The Reckoning by Christie Ridgway Page B

pair of butt-hugging shorts, her long legs naked of everything but a pair of flimsy sandals. Her flag of blond hair fluttered in the breeze and he might have stared all day if a car hadn’t come up behind him and honked.
    It only took him a short time to collect his “date” and return with her to the soccer field. With Nan and Dean unable to attend the game, he’d thought of bringing the other woman. Not only would she provide a much-needed buffer between himself and Linda, he’d figured she would welcome the outing.
    â€œLily!” Linda exclaimed, as she saw the other woman climbing up into the stands. The glance she cast at Emmett stopped just short of a glare. “No one told me you were coming to the game.” She stood up and gave Lily a hug. “How are you?” she said softly. “I am so happy you’re here. Ricky will be, too.”
    Lily Fortune, a widow of just a few short weeks, was close to sixty, Emmett knew. Grief and the rigors of her recent kidnapping at Jason’s hands had added more heavy threads of silver to her dark hair, but she remained a fine-lookingwoman. As she sat down on the wooden bench, she pulled on a pair of dark sunglasses to cover her large, tilted brown eyes and then linked her arm with Linda’s. “I’m getting by,” she said, “by keeping myself busy with activities like lunches with old friends—why I was in San Antonio today—and the important soccer matches of my favorite ten-year-old boy.”
    Emmett seated himself on Lily’s other side. “And you’re busy with the arrangements for the upcoming Fortune reunion, right? I heard that you’re going through with that.”
    Linda’s eyes rounded. “Lily, no. You can’t want to take on such a big project right now.”
    â€œIt’s exactly a big project that I need,” the older woman said, her voice firm. “It keeps me busy and I like the idea of everyone finally getting together.”
    â€œThere were Fortunes galore—” Emmett stopped himself.
    â€œAt Ryan’s memorial service,” Lily finished matter-of-factly. “But this is different. This is going to be a happy occasion.”
    Emmett scoffed to himself. Happy occasion? Unless they rounded up Jason in the next couple of weeks, there were going to be plenty of dark thoughts at that happy occasion. “I’ll get him,” he muttered to himself.
    But Lily heard him. “Of course you will. But I won’t let even Jason ruin the big party I have planned. Well, that Ryan planned, really. It was his dream.”
    Emmett couldn’t disagree with that. Years before, in the 1970s, Ryan had been reunited with the family of Patrick Fortune, his cousin in New York. Patrick and his wife, Lacey, had five children, all whom had spent summers in Texas and who had ultimately settled near Ryan.
    The previous November, after Jason had been jailed for the murder of his girlfriend Melissa and then implicated in Christopher’s death, Ryan had been contacted by Emmett’s father, Blake. It was Blake who had explained why the hereditary,distinctive Fortune birthmark had been found on Christopher’s body—Blake’s father and Ryan’s father had been half brothers. Ryan had immediately embraced what was left of the Jamison clan, despite the trouble Jason Jamison had brought to the area. And even after Jason had kidnapped his beloved Lily.
    Ryan had been a man whose appreciation for family ran very, very deep.
    â€œEmmett?” Lily put a cool hand on his arm. “Are you all right?”
    He blinked away the bright sunshine’s sting, then avoided meeting her gaze by seeking Ricky on the field. The game was just about to start and it wasn’t hard to find the boy’s sunny hair. “Looks like he’s playing goalie this quarter,” he said, watching him pull on a shirt different from the others on his