Page 83 of Inheriting Miss Fortune

(That’s me trying to get a handle on not using so many cuss words. It’s not easy cleaning the eff-word out of my vocabulary! I can just imagine Lellie showing up to school one day after the Cowboys lose and repeating bad words she learned watching the game with my co-workers.)

I wish I could set you and Tully up properly. I think you’d really like him, Dev.

I stared at the screen where she’d attached a photo of Tully asleep on the sofa in a living room I didn’t recognize. A fat-cheeked baby Lellie was asleep face down on his chest with her head tilted to the side over his heart. There was a giant wet spot on his shirt where she’d been drooling. His arms were around her, with one of his large hands sprawled across her back. Her knees were drawn up under her, pushing her little rounded butt in the air.

There was another one. This time, he was tickling her nose with a buttercup, and she was laughing with her eyes squeezedshut. It had to have been taken recently, within the last few months.

Seeing the two of them with flowers piled between them at the ranch hadn’t been the first time they’d done that.

There was something sweet about it that gave me a sense of gratitude, which was obviously what Katie had felt. But it also showed his constancy, which was something my parents hadn’t shown me.

I wiped the tears off my face and shut the tablet down. I hadn’t gotten through all of the messages, but I’d gotten through enough that I thought I understood what Kenji had been trying to tell me.

Tully didn’t just care about Lellie because she was Katie’s daughter and he wanted to do right by her. He’d been part of her life—an important part—from the beginning, and he’d want to stay in her life as much as possible.

Now, I just had to convince him there was a way for him to stay inmine,too.

Thankfully, Renata and her father came over a little while later and volunteered to help us go through Katie’s personal belongings to determine what to keep for Lellie and what to donate.

Renata told me that while Katie loved her house, she didn’t have the kind of sentimental attachment to it that would make it worth keeping for Lellie down the road.

“You’d be better off buying a beach house with the money and having someplace fun to take her during school vacations in the next twenty years,” Renata’s father had said with a wink.“Young women aren’t nearly as excited about Dallas real estate as they’d be about a place in Padre.”

We spent several hours rotating between caring for Lellie and packing up Katie’s things. It was easier for me than Renata since I didn’t have memories here and hadn’t been as close to Katie in the past several years as she had. Kenji arranged for a real estate agent Tully had recommended to list the house, and by the time midafternoon rolled around, Kenji, Lellie, and I were ready to go.

We said a tearful goodbye to Renata and confirmed her plans to come to Majestic for the hot-air balloon festival later this summer. “Take care of her and send me pictures,” she insisted with a brave smile.

When I’d checked in with Tully, I’d learned about his firm’s plans to keep him busy and distracted from Lellie’s case. It wasn’t a surprise, though the thought of returning to Majestic without him made my chest ache. In less than a couple of weeks, he’d become a part of my world there.

He’d become a part of my world,period.

And even though I understood why the separation was necessary, that didn’t mean I had to be happy about it. Or stop racking my brain to find a way to work out a different plan.

After loading up our suitcases for the return trip, the driver Kenji had arranged made her way through the crowded city streets before pulling up to a tall, mirror-bright building downtown. I unbuckled Lellie and held her on my hip as we left the stifling heat and entered the cool, quiet lobby of the sky rise. Professionals in dark suits walked quickly past us with the rapid clip-clip sounds of high heels and wingtips.

Lellie’s eyes were big as we entered the glass-sided elevator and whooshed up above the atrium with its green plants and decorative trees in planter pots. When the elevator stopped atTully’s floor, the people down below looked like flies buzzing around the base of the tiny trees.

“Welcome to Dunlevy, Pace, and Trumble,” a receptionist said from behind a long desk. “How may I help you?”

“We’re here to see Tully Bowman, please.”

Before she had a chance to notify him, the man himself came striding into the lobby, his hair perfectly styled and his suit perfectly pressed. I found my mouth twisting up in a grin. Tully looked sexy as hell in his business clothes. The suit pants looked like they’d been tailored with the express purpose of reminding me what his ass and thighs felt like in my hands.

He laughed as he said something to the person walking along beside him—a city boy like Tully, whose suit was impeccably tailored and whose eyes were fixed on Tully’s face with a kind of heated interest that bordered on fascination.

I resisted the urge to growlMineand claim Tully right there in the lobby.

Lellie had no such compunctions. “Tuh-wee!” she called happily. “Tuh-wee!”

Tully turned instantly, and his face lit up with a big smile. “Hi, baby!”

For a split second, I thought the endearment was for me, but then I realized he was addressing Lellie as she threw herself out of my arms and into his.

I glanced at the other man to gauge his reaction. It was obvious he was tall and good-looking. A small spike of envy twisted inside me as I realized this man, a complete stranger, would continue to have easy access to Tully after I was gone, whether he was a coworker or client.

“Tully, is this your daughter?” the man asked in surprise.

“Hmm? No, no,” Tully said, still making a silly face at Lellie. “This is my friend Katie’s daughter, and Dev here is her father.”

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