Welcome Home, Chloe Fortune!
âYouâre family,â Graham Fortune tells his newly discovered half sister, Chloe Fortune Elliott, and just like that, Chloe has a new job and a new home in Austin. She works well with the troubled teens at Peterâs Place, but sheâs having more difficulty managing a male of the grown-up variety. Ranch hand Chance Howell gets under her skin from the moment they meet.
The tall blond army veteran is good with horses and adolescents, but heâs a master at avoiding intimacy. Maybe thatâs why Chloe is so drawn to him. Or maybe itâs the sadness she recognizes in his eyes. Her head tells her falling for Chance is a bad idea. Her heart tells her she may have no choice...
MEET THE FORTUNES
Fortune of the Month: Chloe Fortune Elliott
Age: 26
Vital statistics: Five foot two, eyes of blue and a heart as big as Texas.
Claim to Fame: Noneâuntil she discovers Jerome Fortune is her biological father.
Romantic prospects: Questionable. She has loved and lost. Once youâve âfallen off the horse,â it can be hard to pick yourself up again.
âIâve been working as a counselor at Peterâs Place ranch for just a few weeks now, and itâs just as challengingâand rewardingâas I thought it would be. One challenge I didnât expect was Chance Howell. Graham Fortuneâs new ranch hand makes me feel, well...he makes me feel. I thought my heart died along with my husband when Donnie got killed in Afghanistan.
I suppose any red-blooded female would respond to a cowboy as sexy as Chance. But heâs a former soldier himself, and heâs made it clear he doesnât âdoâ permanent. And Iâm still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that Iâm a Fortune. There are a million reasons why we shouldnât get involved. So why do they go flying out the window the minute he sidles up beside me?â
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The Fortunes of Texas:
The Secret Fortunesâ A new generation of heroes and heartbreakers!
Prologue
âHello, Chloe, are you still there?â
Chloe Elliottâs hand tightened around her landlineâs receiver as she heard the callerâs deep male voice asking her the same question again.
Was she still there?
Part of Chloe felt like answering the question by simply hanging up. Sheâd had enough disappointments in her twenty-six years to last a lifetime, why would she set herself up for yet another one?
But there was this other part of Chloe, the part that needed to believe that good things could happen, that they still did happen. That was the part that had been instrumental in making her get out of bed every morning even after Donnie, the husband sheâd adored, had been killed while serving in Afghanistan after they had been married for only an incredibly short two years. That was also the part that had decided to make her gather her courage together and to try to get to know her fatherâs family.
The father who had, up until just recently, been a complete mystery in her life.
Ever since she could rememberâuntil sheâd gotten marriedâit had been just her mother and her. There had been no other family members to speak of, and that had been just fine with her. Filling in the blanks for herself, Chloe assumed that her father had been her motherâs high school sweetheart whoâd been killed in a car accident before he could marry her nineteen-year-old mother.
Because that had been her belief since forever, Chloe hadnât been prepared to learn that her father was actually tech giant Gerald Robinson. And even more, that for years now heâd been living under an assumed name. Gerald Robinson was in fact Jerome Fortune, one of the famous Texas Fortunes, no less. Neither had she been prepared for the eight legitimate Robinson offspring, giving her half siblings sheâd never known she had.
And that didnât even begin to take into account the various illegitimate offspring the man had left scattered in his wake, as well.
All in all, it had been a great deal for her to take in and process.
Realizing that the man on the other end of the line, Graham Fortune Robinson, the third of Geraldâs eight children, was still waiting for a response, Chloe answered quietly, âYes, Iâm still here.â
Chloe could almost hear the pleased smile in her half brotherâs voice as he continued. âYou might not remember me, but we met at that big family dinner at Kate Fortuneâs ranch.â