“If you have such a problem with my family’s money, why did you even ask me out tonight?”
“I told you I found you interesting,” Max said.
“The front page of the newspaper is interesting.”
“And because I can’t look at you without wanting you.”
Emily’s lips parted, but her suddenly addled brain couldn’t begin to frame a response.
“But that’s just about sex,” he added.
“Ah,” she said faintly. “Sex.”
“And the hitch isn’t just your money,” he went on, sounding dogged.
“My family’s money,” she corrected.
“You’re also my boss’s sister-in-law. So, like it or not, sleeping with you isn’t … smart.”
“Put that way, I suppose it probably isn’t.”
She froze when he slid those blunt-tipped, warm fingers over the back of her hand.
“Problem is—” his fingers slowly inched upward “—I usually make a habit of doing things that aren’t smart.”
Dear Reader,
Opposites attract. Everybody says so. But aside from that initial wham, when one thing instinctively draws close to another, what keeps them together?
Is it merely physical? Sometimes. But what happens if it’s not? When it’s something deeper? Something underneath the physical where two individuals sense they’re not opposites at all, but entirely similar, sharing the same needs, harboring the same desires, striving for the same goals?
That’s the question Max Allen and Emily Fortune are dealing with, and I thank you for joining them as they discover that what really matters to them isn’t their differences or their plans … it is each other.
Allison Leigh
About the Author
There is a saying that you can never be too rich or too thin. ALLISON LEIGH doesn’t believe that, but she does believe that you can never have enough books! When her stories find a way into the hearts—and bookshelves—of others, Allison says she feels she’s done something right. Making her home in Arizona with her husband, she enjoys hearing from her readers at [email protected] or PO Box 40772, Mesa AZ 85274-0772, USA.
Fortune’s
Perfect Match
Allison Leigh
MILLS & BOON
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For my dad.
Still my favorite pilot.
Prologue
December
Jesus loves me, this I knoooow …
The verse of the lullaby that her mother used to sing circled around and around inside Emily Fortune’s head.
Tears squeezed out from her tightly closed eyes. She’d closed them because of the dust and debris, but she knew if she opened them again, she would still be there in the dark.
Alone.
Jesus loves me, this I know …
She inhaled on a sob that ended in a choking cough.
She didn’t know what had happened.
One minute they had all been walking through the airport. Her brothers up ahead while Emily tried to catch up to her mother—
She coughed through another choking sob. Where was her mother? Had the world collapsed on her, too? On all of them?
They’d been visiting Red Rock for Wendy’s wedding.
More tears burned from the corners of Emily’s eyes. Wendy. Her baby sister, who’d looked so beautiful and happy—finally, finally, happy and settled—as she’d exchanged vows with Marcos during their Christmas Eve wedding.
Had all of Red Rock collapsed? Were Marcos and Wendy and their baby that she was carrying lost, too?
Jesus loves me …
Emily covered her mouth, coughing again. Crying.
She wasn’t a crier. She was a planner. A doer. Even her father admitted that about her. He’d often said that’s what made her so valuable at her job at FortuneSouth.
But the only thought in her mind right then was that she was going to die.
Her feet were trapped. Numb. She could barely breathe. Couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face. All she could hear were the screams inside her head that she couldn’t even gather enough strength to let out.
What did it matter if she’d focused her whole life on becoming valuable to the family business?
She was going to die there, never knowing what had hit the family, never knowing if any of them were safe or not. She’d die, never feeling the joy that had been in her little sister’s face as she said “I do” to the man she loved. She would never know how it felt to have the proof of that love growing inside her.
She’d never hold her daughter in her arms, rocking her to sleep the same way that Emily’s mother had rocked her. She’d never calm a cranky, infant son with a lullaby. Never … never … never—
She coughed again as more dust suddenly collapsed onto her, sending off another round of shouting inside her head.
This was to be her only future, then. Ended beneath the rubble of a small, regional airport in southern Texas.
More dirt fell.
Even though there was no point, she curled her arms around her head. Light appeared beyond her eyelids. Beyond her arms. But there was no sense of peace coming over her. No sense of welcome.
Had she lived her life so wrongly that she wouldn’t even have that? Just this choking, oppressive aloneness? No future?
She curled her arms tighter around her face. She tried to find the comforting lullaby again … but even the childhood song that had been circling over and over inside her head had deserted her.
And then she heard another shout. Not inside her head at all. Hands clutched her arms, pulling them away from her head. She stared, squinting against the light and the dust still clouding the air, seeing only the shape of a fireman’s hat above her.
“What—” She broke off, coughing again.
He