There were two women in Emma’s mirror: one with dark, frantically curly hair, one with smooth blond hair swept into a perfect chignon. Miranda Fortune was sleek, blond and lovely, impossibly elegant tonight in diamonds and a long sweep of black silk.
“Oh, my.” Emma spun around on the small stool. “Don’t you look gorgeous!”
Miranda’s lips turned up in a surprised smile. “Thank you. You look wonderful, too. Don’t worry about Kane. He won’t mind waiting a few minutes.”
Emma had her doubts about that, but she kept them to herself.
“Oh, do stand up and let me see how the dress looks!”
Emma’s dress was yet another compromise in a long line of compromises she’d made in the eight weeks since she came here. She was holding firm about the important thing, though. She wouldn’t let Miranda settle any money on her. A small trust fund for the baby, sure. That was fine. But Emma didn’t want to be rich. She didn’t know how to be rich. Who would she be if she had tons of money she hadn’t earned herself? No one she knew.
The dress was pretty, though. Miranda had wanted to take her to one of the expensive shops she patronized; Emma had wanted to go to a factory outlet store she’d discovered. In the end, they’d found this one on the fifty-percent-off rack at an upscale department store. It was more colorful than elegant, which suited Emma.
The layers of tissue-thin gauze swished pleasantly around her ankles when she stood. She grinned and patted her tummy. “I look like a cross between a hippie and a hippo—one of those dancing hippos in Fantasia, maybe.” And nothing at all like the polished woman standing in front of her.
“You look beautiful.”
The words were simply spoken and obviously sincere. Emma flushed. “Well—thank you.” A sharp jab from inside made her grin. “Elmo is more excited about this party than I am.”
“Elmo?” Both elegant eyebrows rose. “I hope that’s a joke. Yesterday you called the baby Abigail.”
Emma shrugged. “Elmo, Abigail, Zeke, Penelope—I haven’t made up my mind.”
Miranda smiled. “It might be easier to decide on a name if you’d let the doctor tell you what its sex is.”
“I like surprises.”
“That’s good, because I’ve brought you one.” She held out a small, silver-wrapped box the size that jewelry came in. Her lips still smiled, but her eyes were uncertain.
Emma felt a now-familiar stab of irritation. “That’s very nice of you, Miranda, but you really have to stop buying me things all the time. It makes me uncomfortable. You’re already giving me an allowance—”
“This isn’t anything expensive, truly.” She offered the box again. “If you don’t like it, you don’t have to wear it.”
Emma had long since realized that her idea of expensive and Miranda’s were vastly different. Reluctantly she held her hand out and summoned a smile. “How can I refuse?”
The box held jewelry, just as Emma had suspected—a necklace with a dainty silver chain. “Oh…how pretty!” She held it up. The pendant was a stylized yin-yang symbol.
“I hoped you would like it. You seem very interested in that sort of thing.”
Emma felt touched—and guilty. Miranda was trying so hard, and Emma hated to keep disappointing her. But what Miranda wanted from Emma wasn’t possible. “I’ll wear it tonight. Would you put it on for me?”
She sat back down at the dressing table. It was a pretty, totally feminine piece of furniture, covered at the moment with the detritus from Emma’s attempt at applying makeup. The mirror showed her Miranda’s face as the woman moved up behind her.
They looked nothing alike. Their hair was different, their eyes were different, their mouths, the very shape of their faces…but the nose on the older woman’s face was a lot like hers. Straight and a little too short.
It should have been a comforting discovery. After years of looking for her features on the faces of strangers, Emma ought to be glad to find her nose on the face of the woman who had given birth to her.
She wasn’t.
When Miranda bent to fasten the necklace, her fingers brushed Emma’s nape. Feelings rushed in—crowded, confused feelings that made her want rather frantically to get away. She summoned a smile. “I love it.”
“Maybe I could fix your hair.” Miranda touched one curl lightly. “You’d look lovely in a French braid, and I have a little silver clasp we could use.”
Something strong and ugly flashed through Emma. Something she had no intention of acknowledging or encouraging. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Great. I can never do anything with my hair.”
It was going to be a long night.
The party was being given by her uncle, Ryan Fortune, at his ranch outside the city in Red Rock, Texas. Emma rode there in the comfort of plush leather seats with classical music throbbing gently from the car speakers.
Miranda didn’t speak much once they got in the car, and Kane and Allison spoke mostly to each other. and Emma was glad. Making conversation could be a strain with all those undercurrents swirling around.
There would be undercurrents at the party, too, but not such personal ones. It was a big “welcome to the family” bash for her, Justin, and two other Fortune cousins—Sam “Storm” Pearce and Jonas Goodfellow—that the family had recently discovered, thanks to the efforts of Flynn Sinclair.
That man sure got around. He’d made his way into Emma’s thoughts far too often in the past eight weeks.
It was only natural that she would think of him sometimes, she told herself as the lights of San Antonio faded behind them. He’d been the catalyst for some important events in her life. It was no wonder she kept remembering that deep, laconic voice.
Elmo—or maybe Abigail—gave her a hard kick in the ribs in rebuttal.
Okay, so maybe she thought of Flynn a little too often. But there was no harm in a fantasy or two. She wasn’t really interested in the man, no matter what effect he’d had on her unruly hormones. He was a P.I., for heaven’s sake. One step removed from a bounty hunter.
Like Steven.
Emma’s shoulders tensed against the rush of fear. She had to stop reacting that way. It had been months since she’d fled San Diego in the dead of night, and Steven was very good at finding people who didn’t want to be found. Surely, if he had been determined to track her down, he would have done it by now.
No, she wouldn’t think about Steven. He was part of her past, not her present or her future. Better to think about all her new relatives. Fortunately, she’d already met a few of them—like her uncle, Ryan Fortune.
She tasted the phrase in her mind: her uncle, Ryan Fortune. Uncle Ryan. It had an odd ring to it. Odd, but pleasant.
He had come to see her soon after she arrived in San Antonio. There was something very solid about Ryan Fortune, a grounded quality she hadn’t expected in a man with his wealth. She liked him. He didn’t push. He hadn’t so much as raised an eyebrow over her being pregnant and unmarried, either.
She glanced at the woman sitting beside her in the silver Mercedes sedan. Miranda didn’t mean to push. Whatever she had been like when she was young, back when she ran away from home and gave birth to two babies she didn’t keep, she was a nice woman now. A bit too perfect, maybe, but Emma didn’t hold that against her. And Miranda was clearly delighted about the baby.
All