into print journalism. That she deserved her own spot on the map.
Preferably a better map than the one her GPS was currently providing.
She dropped the useless phone on the passenger seat and opened the thick pink notebook on the console, clicking her pen a few times before sighing and drawing a line through the address as she thought about Gerald Robinson.
For one thing, he was a tech industry giant. A household name well beyond the city limits of Austin, Texas, where Robinson Tech was based and where Austinites tended to follow his family like the Brits followed the Royals.
On the surface, the billionaire had everything. Money. Power. Success. He was the father of eight children thanks to his long-standing marriage to a woman who didn’t seem outraged at all over the fairly recent revelation that he’d also fathered more than a few illegitimate children during that marriage.
But what made the situation particularly interesting to Ariana was that Charlotte Prendergast Robinson had also been resolutely closemouthed since the truth came out a year ago that the very identity of the man she’d married was a fiction. Gerald Robinson was a creation of Jerome Fortune. A black-sheep relative of an immensely wealthy, immensely powerful family who’d all believed Jerome to be dead.
Half the world had collectively gasped when that came out.
But not Charlotte. It was as if there was nothing on earth capable of shocking or surprising Gerald’s wife.
Though that wasn’t exactly accurate, either. If it weren’t for Charlotte, Ariana wouldn’t be trying to find Paseo.
She flipped a page in her notes, chewing the inside of her cheek as she studied Charlotte’s photograph. Presumably, she enjoyed the perks of her position so much that she’d rather stand by her husband’s side than publicly express even the slightest hint of outrage and possibly hinder those perks.
But would they really be hindered?
Charlotte was clearly the injured party in the Robinson marriage. Ariana had found no record of the couple ever having a prenuptial agreement. Their marriage predated Robinson Tech’s astronomical success. Success that hadn’t been hurt in the least by Gerald’s scandals. If anything, the company was stronger than ever. If Charlotte chose to walk away from a philandering husband, she’d be walking away with at least half of their fortune. The luxurious lifestyle to which she was accustomed wouldn’t be changed in the least.
And it wasn’t as if the children she and Gerald had together would necessarily be affected. They were all accomplished adults in their own rights. Ariana had profiled many of them, as well as some of Gerald’s illegitimate offspring, in her series, “Becoming a Fortune,” for Weird Life Magazine.
As she’d gotten to know them, she’d formed the opinion that Charlotte was hardly the most loving mother in the world. The woman seemed more involved with her charity work than she was in their lives—even when they had been much younger. Admittedly, none of them had derogatory things to say about their mother. They were too classy for that. But Ariana still sensed there was some curiosity regarding their mother’s steadfast loyalty to their father.
And Ariana was pretty curious, too. Particularly after she’d managed to get a moment alone with the excessively private woman at one of Charlotte’s recent fund-raisers. All Ariana had asked her for was a little clarification about a newspaper article she’d found at the Austin History Center. Not once had Ariana seen the woman look even remotely rattled until she’d grabbed Ariana’s arm, escorting her personally from the function with the warning that she was not going to treat kindly anyone digging up useless old dirt about Paseo.
So far, Charlotte had said, she’d tolerated Ariana’s vacuous magazine series, but it would be an easy matter for her to have a “little talk” with the local magazine about the harassment her family was receiving at the hands of Ariana. After all, she and the publisher sat on a few boards together.
Ariana could have argued the harassment point, but she’d chosen to leave instead. The tacit threat about her job would have been more worrisome if not for the fact that she had bigger fish to fry than the magazine where she worked. Now she had a book deal. The kind of deal where Ariana could really make her mark as a biographer.
But she hadn’t left empty-handed. Because not once had Ariana ever mentioned Paseo in any of her pieces. She hadn’t even heard of the name before. It hadn’t been in the article Ariana had uncovered. That had simply been a decades-old society feature about Charlotte and Gerald’s wedding.
And Ariana wasn’t even certain now that Mrs. Robinson had meant the town of Paseo. It could just as easily be a person’s name. Maybe the name of a company...
Ariana looked out the window again. Not that the town seemed to exist outside of a map.
Which meant she’d have to go back to the drawing board where Gerald’s life was concerned. She wanted to tell the story that no one else had already told.
Yes, Gerald had been born as Jerome Fortune. Yes, he’d cut his ties with his real family so decisively that he’d even faked his own death. Then he’d effectively disappeared from all existence until one day springing forth as Gerald Robinson. And soon after, he’d made Charlotte Prendergast his bride.
It ought to have been a grand love story. Gerald and Charlotte went on to have eight children together, for heaven’s sake. There’d been countless articles and news stories about them. Yet now it came out that Gerald had consistently strayed. Even during the earliest years of their marriage, he’d been off Johnny-Appleseeding with other women.
Was it simply a character flaw? He wasn’t the first brilliant, powerful man to have a weakness for women. Or was there something deeper? Another secret that motived him?
What had really happened between Jerome’s “demise” and Gerald’s explosive success in the tech field?
That was a big black hole into which her book would shine a good, long light.
And that was why she was sitting on the side of the road in the middle of Grassland, USA.
She rubbed her face and wished she hadn’t finished her Starbucks coffee two hours earlier. It would take her hours to get back to Austin. She’d do better to just keep plowing onward. She knew she had to be close to the state line by now, which would put Oklahoma City much closer.
A decent hotel bed. A lot of fresh coffee. Then she could hop on the interstate and drive back to Austin in the morning. It would still take five or six hours, but at least she’d be driving faster than the snail’s pace she’d had to use during today’s wasted trek. She’d be home in plenty of time to finish up her article about the grand opening of Austin Commons, Austin’s newest multiuse complex scheduled for the end of the month. She wouldn’t even have been assigned the story if the project’s architect hadn’t been Keaton Whitfield. He’d been one of her first “Becoming a Fortune” subjects.
She sighed and tossed aside her notes, peering through the windshield again. The clouds were angrily black, and lightning flashed in the distance.
A sharp crack on the side window made her jump so hard she banged her elbow on the steering wheel.
The sight of a man standing on the road right next to her car, though, made her nearly scream.
She reared away from the window, slamming her foot on the brake and jabbing the push-button start.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the man yelled through the window. From the corner of her eye she saw him tip back his black cowboy hat. “Don’t run me over, honey! Just checking that you’re all right.”
Hesitating was stupid. Every single thing she’d ever read or written about a woman’s personal safety told her that. Her heart was lodged somewhere up in her ears, pounding so loudly she felt nauseated.
The wind ripped, yanking the hat off the man’s head, and she heard him curse before he jogged after it.
She could have driven off right then, but the sight of him chasing after