Allison Leigh: Fortune's Prince

MEET THE FORTUNES!

Fortune of the Month:

Amelia Fortune Chesterfield

Age:23

Vital Statistics:Doelike eyes, ivory complexion. As fragile as a china doll—and in the family way.

Claim to Fame:Did we mention that she’s English royalty?

Romantic Prospects:Many men have pursued her for her title, but will anybody love her for just herself?

“My whole life I’ve been a good girl, following the rules, being a proper princess. But everything changed when I met Quinn in Horseback Hollow. He made me realize what was really important. In his strong cowboy arms I finally felt safe. I never should have gone back to London. Everything went so wrong so fast! Now Quinn is acting like he hates me. How can I possibly tell him I’m carrying his child?”

* * *

The Fortunes of Texas:

Welcome to Horseback Hollow!

Fortune’s Prince

Allison Leigh

www.millsandboon.co.uk

There is a saying that you can never be too rich or too thin. ALLISON LEIGHdoesn’t believe that, but she does believe that you can never have enough books! When her stories find a way into the hearts—and bookshelves—of others, Allison says she feels she’s done something right. Making her home in Arizona with her husband, she enjoys hearing from her readers at Allison@allisonleigh.comor PO Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772, USA.

For all the Fortune Women.

As always, it is an honor to be among you.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Extract

Chapter One

He stopped cold when he heard a faint rustle. The only light there was came from the moonlight sneaking through the barn door that he’d left open behind him.

Standing stock-still, Quinn Drummond listened intently, his eyes searching the black shadows around him. He’d built the barn. He knew it like the back of his hand. He knew the sounds that belonged, and the ones that didn’t. Animal or human, it didn’t matter. He knew.

He reached out his right hand, unerringly grabbing onto a long wooden handle. He’d prefer his shotgun, but it was up in the house. So the pitchfork would have to do.

This wasn’t some damn possum rooting around.

This was someone. Someone hiding out in his barn.

He knew everyone who lived in his Texas hometown. Horseback Hollow was the polar opposite of a metropolis. If someone there wanted something, they’d have come to his face, not skulk around in the middle of the night inside his barn.

His hand tightened around the sturdy handle. His focus followed the rustling sound and he took a silent step closer to it. “Come on out now, because if you don’t, I promise you won’t like what’s gonna happen.”

The faint rustle became a scuffling sound, then the darkness in front of him gathered into a small form.

His wariness drained away. His tight grip relaxed. Just a kid.

He made a face and set aside the pitchfork. “What’d you do? Run away from home?” He’d tried that once, when he was seven. Hadn’t gotten far. His dad had hauled him home and would have tanned his butt if his mother hadn’t stepped in. “Never works, kid,” he advised. “Whatever you think you’re running from will always follow.”

The form shuffled closer; small, booted feet sliding into the faint moonlight, barely visible below the too-long hem of baggy pants. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” the shadow said.

Forget wariness. The voice didn’t belong to a child. It was feminine. Very British. And so damn familiar his guts twisted and his nerves frizzed like they wanted to bust out of his skin. A runaway would have been preferable to this. To her.

Amelia.

Her name blasted through his head, but he didn’t say a word and after a moment, she took another hesitant step closer. Moonlight crept from the dark boots up baggy pants, an untucked, oversize shirt that dwarfed her delicate figure, until finally, finally, illuminating the long neck, the pointed chin.

The first time that he’d seen her had been six months ago on New Year’s Eve, at a wedding for one of her newly discovered cousins, right there in Horseback Hollow. Her long dark hair had been twisted into a knot, reminding him vaguely of the dancers at the ballet that his mom had once dragged him and his sister to. The second time that he’d seen her months later at the end of April, had been at another wedding. Another cousin. And her hair had been tied up then, too.

But that second time, after dreaming about her since New Year’s, Quinn hadn’t just watched Amelia from a distance.

No.

He’d approached her. And through some miracle of fate—or so he’d thought at the time—later that night, he’d taken the pins from her hair and it had spilled down past her shoulders, gleaming and silky against her ivory skin.

He blocked off the memory. He’d had enough practice at it over the past two months that it should have been easy.

It wasn’t. It was the very reason he was prowling restlessly around in the middle of the night at all when he should have been sleeping.

“What the hell’d you do to your hair?”

She made a soft sound and lifted her hand to the side of the roughly chopped short hair sticking out from her head. She’d have looked like a boy if her delicate features weren’t so distinctively feminine. “It’s lovely to see you, too.” She moved her hand again, and it came away with the hair.

A wig. It was stupid to feel relieved, but he did.

She scrubbed the fingers of her other hand across her scalp, and her hair, the real stuff, slid down in a coil over one shoulder, as dark as the night sky. “It’s a wig,” she said, stating the obvious. Her voice was unsteady. “The second one, actually. The first was blond, but there were reporters at the airport, and—” She shook her head, breaking off.

That night—the night he’d twisted his hands in her hair and thought he’d tasted perfection on her lips—she’d talked about the reporters who had dogged her family’s footsteps for as long as she could remember. How she hated being in a fishbowl. How her life felt claustrophobic. How she envied his life on a ranch; the wide-open spaces, the wind at his back when he rode his horse.

Again, he pushed away the thoughts. He shoved his fingertips into the pockets of his jeans, wishing he could wipe away the memory of her silky hair sliding over his chest as they’d made love. “What are you doing here?”

“In your barn? Proving I’m better at remembering a Google Map than I thought.” She let out a nervous sound that was maybe supposed to be a laugh but could have been a sob.

“Not my barn,” he said tightly. “Here.”

She took a quick, audible breath. She was young. Seven years younger than his own thirty. Practically a girl. Except she wasn’t a girl. She was full-grown. Self-possessed. Aristocratic.

And now, she was hiding in his barn, stumbling around for words.

“Amelia,” he prompted sharply. He couldn’t pretend her unexpected appearance didn’t make him tense. Any more than she could hide the fact that she was clearly nervous. The way she kept shifting from one foot to the other, almost swaying, told him that.

“Yes. Right. The, um, the last time we spoke—”

“What are you doing here?” He didn’t want to rehash that phone conversation. It had been nearly two months ago. He didn’t want to think about what had precipitated it. Didn’t want to think about it and damn sure didn’t want to feel anything about it. Not that conversation, or whatever was making her so skittish now.