Eileen Wilks – The Pregnant Heiress (страница 1)
Fortunes Host “Members-Only” Party
In the wake of Miranda Fortune’s shocking revelation about bearing twins out of wedlock comes the next revelation. Notorious bad boy Cameron Fortune fathered three illegitimate heirs with three different women prior to his death. Family patriarch Ryan Fortune hosted a party at the Double Crown Ranch this past week to welcome these stunned individuals into the family fold.
No expense was spared as the Fortunes served the finest champagne and fanciest hors d’oeuvres. Although one heir declined the invitation, international importer Jonas Goodfellow, Marine Gunnery Sergeant Sam “Storm” Pearce, businessman Justin Bond and a very pregnant Emma Michaels mingled with their new relatives.
“There was something mysterious about Emma,” according to one unnamed source. “She didn’t want to have much to do with the Fortunes.” Of course, this reporter couldn’t help noticing that she spent an awful lot of time talking to the P.I. who’d tracked her down. Was she just expressing her gratitude…or could something be brewing between them?
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the world of Silhouette Desire, where you can indulge yourself every month with romances that can only be described as passionate, powerful and provocative!
The ever-fabulous Ann Major offers a Cowboy Fantasy, July’s MAN OF THE MONTH. Will a fateful reunion between a Texas cowboy and his ex-flame rekindle their fiery passion? In Cherokee, Sheri WhiteFeather writes a compelling story about a Native American hero who, while searching for his Cherokee heritage, falls in love with a heroine who has turned away from hers.
The popular miniseries BACHELOR BATTALION by Maureen Child marches on with His Baby!—a marine hero returns from an assignment to discover he’s a father. The tantalizing Desire miniseries FORTUNES OF TEXAS: THE LOST HEIRS continues with The Pregnant Heiress by Eileen Wilks, whose pregnant heroine falls in love with the investigator protecting her from a stalker.
Alexandra Sellers has written an enchanting trilogy, SONS OF THE DESERT: THE SULTANS, launching this month with The Sultan’s Heir. A prince must watch over the secret child heir to the kingdom along with the child’s beautiful mother. And don’t miss Bronwyn Jameson’s Desire debut—an intriguing tale involving a self-made man who’s In Bed with the Boss’s Daughter.
Treat yourself to all six of these heart-melting tales of Desire—and see inside for details on how to enter our Silhouette Makes You a Star contest.
Enjoy!
Joan Marlow Golan
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
The Pregnant Heiress
Eileen Wilks
EILEEN WILKS
is a fifth-generation Texan. Her great-great-grandmother came to Texas in a covered wagon shortly after the end of the Civil War—excuse us, the War Between the States. But she’s not a full-blooded Texan. Right after another war, her Texan father fell for a Yankee woman. This obviously mismatched pair proceeded to travel to nine cities in three countries in the first twenty years of their marriage, raising two kids and innumerable dogs and cats along the way. For the next twenty years they stayed put, back home in Texas again—and still together.
Eileen figures her professional career matches her nomadic upbringing, since she’s tried everything from drafting to a brief stint as a ranch hand—raising two children and any number of cats and dogs along the way. Not until she started writing did she “stay put,” because that’s when she knew she’d come home. Readers can write to her at P.O. Box 4612, Midland, TX 79704-4612.
Meet the Fortunes of Texas
Meet the Fortunes of Texas’s Lost Heirs. Membership in this Texas family has its privileges and its price. As the family gathers to welcome its newest members, it discovers a murderer in its midst…and passionate new romances that only a true-bred Texas love can bring!
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Flynn Sinclair: Although this hardened private investigator’s job ended as soon as he’d brought Miranda Fortune’s twins to Texas, one look at a very pregnant, scared Emma Michaels told him that his work had only begun….
Emma Michaels: She’d fled from an abusive relationship in the dead of night, but seven months pregnant, this reluctant heiress wasn’t quite so fleet-footed. The only person who could help her was a darkly handsome stranger whose deep voice had already inspired a fantasy—or two.
Justin Bond: Getting to know the Fortunes had changed Emma’s twin brother…and the first thing on this businessman’s “to do” list was wooing back his wife!
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
Prologue
February: just off I-10, north of Huachuca City,
Arizona
She smiled a lot. Flynn couldn’t figure out why. The elderly couple she was waiting on now could have been excused for thinking she’d shown up at the truck stop this morning just for the pleasure of looking at the photos the old woman had spread out on the table.
Her smile was bright and natural, too, not forced. Sunny-side up, like the eggs she’d set in front of Flynn a few minutes ago. It made people smile back. Flynn couldn’t make sense of that smile.
If the old couple had been paying attention, they would have seen that she didn’t have time to stop and ooh over pictures of their grandkids. They would have seen the exhausted smudges beneath those baby-blue eyes, too.
Flynn paid attention. To everything. It was his job.
She detached herself from her elderly admirers and was making her way along the row of booths in her station when a trucker with a handlebar mustache slid out of a booth and stood, blocking her. He tried out a smile that looked creaky from disuse. He also tried to pat her fanny.
She dodged his hand and said something Flynn couldn’t catch over the noise in the truck stop. He frowned. The trucker might be a slug or just an idiot. There were plenty of both around, men who would want a taste of that sunshine and grab for it.
He had an urge to explain manners to Handlebar Mustache in terms the man would understand. His fingers twitched with the need to make a fist. But he wasn’t needed. Handlebar headed for the register, the lines of his face drooping in disappointment. Flynn’s gaze switched to his subject as she hurried behind the counter to replace the coffeepot on its warmer.
She was too skinny. With her brown hair pulled back in that bobbing ponytail she looked like a kid, her face all eyes and smiling mouth, her arms and legs in perpetual motion. In spite of the telltale bulge her stomach made beneath her faded pink uniform, she looked like she ought to be climbing trees and contemplating the mysteries of puberty. Not dealing with its most noticeable result.
She wasn’t a child, though. Flynn knew her age to the day. Emma Michaels was thirty-two, single, and until recently she’d lived in San Diego, California. He knew her birthplace, the name of her high school English teacher, her last three places of residence and her mother’s name.
Which was more than she knew.
Flynn smiled. He hadn’t expected to enjoy this job. His client was a worm, and when you worked for worms you usually found yourself mucking around in dirt. Moreover, he was certain Lloyd Carter had lied to him.
By itself, that wouldn’t have bothered him much. Clients lied. Everyone lied. He was often amazed at the amount of trouble people would take to cover up some piddly little sin that didn’t amount to a hill of beans to anyone but themselves. Lying was a skill that came packaged with language, and in Flynn’s line of work, spotting those lies was a necessary talent.
Lloyd Carter was a good liar, but not good enough. Nothing put Flynn on his guard faster than someone who insisted he was being totally honest. Flynn was doing well enough these days that he didn’t have to work for a worm if the job didn’t interest him. Even though Carter claimed that Miranda Fortune wanted him to contact the twins, Carter’s explanations and candid gray eyes had failed to impress him.
In spite of that, he’d taken the job. There was a debt involved, a matter of family and honor. Death didn’t cancel a debt, not to Flynn’s way of thinking, and the people Carter had wanted him to find were Fortunes. Not that they knew it.
He’d made the worm cough up a big retainer before taking the case. He would have worked for free if one of the Fortune family had been his client, but there was no point in letting Carter off the hook, and Carter’s credit was bad.
Flynn sipped from the chipped cup and grimaced. The coffee tasted like it had been brewed about the time the cracked vinyl in the seat he sat on was new. He’d had worse, and been in worse places than this. Part of the hazards of his trade. But he hadn’t had much worse.
He drank it anyway. He needed a reason to linger until things slowed down enough for him to speak to Emma Michaels about the family she didn’t know she had.
Watching her was surprisingly pleasant. She was too thin, she smiled too much, she was pregnant—the woman had strings and obligations sticking out all over her, like porcupine quills. She was a flake, too. When she’d brought him his eggs he’d commented on the colored stones in her bracelet. She’d told him cheerily that there was a stone for each of her chakras. The bracelet was supposed to balance her energy, or some crap like that.