mistake from the beginning.

“Yes, he was and he still is,” Julia readily agreed. “But we got married because it seemed like the right thing to do and nobody should get married thinking pragmatically like that. When Neal and I were married, there was no magic, no chemistry, no starbursts—and those are three very important qualities to have in the foundation of a marriage,” Julia stressed.

Leaning in, Julia affectionately pressed a kiss to her mother’s forehead. “So stop beating yourself up. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be and when the time is right, I’ll go on to another phase of my life. Until then,” she said, rising to her feet again, “why don’t you make sure all the eggs are out of the refrigerator in the storage room?”

The bell that hung over the entrance to the grocery store rang, signaling the arrival of the store’s first customer of the day.

“You do that,” she told her mother, “while I go see what this customer wants.”

Turning from her mother, Julia found herself looking straight up at Liam Jones. She wasn’t a short woman—five foot eight in her bare feet and her feet weren’t bare—but at six foot three Liam literally seemed to tower over her. Especially, she noted, since he was wearing boots that added another inch and a half to his height.

Seeing him here surprised her—when was the last time he’d come to the grocery store?—but Julia managed to recover quickly enough.

“Wow, twice in one week,” she joked, referring to seeing him. “Are the planets about to collide or something equally as dire?”

Liam was frowning. She was beginning to think that his face had set that way, like some grumpy old man who whiled away his days parked in a chair on a front porch, scowling at the world.

“I don’t know about the planets, but we sure are,” he told her darkly.

“And exactly what is that supposed to mean?” Julia wanted to know.

“I came to hear you say that it’s not true.”

“Okay,” Julia said obligingly. “‘It’s not true.’” She waited for him to say something. When he didn’t, she gave in and asked, “What’s not true?”

“The rumors I heard.”

They were back to this again, she thought, frustrated. “Okay, I’ll bite. What rumors?” she asked, gritting her teeth.

What was it about this pompous cowboy that set her so completely on edge every time they were within ten feet of each other?

She couldn’t answer that, which only made the whole situation that much more frustrating for her.

“The rumors that say you’re trying to convince those damn Fortunes to stick their noses where they don’t belong and open up some high-falutin’ restaurant in Horseback Hollow.”

Now how did he know she’d been talking to the Mendozas?

“‘Damn Fortunes’?” she echoed. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you a Fortune?” she challenged.

His sharp, penetrating blue eyes narrowed as he said, “Consider yourself corrected.”

That caught her off guard for a second. Had the stories she’d heard been wrong? “So you’re not a Fortune?”

“No.” He all but spit the word out with all the contempt he could put into the two-letter word.

And then she remembered something else she’d heard. Something that completely negated what he’d just told her. “Funny, your mother was in here the other day and she seems to think that all of her children have now adopted the Fortune name.” She had him there, Julia thought.

To her surprise, Liam didn’t take back his statement. Instead he said, “My mother is too softhearted for her own good. She’ll believe anyone. And don’t try to turn this thing around so I lose track of the question. Are you or are you not trying to talk those people into bringing their tainted business into our town?”

She seized the word—but not the one he would have thought of.

“That’s right, Liam. Our town. Not your town, but our town. That means I get a say in what happens here, too, not just you and your incredibly narrow vision.” The man was practically medieval in his outlook. If it were up to him, everyone would still be living in the dark ages.

Liam looked at her coldly. “So it’s true.”

She might as well spell it out for him, otherwise she had a feeling that she would have no peace from this man. Why was he so against progress, anyway?

“If you mean am I trying to show Wendy and Marcos Mendoza that building another one of their restaurants here in Horseback Hollow is a very good idea, then yes, it’s true.” The restaurant would attract business and provide jobs. There was no downside to that.

He succeeded in taking her breath away with his very next question. “Why do you want to destroy the town, Julia?”

For a second she was so stunned she was speechless. And then she found her tongue. “Are you crazy? This wouldn’t destroy the town. This would be an incredibly good thing for the town.”

“Right,” Liam sneered. “‘A good thing,’” he echoed contemptuously. “And after they build this restaurant, what’s next? Bring in chain retail stores? Or maybe a shopping mall? Don’t forget, they bring in a chain store, that’ll be the end of this little family store of yours, as well.” He gestured around the store. “You and your parents will be out living on the street—and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself.”

How could he come up with all this and still keep a straight face? It was just beyond her. “You know,” she told him, “you should really be a science-fiction writer with that imagination of yours.”

Annie Tierney picked this moment to emerge out of the rear storeroom. Seeing Liam beside her daughter, the woman beamed and came forward.

“Hello, Liam,” she greeted him. “Tell me, how is your mother feeling these days?”

Chapter Three

Annie Tierney’s unannounced appearance caught Liam off guard.

He offered her a polite smile. “She’s feeling fine, Mrs. Tierney.”

Julia’s mother laughed, the look on her face telling him that he had misunderstood her question. “I’m not asking after her health, dear. I’m asking how she feels about finding out that she’s actually the long-lost daughter of such a very well-to-do, powerful family. The Fortunes,” she added when Jeanne Marie’s son didn’t immediately respond. “Personally, I find it all very exciting,” Annie went on to confide. “It certainly would be a load off my mind if I found out that I was related to them.”

The older woman turned to look at her daughter. There was unmistakable affection in her eyes. “The first thing I’d do is send my girl off to the very best college that money could buy instead of letting her slave her life away here.”

“I’m not slaving, Mom,” Julia reiterated the point she’d made before Liam had burst into her store with his annoying accusations. “And this is a conversation we can continue later, when we’re alone.” She deliberately emphasized, then looked directly at Liam. “Which will be soon because Liam’s just leaving. Aren’t you, Liam?” Julia asked, looking at him pointedly as she did her best to muster the semblance of a friendly smile, strictly for her mother’s benefit.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” he agreed, his eyes never leaving hers, “seeing as how I was never any good at banging my head against a brick wall.”

“Oh, you poor dear,” Annie declared, instantly sympathetic. As she spoke, Annie reached up to move Liam’s light brown hair off his forehead so she could examine it, but he took a step back, preventing her.

“No, ma’am, don’t worry. I didn’t hit my head in your store.”

When Annie looked at him quizzically, Liam knew she was waiting for him to explain his comment. He was forced to lie so that the woman wouldn’t think he was being flippant about the Superette. He really liked Annie Tierney. She was friendly, always saw the good in everyone and had a kind soul. In his opinion, Julia could have stood to learn a few things from her mother.

“Then where did you hit your head?” Annie asked.

“At the ranch,” he told her, trying to ease away from the topic. “Last week,” he added to forestall any further questions.

“Oh, well mind you watch yourself,” Annie cautioned. “Head injuries aren’t something to just be shrugged off.” And then the serious look on her face vanished as she told him, “I just put on a kettle in the back. Would you care for some tea?”

“No, but thank you for the offer.” Since he knew it seemed rather odd that he’d come into the grocery store without buying anything and was now leaving empty-handed, he told the older woman, “I just came by to have a word with your daughter.”

“Oh.” The thin face lit up, completely erasing the very few lines that were evident. “Well, then by all means, have words,” Annie said encouragingly. “Don’t mind me. I’ll just be in the back, having my tea,” she told them as she made her way out of the store and retreated to the storeroom again.

“She’s a very nice lady,” Liam commented to Julia, watching her mother leave.

Well, there at least he would get no disagreement from her, Julia thought. That was possibly the only area that they wouldn’t clash over. For the most part, he had the very annoying ability of making her want to say “black” whenever he said “white.”

“Yes, she is,” Julia agreed quietly, deliberately avoiding making any eye contact with him.

Liam obviously had no such inclination. Instead he turned to look at her. Julia could tell by his expression that the temporary truce that had been silently called while her mother had been in the immediate vicinity was officially over.

“What would she say if she knew?” he suddenly challenged.

Okay, maybe she just wasn’t sharp today, Julia thought shortly. What the hell was he talking about now?

“Knew about what?”

He looked at her as if she’d suddenly turned simple. She caught herself wanting to strangle him.

“That you’re seriously thinking about trying to get the Fortunes to bring their big-city blight right here to Horseback Hollow.”

“If you’re still referring to my wanting to encourage Wendy and her husband to open up their second restaurant here, she would probably say, ‘Go for it, Julia.’” She raised her chin like someone bracing for a grueling battle. “My mother has always been very supportive of my dreams and I’ve had this one for a very long time.”

His eyes became blue laserlike slits as he regarded her. “So you’re telling me that it’s your dream to destroy Horseback Hollow?”

She wasn’t saying any such thing and he knew it, Julia thought angrily. How could she have ever been attracted to this Neanderthal? She must have been out of her mind.

“No,” Julia contradicted with feeling, struggling not to raise her voice and yell at him. The last thing she wanted to do was to have her mother overhear her giving Liam a piece of her mind—even if he did sorely need it. But she’d had just about all she could take of his holier-than-thou pontificating. “It’s always been my dream to build the town up.”

He laughed shortly. “Right now, that’s the same thing from where I’m standing.”

And just who had died and made him the reigning authority on things like this?

“Well, then, maybe you’d better move and get the sun out of your eyes because you certainly aren’t seeing things clearly.”

“The town’s doing just fine as it is,” he insisted. What was wrong with her? “Why can’t you see how destructive it would be to allow outsiders’ interests to take over Horseback Hollow? What do we need with another restaurant, anyway?” he challenged her.

Just how blind was he? she wondered, frustrated. “Does the term ‘freedom of choice’ mean anything to you?” she returned frostily.

His mouth curved in a humorless smile. “Only if it means I’m free to ignore you.”

“Go right ahead,” she declared, gesturing toward the door. “But you’re going to have to do it outside my store.”

The next moment she’d suddenly put her hands against his back and began to push him toward the door.

She managed to move Liam a few stumbling feet only because she’d caught him by surprise. But once he regained his balance, Liam employed his full weight as a counterforce and there was no way she could budge him more than a couple of shaky inches.

“I just want to say one more thing—” he began.

Exhausted by her effort to move him any farther toward the door, Julia dropped her hands to her sides. “I’ll hold you to that,” she told him sharply.

“How are your folks going to feel when this store is forced to close down?” His tone was surprisingly mild as he put the question to her. He looked like a man who felt he’d scored his winning goal and was just waiting for the fact to sink in with the opposing team.

Julia, however, looked at him as if she thought he’d just lost his mind.

“Why would this store be forced to close down?” She wanted to know his rationale.

Like a parent introducing a new concept to a child, he began to patiently explain. “Hey, chain drugstores aren’t going to be the only thing that’ll be turning up here once you open the floodgates and start ‘building the town up.’ Big chain supermarkets will be horning their way in here, too.” Liam paused to look around the grocery store that had remained relatively unchanged for most of his lifetime. He found that rather comfortingly reassuring. “And this store, with its neat little aisles and limited selections will be boarded up faster than you can say ‘I told you so,’” he concluded.

“I wouldn’t be saying ‘I told you so.’” There were small, sharp daggers coming from her eyes, all aimed at his heart—if he actually had one. “That would be your line,” she retorted.

“Yes,” Liam agreed, grinning from ear to ear. “It would be.”

The strange thing about that grin, Julia later recalled, was that it didn’t seem to reach his eyes. In her experience, any smile or grin that was genuine in scope always included the eyes. Without the eyes being involved, the person who was smiling was only trying to fool people as to his mind-set.

Sometimes, she couldn’t help thinking, they were out to fool themselves, as well. The first time she noticed the difference between real smiles and ones that were entrenched in deception, consciously or otherwise, was when she’d caught a glimpse of her own face in the mirror on her wedding day.

Her eyes hadn’t been smiling then, either. At the time, she was doing what she felt was the “right thing.” It had taken her three years before she’d admitted that to herself.

“Look,” she told Liam, “either buy something or leave. I’ve got work to do and I don’t have time to let you go on badgering me like this because you’re so small-minded you can’t see that you either progress or wither and die on the vine. And you might be content to let Horseback Hollow stagnate, but I want it to flourish.”

He looked at her for a long moment, as if he was debating saying anything to her or not. Finally he said, “There’s a third alternative in that multiple choice of yours.”

She didn’t see it and couldn’t imagine what his point was. “Enlighten me,” she told him.

He laughed at her choice of words. “That’ll take a lot longer than I have right now. But let me just tell you what that third choice is.... It’s maintaining the status quo.”

That was just theme and variation of one of the two choices she’d presented to him.

“In other words, stagnating,” she declared. But before he could say anything further to contradict what he’d just labeled his so-called “third” choice, Julia started talking rapidly to get her point across.

“Nothing ever remains the same, no matter how much you might want it to. Change is inevitable and you can’t stop it or stand in its way. But you can guide it,” she emphasized.

Liam frowned as he shook his head, the ultimate immovable object to her irresistible force. “Sorry, it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than that to convince me to surrender to the boys with the deep pockets. I’d rather just go my own way.”

“Why don’t you?” she said encouragingly. The next moment she’d crossed the floor to the door and held it wide open for him, her meaning clear. “Nobody here will stop you, that’s for damn sure.”

Rather than do exactly that and just leave, Liam pulled himself up to his full height and seemed to just loom over her, his bearing fully emphasizing just how much taller than her he really was.

“No, but someone should really stop you,” he told her in a voice that was completely devoid of any humor. “Before it’s too late and we all wind up suffering the consequences.”

Again Julia raised her chin defiantly, her eyes flashing as she barely managed to suppress her anger.

“It’ll take a better man than you to do it,” she informed him hotly.

“Maybe,” Liam allowed, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

Before Julia could ask him just what he intended to do, Liam did it.

Did something he hadn’t even foreseen himself doing—at least not in the heat of this exchange. Although if he were being completely honest with himself, he would have had to admit that he had envisioned exactly this transpiring more than just once or twice in his head—as well as in his unguarded dreams.

One second they were exchanging glares and hot words, the next it was no longer just the words that were hot.

It was the two of them.

Liam had caught her by her shoulders and brought his mouth down on hers.

There was the argument that doing this was the only way to stop her from talking and, more importantly, from espousing the so-called cause she seemed so intent on pushing.

There was a whole host of arguments and half-truths he could have told himself about why he had done what he’d done. But deep in his soul, he knew that there was only one real reason he was doing this.

Because he wanted to.

* * *

Rather than embracing the cause that was so close to her heart, after a beat, to her dismay, Julia found herself embracing him instead. Found herself weaving her arms around Liam’s neck as best she could, raising herself up on her tiptoes so that she could lean her body into his.

She had to have lost her mind; there was no other explanation for behaving this way.

Yet, as upset as doing this made her, Julia just could not make herself pull back or break away from Liam and his lethal lips.

Not even the tiniest bit.

Not when the very blood in her veins was rising to an alarming temperature and the room was spinning around her faster than Dorothy’s house when it was snatched up by the twister that had sent it whisking off to Oz.

Julia realized that her heart rate had quickened to the point of doubling and the very air seemed to have disappeared right out of her lungs.

Heaven knew that she’d been kissed before, more times than she could possibly count. And of course she’d made love before, as well, but this... This was some kind of new, crazy sensation that she had never, ever encountered before and although she knew, knew in her heart, that whatever this was, was bad for her, she just couldn’t make herself pull away and stop.

Not yet.

A few seconds from now, yes, but not yet.

* * *

Liam was completely convinced that he had succeeded in utterly losing his mind. There was no other reason for what was going on.

He wasn’t that eighteen-year-old hotshot that he had once been anymore, wasn’t that cocky high school senior who reveled in the adulation he saw in every single high school girl’s eyes when she looked at him.

Back then, he’d thrived on those looks and those girls.

But right now he would have been hard-pressed to remember any of their names. They all seemed like just so many interchangeable entities, feeding his fragile young ego and providing a release for all those wild, raging hormones that plagued so many boys at that age.

He’d eventually outgrown that stage, settled down in his thinking and while he did enjoy female companionship with a fair amount of regularity, he wasn’t looking for anything permanent because he wasn’t interested in settling down with any one woman.

Settling.

There wasn’t really a single girl he’d gone out with, a single girl or woman in Horseback Hollow who turned up in his dreams at night, who gave him a reason to whistle tunelessly to himself as he looked forward to Saturday-night outings.

But this, whatever this was, was different. Different enough to put a fire in his belly and make him suddenly feel alive.

Finally pulling back—because Liam was afraid that if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to surface ever again—he looked at the woman who had just shaken up the foundations of his well-ordered world. Looked at her for a long, hard moment.

And when he spoke, the words could definitely not be viewed as romantic in any manner, shape or form.

“What the hell was that?” He wanted to know.

“I have no idea,” Julia answered hoarsely, trying desperately to look angry, to feel angry, and completely unable to manage to do either. “But don’t ever do it again.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Liam replied in a voice that was just as hoarse as hers, a fact that really annoyed him no end.

He said it because, at the time, he meant it.

Or at least he thought he did.

Chapter Four

Harlan Osgood wore not one but two hats in his everyday life.

First and foremost, like his father before him, Harlan was the town barber. He owned and ran The Cuttery, Horseback Hollow’s only barbershop. Eventually he’d expanded the shop to include a hair salon, as well, for those ladies who were brave enough to cross the threshold and place the fate of their flowing tresses in Harlan’s hands.

Almost everyone in town sat in one of his chairs at one time or another, most on a fairly regular basis. Interacting with these town residents gave Harlan some insight into the way the locals felt about all sorts of matters that concerned them. He was a good listener, always had been, and that, in turn, helped him make some of the decisions he needed to make when he donned his other hat, the one that figuratively belonged to the town mayor.

All things considered, the latter was almost an honorary position. For one thing, there was next to no monetary compensation for the job. Being elected mayor by the good people of Horseback Hollow fed his self-esteem rather than helped him put food on the table. That was what running the Cuttery was for.

Harlan had always been considered a decent, fair man by his friends and neighbors. He wasn’t one to impose his will over the objection of others, didn’t look for ways—devious or otherwise—to line his pockets or the pockets of his friends at the town’s expense. What had put Harlan in office and kept him there election after election was his honest belief that in a town as small as Horseback Hollow, that everyone’s voice really counted and was equal to everyone else’s.

The way he saw it, one person was no better, no worse than another, and that included him.

Harlan first heard the rumor about the possibility of a new restaurant—funded by some of the Fortunes of Red Rock—coming here to Horseback Hollow the way he heard about almost everything else that came to his attention: from one of the customers sitting in his barber’s chair.

In less than forty-eight hours, what began as a vague rumor quickly became the topic that was on everyone’s lips. No matter who was doing the talking, it seemed that everyone, young or old, had an opinion on the subject of this new restaurant that might be coming.

Some spoke with feelings and passion about this restaurant that had yet to materialize. Others chose to feel him out first before stating how they felt on the matter.

“What do you think about that new place that’s coming to Horseback?” Riley Johnson, one of his most regular customers, asked him.

The rancher, lean and rangy of build, came in for a haircut like clockwork every two weeks despite the fact that he had very little hair to speak of these days. He came, Harlan suspected, for the company and a chance for some male interaction. Riley owned a fairly small spread as far as ranches in the area went and he and his wife had been blessed with all girls. Riley spent most of his days feeling outnumbered.

The barbershop was a place to regroup.

Riley twisted around in his chair to look at the man he’d known going on five decades, waiting for the latter to answer.

“Well, it’s not a done deal just yet, Riley,” Harlan pointed out as he made rhythmic cuts to the hair that was there.

“I heard it’s more done than not,” Clyde Hanks, another regular, waiting for his turn with Harlan, spoke up.

“Well, you heard wrong,” Harlan told him, keeping his eyes on his work and Riley’s balding pate. “Nobody’s put in any papers for it and nothing’s crossed my desk yet. There’s gotta be permits issued, land measured, all sorts of tedious things like that before anything gets started,” Harlan said. “You boys know that.”

Riley still looked a bit skeptical. “And you’re not just holding out on us?”

“No reason not to tell you if it was happening,” Harlan answered mildly.

“You ask me, it’s not a good idea,” Riley said.

“Bringing in new business is always a good idea,” Clyde maintained.

Harlan could see both sides of the matter, the way he always did. The good and the bad. Which was why he decided that calling a town meeting to put the matter up for discussion and then eventually to a vote might just be the best way to handle this budding tempest in a teapot—before that teapot boiled over.

The meeting was set for Friday evening at seven.

As always, Harlan relied primarily on word of mouth to spread the news of the town meeting. To play it safe, he also had a couple of notices posted, one in the Superette because most of the town frequented the grocery store, and one in the town’s only post office. To his way of thinking, this was as close to covering all bases as he could possibly get.

And then Harlan went back to business as usual, doing what needed to be done until the day of the meeting.

* * *

Julia glanced at her watch. It was almost time for the meeting. She was so preoccupied, going over what she wanted to say and trying very hard not to be nervous, that she didn’t hear her father’s soft footfalls until he was next to her. The once heavyset man had lost a great deal of weight, but he was on the mend and determined to get better with each passing day.

“Julia?”

“Oh, Dad, you scared me,” she said, looking up, startled.

He smiled at her. “I just wanted to wish you luck tonight. Some of our friends and neighbors can be real stubborn about changing anything.” His protective attitude toward her was out in full display as he said, “Maybe I should go with you.”

He still thought of himself as being stronger than he was. She knew these baby steps toward full recovery were frustrating for him, but she didn’t want him taking on more than he should. “No, you know excitement isn’t good for you, Dad. You’ve more than done enough already,” she told him with feeling. “Finding out about the Mendozas and how they were looking for a new location for a second restaurant, setting up my introduction to them... I’ll take it from here.”

“You know, I wanted this for you. Wanted to find some way to pay you back for what you gave up to stay here for me.”

She didn’t want him to feel obliged to her in any way. She’d stayed out of love, not because anyone had made her. “Dad—”

“Let me have my say, Julie. I didn’t do all that much, just asked around to find out where you could get in contact with that Marcos Mendoza guy. Most of it was just a matter of luck, anyway, him being married to Wendy Fortune. They’re looking to expand their business, so why shouldn’t it be here? Especially since James Fortune is so thrilled to finally make contact with his long-lost sister Jeanne Marie, and her living right here in Horseback Hollow. You might even call it fate. I just tugged a little on fate’s hand, that’s all. You did the rest. You wrote to them and laid it all out, nice and pretty, the way I knew you would, telling them about all the ways building their next restaurant right here was a good idea for them and for the town. You always did have a real good head on your shoulders, Julie. Almost as good as your heart,” he said with barely contained emotion.

Moved, she hugged him. “I love you, Dad.”

“Right back at you, baby. Now go knock ’em dead,” he urged.

The meeting was held at the Two Moon Saloon. As usual, the bar was declared officially closed for the duration of the meeting. The establishment’s tables were all pushed to the side, against the walls, and extra folding chairs had been brought in.

As always, there were more people than chairs, but that was just the way things were and no one seemed to mind all that much. Standing for the duration of the meeting seemed like a small price to pay for being included in the town’s voting process.

At exactly the stroke of seven, Harlan began the meeting. “Thank you all for coming,” he said, addressing people he considered to be his friends rather than his constituents. “I don’t think many of you have to be told why we’re here.”

“I dunno about anyone else, but I’m here to get out of doing more chores,” a male voice at the back of the room piped up. A smattering of laughter followed the remark.

“Glad we could help you out, Zack,” Harlan said, recognizing the speaker’s voice. “All right, let’s get started,” he declared, bringing down his gavel and officially calling the meeting to order. “It’s recently come to my attention that there’s been some serious talk about some out-of-towners thinking of opening up a new restaurant right here in town.”

“Why do we need another restaurant? What’s wrong with The Grill, I’d like to know?” a woman on the left asked indignantly.

“Have you been there lately? It ain’t exactly the Four Seasons,” her neighbor, a woman with a rather heavyset face, pointed out.

“Well, this ain’t exactly New York now, is it?” the first woman countered.

“Ladies, ladies, you’ll all get your chance to state your opinions,” Harlan promised calmly. “That’s why we’re here. No need to try to shout one another down. We’re not taking a final vote tonight. That’s for the next meeting. Right now, we’re just going to discuss it. All right, one at a time, please,” he requested, looking out at the sea of faces before him. “Who wants to go first to make a case for or against a new restaurant opening up in Horseback Hollow?”

More than a few hands shot up. This certainly was a hot topic, Harlan thought. He fervently hoped that it wouldn’t divide the town and put the residents at odds with one another. Something like that could turn ugly quickly.

Though he rarely expressed his own opinion on things, he felt strongly about one thing. He would not stand by and see the people who were his neighbors come to blows over this. He wouldn’t allow the restaurant to be built here if it came down to that.

* * *

Though she was friendly on a one-to-one basis, especially with her store’s customers, for the most part Julia considered herself to be rather on the shy side. She certainly didn’t like to call attention to herself, and as a rule, didn’t like speaking up in a crowded room. She always preferred to keep out of the spotlight.

Julia had attended more than one town meeting without saying a single word during the proceedings, only raising her hand those times when a vote had to be taken.

But this was different.

This—the restaurant that was under discussion—could very well mean the resurrection of her own dream, as well as representing some definite choices for the residents of Horseback Hollow.

Contemplating the restaurant’s advent, Julia had already gone so far as to create whole menus in her head, menus that offered so much more than The Grill—the building next to the saloon—did. The latter only served burgers, hot dogs and a grilled-cheese sandwich, which served as the establishment’s main and most popular meal. The selection at The Grill was so limited that it almost hurt.

So, after listening to one opinion being stated after another, with little being resolved—it was more like mundane bickering—Julia decided that maybe it was time for her to speak up on the side of the restaurant. She could see only pluses in having the business built here.

“Anyone else want to say something?” Harlan asked when the last speaker had finally and mercifully run out of steam and sat down. His eyes quickly swept the room.

When he saw the raised hand, he looked rather surprised to see who that hand belonged to.

“Julia?” he said uncertainly. “Would you like to say something?” Even as he asked, the mayor still expected to hear her say “No,” that she hadn’t really meant to raise her hand.

But she didn’t.

“Yes, Mr. Mayor, I would,” she said in a firm voice that gave no hint to the fact that her stomach had flipped over and was currently tied up in a very tight knot.

“Well, stand up and speak up,” he said, gesturing for her to rise. “No use talking if nobody can hear you or see you.”

“Might not be any use her talking even if we can,” someone scoffed.

“Shut up, Silas, and let her say her piece.”

The tersely worded command didn’t come from the mayor, as Julia might have expected. It had come from Liam Jones.

Stunned, she looked over toward where the rancher was standing at the back of the room. He was indolently leaning against a wall, the expression on his face moderately contemptuous. Initially, she would have said the contempt was aimed at her. But now, with his becoming her unlikely defender, she really couldn’t say what Liam was being so contemptuous of.

“Thank you,” she mouthed.

Liam just nodded silently in response, indicated that she should get on with what she had to say.

Liam Jones was a hard man to read, Julia thought, turning her attention back to the subject that had brought her here.

* * *

In truth, Liam wasn’t sure just what had prompted him to speak up just now to silence the would-be heckler. The man had only said aloud what he himself had been thinking. But the thought of someone trying to ridicule Julia into holding her peace had unexpectedly raised a fire in his belly.

If anyone was going to put her in her place, it was going to be him, not some half-wit who thought himself to be clever. And he definitely didn’t want to hear her put in her place in front of a crowd where she could be publicly humiliated. There was no call for that sort of crude behavior.

Julia’s soft, melodic voice broke into his train of thought. Liam turned his attention, albeit somewhat against his will, toward the redhead who had been haunting his thoughts ever since he’d kissed her and had messed up life as he knew it.

“Now I know that a lot of you think that things are going along just fine the way they are in Horseback Hollow—” A smattering of voices agreeing with her echoed around the room. “But they’re not really,” Julia insisted. The same voices now muttered protests.

Harlan raised his gavel in a warning gesture as he looked around the room, daring the mumblers to continue. The murmurings stopped.

Julia continued as if nothing had happened. “You can’t tell me that things are so good, so perfect that we couldn’t stand to have a little more revenue coming into the town.”

“You mean like taxes?” someone asked, somewhat confused as to where she was going with this.

“No,” Julia answered patiently. “I mean like people coming here from some of the nearby towns to eat at the new restaurant and spend their money.”

“So the people who own the restaurant make money, what’s that do for us?” Riley Johnson challenged. Julia could see by the man’s expression that he was one of the ones she needed to convert to her way of thinking. The man could be very persuasive when he spoke.

“What it means to us is a great deal,” Julia insisted, quickly explaining, “after all, the restaurant isn’t going to run itself. It’s going to need waitresses and busboys as well as people to do the cooking, to make sure there’s enough food, enough coffee, tea and other beverages to drink. It takes a lot to run a decent-size restaurant.

“The restaurant’s backers are going to be hiring local people, not busing in people regularly from Red Rock,” she pointed out, effectively shooting down a rumor she’d heard making the rounds this morning. “And those customers who’ll come to eat at the restaurant, they’re not just all going to get back into their cars and drive away into the night,” she said with a laugh. “Maybe they’ll stay and look around, buy something before they go—”

“The town’s only got a handful of shops,” Riley pointed out, still not convinced that the good outweighed what he viewed as the bad in this case.

Julia approached the subject from another angle. “Maybe this’ll encourage some of you to open up more stores. The way it is right now, we have to drive to other towns to get almost everything. For example, we could stand to have a full-size bakery right here in Horseback Hollow,” she suggested.

Liam raised his voice above the voices of several other people, pointing out, “You’ve got a bakery in your store.”

“What we’ve got are doughnuts and coffee,” Julia corrected him, smiling amicably. “I’m talking about a real bakery, one that has proper cakes, pies, fresh-baked bread straight out of the oven on the premises, to name just a few things.”

She looked around to see if she was getting through and to her surprise, she began to make out faces rather than just a sea of blurred features and hair all running together.

Some of those faces were smiling at her with encouragement. Julia took heart in that.

“I’m talking about building up a place that I am proud to call home. It is not going to be easy and it is not going to happen overnight. But it all starts with that first step,” she said with sincerity because she really believed what she was telling the people at the meeting.

Unconsciously holding her breath, she looked around the room to see if she had managed to make her neighbors understand.

“Yeah, but that ‘step’ you’re talking about involves inviting those Fortunes into our town,” someone toward the back piped up. “Who knows, after they’re finished, it might not even be our town any longer.”

Where did they get these ideas? Julia couldn’t help wondering. Even as she did, she caught herself slanting a look in Liam’s direction.

Had he started that baseless rumor? She didn’t want to think that and he had come to her defense when Silas Marshall had tried to heckle her, but Liam wasn’t the kind of man who could be easily swayed with just a few well-placed words and a smile. The man was nothing if not frustratingly stubborn.

“Now listen,” she said. “I’ve done some research on the subject of the Fortunes. I found out that this family always gives back to the community they’re in, usually far more than they ever received. Why, they even built a medical clinic in Red Rock and started the Fortune Foundation.”

“What’s that?” Dinah Jackson queried.

“That’s a nonprofit, charitable organization that helps take care of people in need,” Julia answered, addressing her words to the woman directly. “People who might have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own.”

“Oh, handouts,” someone snorted contemptuously.

At times, these people had more pride than sense, Julia couldn’t help thinking.

“No, a hand up.” She put emphasis on the last word. There was a difference. “The foundation helps people stand up on their own two feet again. As far as I can see, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

A smattering of murmurings rose around the room again as people made comments to their neighbors, rendering their own opinions on what seemed to be the Fortunes’ obviously selfless behavior.

There were a few in the gathering who required more convincing—Liam among them—but for the most part, Julia could see that she had managed get the wavering and undecided thinking about the benefits of having this new restaurant here.

The mayor scanned the room, took note of some of the expressions and made a judgment call.

“All right, I think that we’ve had a fair amount of pro and con debating on this subject for tonight. It’s getting kind of late and we all have somewhere to be. If there are no objections, why don’t we put the matter to a preliminary vote, see where we all stand on this issue right now? Remember,” he warned, “no matter what the outcome of tonight’s vote is, nothing’s final. You all have time to think about this, do a little research before we take a final vote on the matter. As of right now, there’ve been no concrete bids made yet, no proposals about building this restaurant.

“As far as I know, this could just be one great big rumor with legs,” Harlan told the people at the meeting, chuckling at the verbal image he had just created for them.

“If the preliminary vote turns out to be yes, then I will personally go to Marcos and Wendy Mendoza and convince them to build their second restaurant right here in the heart of Horseback Hollow,” Julia promised.

The “heart” of Horseback, at the moment, only involved a two-block radius since that was all that actually comprised the little town.

“Mendoza?” Clyde Hanks echoed, confused. “I thought you said that the Fortunes were the ones who were behind this venture. Just who the heck are Marcos and Wendy Mendoza?” He, as did many others, wanted to know.

“Her name’s Wendy Fortune Mendoza,” Liam told the man tersely.

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