for my mother’s wedding.”
Adrienne paused in the middle of picking up their used paper plates to glance at the lists Hannah was making. “I still can’t believe your mother is going to marry one of the Fortunes of Texas. My mother would die to marry me off to a rich man. I’m thirty-three. I think she’s giving up hope. But Ryan Fortune is rich, and his ranch, the Double Crown, is one of the biggest, most prestigious and profitable ranches in the entire state. It’s just so romantic that your mother loved him when they were both practically children, and now they’re finally being reunited. Have y’all decided what you’re going to wear to the engagement party next weekend?”
“Mother refuses to call it an engagement party. It’s just a get-together.” Hannah motioned to a tiny closet in the alcove between the living room and her bedroom. “I picked up a dress the other day.”
“Tell me it isn’t beige.” At the expression on Hannah’s face, Adrienne said, “Sugar pie, you should wear something bright pink or purple, or better yet, red.” She spoke into the closet, causing the words to sound muffled. “Something that’ll make y’all shine.”
“It’s my mother’s big night, Adrienne. She’s the one I want to shine.”
Adrienne swung around so suddenly the long dress in her hand swished. Her eyebrows formed two identical blond arches, her lips shaped around a long whistle. Holding a filmy, wispy dress the color of walnut shells up to Hannah, she said, “It may not be pink or red, but lordy, I do believe you’re gonna be doing a little shining of your own. What a shame you’re going alone. Whoever could you call? Perhaps some tall, dashing man with an adorable little cleft in his chin?”
Leave it to Adrienne to have noticed that.
Hannah stared past the other woman, picturing the stranger’s strong face. Now that she knew his name, their brief encounter seemed even more intimate. It didn’t change the fact that he’d assumed she was a woman who made her living on her back. It stung her pride, and her pride was important to her.
She took the dress from Adrienne and hung it in the closet. “He’s pompous, he’s arrogant, he’s shrewd and he has a sharp tongue. A man like that wouldn’t think twice about using a woman like me and then tossing me aside.”
Hands full of containers, Adrienne headed for the door. “From what you’ve told me about that little episode in the storage room, he didn’t take you up on what he thought you were offering. He must have at least one scruple.”
“Maybe you should call him.”
“He wasn’t after my phone number, sweetie. I still say you should give it the old college try.”
With a wink the Southern belles of old would have never gotten away with, Adrienne left. It didn’t take long for Hannah to notice the flat, gray object on the table where she always dumped the mail. She padded over and reached out with one finger, sliding the card closer as if it might bite her.
Malone, Malone & Associates, P.C. Attorneys At Law
Adrienne was about as subtle as her bright pink capri pants.
There was a business address, a business phone number. Hannah turned the card over. On the back was another telephone number, this one written in black ink in a distinctive, masculine scrawl.
She knew his name. She knew his phone number. Now what? she wondered.
Now nothing, she told herself. Her encounter with Parker Malone was over. It didn’t matter that he’d been the most ruggedly attractive man she’d ever seen in a suit. He’d embarrassed her. Worse, he’d jumped to conclusions, the most degradingly possible kind.
Striding to an antique desk, she bent to drop the card into the wicker basket filled with wadded-up notes and paper plates. She stared at the card for a long time, then opened a drawer and dropped it inside.
Hannah accepted a glass of white wine from a pleasant, friendly woman who spoke with a Mexican accent. Taking a small sip, Hannah glanced around. She’d seen Ryan Fortune several times since he’d come back into her mother’s life. The first time she’d visited his home, she’d been in awe of its size. She’d heard someone say the house had eight bedrooms. It was grand, and at the same time warm and lovely. The ceiling in the great room was high and beamed. An old stone fireplace dominated an entire wall. Handwoven blankets hung on the other three walls, pottery made by local artists from the same type of clay on which the house sat leant warmth and interest to shelves, corners and on the top of a painted armoire that probably hid a television and stereo system from view.
The house was large, opulent and cordial, as was its owner. Hannah had liked both on sight. Ryan Fortune had promised her mother the party would be a small, friendly gathering. Hannah was beginning to realize that to a man of Ryan’s wealth and social standing, sixty-five to seventy people constituted a small group.
Hannah stood with her mother near the entryway leading to the dining room. Following the course of her mother’s gaze to the group of men on the other side of the room, one of whom was Lily’s future husband, Hannah smiled. Lily Redgrove Cassidy was lovely, and perhaps even more exotic-looking at fifty-three than she’d been at seventeen. Her firstborn and only son, Cole, stood across the room with Ryan and two men whose backs were to Hannah and her mother.
“He’ll be back in a moment, Mom.”
Lily glanced around sharply at Hannah. “I know that, dear.”
“Then what is it?” Hannah asked, trying to understand the reason for her mother’s obvious discomfiture. “Maria isn’t coming, is that it? Is that why you’re chewing on your bottom lip?”
Smoothing an errant strand of hair back into the intricate knot on the back of her head, Lily said, “I’m disappointed that your sister isn’t here, but that’s not it.”
“Then, what is it?”
Lily squeezed her middle child’s hand. “You know me so well. Am I really so transparent?”
“You’re beautiful, and you know it. I can tell when something’s bothering you, that’s all. What could possibly be marring this happy occasion?”
“I’ve learned that Ryan’s attorney is dead-set against Ryan and I making our engagement public. Ryan won’t listen, but what if he’s right? He started divorce proceedings long before he and I found one another again, but what if my presence in his life makes it even more difficult for him to finally break free of Sophia?”
Hannah shook her head sadly. Her own brother was an attorney, so she didn’t dislike all lawyers, but at that moment she very much disliked the attorney who had put the worry in her mother’s brown eyes. “Ryan Fortune has been to hell and back with that woman he married when he was too blind with grief to see her for what she was. He deserves happiness, Mom, and so do you. I’m proud of him for wanting to proclaim his love for you to the world. Maybe Ryan should tell his attorney to take a flying leap the next time he sees him.”
“Oh, his attorney is here tonight, dear.”
“He is?”
Laughter erupted on the other side of the room. Ryan slapped the man closest to him on the back, then held up a glass, his eyes meeting Lily’s. “I’d like to propose a toast.”
Little by little,
