Her Good Fortune
He felt something for her.
A responsibility to protect her. It went deeper than just being responsible for someone he was thrown together with because of fate.
Jack felt something for her.
Undoubtedly the feelings he’d experienced had all been brought on by the car accident, and he didn’t like the wave of panic that had assaulted him when he’d first heard Gloria screaming. And he definitely didn’t like the odd sensation that had waltzed through him, filling every cavity, when she’d clung to him after he’d extracted her out of the vehicle.
Things had stirred inside of him. Things with cobwebs and dust on them.
Feelings.
The last things he wanted awakened within him were feelings. And the sooner this woman was out of his hair, the better.
Her Good Fortune
MARIE FERRARELLA
To Patience Smith, my Guardian Angel,
with sincerest thanks
Books by Marie Ferrarella in Miniseries
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A Hero for All Seasons IM #932
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Do You Take This Child? SR #1145
Detective Dad World’s Most Eligible Bachelors
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Like Mother, Like Daughter
One Plus One Makes Marriage SR #1328
Never Too Late for Love SR #1351
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In Graywolf’s Hands IM #1155
M.D. Most Wanted IM #1167
Mac’s Bedside Manner SE #1492
Undercover M.D. IM #1191
The M.D.’s Surprise Family. IM #1653
Two Halves of a Whole
The Baby Came C.O.D. SR #1264
Desperately Seeking Twin Yours Truly
* The Reeds
Callaghan’s Way IM #601
Serena McKee’s Back in Town IM #808
The Fortunes of Texas: Reunion
Her Good Fortune SE #1665
The Cameo
Because a Husband Is Forever SE #1671
Those Sinclairs
Holding Out for a Hero IM #496
Heroes Great and Small IM #501
Christmas Every Day IM #538
Caitlin’s Guardian Angel IM #661
The Cutlers of the Shady Lady Ranch
(Yours Truly titles)
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Cowboys Are for Loving
Will and the Headstrong Female
The Law and Ginny Marlow
A Match for Morgan
A Triple Threat to Bachelorhood SR #1564
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Man Trouble SR #815
The Taming of the Teen SR #839
Babies on His Mind SR #920
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Stand-In Mom SE #1294
Found: His Perfect Wife SE #1310
The M.D. Meets His Match SE #1401
Lily and the Lawman SE #1467
The Bride Wore Blue Jeans SE #1565
* The Pendletons
Baby in the Middle SE #892
Husband: Some Assembly Required SE #931
The Mom Squad
A Billionaire and a Baby SE #1528
A Bachelor and a Baby SD #1503
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Beauty and the Baby SR #1668
Cavanaugh Justice
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Crime and Passion IM #1256
Internal Affair Silhouette Books
Dangerous Games IM #1274
The Strong Silent Type SE #1613
Cavanaugh’s Woman SE #1617
In Broad Daylight IM #1315
Alone in the Dark IM #1327
Dangerous Disguise IM #1339
MARIE FERRARELLA
This RITA® Award-winning author has written over one hundred and thirty books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.
Pssst, have you heard?
They’re baaack!
Silhouette Special Edition presents three brand-new stories about the famous—and infamous!—Fortunes of Texas. Juicy scandals, heart-stopping suspense, love, loss… What else would you expect from the fabulous Fortunes?
Beginning in February 2005, read all about straitlaced CEO Jack Fortune and feisty Gloria Mendoza in RITA® Award-winning author Marie Ferrarella’s Her Good Fortune, Special Edition #1665….
Then, in March, Gloria’s tell-it-like-it-is older sister, Christina Mendoza, finds herself falling hard for boss Derek Rockwell’s charming ways, in Crystal Green’s A Tycoon in Texas, Special Edition #1670….
Finally, watch as youngest sister Sierra tries desperately to ignore her budding feelings for her best friend—and emotional opposite—Alex Calloway, in Stella Bagwell’s April installment In a Texas Minute, Special Edition #1677….
The Fortunes of Texas: Reunion
The price of privilege. The power of family.
Contents
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Prologue
“A ll right, what’s wrong?”
Maria Mendoza looked up from the items she was straightening on the counter. On it was displayed a multitude of skeins, her latest shipment of angora yarn. The veritable rainbow of colors appeared as cheerful as she was sad. Maria had hoped that keeping busy in the shop would dispel the darkness that insisted on dwelling inside of her. After all, this was her shop and it had become successful beyond her wildest expectations.
But none of that did anything to lift her mother’s mood.
“What makes you think something’s wrong?” With effort, she put on the best face she could for the dark-haired woman who had entered the shop.
Rosita Perez, her cousin and dearest friend in the whole world, frowned. “You and I have known one another for more years than I will willingly admit to anyone except for Reuben,” she said, referring to her husband. “I know when there’s something wrong with you. You look as if you’ve lost your best friend.” Rosita, older by four years but shorter by several inches, picked up a skein, as if debating whether she needed or wanted more wool, then replaced it. “And as far as I know I’m still breathing.”
Maria shook her head. “No, not my best friend, my daughters.” Then, because Sierra still lived within Red Rock’s city limits, she clarified, “Christina and Gloria,” although there was no need. Rosita was as aware of the girls’ location as she was.
Rosita placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Maria, this isn’t exactly anything new. The girls have been gone five years—”
“Exactly.” Maria sighed, struggling against the overwhelming sadness. “Five years. With no end in sight. This is not why I became a mother, Rosita, to hope for an occasional word from my daughters.” She splayed her hand over her chest. “There’s a hole in my heart.”
“You’ve still got Sierra and Jorge close by,” Rosita pointed out. She tactfully omitted mentioning Roberto, who’d moved to Denver, the same city that Gloria had chosen to disappear to.
“And a hole in my heart,” Maria repeated. Even if she’d had a dozen children, she’d still feel the lack of the two who had left. Roberto returned frequently, Gloria and Christina did not.
Rosita shrugged, spreading her hands wide. “So, plug it.”
Maria blew out a breath. Her cousin made the situation sound so simple. “How?”
Rosita wandered from display to display within Stocking Stitch, which was what Maria had chosen to call her store. “Get the girls to come home.”
Maria’s impatience continued to grow. She stepped in front of her cousin before Rosita could move to yet another display. “Again, how?”
Rosita shook her head. “I have never known you to be slow with ideas, ’Ria. You could throw a party.”
Of course, how could she not have thought of that? Jose would cook, as he always insisted on doing, and she could be the hostess. Nothing made her happier than to have everyone home, under one roof. Maria smiled. “A big party.”
“A big family party,” Rosita agreed.
The smile faded from Maria’s lips. She was deluding herself. “But the girls will pass when I ask them to fly out. This thing between them…” She had never gotten all the details, but it wasn’t a stretch for her to guess at what was going on. Christina, her oldest, and Gloria, her wild one, had had a falling out. Most likely over a man. “There’re bad feelings.”
Rosita remained unfazed. The two had spent many hours talking about their children. “So? Come up with something to block out these bad feelings.”
A smile took hold of Maria’s lips, melting away the years. By everyone’s standards, she was still a very handsome woman. “I could tell them that their father’s had a heart attack. They’ll come rushing back for that.”
“They’ll come rushing to the hospital,” Rosita pointed out. “That’s where they’ll expect to see him if he’s had a heart attack.”
Maria nodded. Rosita had a point. “Chest pains, then,” Maria amended. “We’ll hold a family reunion and I’ll tell the girls that if they miss this one, I don’t know if their father will be here for the next one.” She looked at her cousin, a sunny smile on her lips. “What do you think?” she asked as she picked up a pad and pen from the counter.
“I think that I’m happy we’re friends and not competitors.”
But Maria didn’t hear her. She was busy making notes to herself for the party she and her husband were about to throw.
Chapter One
L ike an outsider staring through a one-way mirror, Gloria Mendoza Johansen looked slowly around at the people milling about and talking in her parents’ spacious living room. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Just like the old days, she thought.
There were people in every room of the house, confined inside rather than spilling out onto the patio and the grounds beyond because of the cold weather. February in Red Rock, Texas, left its mark. At times raw, it could leech into your very bones.
But inside the house, everything was warm, cozy. The way she had once thought the world was. But she’d learned differently.
As she floated from place to place, observing, hesitating to join in, she twirled the stem of her glass. A wineglass to hide the fact that she was drinking seltzer instead of something alcoholic.
Because she was one.
A recovering alcoholic, to be exact. Except that alcoholics never really recovered, she thought wryly. They were doomed to an eternal dance, always careful to avoid the very thing that they would always, on some level, crave. A drink. But she had been sober two years now and she was determined to remain that way.
Nodding and smiling, she didn’t pause to talk to people who looked inclined to engage her in conversation. She was still picking her time, taking it all in. It felt strange coming home. In part, it was as if she’d stepped into a time warp and five years had just melted away, never having passed.
But they had passed.
They’d left their mark on her in so many ways. Too many for her to think about now. Besides, there really was no point.
Go forward, don’t look back.
It was something she told herself almost daily, a mantra she all but silently chanted within the boundaries of her mind. And now, finally, she was beginning to adhere to it.
“They’re your family. They won’t bite, Gloria. Mingle.”
Her mother. She’d caught the scent of her mother’s perfume a beat before the older woman had said anything.
Gloria glanced over her shoulder at the diminutive woman. At sixty-two, Maria Mendoza still had the same figure that had first caught Jose Mendoza’s eye, no mean feat after five children. She was wearing her shoulder-length black hair up tonight. The silver streaks added to the impression of royalty, which was in keeping with the way she and the others had viewed her when they’d been children. It was her mother who had summoned her like the queen mother to return home.
Gloria smiled to herself now. Her mother had no idea that she’d been toying with that very notion herself, not for any so-called family reunion or to come rushing back to an ailing father who in her opinion looked remarkably healthy for a man supposedly battling chest pains, but to relocate. Permanently. To set up her business and her life where it had all once began.
Home.
She’d fled Red Rock five years ago when she’d felt her life spinning out of control, when the effects of alcohol and drugs had all but undone her. She’d thought that if she got away from everything, from her mother’s strong hand and everything that had contributed to her feeling of instability, the temptation to drink herself into oblivion and to drug her senses would disappear.
As if.
Because everywhere she went, she always had to take herself with her. It had taken a great deal of soul-searching and one near-fatal catastrophe—her nearly falling off a balcony while intoxicated—for her to finally face the fact that the problem was not external but internal. If she wanted her life to change, then she and not her surroundings needed to change.
So she’d shed the poor excuse for a husband she’d acquired in her initial vain attempt to turn her life around and then scrubbed away every bad habit she’d accumulated since she was a teenager. To that end, she’d checked herself into rehab, probably the hardest thing she’d ever done, and prepared to begin from scratch. And to learn to like herself again.
She knew the process was going to be slow. And it had been. Like molasses rolling downhill in January. But every tiny headway she made was also fulfilling. And as she grew stronger, more stable, more certain, she realized that she wanted to return to a place where people—most people, at any rate—liked her.
She’d wanted to return home.
And home was her parents. It was also her sisters, but that hurdle she hadn’t managed to take yet. When she’d left, she’d left her relationships with them, especially her older sister, Christina, in shambles.
She still had to do something about that.
One step at a time, Gloria cautioned herself.
She’d gotten everywhere else so far and she’d get there, too. Just maybe not tonight. She’d already seen her sisters, both of them, but from a distance. And that was what she intended on keeping tonight: her distance.
The same height as her mother, except that she was wearing heels that made her almost two inches taller, Gloria inclined her head toward the older woman. “Papa looks terrific for a man who�
��s had a heart attack,” she commented, not bothering to keep the smile from her lips.
“Chest pains,” Maria corrected, as if the reason she’d given both her older girls had not been a creative fabrication. “I said he’d had chest pains.”
Gloria could feel her brown eyes fill with humor as she looked at her mother—and saw right through her. “More like indigestion maybe?”
Maria shrugged her shoulders, dismissing the topic. It was obvious that her mother was not about to insist on the lie. It had done its work. It had brought her home. “He wanted you here as much as I did.” Maria fixed her with a look that spoke to her heart. “As I do.”
There was no point in keeping her decision to herself any longer. Gloria slipped her arm around her mother’s shoulders. “Then I have something to tell you.”
But her mother cut her off, as if she was afraid she would hear something that would spoil the moment and the party for her. “Whatever it is, I am sure it is fascinating, but you can tell me all about it after you get my shawl.”
Gloria looked at her uncertainly. If anything, the press of bodies made the air warm, not cool. “Your shawl?”
“Yes, I left it in the den.” Already turning in that direction, she placed her hands on her daughter’s back and gave her a little initial push to start her on her way. “Get it for me, please.”
Gloria paused, then shrugged in compliance. Going to get her mother’s shawl gave her an excuse to withdraw for a moment. Just because she’d made up her mind to uproot her life for the second time in five years and come back home didn’t mean that the idea didn’t make her just the slightest bit uneasy. She supposed it was because she kept thinking about that old line she remembered from her high school English class. Some author, Wolfe? Maybe Hardy? Whoever it was had said you couldn’t go home again.
She prayed it was just a handy title for a book and not a prophecy.