Did ax murderers tie bandanna kerchiefs around their dogs’ necks?
“Get a grip, girl.” She put the car in gear but kept her foot on the brake. The guy finally caught his cowboy hat and jammed it back on his head as he strode back toward her car.
This time, when he leaned down to look in her window, he kept his hand clamped on top of his hat, holding it in place. “Got a bad storm coming, ma’am. I can give you directions if you’re lost.”
“I’m not lost.”
He squinted his clear brown eyes at her, clearly skeptical.
Her heart was back in her chest again, pounding harder than usual, but at least in the right sector of her body. She need only hit the gas to drive off.
And she’d already wasted a whole day...
She surreptitiously double-checked that her doors were locked and squinted back at him. If he was an ax murderer, he was a fine-looking one. And what his rear end did for his plain old blue jeans was a work of art. He wouldn’t have any difficulty getting a woman to follow him most anywhere.
Not her, of course. She was too smart to get bowled over by a stranger just because he happened to be—as her mama would have said—a handsome cuss. If he was an ax murderer, he was going to have to work a little harder than that.
She reined in her stampeding imagination and wondered if she should give writing fiction a try, since she was so far doing such a bang-up job on the biography.
Despite common sense and caution, she rolled down her window. Her hair immediately blew around her face. She grabbed her phone and held it out for the stranger to see the map displayed on the screen. “I’m looking for a town called Paseo. Paseo, Texas,” she elaborated just in case she had crossed into Oklahoma without knowing it.
He ducked his head when another dirty gust blew across them. “What kinda business you got there?”
She squinted at him. “Well, that’s my business, isn’t it?”
He yanked off his hat, evidently tired of trying to keep it in place. The wind chopped through his brown hair and pulled at the collar of his gray-and-white plaid shirt, revealing more of his suntanned throat. “Gonna be my business if I have to haul your toy car here out of a ditch when this storm gets worse.” He thumped the top of her car with his hand. “You want Paseo, you almost found it. Up the road a ways, you gotta cross a small bridge and then you’ll see the sign. But you’d better get your pretty self going before those clouds open up. This isn’t a road you want to be on in a storm.”
“So you live around here?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He stuck out his hand toward her. “Jayden Fortune.”
The phone slipped out of her fingers.
He caught it. “Whoa, there. Looks too expensive to be tossing around on the highway.” He held it toward her.
“Not much of a highway,” she managed as her mind spun with excitement. Could it be so easy? Fortune? “There are more dirt ruts than pavement.”
The corner of his mouth curled upward. “Well, we’re not exactly looking for strangers around here. Which—” he ducked his head against a gust of wind accompanied by a crash of thunder “—pleasant as this may be, is what you are.”
She was blinking hard from the dust blowing into her eyes. “My name is Ariana Lamonte. From Austin. I’m working on a magazine article.” It was true. Just not the whole truth.
“A magazine article about Paseo?” He snorted, looking genuinely amused. “Don’t want to disappoint you, ma’am, but there isn’t a damn thing interesting enough around these parts to merit something like that.”
“I don’t know about that. Considering a Fortune lives here.” She yanked her hair out of her eyes, holding it behind her head so she could see him better. If this man was one of Gerald’s illegitimate offspring, then he’d be the first one she’d encountered who already knew he was a Fortune. Or maybe he wasn’t even illegitimate. She’d already entertained the idea that Gerald could have had a family before his Robinson one. There were certainly enough missing years in his life to allow for one. And it would definitely account for Charlotte’s antagonism toward Ariana bringing up the past.
Could there have been another wife? Maybe one whom Gerald had never even bothered to divorce before he’d married Charlotte Prendergast?
The wheels in her head spun fresh again as she gave Jayden a closer look.
“The name Fortune doesn’t mean I possess one,” he was saying. His smile was very white, very even, except for one slightly crooked cuspid that saved him from looking a little too perfect. Maybe there was a resemblance to Gerald Robinson. Or maybe that was just hopeful thinking on her part.
He rested his arm on top of her car and angled his head, his gaze roving over her and the interior of her car. He glanced over the empty coffee cups and discarded fast-food wrappers lying untidily on the floor as well as the thick notebook laden with news clippings and photographs spread open on her passenger seat.
“Only thing I’m rich in is land, and land round here isn’t all that valuable, either. So what’s interesting enough about Paseo to bring a reporter like you all the way from the big city?”
Her car rocked again and several fat raindrops splattered on her windshield. “I’m not a reporter for the local news or anything. I’m a journalist.”
“There’s a difference?”
“If I was a news reporter, I’d probably have a better salary,” she admitted ruefully. She casually closed the notebook as she reached behind her seat and grabbed the latest edition of Weird Life Magazine and passed it through the window. A photograph of Ben Fortune Robinson—Gerald’s eldest son, who was the Chief Operating Officer of Robinson Tech—was on the cover. “I’m not just writing an article. I’m working on an entire series about the members of the Fortune family, actually, for Weird Life Magazine. You have heard of Gerald Robinson, right? Robinson Tech? His real name used to be Jerome Fortune.” She watched Jayden’s face. But the only expression her admission earned was more humor.
“Then you’re really gonna be disappointed,” he drawled, barely giving the magazine a glance before giving it back to her. “I’m not related. My last name might be Fortune, but only because my mom made it up.”
The sky suddenly opened up in earnest and he shoved his hat back on his head. “Storms around here’re pretty unpredictable, ma’am. Last year we had hail that damaged the town hall so badly it looked like a bomb had hit it. Might be best if you come with me.”
She rolled up the window, stopping shy a few inches, but rain still blew in. Just because he had the last name Fortune—which she wasn’t ready to attribute to coincidence no matter what he said—didn’t mean she planned to get into his truck. The weather hadn’t worried her before, but the rain was coming down so hard now, she could barely see out the windshield. “I’ll follow you.”
He was already drenched, rain sheeting off the brim of his hat. He looked like he was going to argue, but then just tilted his head. “Suit yourself.”
She closed the window the rest of the way and switched on her windshield wipers, watching through her rearview mirror as he yanked open his truck door. Even the bandanna-wearing dog had ducked back inside the cab of the truck.
The car rocked again, whether from the vibration of another violent thunderclap or the wind, she couldn’t tell. “Not good, Ariana,” she muttered. “Not good at all.”
The truck passed her, and even through the curtain of rain between them, she could see Jayden Fortune looking at her.
A shiver danced down her spine.
Okay. So not all not good.
She gave