LITMIR.BIZ

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been brought dangerously close to the edge and was about to flare.

      “You know, it’s like he’s not even the same person anymore,” Toby observed about the absent member of their family. “When this whole thing started, Christopher hated the Fortunes as much as we did. Now he’s run off to Red Rock to work for them. I just don’t get it,” Toby, who at twenty-eight was the youngest of the three of them, confessed, shaking his head.

      Jude shrugged carelessly. “Oh, they’re not so bad,” he told Toby, defending this newly uncovered branch of the family. Blessed with a keen survival instinct, he deliberately avoided looking in Liam’s direction. Jude knew what his thirty-two-year-old brother thought of all the Fortunes and the last thing he was looking for was a fight. He just wanted to impart the information he’d learned about these new relatives of theirs. After all, fair was fair.

      “Gabriella knows them,” Jude went on, referring to his fiancée, “and she said that they’re good people who just got a raw deal, bad-mouthed by folks who’re just jealous of their success and their money.” He spared one quick, fleeting glance in Liam’s direction to see how he was taking this and then just as quickly looked away. “You know how some people are. They try to drag down anyone who’s doing better than they are, thinking that might somehow elevate them.”

      Liam had heard enough. Fed up, he slammed his beer mug down on the table with such force, the sound reverberated loudly enough to garner him a few curious looks from people seated at the nearby surrounding tables, not to mention the attention of several other patrons.

      “Oh, come on.” Liam ground the words out angrily. “Wake up and smell the coffee, guys. Anyone saying anything good about those people is just trying to cozy up to their fat bank accounts and their fancy circle of friends. The Fortunes use people. Anyone who thinks different is just fooling themselves.”

      Toby felt that his brother was forgetting a very important point in all this. “But Mom says—” he began.

      Liam waved his hand at his younger brother before the latter could say anything further.

      “I love Mom, but she’s just being emotional right now and I don’t fault her for that. But I’m a ‘Jones’ boy. Not ‘Fortune Jones,’ just plain old ‘Jones’ and I’m proud of it, proud of the old man, of having a father who worked hard to make a life for himself and his family. And I’m not about to change the way I feel just because some rich guy comes along and tells us we’re the missing branch of his family. Who knows if he’s even telling her the truth, anyway?”

      “Why would he lie about something like that?” Toby wanted to know.

      “Hell if I know,” Liam answered with a shrug. “Who knows why people like that do anything? Maybe there’s something in it for them that we don’t know about yet.” Which, to him, was all the more reason why they should view the whole scenario suspiciously. That way, they wouldn’t be wide open if something did happen.

      Jude gave him a steely look. “You’re reaching, Liam. It doesn’t matter what you feel or don’t feel. That doesn’t change any of the facts—and the facts are you’ve got Fortune blood running through your veins. We all do. Face it, big brother, you’re a Fortune.”

      Liam held up his hand, as if to physically stop the flow of words that could only lead to a knock-down, drag-out argument between them. Clearly nothing was going to be resolved here by talking about those people.

      Deep down in his soul, he really felt that if by some wild chance he and his family welcomed these people with open arms, the Fortunes would only wind up infecting them with their greed.

      With that in mind, it was best just to change the subject and talk about something else.

      “How much longer are you planning on hanging on to those Hemings kids?” he asked Toby. “I mean, don’t you think that five months is plenty?”

      “Not really,” Toby answered. “I haven’t exactly figured out what I’m doing yet. But just so you know,” he told Liam, “I like having those kids around. They make me see things differently.”

      Liam laughed shortly. That certainly wouldn’t have been the way he would have felt about having three children infiltrating every corner of his life.

      “To each his own, I guess,” he told Toby. “As for me, I don’t like being responsible for anyone else but myself.”

      “Yeah, we already know that,” Toby commented dryly. “That’s not exactly a news flash.”

      “If I were you, I wouldn’t go boasting about that too much,” Jude warned Liam. “The gods have a way of taking you down a peg or two if they think you’re being too happy—or too irreverent,” Jude pointed out. And then, as if not to leave Toby out, he couldn’t help commenting, “You know that being responsible for three kids can’t be doing much for your social life.”

      “Why don’t you let me worry about my social life,” Toby told Jude in a laid-back tone.

      Jude turned toward Liam. “Speaking of social life, how’s yours been lately? You seem a little...I don’t know, solitary these days,” he said. “I can remember a time when you had to beat girls off with a stick.”

      “I do just fine, thanks, Jude.” He grinned. “I’ve learned not to beat them off anymore.”

      Liam had always been devoted to working on his ranch from sunup to sundown—and then some.

      “Just remember—both of you,” Jude said, looking from one brother to the other. “Don’t underestimate the value of having a good woman at your side.”

      Liam drained his mug, setting it down again. He had to be getting back soon. As always, there was work to be done.

      But he wasn’t ready to leave just yet. “God, Jude, ever since you got engaged to that little Mendoza girl, you’re acting whipped.”

      “Don’t let Gabriella hear you call her a little girl,” Jude warned seriously. “She’s certainly more woman than you ever went out with—except for maybe that Julia Tierney.”

      Something within Liam tensed at the mere mention of Julia’s name. It always did. Everyone had at least one person they thought of as “the one that got away.” Julia was his.

      “He never went out with Julia,” Toby told Jude.

      Jude looked a little confused. “I thought Liam asked every girl in his senior class out,” Jude said.

      “He did ask,” Toby answered, keeping a straight face. “But Julia was the only one with the good sense to turn him down.” He turned his sharp blue eyes on Liam. “That wounded your fragile pride, didn’t it, big brother?”

      “Shut up, both of you,” Liam ordered in a flat, emotionless voice. “And for the record, my pride’s not fragile and it wasn’t wounded. Not going out with me was Julia’s loss, not the other way around,” he informed his brothers in a no-nonsense voice.

      He saw Toby’s mouth drop open and wondered why since he hadn’t exactly said anything earth-shattering or that novel for that matter. The next moment, both his brothers were scrambling to their feet, as if, belatedly, to show their respect.

      “Funny, I remember it the other way around,” a melodic female voice behind Liam’s chair said.

      Caught off guard, Liam swung around so fast he almost caused his chair to tilt and deposit him on the sawdust floor. He managed to steady the chair at the very last moment, preventing a spill and a great deal of embarrassment on his part.

      The object of their conversation was smiling a greeting at his brothers.

      * * *

      Julia had stopped by the Horseback Hollow Grill with a definite agenda in mind. The Grill was the town’s only restaurant and she had just happened upon a situation that could very well enable her to bring a second eatery to the small town.

      She

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