Fortune's Prince

Every cell he possessed knew the minute Amelia stepped into the kitchen behind him, though she didn’t make a sound. She was as ghostly quiet as she was ghostly pale.

He dropped the other slice of bread on top of the turkey and managed not to smash it down out of sheer frustration. He tossed the knife in the sink next to his elbow and it clattered noisily.

He turned and faced her, choking down the urge to take her shoulders and urge her into a chair.

She looked worse than ill.

The shadows under her eyes were nearly purple. The oversize shirt—an uglier color than the contents of his youngest nephew’s diaper the last time he’d been stuck changing it—had slipped down one of her shoulders and her collarbone stuck out too sharp against her pale skin.

It wasn’t just a day of traveling—by means he damn sure knew she wasn’t used to—taking its toll.

“What the hell have you done to yourself?”

Her colorless lips parted slightly. She stared up at him and her eyes—dark, dark brown and enormous in her small triangular face—shimmered wetly. “You’re so angry,” she whispered.

Angry didn’t begin to cover it. He was pissed as hell. Frustrated beyond belief. And completely disillusioned with his judgment where women were concerned.

Especially this woman, because dammit all to hell, there was still a part of him that wanted to believe in her. Believe the things she’d said that night. Believe the things she’d made him feel that night.

And he knew better.

“I should have taken you to the hospital,” he said flatly. “Have you had the flu or something?” God forbid she was suffering anything worse.

Her lashes lowered and she reached out a visibly unsteady hand for one of the wood chairs situated around his small, square table. But she only braced herself; she didn’t sit. “I haven’t been sick. I told you, I just need food and a little rest.”

“A little?” He snorted and nudged her down onto the chair seat. A nudge is all it took, too, because her legs folded way too easily. He would have termed it collapsing, except she did even that with grace.

As soon as she was sitting, he took his hand away, curling his fingers against his palm.

Whether to squeeze away the feel of her fragile shoulder, or to hold on to it, he wasn’t sure.

And that just pissed him off even more.

He grabbed the sandwich, and ignoring every bit of manners his mom had ever tried to teach him, plopped it on the bare table surface in front of her. No napkin. No plate.

If she wanted to toy around with a cowboy, she’d better learn there weren’t going to be any niceties. He almost wished he chewed, because the notion of spitting tobacco juice out just then was stupidly appealing.

She, of course, not-a-princess that she was, ignored his cavalier behavior and turned her knees beneath the table, sitting with a straight back despite her obvious exhaustion. Then she picked up the sandwich with as much care as if it were crustless, cut into fancy shapes and served up on priceless silver. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

He wanted to slam his head against a wall.

Every curse he knew filled his head, all of them directed right at his own miserable hide. He grimly pulled a sturdy white plate from the cupboard and set it on the table. He didn’t have napkins, but he tore a paper towel off the roll, folded it in half and set it next to the plate. Then, feeling her big brown eyes following him, he grabbed a clean glass and filled it with cold tap water. She was surely used to the stuff that came in fancy tall bottles, but there was no better water around than what came from the Rocking-U well. Aside from water, he had milk and beer. He wasn’t sure the milk wasn’t sour by now, and she definitely wasn’t the type to drink beer.

“Thank you,” she said again, after taking a long sip of the water. “I don’t mean to put you to any trouble.”

He folded his arms across his chest and dragged his gaze away from the soft glisten of moisture lingering on her full, lower lip. “Shouldn’t have gotten on the airplane, then.” Much less a bus.

She looked away.

For about the tenth time since he’d found her hiding in his barn, he felt like he’d kicked a kitten. Then ground his boot heel down on top of it for good measure.

“Eat.” He sounded abrupt and didn’t care. “I’ll get a bed ready for you.”

She nodded, still not looking at him. “Thank—” Her voice broke off for a moment. “You,” she finished faintly.

That politeness of hers would be the end of him.

He left the kitchen with embarrassing haste and stomped up the stairs to the room at the end of the hall. He stopped in the doorway and stared at the bed.

It was the only one in the house.

It was his.

“You’re a freaking idiot,” he muttered to himself as he crossed the room and yanked the white sheets that were twisted and tangled and as much off the bed as they were on into some semblance of order. He’d have changed the sheets if he owned more than one set.

Once she was gone, he’d have to burn the damn things and buy different ones. For that matter, he might as well replace the whole bed. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since learning she’d gotten engaged to that other guy within hours of leaving his arms. He was pretty sure that sleeping was only going to get harder from here on out.

He realized he was strangling his pillow between his fists, and slapped it down on the bed.

It was summertime, so he hadn’t personally been bothering with much more than a sheet, but he unearthed the quilt that his mother had made for him years earlier from where he’d hidden it away in the closet after Carrie left him, and spread it out on top of the sheets. It smelled vaguely of mothballs, but it was better than nothing.

Then he shoved the ragged paperback book he’d been reading from the top of the nightstand into the drawer, effectively removing the only personal item in sight, and left the room.

He went back downstairs.

She was still sitting at the table in his kitchen, her back straight as a ruler, her elbows nowhere near the table. She’d finished the sandwich, though, and was folding the paper towel into intricate shapes. Not for the first time, he eyed her slender fingers, bare of rings, and reminded himself that the absence of a diamond ring didn’t mean anything.

When she heard him, she stood. “I should go to Aunt Jeanne’s.”

“Yes.” He wasn’t going to lie. She’d already done enough of that for them both. “But it’s after midnight. No point in ruining someone else’s night’s sleep, too. And since Horseback Hollow isn’t blessed with any motels, much less an establishment up to your standards,” he added even though she was too cultured to say so, “you’re stuck with what I have.” He eyed her. “Bedroom’s upstairs. Do you have enough stuffing left in you to make it up them, or do I need to put you over my shoulder?”

Her ghostly pale face took on a little color at that. “I’m not a sack of feed,” she said, almost crisply, and headed past him through the doorway.

His house wasn’t large. The staircase was right there to the left of the front door and his grandmother’s piano. She headed straight to it, closed her slender fingers over the wood banister and started up. The ugly shirt she wore hung over her hips, midway down the thighs of her baggy jeans.

He still had to look away from the sway of her hips as she took the steps. “Room’s at the end of the hall,” he said after her. “Bathroom’s next to it.”

Manners might have had him escorting her up there.

Self-preservation kept him standing right where he was.

“Yell if you need something,” he added gruffly.

She stopped, nearly at the top of the stairs, and looked back at him. Her hair slid over her shoulder.

Purple shadows, ghostly pale and badly fitting clothes or not, she was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and looking at her was a physical pain.

“I need you not to hate me,” she said softly.

His jaw tightened right along with the band across his chest that made it hard to breathe. “I don’t hate you, Amelia.”

Her huge eyes stared at him. They were haunting, those eyes.

“I don’t feel anything,” he finished.

It was the biggest lie he’d ever told in his life.

* * *

Amelia’s knees wobbled and she tightened her grip on the smooth, warm wooden banister. Quinn could say what he wanted, but the expression on his face told another story.

And she had only herself to blame.

No words came to mind that were appropriate for the situation. Even if there were words, she wasn’t sure her tight throat would have allowed her to voice them. So she just gave him an awkward nod and headed up the remaining stairs. Because what else was there to do but go forward?

There was no going back.

He’d made that painfully clear more than once and her coming to Horseback Hollow to see him face-to-face hadn’t changed a single thing.

At the landing, the room he spoke of was obvious. Straight at the end of the hall.

The door was open and through it she could see the foot of a quilt-covered bed.

She pushed back her shoulders despite her weariness, and headed toward it. If she weren’t feeling devastated to her core, she would have gobbled up every detail of his home as she walked along the wooden-floored hallway. Would have struggled not to let her intense curiosity where he was concerned overtake her. Would have wondered how each nook and cranny reflected Quinn. The man she’d fallen head over heels in love with on the foolish basis of a few dances at a wedding reception.

And a night of lovemaking after.

The thought was unbearable and she pushed it away.

She’d deal with that later.

She stopped at the bathroom briefly and shuddered over her pallid reflection in the oval mirror that hung over a classic pedestal sink when she washed her hands. It was no wonder he’d stared at her with such horror.

She looked hideous.

Not at all the way she’d looked the night he’d stopped next to her at Toby’s wedding reception, smiled quietly and asked if she cared to dance. She’d looked as good that day as her gawky self was capable of looking.

But when Quinn took her in his arms and slowly circled around the outdoor dance floor with her to the croon of Etta James, for the first time, she’d felt beautiful. All because of the way he’d looked at her.

Tears burned behind her eyes again and she quickly left the bathroom behind, hurrying the remaining few feet into the bedroom. She shut the door soundlessly, leaned back against it and slid down it until her bottom hit the floor.

Then she drew up her knees and pressed her forehead to them.

He believed their lovemaking had been some sort of last fling for her, before settling down with Jimmy, whom she’d been seeing during the months before she’d spontaneously attended Toby’s wedding. Quinn had accused her of that during that dreadful phone conversation. In the weeks since, he’d obviously not changed his opinion.

So how was she ever going to be able to tell him that she was pregnant?

With his child?

If he accused her of lying about that, too, she wasn’t sure she could survive it.

She sat there, her sorrow too deep for tears, until her bottom felt numb. Then feeling ancient, she shifted onto her knees and pushed herself to her aching feet. The boots she’d borrowed from Molly, one of her mother’s junior secretaries whom Amelia trusted, were too wide and too short. They, along with the ill-fitting jeans and the shirt, belonged to Molly’s teenage brother as had the other set of clothes she’d started out in. They’d been left, shoved deep in the rubbish, at the airport in Dallas alongside the blond wig and the knapsack in which she’d carried their replacements.

She dragged her passport out of the back pocket and set it on the rustic wooden nightstand. Even though Molly had helped with the disguises, neither one of them had been able to think of a way around traveling under Amelia’s own name. Not with security standards being what they were. All she’d come with had been the passport, her credit card and a small wad of American currency tucked among the well-stamped pages of her passport. Molly had insisted on the credit card, though Amelia had wanted to leave it behind. She knew cash was untraceable, while a credit card wasn’t, and she’d stuck to it. The only thing she’d purchased had been the bus fare from Dallas. Once she’d reached Lubbock, she’d hitched a ride with a trucker as far as the outskirts of Horseback Hollow. Then, using the directions she’d memorized from Molly, she’d walked the rest of the way to what she’d hoped was Quinn’s ranch. But in her exhaustion and the darkness she hadn’t been certain. So she’d hidden in the barn, intending to rest until daylight.

Her head swam dizzily and she quickly sat at the foot of the bed, the mattress springs giving the faintest of creaks. She closed her eyes, breathing evenly. She didn’t know whether to blame the light-headedness on pregnancy or exhaustion. Aside from her missed period, she hadn’t experienced any other signs that she was carrying a baby. And if it hadn’t been for Molly who’d suggested that her irregularity might not be a result of stress as Amelia had believed at first, she probably wouldn’t know even now that she was carrying Quinn’s baby. She’d still be thinking she was just stressed over the whole engagement fiasco.

Why, oh, why hadn’t she spoken up when those reporters greeted her at the airport six weeks ago, clamoring for details about her engagement to James? Why had she just put up her hand to shield her face and raced alongside her driver until reaching the relative sanctuary of the Town Car? She hadn’t even dared to phone James until she’d gotten home because she feared having her cell phone hacked again. Even though it had happened well over a year ago, the sense of invasion still lived on.

If she’d only have spoken up, denied the engagement to the press right then and there, she wouldn’t be in this situation now. After the initial embarrassment, James’s situation with his family would have ironed itself out in time.

Most important, though, Quinn wouldn’t have any reason to hate her.

She would have returned to him weeks ago exactly as they’d planned while lying together atop a horse blanket with an endless expanse of stars twinkling over them. Then, learning she was pregnant would have been something for them to discover together.

If only.

Her light-headedness was easing, though she really felt no better. But she opened her eyes and slowly pulled off the boots and socks and dropped them on the floor next to the bed. She wiggled her toes until some feeling returned and flopped back on the mattress.

The springs gave a faint squeak again.

It was a comforting sound and, too tired to even finish undressing, she dragged one of the two pillows at the head of the bed to her cheek and closed her eyes once more.

Things would be better in the morning.

They had to be.

* * *

When there were no more sounds, faint though they were, coming from his room upstairs, Quinn finally left the kitchen where he’d been hiding out. He left the house and walked back down to the barn with only the moonlight for company. He closed the door and even though there’d be endless chores to be done before the sun came up and he ought to be trying to sleep the last few hours before then, his aimless footsteps carried him even farther from the house.

But he kept glancing back over his shoulder. Looking at the dark windows on the upper story that belonged to his bedroom. Amelia had eaten the sandwich. But did that really mean anything?

If she fainted again how would he even know?

She’d been raised in the lap of luxury. First-class flights and luxury limousines driven by guys wearing suits and caps. Not economy class and bus tickets and God knew what.

Clawing his fingers through his hair, he turned back to the house. It wasn’t the house that he and Jess had grown up in. That had burned nearly to the ground when Quinn was fifteen, destroying almost everything they’d owned. The same year his dad had already succeeded in literally working to death on the Rocking-U, trying to prove himself as good a rancher as the father who’d never acknowledged him. Jess, five years older, was already off and married to Mac with a baby on the way. Ursula, his mom, would have sold off the ranch then if she’d have been able to find an interested buyer other than her dead husband’s hated father. But she’d only been able to find takers for the livestock.

Despite Quinn’s noisy protests, she’d moved the two of them into a two-bedroom trailer on the outskirts of town and there they’d lived until Quinn graduated from high school. Then she’d packed him off to college, packed up her clothes and moved away from the town that had only ever seemed to bring her unhappiness. Now she lived in Dallas in one of those “active adult” neighborhoods where she played bridge and tennis. She had a circle of friends she liked, and she was happy.

Not Quinn. The moment he could, he’d headed back to Horseback Hollow and the fallen-down, barren Rocking-U. He’d had a few years of college under his belt—gained only through scholarships and part-time jobs doing anything and everything he could pick up—and a new bride on his arm.

He was going to do what his father had never been able to do. Make the Rocking-U a real success.

At least one goal had been achieved.

He’d built the small house, though it had cost him two years and a wife along the way. He’d had his grandmother’s piano restored and the dregs of the old, burned house hauled away. He’d shored up broken down fences and a decrepit barn. He’d built a herd. It was small, but it was prime Texas Longhorn.

He’d made something he could be proud of. Something his father had never achieved but still would have been proud of and something his father’s father could choke on every time he thought about the people he liked to pretend never existed.

And when Quinn had danced with Amelia at a wedding reception six weeks ago, he’d let himself believe that there was a woman who could love his life the same way that he did.

All he’d succeeded in doing, though, was proving that he was Judd Drummond’s son, through and through. A damn stupid dreamer.

He went back into the silent house. He had a couch in the living room. Too short and too hard to make much of a bed, but it was that or the floor. He turned off the light and sat down and worked off his boots, dropping them on the floor.

He couldn’t hear anything from upstairs.

He stretched out as well as he could. Dropped his forearm over his eyes.

Listened to the rhythmic tick of the antique clock sitting on the fireplace mantel across the room.

What if she really was sick?

“Dammit,” he muttered, and jackknifed to his feet. Moving comfortably in the darkness, he went to the stairs and started up. At the top, he headed to the end of the hall and closed his hand around the doorknob leading into his bedroom.

But he hesitated.

Called himself a damned fool. He ought to go back downstairs and try to redeem what little he could of the night in sleep.

Only sleeping was a laughable notion.

He’d just glance inside the room. Make sure she was sleeping okay.

He turned the knob. Nudged open the door.

He could see the dark bump of her lying, unmoving, on his bed. He stepped closer and his stockinged toes knocked into something on the floor. They bumped and thumped.

Her shoes.

It was a good thing he’d never aspired to a life of crime when he couldn’t even sneak into his own bedroom without making a commotion. He’d probably been quieter when he’d found her in his damn barn.

Despite the seemingly loud noise, though, the form on the bed didn’t move. He ignored the sound of his pulse throbbing in his ears until he was able to hear her soft breathing.

Fine. All good.

He had no excuse to linger. Not in a dark room in the middle of the night with another man’s fiancée. There were lines a man didn’t cross, and that was one of them.

It should have been easy to leave the room. And because it wasn’t, he grimaced and turned.

Avoiding her shoes on the floor, he left the room more quietly than he’d entered. He returned to the couch. Threw himself down on it again.

He’d take her to her aunt’s in the morning. After she woke.

And what Amelia did after that wasn’t anything he was going to let himself care about.

Chapter Three

Quinn stared at the empty bed.

Amelia was gone.

It was only nine in the morning, and sometime between when he’d left the house at dawn and when he’d returned again just now, she’d disappeared.

If not for the wig that he’d found on the ground inside his barn door, he might have wondered if he’d hallucinated the entire thing.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out she’d beat him to the punch in calling her aunt. One phone call to Jeanne, or to any one of the newfound cousins, and rescue would have easily arrived within an hour.

He walked into the bedroom.

The bed looked exactly the way it had when he’d tossed the quilt on top of it, before she’d gone to bed. Maybe a little neater. Maybe a lot neater.

He’d also thought her presence would linger after she was gone. But it didn’t.

The room—hell, the entire house—felt deathly still. Empty.

That was the legacy she’d left that he’d have to live with.

He tossed the wig on the foot of the bed and rubbed the back of his neck. He had a crick in it from sleeping—or pretending to—on the too-short couch.

It shouldn’t matter that she’d left without a word. Snuck out while his back was essentially turned. He hadn’t wanted her there in the first place. And obviously, her need to “talk” hadn’t been so strong, after all.

“Gone and good riddance,” he muttered.

Then, because he smelled more like cow than man and Jess would give him a rash of crap about it when he showed up at his nephew’s baseball game in Vicker’s Corners that afternoon, he grabbed a shower and changed into clean jeans and T-shirt.

In the kitchen, the paper towel that he’d given Amelia was still sitting on the table where she’d left it, all folded up. He grabbed it to toss it in the trash, but hesitated.

She hadn’t just folded the paper into a bunch of complicated triangles. She’d fashioned it into a sort of bird. As if the cheap paper towel was some fancy origami.

I have lots of useless talents.

The memory of her words swam in his head.

She’d told him that, and more, when they’d lain under the stars. How she had a degree in literature that she didn’t think she’d ever use. How she spoke several languages even though she didn’t much care for traveling. How she could play the piano and the harp well enough to play at some of the family’s royal functions, but suffered stage fright badly enough that having to do so was agonizing.

He pinched the bridge of his nose where a pain was forming in his head and dropped the paper bird on the table again, before grabbing his Resistol hat off the peg by the back door and heading out.

He paid Tanya Fremont, one of the students where Jess and Mac taught high school, to clean his house once a week and she’d be there that weekend.

She could take care of the trash.

* * *

“Aunt Jeanne, really?” Amelia lifted a glossy tabloid magazine off the coffee table where it was sitting and held it up. “I can’t believe you purchase these things.”

Her aunt’s blue eyes were wry as she sat down beside Amelia on the couch. She set the two mugs of herbal tea she was carrying on the coffee table and plucked the glossy out of Amelia’s hands. She spread it over the knees of her faded blue jeans and tapped the small picture on the upper corner of the cover. “It had a picture of you and Lucie,” she defended. “You and your sister looked so pretty. I thought I’d clip it out and put it in my scrapbook.”