it’s nice to have one of those empty rooms filled again.”
“You’re very kind.” She followed her aunt along the hall and up the stairs to a corner bedroom with windows on two walls. Amelia remembered the room from her first visit to Horseback Hollow six months ago, though it had been her mother who’d been assigned to it then. It was obviously a guest room. Simply but comfortably furnished with a bed covered in a quilt with fading pastel stitching that was all the lovelier for its graceful aging, a side table with dried cat’s tails sticking out of an old-fashioned milk bottle, and a sturdy oak wardrobe. White curtains, nearly translucent, hung open at the square windows and moved gently in the warm morning breeze.
“This used to be Galen’s room,” Jeanne Marie said. “Being the oldest, there was a time he liked lording it over the others that he had the largest room.” She crossed to the windows to begin lowering the shades. “Would have put you in here back when you came for Toby’s wedding in April, but James Marshall and Clara were using it.”
“Leave the windows open,” Amelia begged quickly. “Please.”
“The sunlight won’t keep you awake?”
She self-consciously tugged at her ugly shirt. Light was the least disturbing thing she could think of at the moment. And better to have sunlight than darkness while the memories of the last time she’d been at her aunt’s home were caving in on her. “The breeze is too lovely to shut out.”
Jeanne Marie dropped her hands. She opened the wardrobe and pulled out two bed pillows from the shelf inside and set them on the bed. “Bathroom is next door,” she reminded. “I’ll make sure you have fresh towels. And I’m sure that Delaney or Stacey left behind some clothes that should fit you. They might be boxed up by now, but I’ll try to scare up something for you to wear once you’re rested.”
Her welcome was so very different than Quinn’s, deserved or not, and Amelia’s eyes stung.
She cried much too easily these days. “Thank you.” She sat on the foot of the bed and tried not to think about sitting on the bed at Quinn’s.
She’d thought that had been a guest room, too. Until she’d awakened early that morning and had gone looking for him. She’d done what she hadn’t had the energy for the night before. The rooms upstairs were spacious and full of windows and nothing else. Almost like they were stuck in time. Waiting for a reason to be filled with furniture. With family. Downstairs, he had a den with a plain wooden desk and an older style computer on it. The living room had a couch, a television that looked older than the computer, and a gleaming black upright piano. She’d drawn her fingers lightly over the keys, finding it perfectly tuned.
What she hadn’t found was Quinn. Not only had he been nowhere to be found inside the two-story house, but she’d seen for herself that his home possessed only a single bed.
Which, regardless of his feelings, he’d given up for her.
* * *
Jeanne Marie watched the tangled expressions crossing her new niece’s delicate features and controlled the urge to take the girl into her arms and rock her just as she would have her own daughters. “We’ve got most of the crew coming for supper tonight. But you just come on down whenever you’re ready,” she said comfortingly. “And don’t you worry about me spilling your personal beans to your cousins. You can do that when you’re good and ready.” Then she kissed Amelia’s forehead and left the room, closing the door behind her.
She set out fresh towels in the bathroom, then headed downstairs to the kitchen again and stopped in surprise at the sight of her husband just coming in from the back. “I thought you’d be out all morning.”
“Thought I could get the engine on that old Deere going, but I need a couple more parts.” He tossed his sweat-stained cowboy hat aside and rubbed his fingers through his thick, iron-gray hair before reaching out a long arm and hooking her around the waist. “Which leaves me the chance for some morning delight with my wife before I drive over to Vicker’s Corners.”
Jeanne Marie laughed softly, rubbing her arms over his broad shoulders. How she loved this man who’d owned her heart from the moment they’d met. “We’re not alone in the house,” she warned.
His eyebrow lifted. “I didn’t notice any cars out front. Who’s come this early for supper? Can’t be Toby and his brood.” He grinned faintly. “Those kids’ve been coming out of their shells real nice lately.”
“And they’ll continue to do so,” Jeanne agreed, slightly distracted by the way Deke’s wide palms were drifting from her waist down over the seat of her jeans. “As long as no more hitches come up to stop Toby and Angie adopting them.” Their middle son and his new wife were trying to adopt three kids he’d been fostering for the past eight months and the process hadn’t exactly been smooth so far.
Her blood was turning warm and she grabbed his wide wrists, redirecting his hands to less distracting territory. “Amelia’s here.”
His brows pulled together for a second. “Amelia? Josephine’s youngest girl?”
“We don’t know another Amelia,” Jeanne Marie said dryly.
His hands fell away. He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms over his chest. “Fortunes are everywhere,” he murmured.
She knew his face as well as she knew her own. She had happily been Jeanne Marie Jones for forty years. But learning that she had siblings out there, learning that she had a blood connection to others in this world besides the children of his that she’d borne, had filled a void inside her that Deke had never quite been able to understand. Even though her adoptive parents had loved her, and she them, not knowing where she’d come from had always pulled at her.
And now she knew.
And though Deke hadn’t protested when she’d added Fortune to her own name, she knew also that it hadn’t been entirely easy for him. When their kids followed suit, it had gotten even harder for him to swallow.
No. The advent of the Fortunes to the Jones’s lives hadn’t been easy. And maybe it would have been easier if James had gone about things differently when he’d tracked her down. Her newfound brother was a self-made business tycoon used to having the world fall into place exactly the way he planned and he’d not only upset his own family in the process, he’d sent Jeanne Marie’s family reeling, too, when he’d tried to give her part of his significant fortune.
She’d turned down the money, of course. It didn’t matter to her that all of her siblings turned out to be ridiculously wealthy while she was not. She and Deke had a good life. A happy life. One blessed with invaluable wealth for the very reason that it had nothing to do with any amount of dollars and cents.
Convincing her pridefully suspicious husband that the only fortune that mattered to her was the name Fortune, however, had been a long process.
One that was still obviously in the works, judging by Deke’s stoic expression.
“How long’s she staying?” he asked.
“I have no idea. The girl came here to figure some things out, I believe.” Because she always felt better being busy, she pulled a few peaches out of the basket on the counter and grabbed a knife. She’d already made a chocolate cake for dessert for that evening, but Deke always loved a fresh peach pie. And even after forty years of marriage, a man still needed to know he was in the forefront of his wife’s thoughts. “Do you think she should stay somewhere else?”
He frowned quickly. “No. She’s family.” His eyes met hers. “I get it, Jeanne Marie.”
Her faint tension eased. He might not exactly understand the way she’d taken on the Fortune name, but he did get “it” when it came to family. Nothing was more important to him, even if he didn’t always have an easy time showing it.
“She’d been at Quinn Drummond’s,” she added. Then told him everything that had happened since Amelia had called. She pointed the tip