THE TEXAS TATTLER
All the news that’s barely fit to print!
Fortune Nemesis Escapes Prison!
Clint Lockhart, sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, cunningly escaped his shackles last evening while being transferred to a maximum security facility. Guards opened fire on the dangerous jailbird, but he disappeared into the tranquil Texas countryside. Eyewitnesses report that Lockhart may have been wounded by a bullet to the leg. A full-blown manhunt is under way.
A cellmate confessed that just before Lockhart’s transfer, the vindictive convict told him that “the Fortunes would go down in a blaze of fury.” Looks as if the first stop in the Lockhart Revenge Train will likely be the Double Crown Ranch. Family patriarch Ryan Fortune is said to have installed a security detail to put Fort Knox to shame—but what would we expect from a mogul whose family is more precious than solid gold?
Enough doom and gloom…here’s the latest on Red Rock’s most romantic family. The Tattler has the scoop on dreamboat bachelor Brody Fortune. When this Aussie tycoon “met” his new pregnant secretary, Jillian Tanner, there was an undeniably familiar, lusty glint in his steel-gray eyes. Could all that eye-popping be about her exceptional steno skills…?
Meet the Fortunes of Texas
Brody Fortune: The powerful executive’s new secretary was his long-lost love…and he was shocked! The girl he remembered was now a woman—and a single mother-to-be. Could the truth about the past heal their wounded hearts and make them a family of three?
Jillian Tanner: She thought she’d outgrown thoughts of happily-ever-after, yet when she found herself face-to-face with the only man she’d ever truly loved, she wondered if she could convince Brody that he could bestow his heart on her once more.
Matilda Fortune: This dutiful daughter longed to get away from the watchful eyes of her overprotective brothers. Would the blossoming beauty ever meet a man brave enough to hold his own with her brothers…and sexy enough to sweep her off her feet?
The Expectant Secretary
Leanna Wilson
MILLS & BOON
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About the Author
LEANNA WILSON
A native Texan, Leanna Wilson was born and bred in Big D, but she’s a country girl at heart. She loves visiting her parents’ ranch in east Texas, whether she’s helping to herd cattle or simply sitting by the lake, and she enjoys vacationing in the Rocky Mountains, dreaming up new plots by the side of a rippling brook.
More at home dreaming up stories than writing lesson plans, Leanna gave up teaching to pursue writing. Once she began putting her stories onto paper, it didn’t take her long to publish her first Silhouette Romance novel, Strong, Silent Cowboy, which won the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart Award. “That was a summer I will never forget,” Leanna says. “I sold my first book, got married to my not-so-silent city-slicker husband and after a fabulous honeymoon in England and Scotland had to go to Hawaii, where I won the Golden Heart Award.”
Besides writing Silhouette Romance, Harlequin Temptation and Harlequin American Romance novels, Leanna keeps busy with her two children. She teaches a writing class and leads a book club at the senior center near her home. But mostly she enjoys spending time with her growing family.
To Matrice—a terrific editor!
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
One
“Jillian, you’re the luckiest woman in all of San Antonio!”
Lucky? Jillian Hart Tanner squelched her disbelieving laughter. As far as she was concerned, life had dealt her a pathetic hand. She certainly had the sorriest love life. In fact, she’d never felt lucky at anything, least of all on this day as she sat alone at a table in the third-floor lounge of the Fortunes TX, Ltd. high-rise. She snapped a saltine cracker in two and placed half of it in her mouth rather than respond to the data entry specialist’s envious statement.
“I’d say in the whole U. S. of A.” Alice from accounting poured another packet of sweetener into her coffee and stirred it in with a skinny red straw. “I got a glimpse of your new boss first thing this morning. My, my, my!”
Pretending not to care about the conversation spinning around her, Jillian tried to ignore the nervous fluttering of her heart. She tried to swallow, but the cracker stuck in her throat. Her stomach had been on the verge of mutiny all morning. She clasped her trembling hands under the table.
“You saw him, too?” Kathy from data entry adjusted her wire frames as if preparing for a better glimpse of the newest Australian import of the Fortune clan should he waltz through the door.
“Have mercy!” Alice fanned her face with her hand. “If he was my new boss, I’d be fired for chasing him around the desk, sure as the world. But, Lord, it’d be worth it.”
Kathy laughed. The sound grated on Jillian’s nerves and she gritted her teeth. Why couldn’t her new boss have been anyone other than Brody Fortune? Just the thought of the tall, rugged Aussie was enough to make Jillian’s pulse surge as if she’d been jolted with electricity.
“If you play your cards right, Jill,” Alice added, “you could end up the newest Mrs. Fortune.”
Jillian’s heart pinched tight. Yeah, right. She’d had her chance with the too eligible bachelor once. A long time ago. The odds of that happening then or now were as remote as winning the Texas forty-million-dollar lottery. Besides, she wasn’t interested in the dubious distinction of Mrs. Fortune anymore.
Glancing at the digital clock on the wall, she folded her brown paper sack, stuffed it inside her purse and pushed away from the table. “The last thing I need,” she said, “is a man.”
After all, her husband—her scallywag of a husband…her deceased