Texan Seeks Fortune. Marie Ferrarella

       Prologue

      Connor Fortunado was torn.

      He glanced out of the window of his first-class seat. The flight was just about over.

      He was almost there.

      Houston.

      Home.

      Connor half smiled to himself. Home, better known as “The House of the Incurable Romantics.” The whimsical title had recently occurred to him because every one of his five siblings was either married or going to be married.

      Except for him.

      And that little fact of life, he promised himself, wasn’t about to change anytime soon.

      Or ever.

      Connor was pretty happy with his life. He was thirty-one, single, carefree and able to take off at a moment’s notice without an explanation to anyone if he wanted to—the way he had just done. If he were married and had what was whimsically referred to in some circles as “a better half,” right about now that “better half” would most likely be giving him hell for the double life he was leading. She would have doubtlessly not looked favorably on his giving up an executive position with a prestigious corporate search firm just so that he could follow his passion.

      Everyone in the family still thought he was that highly paid executive at his old firm. His former career had been a dependable, respectable position with an excellent, if somewhat boring, future laid out in front of it. None of his relatives knew that somewhere along the line he had discovered he had a real aptitude for detective work.

      It had begun innocently enough. He’d helped his boss uncover an embezzling scheme within the company. But once he’d discovered the culprit, Connor found that he was hooked on the rush that came in the wake of untangling all the twisted skeins and getting to the bottom of the mystery. After a bit of soul-searching, he’d decided to put his newly honed skills to better use. So he had turned his back on the corporate world and became a highly paid private investigator.

      Career changes like that wouldn’t have sat well with a wife and she would have undoubtedly had no qualms about making her displeasure known.

      To everyone.

      Connor frowned. The moment of reckoning was almost here. He was going to have to come clean to his family once he landed in Houston. Telling his siblings should go fine because for the most part, they were pretty open-minded. It was coming clean to his parents that was going to be the problem. His parents, especially his father, were not going to look favorably on this change in careers.

      He was not looking forward to this. All things considered, he would have gone on keeping his secret for as long as possible.

      However, fate had other plans for him and was forcing him to own up to this major change in his life. All in the name of the family good. He just hoped his parents would see it that way. Yes, he was an adult, but there was still a part of him that preferred parental approval.

      But he really didn’t have the luxury of keeping this to himself any longer. His family needed him. There was no other conclusion to be reached.

      Someone was out there, trying to get them.

      It wasn’t merely a paranoid thought reserved for the rich but an honest assessment of the situation. How else could he view what had been happening to different members of his family in the last two months? Like to his father’s half brother. Gerald Robinson’s estate, palatial by any standards, had been the target of an arsonist, set on fire and almost burned down to the ground. The family-based technology firm, Robinson Tech, had been the victim of cybersabotage. And Fortunado Real Estate, a company his father founded and two of his sisters and one of his brothers-in-law now worked at, had been the target of sabotage, as well.

      It was as if no one who was even remotely related to the Fortune family—no matter how they spelled their last name—was safe.

      Connor had a gut feeling that it was only going to get worse unless whoever was responsible for wreaking all this havoc was found and captured. As a Fortunado, he had found that he and his family were related to the Fortunes. And that meant he couldn’t just sit on the sidelines and watch this little drama play out.

      He had to do something. He had natural skills, he had connections and he had the money to fund the investigation, all of which would serve him well in his search for whoever was attempting to carry out this vendetta against the entire Fortune family.

      His family.

      In his mind, Connor was already getting started on the case even though he was still airborne.

      All he had to do, he thought, was get past telling his parents.

      “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be beginning our descent to Houston shortly. Please return your tray tables to the upright positions…”

      The cheerful flight attendant continued with her instructions, her voice fading into the background for Connor.

      Connor’s stomach felt just the slightest bit queasy. Not because of the airplane’s descent, but because of what lay ahead.

      Zero hour was almost here.