Arabella could see her mother’s hands trembling and felt another wave of nausea. “Send text messages, Mom,” she advised, knowing that her brothers were likely to respond more quickly to a text than a phone call. For there was no question that Catherine Fortune was checking on her boys.
After waiting for the stretcher to be loaded, her dad pulled as close to the hotel entrance as the congestion of vehicles allowed. The second the wheels stopped rolling, Arabella unsnapped her safety belt. “I have my room key.” She pulled it from her bodice where she’d tucked it and held it up.
Her father plucked it right out of her fingertips. “Stay here,” he ordered, and got out of the vehicle.
“I’m twenty-five years old,” she grumbled but he’d already slammed his door shut. “I’m capable of retrieving my own damn luggage.”
“Don’t swear,” Catherine said, holding her phone to her ear. “It’s unbecoming of a young lady. Oh, why won’t Adam answer his phone? Maybe Kane.”
“I told you, Mom,” Arabella said with a sigh. “Text.”
Her mother clucked her tongue and redialed. “I don’t like texting. You know that.”
And her brothers didn’t like getting dragged into lengthy conversations with their mother that inevitably went nowhere.
It wasn’t that they didn’t love her. But Arabella also knew her brothers were frustrated with the chip their father had on his shoulder against the rest of the world—and of late, those Fortunes—and their mother’s support of her husband no matter how unreasonable his attitudes were.
Was it any wonder that Arabella had spent most of her childhood with her nose buried in the books she loved? It was so much more pleasant losing herself in the excitement of a mystery or the throes of a love story than dwell on her overprotective big brothers, her old-fashioned mother and her perennially disgruntled father.
She pushed open her car door and got out.
“Arabella, where are you going?”
“Just to see what’s happening.” She childishly crossed her fingers where her mother couldn’t see and started weaving around cars to get closer to the side of the hotel where the action was most concentrated.
Arabella spotted Jay at once.
He stood on the far side of the debris. Yellow police tape already cordoned off the area. He was looking in her direction and she lifted her hand, hoping he would notice, but she got jostled aside by the arrival of a television crew headed by a helmet-haired woman who was clearly ready to bat her pathway clear with her big microphone.
“Focus on that pile of debris and crushed landscaping,” she was ordering her cameraman. “And cut back to me in five, four, three—”
Arabella looked toward Jay again.
But he was gone.
Disappointment sagged inside her.
I think you should know that...
What had he intended to say?
...I do believe in love at first sight. With you, Arabella.
Her arm was grabbed again, this time from behind.
“I told you to stay in the car,” Gary said tightly. “You want to get hurt out here?”
“The person who got hurt was on that stretcher we saw.” She craned her neck, trying to find Jay again.
“Police,” Gary muttered, obviously not listening. He was practically frog-marching her back to the car. “Everywhere.”
“Doing their job, it looks like to me.”
“Yeah and those Fortunes give them plenty to do.” Her dad pushed her into the back seat and tossed her overnighter in after her. “Just watch. They’ll buy their way out of this latest trouble. That’s what people like them do.” He slammed her door shut and got behind the wheel while Arabella was trying to untangle her high heel from where it had punctured her hem. “Who would have thought that Arabella would be the one to show the most common sense? She’s perfectly happy in New York. Not trying to act like some hifalutin Fortune.”
“Gary,” her mother started again. “If you just gave them a chance, maybe—”
“I don’t want to hear it, Catherine.”
Neither did Arabella. She closed her eyes, envisioning Jay’s brilliant green ones. Remembering the touch of his hand on hers.
I think you should know that...
Copyright © 2021 by Harlequin Books S.A.
ISBN-13: 9781488076459
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Copyright © 2021 by Hometown Girl Makes Good, Inc.
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