“Because the woman I’ve hired to write the Fortune family saga is Bianca Quinn. She’s just arrived and she’s joined your friends.”
Nash whipped his gaze back to the group he and his grandmother had left earlier at the far end of the pool. His eyes fastened on her immediately. A tall blonde, slim as a wand in a white sundress. Though her back was to him, recognition instantly flooded his system. So did the memories. Feelings he’d buried long ago shot to the surface. A mix of love, desire, anger and hurt froze him to the spot.
Unable to move, he absorbed the long slender legs, the narrow waist, the honey-colored hair that fell to her shoulders. He’d known every inch of her and he hadn’t forgotten a single detail. She matched perfectly with the image that he hadn’t been aware he still carried in his mind.
What the hell was it doing there?
Then, as if she were aware of his gaze on her, she turned and glanced up at the balcony. Like a two-fisted punch to the gut, he felt desire, hot and raw. Not a memory, this time. The real thing.
Then he couldn’t think at all. It was as if no time at all had passed. The impulse to go to her was so strong. He wasn’t aware until he felt the warmth of Maggie’s hands on one of his that he’d gripped the balcony railing.
Glancing down, he noted the whiteness of his knuckles. What had been his plan? To just leap onto the terrace and run to her?
No way. Time had passed. He wasn’t a nineteen-year-old anymore. Nash drew in a deep breath and let it out. No other woman had ever affected him the way Bianca Quinn had. Evidently, she still could.
He drew in another breath. He was older now. And he knew a lot more about women than he had at nineteen.
So he’d handle her. For his grandmother’s sake. But it wasn’t his promise to his grandmother that kept his eyes lingering on Bianca. Without thinking he touched a finger to his chest just where the medal lay beneath his uniform. He’d find a way to handle her.
Turning to Maggie, he smiled. “I’ll be happy to give her an interview. Why don’t we join the party?”
2
Five minutes earlier…
WITH NERVELESS FINGERS, Bianca Quinn handed the keys of her car over to the valet.
“Welcome to Fortune Mansion, Miss Quinn.”
At her surprised look, he smiled. “Ms. Fortune said you’d be arriving right about now. She asked us to keep an eye out for you. Just follow the lighted path around the side of the house. The party’s in the garden and you’re in plenty of time for the birthday cake. Enjoy.”
Enjoy. Maybe she could once she got through this first meeting with Nash Fortune. The path was only a few feet to her right, and she could hear the sound of laughter and the faint strains of Vivaldi. But for a moment she simply couldn’t make herself move.
She’d read about déjà vu, but she’d never before realized the physical impact it might have. For just an instant she felt transported back in time to that fateful day eleven years ago when she’d stood on this very spot. She’d sensed then that her life was about to change.
It had.
And she felt the same way now.
As ridiculous as it was, she couldn’t immediately shake off the feeling, nor could she seem to drag her gaze away from the Fortune Mansion’s stone and glass facade.
But she would no longer allow it to intimidate her. The new bargain she’d struck with Maggie Fortune was entirely different from the one she’d made eleven years ago when she’d promised to disappear from Nash Fortune’s life. The new one was strictly business. She was going to research and write a history of the Fortune family in Colorado.
A family saga wasn’t the type of book she usually wrote. And as lucrative as Maggie’s offer was, she would have turned it down if it hadn’t been for two things. First, she was intrigued by the story, sketchy as it was, of the two Fortune brothers who’d discovered gold in the 1860s and started a dynasty. She had a gut feeling that if she just dug a little deeper, she would find something, and her hunches were seldom wrong.
Her second reason for accepting Maggie’s deal was one that the woman had pointed out to her—she could kill two birds with one stone. She had to come to the Denver area anyway to begin seriously researching her latest true crime book—the real story behind the disappearance of Cadet Brian Silko from the Air Force Academy more than a decade ago. Just as she had with her first book, she would visit the scene of the crime, so to speak—in this case, the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
Not that she was sure a crime had been committed. But she had a strong hunch that there had been some kind of cover-up. And it might still be going on. When she’d called the superintendent of the Air Force Academy to ask for an interview concerning Brian’s disappearance, he’d refused to even speak with her on the phone. In her experience, when someone didn’t want to talk, it was because they had something to hide.
And the person who’d sent her the three anonymous notes agreed.
She hadn’t thought of Brian Silko in years. Not until two months ago when she’d been doing a book-signing in a Barnes & Noble in Chicago. Out of the corner of her eye, she’d seen a tall young woman with dark hair slip a note under a pile of her books. The message had been concise: “For your next book, why don’t you find out the true story behind Cadet Brian Silko’s disappearance from the Air Force Academy eleven years ago?”
Of course, she’d recognized the name right away. Brian had been a year ahead of her in junior high and she’d interviewed him for an article in the school newspaper. It was right before his family had moved to Phoenix. Her story had focused on Brian’s love of flying and his dream of one day attending the Air Force Academy.
Brian Silko had achieved his dream. He’d been in Nash’s class their freshman year at the academy. They’d both played for the Falcons, the academy’s football team. Then in the spring, Brian had stolen a small plane from the airfield and completely vanished.
It had been all over the news. She and Nash had talked about it, of course, but they’d been too involved with each other to pay much notice. No one had discovered why Brian had done what he’d done. And no one had ever found him or the wreckage of the plane.
The second anonymous note, postmarked from Denver, had been sent to her editor a few days later. He’d urged her to at least do some preliminary research. But she’d already started on that. Brian’s mother had died a year ago, and she’d hadn’t been able to locate his sister yet. What she’d found in the press coverage hadn’t been anything more than she’d known at the time. No one seemed to know why Brian had suddenly stolen that plane or where he might have gone. And within a month, the press had forgotten about him.
So had she for over a decade.
Bianca had been well and truly hooked when the third note arrived bearing the postmark of the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs—it stated that Brian was alive. If that was true, why hadn’t he been found or come forward? And what had made him give up his dream of graduating from the Air Force Academy? There was a story here all right, and she was going to start by locating the people who’d known Brian the year he’d disappeared. One of those people was Nash Fortune.
And you’re afraid to see him again.
Bianca drew in a deep breath and let it out. She was being ridiculous. She had nothing to fear from Nash Fortune because she was no longer that naive seventeen-year-old girl who could be completely swept away by what she felt for a man. Nor was she that young girl with a dream of one day becoming a published writer.
She was a writer. “A top-rate investigative journalist,” one of her reviews had read. Her first book, Cover Up, had made the Times extended list and her publisher had already accepted the proposal for her second book on Brian Silko.
Straightening