Meet the Fortunes of Texas

      Meet the Fortunes of Texas’s Lost Heirs—membership in this Texas family has its privileges and its price. As the family gathers to welcome its newest members, it discovers a murderer in its midst…and passionate new romances that only a true-bred Texas love can bring!

      CAST OF CHARACTERS

      Holly Douglas: She thought she’d run as far away as she could from the Fortune family and the dusty-dry Texas trailer park where she’d grown up. But fate and the handsome stranger she’d just rescued had their own agendas….

      Guy Blackwolf: Built solid as a western red cedar, this pilot had yet to meet a female who could get the better of him. And then he went head-to-head with Mother Nature…and Holly Douglas!

      Jonas Goodfellow: The Fortunes had opened their homes to this lost heir, but had he repaid their generosity by poisoning the family patriarch?

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      One

      The storm came on fast and hard, slapped at the tiny seaplane as if it were a pesky gnat instead of three thousand pounds of metal and man. Thunder boomed and a second assault on the plane tipped the nose dangerously downward. Metal groaned while the man swore, struggling to hold on to the wheel and stay in control.

      “Come on, sweetheart, stay with me,” Guy Blackwolf hissed through clenched teeth. “We’ve seen worse than this.”

      Thick clouds swallowed machine and man whole. A jagged bolt of lightning exploded not more than twenty feet from the plane’s left wing, momentarily turning Guy’s world a brilliant, blinding white. He blinked furiously, tightened his grip on the throttle and eased the plane’s nose level while the wind rocked the wings like a child’s teeter-totter.

      “Steady, steady,” he coaxed with the patience of a lover. “That’s my girl.”

      He knew he was close. He could see the tops of the trees thirty feet below and according to his instruments, Twin Pines Lake was two hundred feet ahead. Two more minutes and he’d be safe and sound, gliding smoothly over the water to shore.

      He could do it. He would do it. He owed a friend a favor, and he refused to let anything—not even a miserable storm in the wilderness of Alaska—get in his way. Mother Nature might be one tough broad, but Guy Blackwolf had yet to meet a female that he’d let get the better of him.

      The storm opened up like the jaws of a giant beast and closed around the plane, then gave a savage shake. The throttle shook fiercely under Guy’s hand, but he held firm, eyes narrowed, jaw tight. Just another hundred feet. Piece of cake, he told himself as he eased the plane down.

      He gave a hoot of victory as he broke through the blanket of thick gray and the lake emerged below him. He spotted the dark blue Land Rover parked close to the north bank, knew that the woman was waiting for him. Well, not for him, he thought with a smile. She thought he was merely bringing supplies for her store. He’d let her keep thinking that, until he assessed the situation. She wasn’t going to like it, but when the moment was right, he’d tell her who he really was, and why he’d come.

      He caught sight of the woman standing close to the shore, though he couldn’t make out her features or see her hair under the rain slicker she wore. He’d see soon enough, he thought and gently guided the plane lower.

      Without warning, an explosion rocked the tail section of his plane and sent the machine into a downward tilt. Smoke filled the cockpit and the scent of burning metal choked the air. Guy swore hotly and frantically struggled with the controls. But it was no good.