Kate Fortunes Journal Entry
Together at last! Ive missed my whole family so much over the past months. Its nice to finally be able to share in their happiness. Many things have happened in their lives. Several weddings have taken place, many babies have been born and estranged couples reunited. Im glad that some of my special gifts worked their magic and brought each child and grandchild love and joy. Its been a rollercoaster ride, but I wouldnt have missed it for all the world. I cant wait to see what the next fifty years bring!
A LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR
Dear Reader,
I was tantalized by the whole concept of our FORTUNES CHILDREN series from the very beginning. We all had fun developing our different suspense and danger elements, but the heart of each story is linked to the Fortune family. Although the Fortunes amassed a giant financial dynasty, the true legacy they passed on to each other was wealth of a different kind. This is a family who knows what love is, and who sticks together through thick and thin.
The series ends with Rebeccas love story. Shes not one to be impressed with champagne and a candlelit dinner. She wants babies. She wants a hearth and home. She learned the power of love from the nest of her own family, and theres no way shes willing to settle for less. Her hero despairs that shes a hopeless romanticbut I tend to see her as a hard-core realist. It takes a tough, strong cookie to fight for what really matters, and she believes in families.
Me too.
I hope you enjoy The Baby Chase and am enclosing my best wishes to you and all your families
The Baby Chase
Jennifer Greene
www.millsandboon.co.uk
To my fellow PTerswho else would have put up with all the petunias? Thanks from my heart for all the support.
JENNIFER GREENE
lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and two children. Before writing full-time, she worked as a teacher and a personnel manager. Michigan State University honored her as an outstanding woman graduate for her work with women on campus.
Ms. Greene has written more than fifty category romances, for which she has won numerous awards, including two RITA® Awards from the Romance Writers of America in the Best Short Contemporary Books category, and a Career Achievement award from Romantic Times.
Meet the Fortunesthree generations of a family with a legacy of wealth, influence and power. As they unite to face an unknown enemy, shocking family secrets are revealedand passionate new romances are ignited.
REBECCA FORTUNE: The nurturing and loving author is still single, but she wants to be a mother. Shes decided she will do anything to have a babyeven if she has to seduce the man who wont accept her for who she is.
GABRIEL DEVEREAX: The wary private detective doesnt believe in love or family. But after one steamy night of passion with Rebecca, he hadnt counted on what would happen nexthe was about to become a father!
KATE FORTUNE: With the Fortunes reunited, matriarch Kate is encouraged by the fulfillment and happiness in her childrens and grandchildrens lives. Is Kate destined for a romance of her own now that the family crisis is resolved?
STERLING FOSTER: Kates attorney and closest confidante has stood by her through decades of family turmoil. Was it just professional loyalty or is there something more to the sparring relationship between Kate and this charming man?
LIZ JONES CELEBRITY GOSSIP
Staff writer
In an unprecedented comeback, the Fortune family is backand stronger than ever! Their mighty cosmetics empire has launched a new youth formula that women around the world are buying by the case, which firmly reestablishes Fortune Cosmetics as the number one international makeup company.
The Fortune family has also broken into the media business. Theyve purchased a television station as well as this very newspaper. There have been no staff changes except for oneLiz Jones has been relieved of her column. According to Kate Fortune, Theres no room in a serious paper for a rumor-spreading gossipmonger.
This is the last week for the column to run. For those still interested in celebrity gossip, you may want to try The Tattletale. From now on, this section will be Kates Korner, featuring helpful tips on matchmaking, planning your wedding, raising your babies and home-decorating ideas.
We hope you enjoy the new direction of the column. Happy reading!
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
Epilogue
One
The entire view offended Rebecca Fortune. It was a dark and stormy nighthow trite was that? Lightning speared the midnight sky, haloing a big, gaudy, ostentatious mansion that looked like a fake set in a grade B Hollywood movie. Worse yet, she was about to break into the mansion.
Rebecca wrote mysteries. Shed thrown her heroines into every dangerous situation her devious mind could come up withand her imagination was considerable. But shed throw her word processor in the trash before forcing a heroine into a stupid, clichéd plot setting like this.
Rain sluiced through her curly red hair, dribbled down her neck and splashed off her eyelashes. She was shivering all the way down to her squishy wet sneakers. March was usually chilly in Minnesota, but the whole day had been unseasonably warm, almost springlike. Before leaving home, shed heard the storm forecast, but her raincoat was a neon yellow slickerhardly suitable burglar attireso shed dressed for success in a black sweatshirt and black jeans. Both were clinging to her like soggy glue.
She must have been more miserable sometime. She just couldnt remember when. Her extensive experience with crimeincluding a wide range of burglary techniqueshad been acquired in her nice, safe, warm office, in front of a keyboard and all her research books. Reality was proving to be a teensy bit more difficult than theory.
Shed thought shed planned this out so well.
The tall iron fence protecting the property was locked, but shed just vaulted the fence. That was no sweat. Right after Monica Malones murder, police and investigators had swarmed around the place. Now, though, there was little chance of anyone discovering her. The house was as closed up and quiet as a tomb, totally desertedno sign anyone had lived or been around in weeks.
Shed brought a backpack full of helpful tools. The mansion had five outside entrances. Rebecca had tried a skeleton key on all the doorsshed bought the key from one of her writers catalogsand that had been when things started going wrong. The key didnt work on any of the locks. Shed also brought a crowbar, because every resourceful heroine shed ever written had found some use for a crowbar. Not her. Shed circled the whole blasted house, checking every window on the first floor. None of them were boarded up, but they were all locked tight. All shed managed to do with the crowbar so far was chip some paint.
There were a dozen other tricks and tools in her backpackher writing research had prepared her well for a life of crime. But as yet, none of them had been worth spit, and the pack weighed a ton, biting into her shoulder blades. The sky was a black growly mass of moving clouds, and thunder rumbled close enough to make the whole earth shudderor maybe that was just her, shivering hard. Any sane woman, she told herself, would give up.
Unfortunately, Rebecca had always been rotten at giving up on anything that mattered to her. Some said she was stubborn to the point of being relentless. Rebecca preferred to think she took after her mother, Kate, who never failed to have the guts and character to do what she had to do.
This was something Rebecca had to do. There were certainly other people trying to clear her brother of the charge that hed murdered Monica. But they werent getting anywhere. No one outside the family really believed in Jakes innocence.
Her lips firmed with resolve, she tramped through the wet, spiky grass around the circumference of the house again. There had to be a way in. And, somehow, she had to find it.
A wild, gusty wind tore at her hair. When she lifted a hand to push the hair from her face, spears of lightning caught the sparkle of gold on her wrist. The charm bracelet belonged to her mother, not her, and a dozen turbulent, traumatic memories suddenly flashed in Rebeccas mind.
Shed almost lost her mom. The whole world had believed that Kate Fortune had died in a plane crashno one had known shed fought off a kidnapper and had survived the crash, only to be lost in the jungle for monthsand Rebeccas heart still clenched tight when she remembered the tears, the fear, the love that had colored her recent emotional reunion with her mom. Shed taken the charm bracelet from the sculpted arm that had displayed it in the Fortunes office the day Kate was discovered missing. Shed added her own charms once Kates will had been read and each family member had received the charm that had represented his or her own birth. Rebecca had needed the connection the bracelet represented, and her mother hadnt let her give it back once she returned.
For Rebecca the charm bracelet was a talisman, a symbol of what family meant, and the links of love and loyalty that bound them all.
She rubbed those gold links now. Maybe her mother had founded a financial dynasty, but Kate loved children and believed in family before all else. Shed passed those unshakable values on to Rebecca. And right now was a heck of a time to be thinking about babies, but she was thirty-three, and babies pounced in her mind at any excuse these days. Her personal biological clock didnt seem to care that she was single, with no Prince Charming on the immediate horizon. She wanted a baby. Shed always wanted children and a family. No matter what exotic directions the rest of the Fortune clan had taken, she was a hopelessly nurturing homebody type. And now it seemed she was the last of the family to settle down. Even her nieces had kids!
Rocking a baby came naturally to her. Cat burglary sure didntand a sudden shiver of fear snaked up her spine. The storm didnt scare her. And she wasnt spooked by the big old deserted mansion, even if it was a murder site.
The shiver of fear was motivated solely by love. She wanted so badly to come through for her brother, and she was scared of failing. Somewhere in that house, there had to be clues, information, evidencesomething that would clear Jakes name. Dozens of people had had outstanding reasons for killing the old bat, including quite a few in her own family. Monica had been an evil, greedy, selfish woman, and shed done her damnedest to destroy the Fortune family for more than a generation. A two-year-old could have found suspects with motives.
The problem was that Monica had almost cost Jake everything that mattered to him, so he had a prizewinning motive, too. More to the point, hed been at the scene of the murder and a ton of physical evidence pointed to him. Neither the cops nor the familys investigators had turned up another suspect. Neither had the staff of lawyers on her brothers team. No one seemed to regret that the aging Hollywood film star was dead, but neither did anyone believe in Jakes innocence.
In her heart, Rebecca knew her brother couldnt, wouldnt, kill anyoneno matter what the provocation. But she was afraid that unless she found proof that another suspect had done the deed, no one else would.
So far, she hadnt run across an alarm system, or any indication that one was turned on. The doors were all locked, and the first windows were not only latched and locked, but built casement-style, with small square panes made of leaded glass. Even if she broke the glass, the panes were too small for her to gain entry. With rain dribbling down her cheeks, she discounted the rose trellisshe was a lightweight 115 pounds, but the trellis looked beyond rickety. A huge silver maple spread a hoopskirt of branches in the yard, but no branches were close enough for her to leap to the east roofunless she suddenly developed wings.
She could try the trellis if she had to. First, though, she circled the house again, crouching low, battling the bushes in the flower beds to shine a flashlight over one basement window at a time.
The prickers of a flowering almond snagged at her clothes like a witchs fingers, stabbing and clawing. Mud sucked at her sneakers. She broke a nail on a window frame. A splinter lodged in her finger, and the nuisance thing bled. The deluge finally quit, but she was so damp and cold that miserableness was only a matter of degree by that time, anyway.
Finally, though, her flashlight zoomed on a window frame that appeared both uneven and cracked. She battled a bosomy lilac bush for the space to crouch down, and ran her palm across the uneven frame. The window wasnt latched. It just seemed to be painted shut.
It opened out, and didnt look big enough for a ten-year-old to crawl through, but no matter. Rebecca figured this was as close to manna from heaven as she was likely to get.
She reached behind for her backpack, and juggled it and the flashlight to find her crowbar again. Twice she probed and pulled with the crowbar, but it was almost impossible to get leverage in the narrow space between the blasted wet lilac bushes. The muddy, mucky ground refused to help her out with some traction. On the third try, though, she finally managed to wedge the crowbar under the ledge, and the window squeaked and creaked open.
Rebecca hunkered back on her heels and scratched her chin. So. It was open. But the opportunity made her feel as if she were holding a winning lottery ticket without a way to collect the loot. The window opened out, creating an even tinier space to crawl through than shed first guessed. She was built lean, but not that lean.
Hesitantly she aimed the flashlight through the opening. Spatial relationships werent exactly her strength, but it sure looked like a hundred feet down to the concrete basement floor. Nothing to break her fall. Stephen King could have set a book down in those gloomy, eerie shadows. The light didnt illuminate anything but ghostly corners and dank concrete walls.