Which was fortunate because the butterflies fluttering madly inside her veins needed to burn off some energy as badly as the boys did.
Lights were coming on around the property when she herded the twins back inside through the main entrance and upstairs.
Fortunately, they were just in time to see Larkin smashing his way through his truck-shaped birthday cake, earning oohs from the twins who raced to the table and onto Catherine’s and Gary’s laps—proof that they were perfectly normal little boys despite the tragedy of their parents’ deaths last year.
Arabella spotted Jay and he jerked slightly when she touched his sleeve, but his smile was warm as ever. “Hello again.”
Aware of his responsibilities there, she snatched up an unused coffee cup from the abandoned guest table next to them. “Fill me up?”
One of his dark eyebrows peaked. “With coffee?”
“Are you offering anything else?”
His eyes didn’t let go of hers as he tilted his coffee carafe over her cup. “That depends.”
“On what?”
He shook his head slightly as if he were as bemused as she. “Arabella.”
She moistened her lips. “Yes?”
“I’ve never met an Arabella before.”
Her heart had climbed into her throat and she felt almost dizzy. “Is that a good thing?”
His dimple flirted into view. Just for a moment before disappearing again. He set the carafe aside. “I’ve really liked meeting you, Arabella. A lot.” He took her free hand in his. His thumb stroked over her wrist. She knew he had to be able to feel the insane thrumming of her pulse. “And I get off at ten.”
Choruses sang inside her head. “Okay,” she managed almost soundlessly.
“But I think you should know that—”
A huge screech rent the air just then, and they both jerked. A horrible rumbling juddered up from the floor as the balcony and everything on it fell away.
In the horrified void that followed, a balloon of dust rose silently in its place.
Then a woman screamed.
Followed by another.
And suddenly people ran.
Kids cried.
Jay shoved Arabella to one side just in time to avoid a chair flying toward her and she stared numbly at the cause as Brady vaulted across the room to scoop up Toby and Tyler.
She lost sight of Jay then in the melee while Callum—one of those Fortunes who’d built the hotel in the first place—ushered guests off the second floor.
Arabella gasped when her dad grabbed her arm in an iron grip.
“I knew it was a bad idea coming here.” He had her mother’s hand in his other and Catherine stumbled over a spilled tray of dishes trying to keep up with him.
“Daddy!” Arabella pulled on his hand, slowing him long enough to notice her mom. She was glad at least to see the true dismay in his face when he helped her mom to her feet. But that didn’t stop him from shackling Arabella’s wrist again as if she were a wayward toddler and joining the exiting guests.
Outside, the sound of sirens ought to have been reassuring—help was on its way—yet it only seemed to add to the horror.
“Was anyone hurt?”
“Where’s Wiley?”
“Was it a bomb?”
“Dear God, Grace was—”
“The mayor’s here. She can—”
The voices swirled and Arabella saw a mountain of rubble where only minutes earlier, Toby and Tyler had been running around the bushes below the balcony.
Nausea assaulted her and she looked away, numbly letting her father pull her and her mother even farther away from the scene. He hustled them into the car he’d rented at the airport in Houston. He was muttering to himself the whole while, but Arabella barely heard.
The evening wasn’t cold, but her teeth chattered hard as she looked out the back car window as her dad drove away from the hotel. Emergency lights flashed as one vehicle after another turned into the parking lot, tires squealing. She knew her brothers were safe. They’d all been inside Roja and well away from the balcony when she’d been talking with Jay.
I think you should know that...
“Gary, surely the entire hotel isn’t collapsing! Shouldn’t we—”
“No,” her dad said flatly, cutting off whatever her mother had been going to suggest. “We’re going straight back to New York where we belong.”
Jarred from her stupor, Arabella envisioned her overnight bag still sitting on the foot of her bed. Because the party was being held right there in the hotel, she’d seen no reason to take her purse to the party. “Dad, our luggage—”
“Can be sent to us. It’s the least those Fortunes owe us.”
“Maybe, but I’m still not going to be able to get on a plane without ID! And that’s still in my hotel room.” In his present mood, she knew he wouldn’t welcome any comments from her, but if they drove all the way to Houston only to have to turn around again, he’d be even more furious.
“Don’t you know better than to go anywhere without your ID?” He obviously didn’t expect an answer because he was swearing under his breath as he turned around and started back to the hotel.
She hadn’t gone anywhere until he’d dragged her out of the hotel. But she was pretty sure pointing that out wouldn’t earn her any points.
“How many times have I told Adam that moving to Rambling Rose would be nothing but bad news? Kane’s no better. That family just invites trouble. I told you about that wedding,” he said to Catherine, repeating words that Arabella had heard again and again over the past few years. “Deranged women. Kidnapping. Car chases. Now this? Those Fortunes are cursed!”
Her mother’s voice was meant to be soothing. “That was years ago. What happened at your brother’s wedding in Paseo—”
“Gerald Robinson is not my brother,” Gary snapped. “How many times have I told you that?”
Julius Fortune’s copious spreading of his gene pool said otherwise. Arabella kept that thought to herself, too. She’d never met Julius, who had fathered not only one legitimate son—Gerald—but at least four illegitimate ones, including her father. Everything she knew about the wealthy philanderer who’d died before she was even born was what she’d
