A Small Fortune Read online

“Obviously,” was Shane’s for once nonjudgmental comment.

  He knew that Asher was having a tough time with this divorce he’d just gone through. They all did. They might not always agree and might get under each other’s skins on occasion, but at bottom they were brothers and united against the world. That world included their father, who they all felt had betrayed them without so much as a word of explanation.

  “Doesn’t he seem kind of young to be drawing those kinds of conclusions?” Asher asked.

  “Not really,” Shane answered. “Besides, he’s a Fortune.” The smile was back, curving the corners of his mouth. “We tend to be born old.”

  That was true of him, Asher thought. But not of his brothers. And definitely not Shane.

  “You didn’t seem to be too old to chase after that assistant district attorney back in Atlanta,” he reminded Shane.

  Shane dropped his arm from Asher’s shoulder. He plucked a glass of red wine from a server’s tray as the man went by. “I was very young then.”

  Asher narrowed his eyes as he looked at him. “That was six months ago,” he pointed out.

  “My point exactly,” Shane answered, a twinkle entering his eyes. He drained the glass and set it down on another tray. “Six months can be a very long time.”

  Asher shook his head. Shane tended to grow more philosophical as the evening—and the glasses of wine—wore on. “I can’t even begin to pretend that I understand what you just said.” Asher looked about the crowded floor, but he wasn’t able to home in on Jace’s whereabouts. “Where is my son?”

  Arming himself with another glass of wine, Shane nodded toward the stairs and the rooms upstairs. “Wendy’s nanny showed up and took charge of both MaryAnne and Jace.” His grin grew wider. “From what I saw, the kid seems pretty taken with her.” Shane looked at him with that knowing look that had always irritated him. “Easy to see that he’s your kid, all right. Already trying to charm an older woman.”

  Asher pretended to ignore his brother. It was a great deal simpler that way.

  He looked around to see if he could spot either his son or the woman Shane was referring to—just in case Shane was wrong and they were still down here.

  The situation Shane had alluded to went all the way back to the time just before Asher had graduated from high school. They’d had a maid back then, an extremely attractive young woman named Elena. She was two years older than he was and he’d been flattered by her attention. It was Elena who was responsible for introducing him to the world of lovemaking.

  “Thanks for watching him,” Asher said as he walked toward the stairs.

  “No problem,” Shane called after him.

  There were four bedrooms upstairs. Four master suites with their own bathrooms and closets large enough to hide a small village. Jace and Marnie, as well as Wendy’s daughter, were in the fourth one.

  It was the only bedroom that hadn’t been recruited to double as a horizontal coat closet. There were no coats littering the bed, only the two children.

  “Daddy, you came back!” Jace cried the moment Asher stuck his head into the room. The little boy bounced off the bed in one swoop and ran to throw his small arms around his father’s legs.

  “Of course I came back,” Asher said as the boy all but scrambled up his body, using him as a human jungle gym. Asher was also aware that Marnie was looking at him as if he were the spokesman for deadbeat dads everywhere. She’d probably had to calm the boy down and reassure him. Jace could be difficult to deal with once he got a notion in his head. “Why would you think I wouldn’t?”

  Sky-blue eyes looked up at him solemnly. “Mama didn’t come back.”

  “Well, I always will,” Asher told his son firmly. “I promise no matter where I go, I will always come back to you,” he said, elaborately crossing his heart with his free hand. “We’re buddies, right?” He leaned his forehead against Jace’s. It had always been part of their bonding ritual.

  “Right,” the boy agreed with enthusiasm, bobbing his head up and down. But one look at his face made it clear that Jace had been worried.

  “What that means is that we’ll always have each other’s backs,” Asher told his son.

  “Got your back,” Jace echoed.

  Marnie never could hold her tongue when it came to children—or abandoned animals. Now was no exception. “I think he’d do better with a father than a buddy,” she told Asher.

  Still holding his son in his arms, Asher shifted the boy to his other hip as he turned to look at her. He didn’t recall asking her advice. “Oh? And what makes you such an authority on the subject?”

  In her opinion, being a part-time babysitter and children’s riding instructor qualified her to speak with authority, but she refrained from saying as much. “I deal with kids on a regular basis and see how much parents wind up missing because they’re too busy with their lives.”

  He was willing to concede that he screwed up in a number of areas, but raising Jace was not one of them. At least he was still here to do it, unlike Lynn.

  “Well, I’m not too busy for my son and I know what’s best for him.”

  “Whatever you say,” Marnie said in a voice devoid of any emotion. A voice that, because it was devoid of any emotion, told him that she disagreed with him but wasn’t about to waste time arguing the point.

  He knew he was being overly sensitive and that she wasn’t actually criticizing him so much as offering an opinion based on what he assumed she regarded as experience.

  In any event, he was being too touchy. He supposed that Jace was his Achilles’ heel.

  “Sorry,” he said. Judging by her expression, he’d managed to surprise her. He took some small satisfaction in that. “I keep getting off on the wrong foot with you.”

  She raised her eyes to his and suppressed an amused grin. “Two left feet?” she asked innocently.

  “Sometimes it feels that way,” he admitted.

  Asher set his son down on the floor, and the boy immediately clambered back onto the bed to resume playing the video game Wyatt had given him earlier. Obviously curious, MaryAnne climbed back up on the bed and plopped down beside Jace.

  One eye on his son, Asher turned to Marnie. “Look, let me make it up to you.”

  “There’s no need,” she demurred. While Asher Fortune was possibly the handsomest man she’d ever seen up close and personal, she had a feeling that he might turn out to be more than she’d bargained for. In general, she was used to down-to-earth working-class men. Asher was a little bit more complicated than she was accustomed to dealing with. The Fortunes were not exactly ordinary or run-of-the-mill by any stretch of the imagination.

  He wasn’t about to just give up that easily. He hadn’t just been talking earlier when he’d told her that he always paid his debts.

  “Well, let me at least pay for the repairs on your car. It’s only fair.”

  Now that she was back among people, she’d had a chance to calm down and rethink things. It was on the tip of her tongue to turn down that offer, as well, but it wasn’t as if she had money to burn. That was partially why she picked up babysitting assignments to supplement her regular income. During her days, she worked as a riding instructor at a local stable. Most of her students were children, which was just the way she wanted it. On the whole, children were a great deal easier to work with than adults.

  Marnie relented. “All right, since it’ll obviously make you feel better, you can pay my car repair bill,” she agreed.

  He wanted her to know that he wasn’t just making an empty promise. “Great, I’ll have someone tow your car into town. One of my brothers has this mechanic who works absolute miracles on anything that uses four wheels and a transmission.”

  “I don’t think it needs a miracle,” she said tactfully. “It just needs to be checked out.” There’d been more d
amage done to her temper, she now silently conceded, than had probably been done to her car. She paused for a moment, debating making her own offer, then decided she had nothing to lose. Besides, she rather liked Asher’s precocious son. “Look, since I’m here anyway, why don’t I take care of your son for you for the next few hours?” She nodded toward the hallway and the activity below. “That way, you can go enjoy yourself at the party.”

  Never one for crowds, Asher suddenly realized that he would rather have enjoyed himself here, with her and his son. But he knew that if he said something to that effect, it would probably sound too much like a pickup line and he’d already made enough of a bad initial impression on her.

  “I’m not much for parties,” he told her honestly. “To tell the truth, I feel out of my element with a bunch of strangers. My brothers invited a lot of people I don’t know,” he explained. He wouldn’t have minded so much if Wyatt had started with a small dinner party. But this felt as if the whole town were here.

  Her heart softened a little. Maybe that was why he’d been so preoccupied on the road back there. He was actually trying to get away from this gathering. While she sympathized, she had always been of the opinion that you met challenges head-on; otherwise they conquered you instead of the other way around.

  “Well, the only way to get to know them is to get to know them,” she pointed out gently. “If you stay up here with their coats, you’ll never get to know them.”

  “The coats aren’t the only things on this floor,” he said, looking at her for a long moment.

  “I’m here, right, Daddy?” Jace piped up, pausing his game to look at his father over his shoulder.

  Asher laughed and ruffled the boy’s silky blond hair. “You certainly are, Jace,” he acknowledged, then smiled at his cousin’s little girl. “And so are MaryAnne and Miss McCafferty.”

  Jace scrunched up his small, open face as he pondered on the last name his father had just uttered. “Who’s that?”

  Marnie touched the boy’s shoulder to get his attention. “Your dad’s talking about me, Jace,” she told him.

  Jace laughed in response, as if his father had just made a really funny mistake.

  “That’s not Miss McCafy,” he told his father, noticeably shortening his newfound friend’s last name. “That’s Marnie.”

  Asher glanced toward the woman. He’d been raised in an atmosphere that religiously clung to etiquette at the cost of approachability, as well as warmth. It was hard to shake old habits, especially the very few that actually made sense to him. Children were supposed to refer to adults by using their titles and surnames.

  “You don’t mind him calling you Marnie?” Asher asked her.

  She looked surprised that Asher should even ask. “Why should I? It’s my name.”

  He couldn’t be that out of touch—could he? he wondered. “I was taught as a kid that it’s not respectful to address adults as if they were your equal.”

  “Respect isn’t in what name you use when you talk to someone. It’s in the way you talk to them, in the way you treat them,” she told him just before she turned her attention to his son. “Remember that,” she instructed Jace.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jace answered solemnly. The next moment, he broke out in a wreath of smiles again. “Hey, Daddy, look! I’m winning!” he announced. But the moment he said that, the screen suddenly went blank. Jace’s eyes grew to the size of small saucers. “What happened? Where did the game go?”

  The next moment, the cause of the sudden blackout became crystal clear. MaryAnne had slipped off the bed. Trying to get back up, she tripped over the gaming machine’s cord and accidentally pulled it out of the wall, bringing the game to an abrupt and ignoble end.

  “She killed the game!” Jace accused indignantly, frustration echoing in his high voice.

  “It’s not dead, Jace,” Marnie told him cheerfully, placing her body between the boy and the reason his game had suddenly gone into hibernation. If he was left unrestrained, she knew what would happen next—and she wasn’t about to let it. “It’s just resting.”

  The tears of frustration that were about to spill out halted as he stared at his new hero. “You mean like taking a nap?”

  “Exactly like taking a nap,” she confirmed, secretly grateful that the boy had provided her with an explanation that he was obviously willing to accept. “Machines get tired, too. Just like people do. That’s why we can’t overuse them.”

  It was obvious by the expression on Jace’s small face that he was hanging on her every word and accepting each of those words as pure gospel.

  Asher stood back, taking in the scenario as it played out before him. He didn’t realize he was grinning until he felt the muscles stretching. It was definitely better up here in this bedroom than it would be downstairs, milling around with a glass of something or other in his hand, trying to make small talk with a houseful of people he didn’t know and probably, for the most part, wouldn’t really ever know.

  “You really are good with kids,” he said, making no effort to hide the admiration in his voice.

  “Thanks,” Marnie said. “But it’s not really hard. There’s no magic formula. You just have to remember that they’re just short people—without the baggage,” she added.

  Amen to that, Asher thought. He would have been a lot happier if Lynn hadn’t had the amount of baggage that she’d ultimately had. Who knew? They even might still be a family now.

  Who are you kidding? a voice in his head demanded irritably. You were never a family. Lynn never wanted to be part of a family. You forced her into it and you know it.

  That part was right. He did know it. He’d talked her into having Jace, into staying and being a mother. He’d wanted it so much, wanted to have a wife and a family, to be a father, that he deliberately ignored all the warning signs flashing in front of him. Signs that told him he was heading down an incline that could only end one way: in a destructive crash.

  He saw that Marnie was still looking at him expectantly.

  “Really,” she insisted. “This little guy’ll be fine.” She ruffled the boy’s hair just as he had. “So, go, join the party,” she urged.

  “It’s not my son I’m worried about,” he confessed honestly, his blue eyes sweeping over her and the little girl beside her.

  She laughed, getting his meaning. “We’ll be fine, too,” she assured him. “Now I suggest you get to that party. Wendy said that your brother Wyatt went to an awful lot of trouble to throw this little shindig. The least you can do is show up for a couple of hours.”

  Knowing she was right, he nodded, suppressing a resigned sigh. “You have a point,” he said out loud as he turned on his heel and headed for the bedroom door.

  “I always do,” he heard Marnie say as he left the room.

  He had no idea why that made him grin.

  But it did.

  Chapter Four

  There was a time, Asher thought as he came to the bottom of the stairs, that he would have headed straight for the wet bar, looking to give himself several hours of respite by tossing back shots of bourbon until a velvety oblivion wrapped itself around him. Granted, that method didn’t exactly solve any problems, but it did dissolve them for a few hours.

  But that was before he’d become a father, before he had to think of someone besides himself and put that person’s welfare before his own.

  The advent of fatherhood had brought with it some heavy responsibilities, and he took his role very seriously.

  Maybe, if Lynn hadn’t run out on them, he might have allowed himself to relax for a few hours once in a while, given himself permission to have a few drinks rather than policing himself so stringently, silently promising to have no more than three weak drinks over the course of the evening—if even that many.

  However, despite the fact that his brothers w
ere here, Asher knew he couldn’t just throw caution to the wind and be the carefree man he once was. He was an adult now and he had to act like one. That meant exercising self-discipline, as well as denial if the occasion called for it.

  It was better like this, he told himself as he slowly made his way over to the open bar. This way, there wouldn’t be any hangover for him to deal with and get over tomorrow morning. Plus, unlike mornings of old when the events of previous evenings were blurred and smudged, he’d actually be able to remember any conversation he might have tonight.

  That was important because he felt he sorely needed a few words of wisdom to help him navigate out of this mental fog he repeatedly found himself sinking into.

  His brother was right in what he’d said earlier. Asher needed to move on. But in order to do that, he needed help.

  Maneuvering his way through the human obstacle course before him, Asher finally managed to reach the bar just as Marcos came up on the other side.

  Perfect timing, Asher thought. Just the man he wanted to talk to.

  Marcos Mendoza had been working nonstop since he, his wife and the staff he’d brought with them had arrived. He felt as if he’d been everywhere, supervising the servers and making sure that every single item they’d brought was fresh, hot and appetizing-looking. As always, he wanted to make sure that there were no complaints about either the service or the quality of the food that was being served.

  No rest for the weary, Marcos thought when he saw his cousin-in-law come up to the bar. In an instant, he went back into catering mode.

  “Asher, what can I get you?”

  “I’ll have a beer, thanks,” Asher told him.

  Moving behind the bar, Marcos paused before plucking a bottle of dark ale from amid its brethren. “You don’t want anything stronger?”

  The corners of Asher’s mouth curved ever so slightly. “I do, but, well, Jace is upstairs and you know how it is.”

  No further words of explanation were necessary. Marcos understood. He’d been on his very best behavior since MaryAnne was born. For him, the decision hadn’t been a hardship. He loved being a father and wanted to be able to be immersed in the experience as much as possible.