Fortune in Name Only, page 3
Only then fully grasping what he’d just done. What he’d gotten them both into.
If he hadn’t been so worried that Widow Hensen would put the ranch back on the market and find a married buyer willing to offer more than asking price, selling it right out from under him, he might have had the sense to slow down.
To talk over parameters with Lily, at the very least.
He knew they weren’t just entering into a platonic, limited time marriage for Val Hensen’s sake. They were embarking on a union that everyone would think was real.
Chatelaine was an old-fashioned small town that wasn’t progressive like other communities in Texas. The people there wanted things left just like they were.
And they were not the type of folks who’d likely look kindly on a man using one of their own to his own gain.
Feeling like a lout, he kept a smile on his face and grabbed Lily’s hand as soon as, purse in hand, she reappeared from the back room.
“We need to talk,” he whispered directly into her ear.
Even if she had other pressing plans, she’d have to change them.
His fault.
He’d make it up to her.
But if he’d just sent a boulder down a hill to crash her world into pieces, he had to find a way to stop the descent.
She was busy accepting well-wishes and being stopped for hugs as they made their way out of the café. But she seemed as eager as he was to be alone.
To sort out the mess he’d made.
And, if they were going forward, to get plans in place for future public appearances.
He wanted his future.
But not at the cost of hers.
As he pushed through the door of the GreatStore, holding it for her, he could feel the sweat trickling down his back and promised himself he’d just made his last mistake where Lily Perry was concerned.
Chapter Three
We need to talk.
That kind of lead-in usually meant the conversation would not be good.
They’d reached the GreatStore parking lot.
Asa started talking. “We can take my truck, maybe head out to my cabin at the ranch. Word getting to Val Hensen that we’re alone there together would be good, but we’d also have plenty of privacy.”
And they’d be at the ranch. Their whole reason for getting married.
“I can’t, Asa. Not right this second. I’m meeting my sisters for an early dinner.” True. Though she didn’t have to show up at the restaurant for another hour. She just wasn’t ready for “the talk.” Not ten minutes after he’d shocked her with the impromptu and incredibly romantic proposal in front of a crowd of people who’d known her all her life.
She’d needed it to be real in the worst way.
But it wasn’t. And she had to get a grip on that before things went any further. So right now, with the way her body was humming and her heart was crying, being alone with him at his cabin was a very bad idea.
“Call them,” he said, pulling her down out of the way of the store’s entrance. “Make it an hour later, and I’ll take us all out to the LC Club.”
He said it as though visiting the ritzy oasis set twenty miles out of town with multiple balcony dining spaces overlooking Lake Chatelaine, wasn’t a once-in-a-lifetime experience. For Tabitha, it wouldn’t be. Probably not for Haley, either. But for Lily?
She’d never been.
And didn’t want her first time to be a fake celebration. Most particularly not when she’d be there with the three people she loved most in the world.
Shaking her head, Lily pulled away from Asa. Secretly hating the way his brows drew together, like he was pained, but held her ground, just the same.
“My time with my sisters...it’s still kind of sacrosanct to me. You know, having grown up without knowing them... I can meet you after,” she said to him. “We can drive out to the lake, if you’d like.”
We need to talk purported a need for privacy, and it wasn’t like they could find that at the LC Club.
As soon as she saw his nod, she turned toward the employee parking area and was further put out when Asa kept in step beside her, until he murmured, “Just to keep up appearances.”
At which point she nodded, grinned at him, and walked fast.
She still felt like she was racing as she sat, in newly donned jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, fork suspended over her chef salad, facing her triplet sisters an hour later.
It was like she couldn’t catch her breath. Had been that way since she’d seen Asa down on his knee in front of her, holding out that ridiculously fancy diamond ring.
She’d taken it off the second she’d shut herself in her old beater of a car.
“Tell us already,” Haley said, sounding more caring than exasperated. Lily saw the glance she shared with Tabitha, the beautiful blonde sister, as Lily thought of her. One more suited to Asa Fortune, for sure, if not for the fact that Tabitha had already loved, and lost, a Fortune. Weston Fortune’s death had left her a single mother, raising their year-old twins alone.
“Tell you what?” Lily knew pretending was only going to stall the inevitable. When pretense had gotten her into this whole mess to begin with. And besides, she’d needed to talk to her sisters.
But just putting it out there...facing reality. Was she really ready for that? A part of her wanted to cling to fantasy for a second or two longer.
“We both got calls,” Tabitha said softly, her blond hair falling perfectly against the sides of her face, her green eyes filled with questions.
“Within a minute of him asking,” Haley confirmed.
“You knew we would.” Tabitha again.
And Lily put her fork down.
“Trouble is, you aren’t wearing the ring.” Haley just kept coming at her. “And you sure don’t look like an ecstatic, newly engaged woman.”
“Which, considering how besotted you are with the guy, is a bit of a concern,” Tabitha added.
They weren’t going to let this go. And truthfully, she didn’t want them to. She just wished, for once, she wasn’t the poor fledging among them. The one who didn’t have a life mapped out in front of her.
Because who else would enter into a fake marriage just to help out a friend?
“It’s a favor,” she leaned in to say. There. She’d put it out there. Quietly. Just between the three of them. And effectively ended the weird flight into make believe she’d been teetering around in. “But before I tell you any more, I need you both to swear that this goes no further,” she said, looking between the two of them with a solid gaze.
Both women nodded immediately.
“I mean it,” she reiterated. “No one.” If word got out, the adventure was over. And Asa lost everything he most desired.
“Of course,” Tabitha agreed.
“Goes without saying,” Haley said. “We’re our safe place, right?” Her glance encompassed Lily and Tabitha equally.
“Right,” they both answered solemnly. In tandem.
As though they’d grown up together rather than just being part of the same birthing event, and sharing a home for the first ten months of their lives.
“So yeah, I’m a fool,” Lily said with a beleaguered sigh, suddenly feeling a lot younger than her sisters despite the fact that they were all the same age. But looking over at Tabitha, the doting mother, and Haley, the incredibly talented magazine writer, she suddenly just knew. She wasn’t going to change her mind.
No matter the eventual cost to her heart.
“What have you two been telling me for the past year?”
“That you need to expect more out of life,” Haley answered first.
“That you deserve more than you allow yourself to expect,” Tabitha chimed in with her version of the same.
“Right. Well, um, as it turns out, Asa can’t buy the ranch unless he’s married. So...”
“He asked you to marry him, to give up your life, so he can buy a ranch?”
Not a ranch. The ranch. “No. He made a joke. I’m the one who talked him into it.”
“Still...he’s letting you give up your life for...”
She shook her head before Haley could finish the sentence. “No,” she stated emphatically. “First, I’m not giving up my life. The marriage is only temporary. Second, it’s in name only, though as far as the town is concerned, it will be real. Basically, I’m moving from my apartment to the main house on the ranch for the next six months or so...” Assuming Asa’s talk didn’t change that.
“Ah, Lil...” Tabitha’s look was full of...worry. “You love him. You think you’ll share his daily life for six months and then just be able to walk away?”
Shoulders straight, she shot back, “What I think is that I’m reaching for what I want,” she told them pointedly. “I want a home. Marriage. I want to be surrounded by family. And while this isn’t at all what I’d envisioned, it’s a hell of a lot better than waitressing at the café.”
Both women kept their mouths shut, but their facial features expressed their doubts loud and clear.
“Sharing his life for six months is better than not ever having known what living with him is like,” she continued, articulating thoughts she hadn’t fully landed on yet. “Who knows, maybe Asa will turn out to be no fun at all in everyday life.”
“And if he’s everything you ever hoped for?” Haley asked again.
“Then I know what to reach for. Don’t you see? You both grew up in a regular homes. You’ve had stability your entire lives. I never have. Besides, love isn’t about what you get, it’s what you give. I’m helping Asa’s dream come true...”
“And when the marriage is over...you move back to your apartment, or one like it, and go back to work at the café?” Tabitha asked the question, but it blared from Haley’s expression as well.
“No.” She was never going back. To either. “I expect that Asa will keep me employed at the ranch for as long as I want to be...” Assuming she made it there at all.
As minutes passed, Lily grew more and more anxious about that talk Asa had said they had to have. Surely, he wouldn’t make a big public proposal and two minutes later cut her off.
He wanted the ranch too badly to do that, the more practical side of her reminded herself.
“I told him, when I was giving him my reasons for wanting to help him, that I’d already been planning to ask him for a job as soon as he got the ranch...”
Ignoring the salad in front of her...her stomach was too knotted to eat much...Lily nibbled on a dinner roll as she gave her sisters a rundown of the reasons she’d used to convince Asa to marry her. Ending with... “And the bottom line is...I want to do this,” she told them both. “It might be dumb, I might get hurt, but at least I’m daring to live bigger...”
When Haley and Tabitha both nodded, Lily’s stomach settled some. She might be walking into heartache, but she was doing so consciously, by her own choice.
“And who knows,” Tabitha said, sharing a glance, and a small smile, with her triplets. “Maybe he’ll fall in love, too, and the marriage will become real.”
Haley’s brows raised, her eyes wide, and, glancing at Lily, she added, “I can’t imagine any straight man living with Lily for six weeks, let alone six months, without falling for her...”
Lily got that her sisters were trying to make her feel better. But she’d been residing in a town that was full of eligible men her entire life and not one of them had ever tried to snatch her up.
And it didn’t matter, because the last thing she needed was false hope.
What she did need, however, was to get out of there, call Asa, and get every second of living she could out of the next six months.
* * *
Asa almost didn’t pick up when Lily’s call came through. From practically the minute he’d left her at her car in the GreatStore parking lot, he’d been getting calls from his siblings and cousins, congratulating him. He’d wanted word to travel fast. He’d just never expected the deluge that rained down upon him.
But then, he was still reeling somewhat from the huge changes life had brought him. A decades old mining tragedy that had driven his grandfather and great uncle out of town, after they’d pinned the blame on someone else, had turned into a windfall for their heirs Asa had been shocked when he’d received the letter telling him that he was the beneficiary of a fairly large sum of money. Even then, he’d never, in a million years, expected that the family members he’d never met would welcome him home as if he’d lived there all his life.
Turned out his Fortune cousins were so much in his life that they’d been noticing how much Asa and Lily hung out together and had been hoping that he’d be bringing another one of the Perry triplets into the family.
While Tabitha wasn’t officially a Fortune, with West, a former federal prosecutor, having been killed before they’d been married—before he’d even known he was going to be a father—her twins were most definitely carrying Fortune blood, and the entire clan had welcomed Tabitha in as one of them.
And his own sisters...well, they’d been giddy over the idea of him actually getting over their rancorous upbringing and settling down.
Which, of course, wasn’t happening at all.
Still feeling the sting of guilt over keeping the truth to himself about his impending nuptials to Lily, he’d glanced at his ringing phone on the fourth ring and saw that it was his bride-to-be.
“Hey!” he answered, anticipation replacing all of the other emotions that had been rolling around inside him. “I thought you’d be another hour or so...”
“I can meet up with you later, if you’re busy.”
“Now’s just fine,” he told her, arranging to pick her up at her place in five minutes. And as he hung up, he couldn’t help feeling relieved that she was back to her easygoing, accommodating self.
Not that he wanted her to always let him have his way. On the contrary, he’d like to show her, during their time together, that she didn’t always have to fit into everyone else’s plans. Just like earlier, outside the store, when she’d turned down his dinner invitation.
She could say no, and it wouldn’t change anything between them.
In fact, he wanted her to feel comfortable asking for what she wanted from him, and he’d do his best to give it to her.
That thought in mind, as soon as she climbed into his truck, he said, “I want this marriage to be a two-way street.” No hello. Just him, pushing forward into his future.
Which was now hers, as well, at least for a time.
“You’re the one friend in the world I think I’ve ever wholly trusted, Lily, and I don’t want anything to ever jeopardize that.”
What the hell was he doing?
“What’s going to jeopardize it?” she asked, looking cute and comfortable in her jeans and shirt. No makeup, hair just flowing naturally. That was Lily.
And he wouldn’t have her any other way.
“You not benefiting in a big way from it as well.”
He’d intended to wait until they were parked at the lake to get into it with her. Had planned to take Major out for half an hour before he met up with her again, too.
To have some soul-calming family time.
He told her about his conversations with his lawyer. The prenuptial agreement he’d already had drawn up.
“That’s ridiculous, Asa, you don’t have to do that.”
Glancing over at her, he pulled off onto a dirt road, parked by some trees, and turned to her. “This marriage is changing my life forever, Lily, giving me my future. It needs to do the same for you. No way you just go back to working at the café, not unless you loved the work, and remember, this is me? I already know you don’t. You love seeing the people, being a part of their lives, every day, being able to keep up on everyone’s news. But the work...”
Her smile was more self-deprecatory than filled with humor as she conceded the point with a nod. They’d had a long talk over beers one night about their jobs. Him needing to move on from ranch hand to ranch owner. And her not knowing what she’d move on to.
“I don’t want to be bought.” Her words were barely above a whisper. He felt them to his core.
“Are you marrying me for money?” He met her gaze in the early evening, shaded sun glow.
“Of course not! How could you even ask that?” Her hazel eyes glared at him, like pinpricks of gold and steel.
“Then you aren’t being bought.” He waited a second for his words to settle over her before continuing. “You’re working toward your future,” he told her. “You want a home of your own. You said so. That’s one of your dreams to the point that you’re willing to settle for six months of having one, rather than never having the chance.” He huffed out a breath. “But I can’t do that to you. Just let you taste your dream and then snatch it away. You’re doing this to make me happy, well, I need to make you happy, too. When we get married, you’ll be getting a home for life. For the first six months, or so, you’ll be sharing mine. After that, you’ll have the resources to choose one you want.”
Saying the words aloud, knowing she was hearing them, settled some of the qualms inside him. “It’s the only way I can do this,” he told her, holding her gaze tightly. “This arrangement can’t be a one-way thing.”
She didn’t look away. Lily wasn’t a wallflower. She didn’t hide. She just...expected less than she deserved. Words she’d told him months ago, again over beers, repeating what her sister, the mother of his second cousins, had said to her.
When she nodded, she didn’t look happy, but she didn’t seem upset, either. She seemed to have lost, or at least fully contained, all of the agitation his impromptu proposal had raised in her.
