Chapter Fourteen

Lila had vacillated about whether or not to invite Everett to the Fortune Foundation fund-raiser for the better part of a week. And now the event was tonight. That meant it was too late for her to change her mind again and invite him.

Just as well, Lila told herself. She’d attend the black-tie gala solo, just as she had initially planned when she’d first gotten the invitation.

Before Everett had popped up back in her life.

The only problem was, she felt conflicted.

Ever since Everett had gone out of his way and nursed her through that bout with the flu, she’d been sorely tempted to invite him—just as a show of gratitude, of course. However, she felt that if they attended the function together, that would be like practically announcing to the world at large that they were a couple—again.

And it was much too premature for that sort of speculation to make the rounds.

Because they weren’t a couple anymore and they might never be a couple.

So, as she wavered back and forth, Lila fell back on her old stand-by: Why borrow trouble?

Consequently, she was going alone.

It wouldn’t be the first time, she thought. And given what her life was like, it undoubtedly wouldn’t be the last.

The way she felt at the moment, Lila had a premonition that she was destined to be alone for the rest of her life. Her dreams about Everett had been just that: dreams. And sooner or later, people were destined to wake up from dreams.

To boost her spirits, Lila bought herself a brand-new dress. It was a gown really, she thought, looking herself over from all angles in her wardrobe mirror as she prepared to leave.

The floor-length baby-blue silk gown swirled around softly as she moved and made her feel like she was a princess.

A princess without a kingdom—or a prince, Lila added ruefully—but a princess nonetheless.

“At least for one night,” Lila whispered to her reflection.

Taking a deep breath, she gathered up her wrap and her purse. She checked her purse one last time to make sure she had her invitation. It was right where it had been the last four times she’d checked, tucked against her wallet.

She was ready.

“Nothing left to do but drive Cinderella over to the ball,” Lila murmured to her reflection.

She smiled to herself as she locked the door and got into her car.

Where are the singing mice when you need them? she wondered wryly, starting up her vehicle.

The Fortune Foundation’s fund-raiser was being held on the ground floor ballroom of Austin’s finest hotel. Everything about the evening promised to be of the highest, most expensive quality.

After slipping into her purse the ticket that the valet who’d taken her car had given her, Lila went into the hotel.

She didn’t need to look at the signs to know which ballroom the fund-raiser was being held in. All she had to do was follow the sound of music and laughter. It was evident that the crowd was having a good time.

The sound quadrupled in volume the second she opened one of the doors to the Golden Room.

She stood there just inside the doors, acclimating herself and looking around what seemed like a cavernous ballroom. There were people absolutely everywhere.

“You made it!”

Surprised, Lila turned to her right and found herself looking at Lucie. Her friend easily hooked her arm through hers.

“I was beginning to think you’d decided to take a pass on this,” Lucie said as she began to gently steer Lila in what seemed to be a predetermined direction.

“I didn’t think the Foundation allowed us to take a pass,” Lila answered honestly. Not that she would have. Her sense of duty and loyalty was just too strong.

“Well, I don’t know about ‘allowed,’” Lucie replied, considering the matter, “but I do think that there would have been a lot of disappointed people here if you hadn’t shown up.”

Lila laughed. “I really doubt that,” she told Lucie.

“I don’t,” Lucie retorted. Her eyes were sparkling with humor as she added, “Especially one someone in particular.”

Lila stared at her. Lucie had managed to completely lose her. Her brow furrowed as Lila asked, “What are you talking about?”

“Come.” The woman tugged a little more insistently on Lila’s arm. “I’ll show you. By the way, I like the gown. Light blue’s a good color for you. It brings out your eyes,” she added with approval.

“It’s new,” Lila confessed, having second thoughts and thinking that maybe she shouldn’t have indulged herself like this.

Glancing at the gown one more time, Lucie nodded. “I had a feeling.”

“Why? Did I forget to remove a tag?” Lila asked nervously, looking down at her gown and then trying to look over her shoulder to see if there were any telltale tags hanging from the back.

“No, you didn’t forget to remove a tag, silly. It just has that first-time-off-a-hanger look.” Looking past Lila, Lucie raised her hand and waved.

“Who are you waving at? Chase?” Lila asked, referring to her friend’s husband. Scanning the immediate area, Lila tried to get a glimpse of the rancher.

“Chase is off talking to Graham about that pet project of theirs, the center for military equine therapy,” Lucie said. She was talking about Graham Fortune, the man who not only had taken over Fortune Cosmetics but also owned the successful Peter’s Place, a home where troubled teens were helped to put their lives together. “No,” Lucie told her, a very satisfied smile playing on her lips, “I was waving at the person I said would have been disappointed if you’d decided not to attend tonight.”

Before Lila could ask any more questions, she suddenly found herself looking up at someone she’d never expected to see.

Everett. In an obligatory tuxedo.

At that moment Lila realized Everett in a tuxedo was even more irresistible than Everett in jeans.

Face it, the man would be irresistible even wearing a kilt.

“What are you doing here?” Lila asked when she finally located her tongue and remembered how to use it.

“You know, we’re going to have to work on getting you a new opening line to say every time you see me,” Everett told her with a laugh. “But to answer your question, I was invited.”

Lucie stepped up with a slightly more detailed explanation to her friend’s question. “The invitation was the Foundation’s way of saying thank-you to Everett for his volunteer work.”

“Disappointed to see me?” he asked Lila. There was a touch of humor in his voice, although he wasn’t quite sure just what to make of the stunned expression on Lila’s face.

“No, of course not,” Lila denied quickly. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I thought you were still back in Houston.”

“I was,” Everett confirmed. “The invitation was express-mailed to me yesterday. I thought it would be rude to ignore it, so here I am,” he told her simply, as if all he had to do was teleport himself from one location to another instead of drive nearly one hundred and seventy miles.

“Here you are,” Lila echoed.

Everything inside her was smiling and she knew that was a dangerous thing. Because when she was in that sort of frame of mind, she tended not to be careful. And that was when mistakes were made.

Mistakes with consequences.

She was going to have to be on her guard, Lila silently warned herself. And it wasn’t going to be easy being vigilant, not when Everett looked absolutely, bone-meltingly gorgeous.

As if his dark looks weren’t already enough, Lila thought, the tuxedo made Everett look particularly dashing.

You’re not eighteen anymore, remember? Lila reminded herself. You’re a woman. A woman who has to be very, very careful.

She just hoped she could remember that.

“Since your last name practically sounds like Fortune,” Lucie was saying to Everett, flanking him on the other side, “maybe you’d like to meet a Fortune or two—or twelve,” she teased.

He turned to look at Lila. “Is that all right with you?”

The fact that he asked surprised her. “Why would I object?” she asked, puzzled.

Bending over, he whispered into her ear. “I thought, looking like that,” he paused to allow his eyes to skim over her from top to bottom, “maybe you’d want me all to yourself.”

She wasn’t sure if it was what he said, or his warm breath in her ear that caused the shiver to run rampant up and down her spine.

Whatever it was, it took everything Lila had not to let it get the better of her. She knew where that sort of thing led her. To heaven and then, eventually, to hell as a consequence.

That wasn’t going to happen again, she silently swore.

Clearing her throat, Lila ignored the last part of what he’d said and crisply answered, “Yes, it’s fine with me.”

Lucie smiled. “Then let the introductions begin,” she announced, taking charge.

Lucie led off with her husband, Chase. The latter was a genial man who struck Everett as being very down-to-earth, considering the fact that he was an extremely wealthy man.

It was while Everett was talking to Chase that he was introduced to Graham Fortune Robinson. Graham, Everett was told, was one of Jerome Fortune/Gerald Robinson’s eight legitimate offspring. Again, rather than behaving as if he was spoiled or indifferent, or extremely entitled—all traits that Everett had seen displayed by many of the wealthy people he’d grown up with—Graham Fortune came across as only interested in the amount of good he could do with the money he had.

The man, like so many of the other Fortunes who were there that evening, had a keen interest in philanthropy, Everett concluded.

While he was being introduced to and talking with various members of the Fortune clan, Everett found himself exploring the subject that was so near and dear to Schuyler’s heart: that perhaps there was some sort of a family connection between the Fortune family and his own. Was “Fortunado” just a poor attempt by someone in the previous generation to either connect to the Fortunes, or to clumsily try to hide that connection?

Everett’s radar went up even higher when, after Lucie said that her connection to Graham went beyond just bloodlines, Graham joked that it seemed like everyone was related to him these days.

Everett forced himself to bite his tongue in order to refrain from asking Graham if, by that comment, he was referring to the Fortunados.

The next moment, Graham cleared up the possible confusion by saying that he was referring to the fact that numerous illegitimate Fortune offspring had been located over the past couple of years. Apparently, many years ago the prodigious patriarch Jerome Fortune had deliberately disappeared. When he had resurfaced, he had changed his name, calling himself Gerald Robinson. And, in addition to going on to amass a wealthy portfolio of his own, Gerald/Jerome had amassed a sizeable number of offspring, both legitimately with his wife, Charlotte, and illegitimately with a whole host of women whose paths the man had crossed.

“How did he manage to keep track of all those kids?” Everett marveled, still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that one man had wound up fathering a legion of children.

“Quite simply, he didn’t,” Graham answered. “But according to one story I’ve heard, his wife—and my mother—did. She got it into her head to look up every one of her husband’s progeny. Some of my siblings think she wanted to be prepared for any eventuality,” Graham explained. “Supposedly, she has everything she found written down in a big binder or something along those lines.”

Graham smiled. “My personal theory is that when she collected enough data to make that binder really heavy, she was going to use it to hit my father upside the head and teach him a lesson for tomcatting around like that.”

Lila nodded, saying in all seriousness, “If you ask me, the man certainly had it coming, spreading his seed around like that without any thought of how this was affecting anyone else in his family—especially those children.”

“Yes, but then on the other hand, if he hadn’t done it, there would be a lot less Fortunes in the world and so far, all the ones I’ve met have been really decent people whose hearts are in the right place,” Everett pointed out.

Graham smiled his approval at Everett’s comment. “I couldn’t have put it better myself. I’ve come to like every one of my siblings.” He shrugged and held up his wineglass as if in a silent toast to them. “It’s not everyone who has a family big enough to populate a medium-size town.”

Everett touched his glass to Graham’s. He felt as if he could go on talking about the various members of the Fortune family all night. But suddenly, everyone in the ballroom was being asked to stop what they were doing.

“Can I have everyone’s attention for a moment?” a tall, imposing man with a booming voice said into a microphone. He was standing before a podium at the front of the ballroom. “This is the time in our evening where we all temporarily suspend the festivities and are asked to dig deep into our hearts—and our pockets,” the MC added with a laugh. “In other words, it’s time for us to donate to the Fortune Foundation so it can go on doing all those good works and helping all those people who are not nearly as fortunate—no pun intended—as we all are.”

The man’s piercing blue eyes seemed to sweep around the entire ballroom. No easy feat, Lila thought, watching from the sidelines.

“Now don’t be shy,” the MC continued. “Give as much as you’re able. No donation is too small, although bigger is always better. But even a little is better than nothing. So, like I said, open your hearts and get those checkbooks out. Remember, it feels good to give. And when you do, you’ll find that you’ll get back in ways you never even suspected were possible.”

Listening, Lila opened up her purse and took out her checkbook. She was about to start writing out what she viewed to be a modest amount—although it was all she could afford—when Everett put his hand on hers, stopping her.

She looked at him, puzzled. Why wasn’t he letting her write the check?

“I’ll take care of it for both of us,” he told her. The next moment, as she watched, she saw Everett write out a check for the sum of one hundred thousand dollars.

At the last second, she remembered to keep her mouth from dropping open.