LASSOED BY FORTUNE Read online

  Can an independent cowboy be lassoed by love when he least expects it? USA TODAY bestselling author Marie Ferrarella arrives at Horseback Hollow with the latest installment of the popular Fortunes of Texas continuity!

  Liam “Fortune” Jones knows exactly who and what he is: the son of Deke Jones, born and bred in Horseback Hollow. He is an old-fashioned cowboy, committed to tradition and used to getting his own way. And he won’t change for anyone—not even for the sassy aspiring chef who’s been tormenting his dreams….

  Julia Tierney holds the distinction of being the only woman who ever turned Liam down. She’s an independent lady with dreams way bigger than their rustic hometown. Every time she runs into that bullheaded rancher, they bicker. The man makes her nuts! But there’s something about Liam that keeps roping her in and making her come back for more….

  MEET THE FORTUNES!

  Fortune of the Month: Liam “Don’t Call Me Fortune” Jones

  Age: 32

  Vital Statistics: Six foot three of pure, unadulterated hunk

  Claim to Fame: Strong will and stronger sex appeal. Never met a woman he couldn’t woo.

  Romantic Prospects: Stellar—with just about anyone except Julia Tierney

  “I’ve never met anyone so stubborn in my entire life. Every time Julia and I are together, we fight like an old married couple. Without benefits. She thinks the Fortunes and their friends the Mendozas are going to bring progress to Horseback Hollow. I just think they’re gonna bring trouble. Why can’t things stay the way they are? Why can’t Julia just admit that I’m right? Why can’t I stop thinking about her even when she isn’t here?”

  *

  The Fortunes of Texas:

  Welcome to Horseback Hollow!

  Dear Reader,

  The Fortunes are back, this time invading a little town called Horseback Hollow, Texas. The town, which at its center is little more than two streets of stores, makes Red Rock look like a metropolis by comparison.

  In this book, Jeanne Marie’s son, Liam, is not only dead set against acknowledging that he is a Fortune through his mother, but also against the Fortunes setting foot in his town and thereby contaminating the purity that is Horseback Hollow. The book centers around the eternal struggle of the irresistible force (one selfless Julia Tierney) meeting the immovable object (our hero, Liam “Fortune” Jones). Julia, who remained in the tiny town to run her ailing father’s grocery store rather than go to college and pursue her dreams, wants to usher the town into the twenty-first century by coaxing Wendy (Fortune) and Marcos Mendoza to open a second restaurant in Horseback Hollow, while Liam wants to preserve the town’s innocent quaintness and send the Fortunes packing. He believes they’re only out for their own selfish interests.

  As happens when irresistible force meets immovable object, there is an explosion—but not the type you might expect. No one is hurt, although a couple of hearts are bruised. To find out about the outcome of this eternal confrontation, read the story.

  As always, thank you for taking the time to read my book and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

  Until the next time we meet, and wishing you all the best,

  Marie Ferrarella

  LASSOED BY FORTUNE

  Marie Ferrarella

  Books by Marie Ferrarella

  Harlequin Special Edition

  ¶A Match for the Doctor #2117

  ¶What the Single Dad Wants… #2122

  **The Baby Wore a Badge #2131

  ¶¶Fortune’s Valentine Bride #2167

  ¶Once Upon a Matchmaker #2192

  §§Real Vintage Maverick #2210

  ¶A Perfectly Imperfect Match #2240

  ~~A Small Fortune #2246

  ¶Ten Years Later… #2252

  ¶Wish Upon a Matchmaker #2264

  +Lassoed by Fortune #2317

  Silhouette Special Edition

  ~Diamond in the Rough #1910

  ~The Bride with No Name #1917

  ~Mistletoe and Miracles #1941

  ΩPlain Jane and the Playboy #1946

  ~Travis’s Appeal #1958

  Loving the Right Brother #1977

  The 39-Year-Old Virgin #1983

  ~A Lawman for Christmas #2006

  ¤¤Prescription for Romance #2017

  ¶Doctoring the Single Dad #2031

  ¶Fixed Up with Mr. Right? #2041

  ¶Finding Happily-Ever-After #2060

  ¶Unwrapping the Playboy #2084

  °Fortune’s Just Desserts #2107

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  Private Justice #1664

  ∆The Doctor’s Guardian #1675

  *A Cavanaugh Christmas #1683

  Special Agent’s Perfect Cover #1688

  *Cavanaugh’s Bodyguard #1699

  *Cavanaugh Rules #1715

  *Cavanaugh’s Surrender #1725

  Colton Showdown #1732

  A Widow’s Guilty Secret #1736

  *Cavanaugh on Duty #1751

  ☐The Colton Ransom #1760

  *Mission: Cavanaugh Baby #1767

  *Cavanaugh Hero #1788

  Silhouette Romantic Suspense

  ∆A Doctor’s Secret #1503

  ∆Secret Agent Affair #1511

  *Protecting His Witness #1515

  Colton’s Secret Service #1528

  The Heiress’s 2-Week Affair #1556

  *Cavanaugh Pride #1571

  *Becoming a Cavanaugh #1575

  The Agent’s Secret Baby #1580

  *The Cavanaugh Code #1587

  *In Bed with the Badge #1596

  *Cavanaugh Judgment #1612

  Colton by Marriage #1616

  *Cavanaugh Reunion #1623

  ∆In His Protective Custody #1644

  Harlequin American Romance

  Pocketful of Rainbows #145

  °°The Sheriff’s Christmas Surprise #1329

  °°Ramona and the Renegade #1338

  °°The Doctor’s Forever Family #1346

  Montana Sheriff #1369

  Holiday in a Stetson #1378 “The Sheriff Who Found Christmas”

  °°Lassoing the Deputy #1402

  °°A Baby on the Ranch #1410

  °°A Forever Christmas #1426

  °°His Forever Valentine #1462

  *Cavanaugh Justice

  ∆The Doctors Pulaski

  ~Kate’s Boys

  ΩThe Fortunes of Texas: Return to Red Rock

  ¤¤The Baby Chase

  ¶Matchmaking Mamas

  °The Fortunes of Texas: Lost…and Found

  °°Forever, Texas

  **Montana Mavericks: The Texans Are Coming!

  ¶¶The Fortunes of Texas: Whirlwind Romance

  §§Montana Mavericks: Back in the Saddle

  ~~The Fortunes of Texas: Southern Invasion

  +The Fortunes of Texas: Welcome to Horseback Hollow

  ☐The Coltons of Wyoming

  Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

  MARIE FERRARELLA

  This USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author has written more than two hundred books for Harlequin, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

  To

  Susan Litman,

  who somehow manages

  the monumental task of

  keeping all these stories

  straight

  while keeping us all

  in line.

  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

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Excerpt

  Chapter One

  Liam Jones leaned back in his chair, nursing his beer and listening to two of his younger brothers, Jude and Toby, talking about a third younger brother, Christopher, who had recently picked up and moved to the nearby town of Red Rock.

  As he listened, Liam’s frown, already a fixture on his face from the beginning of this conversation, deepened, highlighting his increasing disapproval.

  Christopher, apparently, at least in his eyes, had gone and sold his soul to the devil.

  Liam’s initial intent in coming to the bar at the Horseback Hollow Grill with two of his brothers was to unwind a little. Instead as he listened to Toby and Jude, he found himself getting progressively more and more annoyed. The current discussion was merely a theme and variation of the same old thing; a topic that had taken center stage in his family for months now: his mother’s rediscovered wealthy siblings.

  Liam had always known his mother, Jeanne Marie, had been adopted and, like her, he’d thought nothing of it. Countless people were adopted; it was no big thing. Just this past year his own brother Toby had taken in three foster children.

  What made it such a big thing, not just in his eyes but in everyone else’s, was that it turned out his mother had been given up for adoption, along with a sister she hadn’t even known about until just recently, by none other than a member of the highly revered Fortune family.

  And that little bit of news had turned all of their worlds upside down.

  The ironic thing was that his mother might have very well gone to her grave not knowing a thing about her roots if her brother, James Marshall Fortune, hadn’t come poking around, telling her that she was not only his sister but that she, he and the sister she had previously known nothing about—a British woman named Josephine May—were actually triplets.

  The whole thing sounded like something out of a movie and if it had been a movie, he would have walked out on it right in the middle. Specifically around the part where this “long-lost brother” of hers gave her a whole wad of money. That had been James Marshall’s way of “making it up to her” for having lived a life that hadn’t been embedded in the lap of luxury.

  As if money could fix everything and anything.

  Liam found the whole money thing offensive and degrading. He resented the offering of a “consolation prize” to make up for the fact that his mother had lived a life that James Fortune obviously felt was beneath her.

  When his mother gave Fortune back his money, Liam had never been prouder of her. But then she’d gone and spoiled it all by turning around and asking him and his siblings to not just recognize these interlopers as their blood relatives but to actually take on their surname.

  Oh, they’d still be the Jones family, but now they’d all be known as the Fortune Joneses.

  The hell they would, Liam thought angrily as he took another swig of his beer, which by now was decidedly no longer cold. But he hardly noticed.

  In all honesty, he had expected his six siblings to feel exactly the way he did and was utterly stunned to discover that the whole thing didn’t even begin to bother them as much as it did him.

  In fact, it felt as if his brothers and sisters were dropping like flies around him, taking on the Fortune name and forgetting just who the hell they were to begin with: Deke Jones’s offspring.

  Granted, their father wasn’t an emotional, verbally effusive man. But at the same time, he was a decent, hardworking man who had always made sure they had food in their bellies, a roof over their heads and more opportunity to make something of themselves than he had. Some men showed they cared by talking, others by doing. Deke Jones fell into the latter category.

  Liam sensed that this rush to embrace the Fortune name was a slap in the face for his father, even though Deke had said nothing about it either way.

  But the look in his eyes certainly did.

  As the conversation continued to revolve around Christopher and his drastic move out of town, Liam found that his temper had 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.”