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Her heart had all but stopped as she’d listened to the bulletin. She knew that Blake and Wendy, as well as the rest of their family, were all out there, stranded and in the tornado’s path. The very thought unnerved her. She’d instantly started praying and searching for more information.
At one point, she had almost torn out of the office to try to get the first flight out to Red Rock, but no flights were going out to Red Rock, not directly or with layovers. Moreover, as reports began to come in, apparently there no longer was an airport for the flights to land in. The tornado had taken care of that.
That first day, she’d stayed up over twenty-four hours, scouring the channels and the internet, searching for any shred of information. Looking for the names of those who hadn’t made it—desperately praying she wouldn’t see any she recognized.
Especially not the name of the man she had loved with all her heart since she was a little girl.
Not that Blake Fortune actually ever noticed her. Oh, he’d seen her, but never as what she wanted him to see. To him she was just his sister’s friend, the annoying girl next door. Later on, he’d acknowledged her as a college graduate with a marketing degree and he’d been impressed enough with her skills to hire her. But he never saw her as what she was. A woman who could love him the way he desired to be loved.
Still, something was better than nothing, so, as a kid she’d settled for his teasing words, his pranks, pretending indignance and secretly loving the attention. Anything, she had long ago decided, that had Blake looking in her direction was fine with her.
After she grew up, of course, she’d wanted more. Couldn’t help wanting more. She’d wanted him to look at her as something other than Katie Wallace, the little girl next door.
That was why she’d gone to college to get that marketing degree in the first place. This was the key to getting closer to him, if not in his private life, then in his professional one. She’d nurtured the hope that if she worked really hard and proved to be indispensable to him, Blake would eventually wake up one morning to realize that he had feelings for her beyond his role as her boss.
That had been her plan, but even so, right now she still was having trouble believing that she wasn’t dreaming. Was Blake actually saying what she thought he was saying?
After all this time?
Her heart was hammering in her throat as she forced out the words, “Excuse me?” into the receiver, scarcely above a whisper. She cleared her voice and spoke up. “Could you repeat please that?” Then, in case he thought she was being coy instead of just shocked, she quickly explained, “There’s interference in the line, I didn’t really hear what you just said.”
“I said I need you,” Blake told her, raising his voice. “It looks as if I’m going to be here longer than I thought. At least a couple of weeks, maybe three. When can you get out here?”
Katie allowed herself to savor his words for exactly thirty seconds. Where were Dorothy’s magic ruby-red slippers when you needed them? she thought. Because then all it would take was clicking her heels together three times and she would be there at his side. Just the way she desperately wanted to be.
She knew that this had to be about work and that Blake needed her to get things done, but she viewed the phrase he’d uttered as her first step in the right direction. Someday, she promised herself, Blake was going to realize that he really did need her—and not just as his assistant.
“I can be on the first flight out there,” she promised. Even as she spoke, she began searching the internet, pulling up the various airlines and looking at departure times. “I’ll call you back the second I’m booked.”
“That’s my girl,” he said. “I knew I could count on you.”
That’s my girl.
The three words echoed in her head over and over again as she all but flew back to her apartment and set a new world record for packing quickly.
That’s my girl.
Definitely in the right direction, she thought happily.
Chapter Two
“You sure you don’t mind me setting up an office in your house?” Blake asked his older brother Scott for a second time.
Ordinarily, he would have opted to use one of the offices in the building housing the Fortune Foundation in town. However, it was currently off-limits since it had sustained major structural damage during the tornado.
Scott had only recently decided to transplant himself from Atlanta to Red Rock and had just purchased a ranch and the house that stood on it. As of yet, he and Christina, the woman who had won his heart, were redecorating the rooms and several were still in limbo. Blake was temporarily claiming one for an office—as long as Scott had no objections.
“I mean, I’m already in your hair, bunking here until Wendy’s baby is strong enough to finally make us uncles.” Blake thought for a moment, then decided to ask Scott, since he was now the Red Rock resident. “Maybe it’d be better if I rent a couple of rooms in town—”
Scott waved away what he anticipated was the rest of his brother’s thought.
“After the tornado, whatever’s available in Red Rock has most likely been commandeered for temporary living quarters for the folks who lost their homes, or whose homes are so damaged that they’re not safe to stay in right now. Besides,” Scott added as an afterthought, “turning part of my place into ‘FortuneSouth-West’ might just make points with the old man, though I doubt it.”
Their father, as everyone knew, had very high standards, which at times, Scott couldn’t help feeling, even God might have some trouble reaching. It didn’t help matters that, in the aftermath of the tornado, Scott had decided not to go back to Atlanta but to make a life for himself here, with a woman he firmly believed was his soul mate. A woman he had only known for a little over a month. The senior Fortune, Scott felt certain, undoubtedly believed that he had lost his mind—instead of finally finding his soul.
“And you’re sure I won’t be in your way?” Blake probed.
This new, improved and far more relaxed Scott was going to take some getting used to, Blake thought. Up until a month and a half ago, Scott had been as big a workaholic as their father and oldest brother, Michael. But he was definitely of a mind that this change in his brother was for the better.
“Not unless you plan on lying in the front doorway like a human obstacle course,” Scott answered. He grinned as he regarded his brother who, at twenty-seven, was five years younger than he was. “Might be kind of nice having you around for a while. Aside from that little buried-alive incident on New Year’s Eve-eve—and, of course, Wendy’s wedding—we don’t get to see each other all that much anymore,” he noted.
The observation amused Blake. “Said the workaholic,” he interjected.
“Not anymore,” Scott emphasized. “That tornado kind of made me reexamine my priorities.” Almost dying did that to a man, Scott thought. He felt as if he’d been given a second chance for a reason—and he didn’t intend to waste it by going back to “business as usual.” “There’s a lot more to life than finding different ways to continue building up a telecommunications empire.”
His brother really was sincere, Blake thought. This wasn’t just a passing phase. Scott was serious about putting his roots down in Red Rock because living here was so important to Christina, his future wife, and thus, important to him.
“Yeah, I know what you mean, about reexamining my priorities,” Blake explained when Scott raised a quizzical eyebrow. “I told Wendy that I feel like my life’s been on hold long enough and that it’s time I did something about it.”
“Anything you care to share with the class?” Scott asked, amused at the very serious expression on Blake’s face.
“I’m going after the one who got away,” Blake told him simply.
Scott nodded and smiled. He might have been a dedicated workaholic when they were all back in Atlanta, but that didn’t mean that he had been wearing blinders 24/7. He was quite aware of how his young brother’s assistant, Katie Wallace, looked at Blake when she thought no one was paying attention. At the time, he’d found it rather amusing. But now, finding himself on the other side of love, he understood how she must have felt—and continued to feel. But something wasn’t making sense, he realized.
“I wasn’t aware that she had exactly ‘gotten away,’” Scott commented.
Blake supposed that Scott was either too busy to have noticed, or maybe he’d just forgotten. “Yeah, she did,” he assured his brother.
Okay, maybe he’d missed a chapter or two of Blake’s life, Scott thought. “So you’re going after—”
“Brittany Everett, yes,” Blake said, filling in the name for Scott.
For a second, all Scott did was stare at him. And then he murmured, “Oh,” more to himself than to his brother.
“What do you mean, ‘oh’?”
There was no point in talking about Katie if his brother’s sights were set on a vapid prima donna like Brittany Everett. Like everyone else in the family, because of the circles they all moved in he was vaguely aware of the woman—and what he knew, he didn’t find very compelling.
Scott shrugged, dismissing his slip. “Nothing, just surprised that you seem so determined to get together with her.” For a moment, he thought back to his brother’s college days. “Didn’t Brittany dump you right after graduation?”
“No one dumped anyone,” Blake insisted. “We just drifted apart.”
“Right, after you caught her in a lip-lock with some other guy, if I remember correctly.”
“I should have fought for her.”
You should have cut her loose long before that, Scott thought. But Blake was a big boy now, able to make his own decisions. Besides, Scott had a feeling that the more he talked against Brittany—whose only attributes as far as he could see were strictly physical—the more, he was certain, Blake would dig in. They were alike that way, he and his brother.
So Scott dropped the matter, stepped back and hoped for the best. “If you say so. Look, I promised Christina I’d meet her for lunch, so I’d better get going. Good luck with whatever it is you’re planning to do.” And I hope you come to your senses real soon.
The reference to time had Blake looking at his own watch. “Hey, I’d better get going, too. I’ve got to drive over to San Antonio International Airport to pick up Katie,” he said, joining his brother in the hallway. “She’s flying in to help me with my strategy to win back Brittany.”
Scott stared at him, utterly stunned. “She is?” he asked. This couldn’t be right. “You actually told Katie that you were ‘launching’ this so-called campaign to get Brittany to become Mrs. Blake Fortune?”
“Well, not in so many words,” Blake admitted. The next moment, he saw a very wide smile curving his brother’s mouth. He was unaware of having said something funny. “What?”
“Nothing,” Scott answered, waving his hand and struggling to keep the laughter under wraps. “Just, good luck with that.” And then, he couldn’t resist asking, “By the way, how many pallbearers would you like at your funeral?”
Maybe the tornado had shaken Scott up more than anyone realized, Blake thought. His brother wasn’t making any sense. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
But Scott continued grinning mysteriously. And then he patted him on the shoulder. “You’ll figure it out, Blake,” he assured him, just before he hurried off down the hallway and out of the house.
Blake shook his head as he followed slowly in his brother’s path, heading for the car he’d left parked in the huge, circular driveway. He put the odd conversation with Scott out of his head.
Right now he had something more pressing to attend to.
The way he figured it, if the flight from Atlanta arrived on time, he was just going to make it to the airport by the skin of his teeth—barring the unforeseen. It was a footnote that he had gotten into the habit of adding ever since the tornado had turned his life and his family’s lives entirely upside down, tossing them on their collective ears.
Katie had deliberately brought only carry-on luggage with her. She had no desire to spend the extra time required to wait for luggage.
So, in the interests of speed and efficiency, Katie had stuffed into a single piece of luggage everything she felt she would need that couldn’t be purchased at some local shop between the airport and Red Rock. After engorging the suitcase to the point that it looked as if it would explode, she’d sat on the lid and fought with the zipper until she’d managed to bring the closure full circle.
She managed to secure the very last ticket for the next outgoing flight to San Antonio International Airport.
She didn’t relax the entire flight, her mind busily embracing the key phrase Blake had used when he’d called her.
I need you.
Part of her still didn’t believe she’d finally lived to see the day when everything she’d dreamed about for so long would actually start happening.
Don’t start sending out the wedding invitations yet, her mind warned. That was the part of her that was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
She could warn herself all she wanted about not getting too excited—but she still was.
When the plane landed—reasonably on time for once, she noted, hoping that was a good omen—she was debating whether to just rent a car and drive to Red Rock or splurge and have a shuttle service do the driving for her.
The latter would prove to be the more expensive route, because of the distance that was involved, but she really wasn’t too keen on driving by herself all that way. She was tired and the prospect of falling asleep behind the wheel was unnerving.
Maybe if she had a really strong container of coffee—
As it turned out, there was no need to debate the pros and cons of driving versus being driven, because, as she was weighing her options, she realized that she was being paged over the P.A. system.
Heading over to the customer service desk, she didn’t actually see Blake, she saw his smile. But she knew that smile even at this distance. It belonged to Blake. Blake was here! And he was walking toward her.
Reviewing their phone conversation in her head, she couldn’t recall him saying anything about picking her up at the airport. She knew where he was staying, thanks to the directions he’d texted to her on her phone. Scott Fortune had bought a ranch here and Blake was staying with him. Since, according to Blake, the company would be paying for her flight, she’d just assumed that she would wind up charging either the car rental or the shuttle service to FortuneSouth Enterprises. Never one to wantonly spend money, even if it was someone else’s, she was just trying to make the best decision.
Was Blake this eager to see her that he had driven over himself?
The pounding of her heart went up another notch.
The exhaustion that had been slowly laying claim to her completely vanished as Katie picked up her pace, all but breaking into a run as the distance between them shortened noticeably. The heavy suitcase became nothing more than an unwieldy pull toy in her wake.
“You made it,” Blake called out to her, obviously pleased at how quickly she’d managed to get here after he’d called her.
Katie beamed at him. “Nothing could have kept me away.”
“Good,” he pronounced with approval. “Then we can get right down to work as soon as you’re ready. Here, let me take that for you,” he offered, putting his hand over hers on the suitcase handle.
The brief contact still managed to steal her breath away, as it usually did. But what he’d just said pushed reality in, front and center.
“Work?” Her heart fell. Blake was still making noises like a workaholic. The hope that he would be just a little more laidback, a little more … personal … died a quick, bitter death.
Katie had a strange expression on her face. He took it to mean that she was experiencing a little jet lag. Maybe she did need to rest awhile, although he’d known her to work tirelessly when the occasion called for it.
“Yes. Work,” he repeated. “That’s the reason I sent for you. It was Wendy’s idea, really. She thought you could help me get my campaign underway.”
“Your campaign,” she repeated numbly. Was this why he “needed” her? To work on some marketing campaign? Here? She felt confused. Even so, she sensed her slim grasp on happiness slipping away as her heart constricted within her chest.
“Yes. My campaign,” he asserted, then added the damning phrase: “To win back Brittany Everett.” Not seeing her face all but fall, he laughed a little self-consciously. “I know it’s not exactly what you’re used to doing, but I thought that if I went about winning Brittany back the way we go about landing an account for FortuneSouth Enterprises, then I’m almost guaranteed to be successful.”
So this was what shock felt like, Katie thought. Shock, mixed with acute disappointment. Her pounding heart now felt like utter lead in her chest.
“And Wendy suggested you send for me to help you procure this woman?” she asked in disbelief.
“Not procure,” he corrected, bristling at the word she’d used. “That makes it sound sordid.” He didn’t want Katie starting out with the wrong idea about this. Otherwise, she’d be no help at all and, he had to admit, he had come to rely on her shrewd instincts pretty heavily these past two years. “Brittany and I had a connection in college.”
“Yes, I remember,” she answered grimly as they made their way down the escalator to the first floor.
There was deep regret in his voice as he concluded, “And then I didn’t follow through. I want to win her back. I’ll be taking her to the Valentine’s Day fundraiser in Atlanta in a few weeks. That’s when I intend to make my move.”
Were they talking about the same woman? As she recalled, the woman was a little too Scarlett O’Hara for her taste.
“Kind of hard to get close to someone with that kind of a throng surrounding her,” she recalled.
That, Blake thought, disturbed by Katie’s comment, was an unwarranted, uncalled-for assessment. “It wasn’t a throng,” he protested.
“Okay, a swarm, then. Or maybe ‘mob’ might be a better word to use,” she suggested crisply.
How could he? her mind cried. How could he think about getting together with a girl like that again? She’d never understood what had compelled him to get together with Brittany in the first place. Yes, she had what amounted to an almost-perfect body, but it was coupled with a completely imperfect personality for him.
They were outside the terminal now and approaching the valet’s booth. Blake glanced in her direction as he gave the valet his ticket.
“I’m sensing a little hostility here,” he noted.
“Just a little?” Katie muttered under her breath.
Blake cocked his head, bringing his ear a little closer to her. The noise level outside the terminal was even louder than it was inside, making it hard to maintain a conversation without resorting to shouting. And Katie hadn’t shouted. Had he not seen her lips moving, he wouldn’t have even been aware that she’d said anything at all.
