into Maggie Perez’s gorgeous dark eyes. She’d grown up to be a strikingly beautiful woman—naturally tawny skin, the kind of full rosy lips that a fashion model might envy, and a perfect body and legs. Her hands and feet were small, her wrists delicate, her fingernails beautifully shaped and shiny with colorless polish.
“Um, when did you arrive?” Dallas asked.
Maggie looked off into the distance and frowned slightly. It had seemed like such a good idea to return to Texas—to the ranch she’d grown up on and to her family—until she got her bearings again after being laid off from her job as a bank manager. But now she wasn’t so sure. Unquestionably she wasn’t accomplishing anything positive by living with her parents, even though Rosita, her mother, and Ruben, her father, were wonderful to her and Travis.
“I’ve…rather, Travis and I have been here for weeks and weeks,” she murmured, unnerved by the swift passage of time. She really must get herself together and decide what she was going to do with her life. Her divorce was over a year old and hadn’t bothered her nearly as much as had losing her job. But then she hadn’t really been in love with her ex, nor had he loved her. Their marriage had been a result of her pregnancy, a foolish mistake for both her and Craig, and for a while she had hoped to make it work. Craig, too, had tried—for a while—but then it all started falling apart. Without love, relationships—even marriage—simply couldn’t endure.
“Are you home for good?”
“No, of course not. Just until…well, I’m not really sure just how long we’ll stay, but I know we’re not here for good.” Maggie was a trifle confused. Dallas seemed to be sincerely interested in talking to her, and why would he be? Heavens, he was attractive! At least six feet tall, and so lean and hard-muscled. And his eyes were a marvelous color, a light golden brown that reminded her of good whiskey. She liked the way he wore his sun-streaked brown hair, too, long enough to touch his shirt collar.
“Didn’t I hear something about your living in Phoenix?” Dallas said, breaking into thoughts that Maggie knew full well she shouldn’t be having.
“I was living in Phoenix, so you heard right,” she said a bit brusquely. Admiring Dallas Fortune’s good looks was just about the most foolish thing she could do while she was here, and if there was one thing she didn’t plan on ever being again with a man, it was foolish. One stroll around that block was quite enough, thank you very much. “But I’m not going back to Arizona. I haven’t actually done anything about it yet, but I’ve been thinking about looking for work in Houston,” she found herself adding, in spite of all that common sense in her system telling her to take Travis by the hand and get the heck away from Dallas Fortune.
“What kind of work do you do?” Dallas asked.
“At my last job I was a bank manager.”
Dallas nodded. “Banking is a good field.” He wanted to ask about her husband in the worst way, but not in front of Travis. Something very unusual was happening to Dallas: he was attracted to a woman! Feeling her pull, inhaling her scent, realizing that his body was reacting exactly as it should to a beautiful, sexy lady—which it sure hadn’t been doing with any other beautiful, sexy lady he knew. Obviously their chemistries blended in the unique and special way that brought a man and a woman together. Did she feel it as strongly as he did?
Travis was beginning to squirm. Maggie took his hand in hers. “We’d better be going. Thank you again, Dallas. I shudder to think what might have happened if you hadn’t been here.” She started walking away.
“Maggie, it was great seeing you again,” Dallas called after her.
She turned around just long enough to say, “It was nice seeing you again. Goodbye,” and then began walking so fast that Travis almost had to run to keep up.
“Mama, stop, you’re going too fast,” he finally complained.
“Don’t you ‘Mama’ me, young man,” she said sternly. “You could have been hurt very badly today. Do you understand what almost happened to you? If I catch you leaving the yard again without permission, I promise I will paddle your behind and you will sit on a chair in the house for a week. Without TV or toys. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Mama,” Travis said with a tearful sniffle. He could cry now that he wasn’t with Dallas, and actually a few tears might even soften his mother’s heart.
They didn’t. Maggie marched stoically on toward her parents’ house with her son in tow, thanking God and Dallas Fortune that Travis hadn’t been injured, or worse, today.
But she’d meant what she’d told her son, and his teary little face did not affect that decision in the least.
Maggie’s homecoming—weeks and weeks before, as she’d told Dallas—had been everything she’d known it would be. She and Travis had arrived in the evening, surprising her parents to joyful tears. Rosita and Ruben had passed her back and forth, hugging and kissing her, and doing the same with Travis.
“Oh, he is such a handsome boy,” Rosita had exclaimed again and again. “And you are so beautiful, Maggie. Oh, my dear daughter, I’ve prayed so often that you would return to us. Now, let’s get you settled in, then we’ll have coffee and talk. We have a lot to catch up on.”
Rosita rarely had the time to write long letters, and Ruben corresponded with no one. But over the years Rosita had often scribbled notes to her daughter, passing on what Rosita considered to be the most crucial information about everyone who currently lived or previously had lived, on the ranch. And, of course, there’d been the long-distance phone calls between mother and daughter.
Those notes and phone calls were the reason Maggie knew about Ryan Fortune’s divorce problems, and about his new love, Lily Cassidy, which, in fact, wasn’t a new love at all but an old love renewed. Then there was the bewildering event of baby Bryan’s kidnapping.
Over coffee or tea at the kitchen table in the evening Maggie and Rosita did most of their talking. It began the first night Maggie returned to the ranch, and was what they were doing the evening of the day that Maggie and Dallas had met again because of Travis’s disobedient behavior. With Travis tucked into bed and Ruben reading his paper in the living room, Rosita related the latest news. “Sheriff Wyatt Grayhawk is still investigating the identity of the mystery baby. Of course, as I told you before, FBI agent Devin Kincaid rescued a baby from the kidnappers who the family believed was baby Bryan. But when Claudia and Matthew saw him, they knew it wasn’t their son. They’ve kept him and named him Taylor. More mysterious still is that the child turned out to be a Fortune—he has the crown-shaped birthmark and rare blood type. Yet no Fortune has claimed him.”
Maggie sipped her coffee. “That is so odd, isn’t it?”
“Very. He has to be the son of one of the Fortune men, because if any of the Fortune women had given birth, someone would know about it.”
“But which man could it be? How will Wyatt find out?”
Rosita leaned forward. “I heard that he’s mentioned a DNA screening on every one of the Fortune males.”
“But that’s so…so personal!”
Rosita shrugged. “So is fathering a child and then pretending you know nothing about it.”
“Mama, most of the Fortune men have pretty fast reputations, but I can’t imagine any of them knowingly denying their own flesh and blood.”
“I
