LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      The line of people waiting to get past the security guard was finally dwindling. It had definitely taken long enough.

      Ben Robinson stepped into the sphere of golden light bathing one of the stone pillars leading toward the entrance of the house and joined the line, nodding briefly to the man in front of him as he glanced back.

      “Long line,” the guy said ruefully, waving the ivory invitation in his hand. He was dressed in a tuxedo that sat uneasily on his shoulders. The woman in a cashmere shawl beside him seemed equally nervous about the diamonds circling her neck, considering the way she kept checking them.

      “Yes.” Ben’s black suit was Tom Ford. Not a tux, but not exactly off-the-rack, either. And he was comfortable in it. The only difference that mattered between him and the line of guests in front of him was that they all held one of those ivory invitations that allowed them entry to this highly exclusive event.

      An invitation he himself did not possess.

      The man in front of him hadn’t turned his attention forward yet. “Suppose it’ll be worth it?”

      Ben shrugged. He was counting on it, but the invited man in front of him didn’t need to know that. “Guess we’ll find out.”

      “Honey.” Diamond Necklace touched her mate’s arm excitedly. “That woman getting out of the limo?” She discreetly waved toward the long vehicle that had just stopped nearby in the circular drive fronting the opulent house. “That’s Lady Josephine Fortune Chesterfield,” she said under her breath. “I’d recognize her anywhere. You know she spends a lot of time in Texas now. Her daughter, Lady Amelia, got married in Horseback Hollow—that’s where they opened Cowboy Country last year. Remember? Oh, my goodness, she’s here right now! Doesn’t she remind you of a young Audrey Hepburn? It’s so romantic that she chose a rancher to marry, but she was engaged to an earl. I wonder if her sister, Lady Lucie, is—”

      The guy gave Ben a wry look and focused again on his companion, cutting off her excited chatter. “Let me guess. You read all about them in those magazines you love.”

      “Don’t make fun of me, Mr. Smarty Pants,” she warned. She waved her hand at the palatial estate and the line of guests still in front of them. “You’re worried this whole thing was a recipe for disaster. But I’m more convinced than ever that this is some big deal about the Fortune Foundation. Maybe they’re going to open an office in Austin.”

      “Who sends an invitation like this without saying who they are? And why would the Fortune Foundation keep quiet if this was their doing?” The guy flipped his invitation lightly against her nose, sending Ben a look, as if expecting agreement.

      Ben shrugged again. He hadn’t seen the actual invitation. But he had damn sure done his research. He, at least, knew who the chef was of this particular dish. And it was not the Fortune Foundation, which was a nonprofit headquartered out of Red Rock, Texas, a few hours away.

      The line moved again then, and Necklace didn’t entirely succeed in holding back a squeal as she grabbed Smarty Pants’s sleeve and pulled him up to the guard, whose suit didn’t disguise either the muscles or the sidearm beneath. Ben moved more leisurely, but soon enough he was in front of the guard. With the dwindling line, there was only one now. When Ben had first arrived and begun scoping out the situation in person, there had been three guards at the door.

      “Your invitation, sir?”

      Everyone had always told Ben he was just like his father. He didn’t need times like this to know how damned true that was. Gerald Robinson had nerve to spare. And so did Ben. He smiled smoothly and pulled his Robinson Tech ID from his lapel and held it out with an expectant look.

      The guard returned it with one caught halfway between surprise and suspicion. “Uh, Mr. Robinson.” He obviously recognized the badge. And Ben’s name. “I don’t have you on—”

      “The list. There hasn’t been enough time. When I heard there might be a computer breach between the ranch here and the headquarters in Minnesota—”

      The guard paled a little, stealing a quick look at the state-of-the-art Robinson model computer propped on a stand beside him. “Breach?”

      Ben clapped the guard reassuringly on the shoulder while returning his company ID back to his lapel pocket with his other hand. “Don’t worry, man. I’ll have it ironed out in no time.” He could feel the guard’s tension and smiled confidently, even though he was lying through his teeth. “I know the system is secure. My own people put it in. But you know how your boss is. Never entirely trusting someone outside the network without a few tests slipped in along the way.”

      It was a calculated and accurate assessment, and almost immediately, the tension Ben felt under his hand eased. Knowing he’d succeeded, he let his hand drop from the guard’s shoulder and stepped through the opened doorway into the house, even before the guard waved him along. He wasn’t surprised at being passed through.

      Whether a result of being Gerald’s firstborn or being the chief operating officer of the company his father had founded, there were few people Ben encountered who didn’t tend to see things the way he wanted them to.

      He bypassed the long table set to one side of the high-ceilinged foyer, where guests were finding their name tags, breaking up the tidy rows in which they’d been arranged, despite the efforts of the two young women dressed in plain black dresses who were clearly assigned the job of assisting.

      The tags were fancy. Gold. Preprinted. But even so, they looked wholly prosaic among the proliferation of tuxes and jewels. Nevertheless, he found them handy as he made his way deeper into the palatial house, following the directions provided by even more party attendants. Because the tags assigned faces to names that, up until now, had been only that.

      Names.

      James Marshall Fortune of JMF Financial out of Atlanta. His older brother, John Michael Fortune, who’d founded the telecommunications giant, FortuneSouth. One of their sisters, Ben knew, was the Lady Josephine whom Diamond Necklace had been so excited to spot. There were power brokers, movers and shakers in attendance, as well as folks like Mr. Smarty Pants and Diamond Necklace, who’d struck him as pretty salt of the earth.

      Yet all of them—save the help—had been invited because in one way or another they were part of the Fortune family.

      His lips tightened and he tamped down the resentment that had been seething inside him for longer than he wanted to think about.

      Invited.

      But not Ben. And none of his seven siblings, either. He’d only learned about the party in the first place because he’d had the family under a microscope ever since his sister Rachel dropped her little bombshell.

      He finally arrived in a soaring room cleared of typical furniture in favor of round banquet tables draped in heavy gold silk and topped with crystal and candles. He wound through the exalted invitees, who’d begun clustering in small groups of twos and threes around the open areas of marble floor, and stopped near one of the three bars set up in the corners of the room. He chose the bar at the far rear because, from that position, he had a good view of all entrances into

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