Marie Ferrarella - Lassoed by Fortune

For tune of the Month:Liam “Don’t Call Me Fortune” Jones

Age:32

Vital Statistics:Six foot three of pure, unadulterated hunk

Claim to Fame:Strong will and stronger sex appeal. Never met a woman he couldn’t woo.

Romantic Prospects:Stellar —with just about anyone except Julia Tierney

“I’ve never met anyone so stubborn in my entire life. Every time Julia and I are together, we fight like an old married couple. Without benefits. She thinks the Fortunes and their friends the Mendozas are going to bring progress to Horseback Hollow. I just think they’re gonna bring trouble. Why can’t things stay the way they are? Why can’t Julia just admit that I’m right? Why can’t I stop thinking about her even when she isn’t here?”

* * *

The Fortunes of Texas:Welcome to Horseback Hollow!

Lassoed

by Fortune

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA ®Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLAhas written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To

Susan Litman,

who somehow manages the monumental task of keeping all these stories straight while keeping us all in line.

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

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Excerpt

Chapter One

Liam Jones leaned back in his chair, nursing his beer and listening to two of his younger brothers, Jude and Toby, talking about a third younger brother, Christopher, who had recently picked up and moved to the nearby town of Red Rock.

As he listened, Liam’s frown, already a fixture on his face from the beginning of this conversation, deepened, highlighting his increasing disapproval.

Christopher, apparently, at least in his eyes, had gone and sold his soul to the devil.

Liam’s initial intent in coming to the bar at the Horseback Hollow Grill with two of his brothers was to unwind a little. Instead as he listened to Toby and Jude, he found himself getting progressively more and more annoyed. The current discussion was merely a theme and variation of the same old thing; a topic that had taken center stage in his family for months now: his mother’s rediscovered wealthy siblings.

Liam had always known his mother, Jeanne Marie, had been adopted and, like her, he’d thought nothing of it. Countless people were adopted; it was no big thing. Just this past year his own brother Toby had taken in three foster children.

What made it such a big thing, not just in his eyes but in everyone else’s, was that it turned out his mother had been given up for adoption, along with a sister she hadn’t even known about until just recently, by none other than a member of the highly revered Fortune family.

And that little bit of news had turned all of their worlds upside down.

The ironic thing was that his mother might have very well gone to her grave not knowing a thing about her roots if her brother, James Marshall Fortune, hadn’t come poking around, telling her that she was not only his sister but that she, he and the sister she had previously known nothing about—a British woman named Josephine May—were actually triplets.

The whole thing sounded like something out of a movie and if it had been a movie, he would have walked out on it right in the middle. Specifically around the part where this “long-lost brother” of hers gave her a whole wad of money. That had been James Marshall’s way of “making it up to her” for having lived a life that hadn’t been embedded in the lap of luxury.

As if money could fix everything and anything.

Liam found the whole money thing offensive and degrading. He resented the offering of a “consolation prize” to make up for the fact that his mother had lived a life that James Fortune obviously felt was beneath her.

When his mother gave Fortune back his money, Liam had never been prouder of her. But then she’d gone and spoiled it all by turning around and asking him and his siblings to not just recognize these interlopers as their blood relatives but to actually take on their surname.

Oh, they’d still be the Jones family, but now they’d all be known as the Fortune Joneses.

The hell they would, Liam thought angrily as he took another swig of his beer, which by now was decidedly no longer cold. But he hardly noticed.

In all honesty, he had expected his six siblings to feel exactly the way he did and was utterly stunned to discover that the whole thing didn’t even begin to bother them as much as it did him.

In fact, it felt as if his brothers and sisters were dropping like flies around him, taking on the Fortune name and forgetting just who the hell they were to begin with: Deke Jones’s offspring.

Granted, their father wasn’t an emotional, verbally effusive man. But at the same time, he was a decent, hardworking man who had always made sure they had food in their bellies, a roof over their heads and more opportunity to make something of themselves than he had. Some men showed they cared by talking, others by doing. Deke Jones fell into the latter category.

Liam sensed that this rush to embrace the Fortune name was a slap in the face for his father, even though Deke had said nothing about it either way.

But the look in his eyes certainly did.

As the conversation continued to revolve around Christopher and his drastic move out of town, Liam found that his temper had been brought dangerously close to the edge and was about to flare.

“You know, it’s like he’s not even the same person anymore,” Toby observed about the absent member of their family. “When this whole thing started, Christopher hated the Fortunes as much as we did. Now he’s run off to Red Rock to work for them. I just don’t get it,” Toby, who at twenty-eight was the youngest of the three of them, confessed, shaking his head.

Jude shrugged carelessly. “Oh, they’re not so bad,” he told Toby, defending this newly uncovered branch of the family. Blessed with a keen survival instinct, he deliberately avoided looking in Liam’s direction. Jude knew what his thirty-two-year-old brother thought of all the Fortunes and the last thing he was looking for was a fight. He just wanted to impart the information he’d learned about these new relatives of theirs. After all, fair was fair.

“Gabriella knows them,” Jude went on, referring to his fiancée, “and she said that they’re good people who just got a raw deal, bad-mouthed by folks who’re just jealous of their success and their money.” He spared one quick, fleeting glance in Liam’s direction to see how he was taking this and then just as quickly looked away. “You know how some people are. They try to drag down anyone who’s doing better than they are, thinking that might somehow elevate them.”

Liam had heard enough. Fed up, he slammed his beer mug down on the table with such force, the sound reverberated loudly enough to garner him a few curious looks from people seated at the nearby surrounding tables, not to mention the attention of several other patrons.

“Oh, come on.” Liam ground the words out angrily. “Wake up and smell the coffee, guys. Anyone saying anything good about those people is just trying to cozy up to their fat bank accounts and their fancy circle of friends. The Fortunes use people. Anyone who thinks different is just fooling themselves.”