LITMIR.BIZ

      Meet the Fortunes of Texas

      Cole Cassidy: He would do anything to catch the person who’d framed his mother for murder—even team up with his former lover, investigator Annie Jones….

      Annie Jones: Cole was the last person Annie ever wanted to see again, let alone work with! She’d been burned once by Cole and refused to fall in love with him again. But some things were beyond her control….

      Maria Cassidy: Cole’s youngest sister’s zealous interest in babies has the family talking. Will Maria’s secrets be safe much longer?

      Zane Fortune: The executive heartbreaker has just about every blue-blooded beauty in Texas at his feet. However, not one of those socialites has captured his attention quite as much as a certain down-on-her-luck single mom….

      This book is dedicated to my fellow alumni of Blanchet High School in Seattle, class of ’65, with the hope that your lives have all been as happy and fulfilling as mine. The best is yet to come.

      And to Frank Bell, class of ’64, who puts the romance in my writing and in my life.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      One

      “You aren’t going to prison,” Cole Cassidy promised the woman seated across the table from him. Even though their relationship had recently become strained, Lily was still his mother. “I’ll do everything I can to clear you.”

      Lily abandoned her surveillance of the restaurant’s entry long enough to glance at Cole. The pressure of the last few weeks had left shadows beneath her dark eyes, but she was still a beautiful woman.

      “You believe that I didn’t murder Sophia Fortune, don’t you?” she asked, an uncharacteristic quaver in her husky voice. “I swear I’m telling the truth.”

      Cole leaned forward and squeezed her hand. It was icy cold. “I know you’re innocent,” he replied. “You don’t have to convince me.”

      “The prisons are full of innocent people.” Her fingers shifted restlessly as she waited for the arrival of her fiancé, Ryan Fortune. He was bringing with him the private investigator he’d hired to dig up enough evidence to clear Lily of the murder charge for which she was out on bail.

      Cole wanted to reassure his mother, to tell her he knew she would never lie to him. Yet she had lied—repeatedly—by omission, and that knowledge stood between them like an elephant both were pretending they couldn’t see.

      Before he could think of something to say about her honesty that wouldn’t reek of irony, Lily’s attention was diverted. Recognition hummed through the room as her fiancé, the head of the Fortune empire and owner of the Double Crown Ranch, stopped in the entryway. As soon as he spotted Lily, his weathered face relaxed into a smile. Then, as Cole got to his feet, Ryan leaned down and spoke to the woman at his side.

      As the two of them came toward Cole’s table, identification and disbelief double-teamed him, driving the air from his chest like a one–two punch to the gut.

      Lily glanced up. “Is something wrong?”

      Her voice was nearly drowned out by the sudden roaring in Cole’s ears. It couldn’t be—and yet it was. The riot of brown curls, the heart-shaped face and those wide, kissable lips—the image was seared into his memory like the scar from a red-hot branding iron.

      The woman with Ryan was Annie Jones, the same woman Cole had left behind six years before when he’d moved to Denver.

      The moment Annie recognized the tall, dark-haired man waiting for Ryan, an icy hand squeezed her heart with painful ferocity. Pride was all that kept her from stopping dead in her tracks.

      Ryan must have sensed her hesitation as he led her to the table. “Lily and her son make a handsome pair, don’t they?” he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he leaned over to give the woman with Cole Cassidy a quick kiss on her upturned mouth.

      If the man who’d hired Annie had been anyone else in the Lone Star state, no matter how wealthy, powerful or well-connected, she would have ditched the case and walked away. Unfortunately, she owed Ryan Fortune far too much to even consider letting him down. Since quitting wasn’t an option, she straightened her spine, curved her mouth into a cool smile and did her best to mask the turmoil scrambling her insides like a butter churn.

      “Hello,

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