“What are you nervous about?”

If her face got any hotter, her blood was going to steam right out of her ears. “Nothing, and good night, Mr Forrest. You should go play with your debutantes,” JD said as she turned to go.

His hand on her shoulder stopped her dead in her tracks. “I’m not interested in any debutantes.”

She sent up a breathless prayer for her fleeing common sense to get back where it belonged. But the light touch of his fingers on her shoulder didn’t move away, nor did her common sense trot on back to the barn. “Mr Forrest–”

“Most of the crew calls me Jake.” His fingers finally moved, sliding down her shoulder, grazing over her bare elbow beneath the short-sleeved shirt, only coming to a stop when they reached her wrist. He pressed his thumb against her frantic pulse. “But not you, not even after all these years. Why is that?”

“I like to keep things professional.” Unfortunately, her low, husky voice sounded anything but.

A Weaver Baby

by

Allison Leigh

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ALLISON LEIGH started early by writing a Halloween play that her school class performed. Since then, though her tastes have changed, her love for reading has not. And her writing appetite simply grows more voracious by the day.

She has been a finalist for the RITA® Award and the Holt Medallion. But the true highlights of her day as a writer are when she receives word from a reader that they laughed, cried or lost a night of sleep while reading one of her books.

Born in Southern California, Allison has lived in several different cities in four different states. She has been, at one time or another, a beautician, a computer programmer and a secretary. She has recently begun writing full time after spending nearly a decade as an administrative assistant for a busy neighbourhood church. She currently makes her home in Arizona with her family. She loves to hear from her readers, who can write to her at PO Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772, USA.

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Available in September 2010

from Mills & Boon®

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For my family.

Prologue

“Heads up.” The warning came in accented English. “He’s got her highness with him.”

J. D. Clay gave Miguel a wry smile. “She can’t be that bad.” The man who owned the thoroughbreds she and Miguel Perez worked with had married the “highness” after all. Jake and Tiffany Forrest even had twin sons, though in the short time since Miguel had hired J.D. to work in the stables at Forrest’s Crossing, she hadn’t yet seen the boys.

“She’s worse,” Miguel said under his breath as he put a wide smile on his face while the couple in question strode along the hectic shed row toward them. “Beautiful an’ no good for da boss.”

J.D. frowned a little, but she’d quickly learned that gossip and rumor were always ripe in the stables, particularly when it came to Jake and his beauty-queen wife. They looked like they belonged on a movie screen rather than here, with dirt under their feet and the perfume of horse manure in the air.

Tiffany Forrest was ivory skinned and black haired. A modern-day version of Snow White, only this one had an elaborate race-day hat perched on her head that would have cost the dwarfs their entire mine. And her tall, athletically built husband, Jake, was simply the description in the dictionary beneath TallDarkandHandsome. Together, the two were—well, striking didn’t even come close.

They stopped next to the stalls that had very tasteful bronze FC plaques on them, and J.D. watched the man’s brown, intensely sharp gaze rove over his thoroughbreds there. One, Metal Cross, was running in the Kentucky Derby later that afternoon. His stable mate, June Cross, had won the Kentucky Oaks—a race for fillies only—the day before. “Everything set to go, Miguel?”

“Sí, sí.” Miguel was head trainer for Forrest’s Crossing and the diminutive Peruvian grinned widely. “Metal here, he gonna do it for us this year. Bring you the roses jus’ like when your daddy won ’em.”

“That’s what I want to hear.” Jake’s coffee-brown eyes skipped over Miguel’s head. “J.D.,” he greeted. “Everything looking good with our filly, there?”

Before J.D. could offer a response, the glossy woman at his side looked up at him with a smile that was only exceeded in brilliance by the jewels draped almost nonchalantly around her throat. “Jake, everyone’s waiting for us up top,” she reminded.

“We’ve got time,” Jake assured. He was still looking at them and missed the sexy pout his wife aimed his way.

J.D. didn’t. “Junie’s in great shape, Mr. Forrest,” she said as she ducked under June’s neck and moved to the far side, running the soft brush over the beautiful filly’s flank. She didn’t need to see the superior glint in Mrs. Forrest’s eyes to confirm that she was much more suitable inside the stable, than outside of it. “Metal’s going to run just as great as Junie did, yesterday.”

Jake’s smile was slightly crooked as he tucked his hand around his wife’s rail-thin waist and turned to go. “Then we’ll see you in the winner’s circle, won’t we?”

“Oh, Jake.” J.D. could hear Tiffany laughing lightly as she walked away with her husband. “Don’t go getting that poor girl’s hopes up. She’s not going to be there with us.”

J.D. kept grooming June. She already knew that if Metal ran his way to the winner’s circle, it would only be the owners, their trainer and the jockey smiling for pictures and accepting trophies and winnings. She’d be back here, mucking out the stalls and polishing up tack.

She was part of the stable woodwork while the couple was definitely Millionaire’s Row.

They were welcome to it.

Give J.D. horses any day of the week. They never disappointed her. And she never disappointed them.

Chapter One

Five years later

“You didn’t go out with the rest of the boys?” Jake’s voice was deep and in some fanciful part of J.D.’s mind, she imagined it felt like a soft blanket sliding down her bare skin.

“I didn’t want to cramp their style.” She sent him a smile over her shoulder, but the wryness of it was mostly for herself. As the only female in the entire stable crew at Forrest’s Crossing, she’d never been one of “the boys.” She was simply an assistant horse trainer on Jake’s sizable payroll who—according to Miguel—usually had one too many opinions of her own.

Though this time, her opinion when it came to Latitude had proved right on the money.

Literally.

From the first burst out of the starting gate to the way the thoroughbred sailed across the finish line of The Sanford, the horse had been pure poetry in motion. He’d raced as brilliantly as J.D. had known he could, so of all the crew from Forrest’s Crossing, she was probably the least surprised.

And except for Latitude Crossing’s owner, Jake—who’d collected the tidy first-place purse he didn’t remotely need—she was probably the happiest.

Satisfaction curved her lips all over again, and it didn’t even matter that Miguel had been the one to claim the glory of Latitude’s unlikely win. He’d been so elated, he’d told the stable crew that drinks were on him, and they’d all tumbled out of the barn, looking ready to continue the celebration that had been going on since they’d touched down in Georgia from Saratoga.

Even though it was late, J.D. was still celebrating, too; but she preferred to do it in the company of the real winner.

She folded her arms over the top rail of the stall, looking at the gleaming bay contentedly munching his way through fresh feed as if he had done nothing remarkable at all. “Look at you acting all modest,” she chided the colt. “You ought to be wearing a crown.”

“The Triple Crown,” Jake murmured behind her.

That shiver dashed down her spine again. She’d like to blame it on the prospect of Latitude joining those few elite horses in history that had attained the coveted achievement, but she’d never been one to lie to herself.

The shiver came from Jake. Not from the idea of Latitude finding the elusive Triple Crown glory in the coming year.

“His chance at that is nearly a year away,” she said. The famous races that comprised the Triple Crown were run by three-year-old thoroughbreds only, beginning in May with the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes two weeks later and capped off with the Belmont Stakes in early June. Which meant a thoroughbred had one chance in their lifetime to accomplish the feat. “And who knows what Miguel will want to do between now and then,” she added practically. Miguel fired people at the drop of a hat. The fact that she’d survived his mercurial nature for five years was a record for Forrest’s Crossing.

“If he’s smart, he’ll leave you alone with Latitude. Miguel’s more interested in Platinum Cross, anyway.” Platinum was sired by one of Forrest’s Crossing’s most successful horses. But even Metal Cross hadn’t brought home the “crown.” He’d won both the Preakness and the Belmont. But he hadn’t won the Derby. Nor had any other horse for Jake.

They still made the trek every year to Churchill Downs. The only things that changed were the names of the thoroughbreds running for him, and the names of the glossy women on his arm who’d revolved through his world since his divorce shortly after J.D. came to Forrest’s Crossing.

He folded his arms over the top rail next to her, holding an open bottle of Cristal in one hand and a slender champagne flute in the other.

He held them just as casually as if they were a dime-store mug and a long-neck beer. But the expensive champagne was much more in keeping with the off-white silk shirt he wore. And the crystal flute was probably of the irreplaceable, antique variety, inherited from his father and great-grandfather just as he’d inherited Forrest’s Crossing.

It wasn’t the quality of the champagne or the stemware that made her nerves jumpy, though. There was wealth in her upbringing, too. Just not on the scale of Jake’s.

His family owned Forco, one of the largest textile firms in the country. For him, thoroughbreds were merely a personal passion that he could well afford to indulge. And where his family was into jets and setting, hers was more into jeans and settling down.

No, what made her nerves want to dance a jig had one, simple cause.

Him.

She slid her gaze away from his arms and those long, lean fingers, focusing again on the oblivious colt as she discreetly tried to put a little space between their arms. She needed every inch she could get just to breathe around the man.

“Miguel will take over again now that he’s seen for himself what kind of heart Latitude has,” she predicted, clinging to the thread with a desperation that she prayed didn’t show. Miguel was the head trainer. J.D., an underling. He had every right to make whatever decisions he wanted.

“Does that bother you?” Jake shifted slightly and his arm grazed hers, right across that spare inch she’d managed to gain.

She sucked in a silent breath and made herself remain still. It was no easy task. “Crossing the finish line first isn’t what I love about horses.” Her voice was blithe.

Latitude lifted his head, his large, liquid eyes looking into hers. He blew out a noisy breath, as if he were laughing at her nonchalance.

She stared back into the colt’s eyes. Mind your own business, Lat.

He snorted again and stretched his long neck over the rail, butting his nose against her shoulder.

She fell back a step, laughing softly despite herself.

Jake steadied her and he nudged Latitude’s head away. “Behave.”

“He just wants this.” J.D. pulled a peppermint out of the pocket of her FC-emblazoned polo shirt. She unwrapped the mint and held it out.

Latitude eagerly nipped the candy off her palm.

“Can’t blame him for that.” The corner of Jake’s mouth curled slightly and his gaze seemed to linger on her shirt.

More specifically, on the pocket above her breast.

Admittedly, it had been years since she’d even flirted with a man, but she wasn’t so out of practice that she didn’t recognize interest when it—all six-plus feet topped with thick brown hair and hooded eyes—was staring her in the face.

Her cheeks heated when her nipples pinpointed eagerly beneath the butter-yellow cotton.

She stepped back to the rail, careful to keep that space between her arm and Jake’s. Squashing her breasts against the hard rail didn’t do a thing, though, to squash the warmth zipping around in her veins.

If she’d had such an infernally predictable response to Donovan, maybe they wouldn’t have broken up six years ago. But then again, she knew they would have. Donny hadn’t liked coming in second to her beloved horses. And he’d especially not liked coming in second to another man—Troy.

She’d learned her lesson, though.

Stick to horses and nobody gets hurt.

She could feel her face getting hotter by the second and avoided Jake’s gaze. Having the hots for the owner of the horses she loved was so not high on her list of how to succeed in what was commonly perceived as a man’s world.

She’d always been fine before with her particular affliction where Jake was concerned. Because she was just a lowly soul on his stable crew. One he barely looked twice at, much less looked at the way he was looking now.

“Something wrong? You’re looking very…flushed.”

She wanted to bury herself in a pile of straw. “I’m still not used to the humidity here,” she defended with a shrug that even she didn’t buy.

“It’s just a warm Southern night.” His voice was like molasses. Vaguely amused. Darkly sweet.

She had another peppermint tucked in her breast pocket and wondered if it could melt because of the heat steaming through her. “With about a gazillion percent humidity.”

He tipped the champagne bottle over the flute and shimmering, golden liquid bubbled forth. Then he held the glass toward her. “Maybe this will help you cool off.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “I think I’ve already had too much of that.” The first bottle of bubbly had been opened at the track in New York. And it had been followed by several more on the flight in his personal jet that made the trips to New York and Florida and California easier on the horses.

“Yeah, but you didn’t have Cristal,” Jake drawled. “Live it up, J.D. It’s just one night.”

She knew she should decline. But she still closed her fingers around the smooth, delicate crystal, brushing against his warm fingers as she did so.

Her heart skittered around. She couldn’t manage to look away from his face. “I’m not exactly a champagne kind of girl.” And not at all his kind of girl.

“What kind of girl are you?”

The kind who was getting out of her depth fast, and should be old enough to know better. Her fingers tightened around the glass. “Strong coffee when it’s cold and a cold beer when it’s not.”

A faint smile hovered around his lips. “Not that I’m knocking either one, but this is a special occasion. Latitude’s won his first race. One of many, if all goes well.” He tucked his finger beneath the base of the glass and urged it upward. “Live it up. You might like it.”

There were a lot of things she was afraid she would like, more than was good for her.

Champagne was at the bottom of that list.

Jake Forrest was at the top.

All of which did not explain why she still lifted the glass to her lips and inhaled the crisp aroma as she slowly took a sip. And once she did, she couldn’t help the humming sigh of appreciation that escaped.

The fine web of crow’s-feet that arrowed out from his eyes crinkled even more appealingly. “I knew you’d like it.”

How could she not? It was like swallowing moonbeams.

Then he lifted the flute out of her fingers and put his lips right where hers had been.

He might as well have touched her with a live wire. But judging by the flare of his pupils as his gaze stayed locked on hers, he was perfectly aware of that fact.

She swallowed, hard, and stepped away from the rail again. Some temptations were wiser left untouched. Jake might be divorced, but that didn’t mean he was available.

So, she swept her hands down her jeans to hide the fact that they were shaking and kept her shoulders square. “It’s getting late. I’d better—”

“Are you afraid of me, J.D.?”

Her jaw loosened a little. Fear would be easier to deal with. “Of course not.”

“Then why are you ready to bolt?”

She opened her mouth to protest that, but how could she? She was ready to bolt.

And yet, when he lifted the crystal glass and grazed the cool rim ever so faintly against her lower lip, she seemed frozen in place.

His voice dropped another notch. “What are you nervous about?”

If her face got any hotter, her blood was going to steam right out of her ears. “Nothing.” She snatched the glass from him and inelegantly chugged the remainder, then pushed the glass back at him. When he didn’t take it, she reached past his broad shoulder and balanced it on the corner post of Latitude’s stall. “Good night, Mr. Forrest. You should go play with your debutantes.” She turned to go.

His hand on her shoulder stopped her dead in her tracks. “I’m not interested in any debutantes.”

She sent up a breathless prayer for her fleeing common sense to get back where it belonged. But the light touch of his fingers on her shoulder didn’t move away, nor did her common sense trot on back to the barn. “Mr. Forrest—”

“Most of the crew calls me Jake.” His fingers finally moved, sliding down her shoulder, grazing over her bare elbow beneath the short-sleeved shirt, only coming to a stop when they reached her wrist. He pressed his thumb against her frantic pulse. “But not you, not even after all these years. Why is that?”

“I like to keep things professional.” Unfortunately, her low, husky voice sounded anything but.

“You’re the epitome of professionalism.”

She couldn’t help it. She looked up at him through her lashes. “Pardon me, but I don’t feel that way just now.”

His coffee-brown eyes would have looked sleepy if not for the heat blazing from them. “Your job is secure no matter what. Miguel is in charge of the stable crew.”

“And you’re in charge of Miguel.”

“Miguel is in charge of Miguel,” he corrected wryly. He upended the rest of the champagne into the flute and lifted the glass again. “But if you insist on going, take this with you, at least. You, more than anyone, has earned some very fine champagne today.”

“Latitude did all the work.”

“Latitude ran for you. Miguel wanted me to sell him until you started handling him.”

Jake wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. She took the glass. Felt her head swim as she sipped again at moonbeams.

And somehow she found the toes of her scuffed boots boldly brushing the toes of Jake’s highly polished ones. She wasn’t even sure if his arm came around her waist first, or if it was her hand pressing against the solid warmth of his chest. But the crystal flute was suddenly caught between them, the glittering liquid spilling as their mouths found one another.

Champagne moonbeams were no comparison at all when it came to the taste of Jake Forrest.

It made her weak. Deliciously weak.

And there was no earthly way she could convince herself that one kiss would be enough.

Not when his splayed fingers were hard and hot against her spine through the thin knit of her shirt. Not when his other hand slid along her shoulder, cupped her cheek, fingers threading through her hair, urging her head back. Not when she felt the murmur of her name in his low, deep voice whispering along her neck before he pressed his lips against the pulse at the base of her throat.

Her mind reeled, trying to find reason. Or justification. Jake was a worldly man. He wouldn’t expect anything later that she wasn’t capable of giving.

Her fingers flexed against him, encountering champagne-damp silk and cool crystal. Then the glass fell, landing with a soft shatter when Jake lifted her off her feet until her mouth was level with his again. “Do you still want to run?”

She could feel his heart thudding hard against her. Her fingers clutched his broad shoulders. Their faces were so close, she could have counted every one of the dark, spiky eyelashes that surrounded his gleaming gaze. “Do you want me to run?”

He pressed her against the paneled wall next to Latitude’s stall and ran his hands along her thighs, drawing them up, alongside his hips. “What do you think?”

Every unyielding inch of him from shoulder on south pressed into her and she had to choke back a moan. “Mr. Forr—”

His mouth cut her off. “Jake,” he said against her.

Her hands slid behind his neck. His thick hair was cool between her fingers. “Jake,” she obliged breathlessly. She’d have said anything as long as he didn’t take away the intense pleasure of his kiss. “Jake,” she said again on a low moan of delight when his weight pressed even harder into her. Her fingers slid from his hair to curl into the smooth silk covering his back, pulling it up until she could feel the warmth of his satin-smooth flesh instead.

A deep sound rumbled from him to her and she couldn’t just hear his want…she could taste it. Then his hands clasped her rear and she was vaguely aware of glass crunching beneath his boots as he carried her into an empty stall, and she almost cried out at the loss when he settled her on her unsteady feet.

But the loss was mercifully brief. He knelt before her, dragging the hem of her shirt from her blue jeans, shoving it up as his mouth pressed, open and hot, against her abdomen. She swayed, clasping his shoulders, only to draw his hands greedily to her breasts when they hovered so close, so teasingly near.

His thumbs dragged the thin cups of her lacy bra aside, raking tauntingly over her tight nipples and needles of delight shot through her. She yanked off the strangle-hold of her twisted shirt and slid bonelessly to her knees. She felt blind to everything but the fire burning in Jake’s eyes; couldn’t look away from him as his long fingers slid away from her breasts to meet at the zipper of her jeans. “Don’t stop now,” she whispered.

A muscle flexed in his angled jaw and he pulled down the zipper. Before she could shimmy out of the jeans, though, he tipped her back and she felt the scrape of soft, fresh straw against her spine.

“Boots.” His voice was a low, husky drawl that was as arousing as his touch. He pulled off her boots and tossed them aside.

Her impatient hands reached out for him again then, but he pushed to his feet, and she could only lie there, breathless with tightening desire, as he pulled off his own boots. The silk shirt followed as he yanked it over his head, not even bothering with the buttons.

Then his hands fell to the belt at his waist. Her mouth ran dry as he slowly pulled it loose, dropping it aside, right along with every other stitch he wore.

She wasn’t exactly a virgin. She’d had two lovers before, brief though those failed relationships had been. But it was still good that she was already sprawled in the straw because the sight of all that male glory made her dizzy. Dark hair swirled across his muscular chest, narrowing to a fine line over his tight abs, just inviting her to follow its trail.

And then he was pulling at her jeans, sliding them off her hips. His lips pressed against her navel, and the heat inside her threatened to explode as she nearly bowed off the ground.

“What happened here?” His fingers smoothed over the faint remains of a long-healed scar that peeked above the edge of her pink panties.

“Stepped on by a horse.”

He trailed the line up and down. “Must’ve hurt.”

Agonizing in ways she didn’t let herself think about anymore. “You work around horses, you’re going to have some bruises somewhere along the way.”

His lips kicked up. “First time I fell off, I was five.”

“Six.” She shifted, impatient for him to get beyond the cotton panties. And he seemed to realize it because his mouth traced the thin scar as he drew the hank of fabric down her thighs with an intensity that made her feel perfectly beautiful and unscarred.

His breath whispered against her abdomen. “Are you sure?”

She couldn’t help the strangled laugh that quivered up her throat. Her thighs shifted restlessly and she reached for him. “I’m dying here,” she managed.

“Impatient.” The edge of his white teeth flashed for just a moment as he slowly moved over her. “I like that.”

She wanted to sink her teeth into his shoulder when he didn’t move fast enough to suit her, and she pushed at him, flattening him on his back with a speed that had those crow’s-feet crinkling again. “I am impatient,” she whispered. “I haven’t done this in a long while.” In one smooth arch, she took him in.

Her breath stopped. Her heart stopped.

The world might have stopped, too, except she was too busy staring into the unholy pleasure that tightened Jake’s face to notice. He sucked in a sharp breath and closed his hands hard and tight around her hips. “How long a while?”

She shook her head. How could she care about details that didn’t even merit comparison to this? “It doesn’t matter. Years.” She slowly worked her hips against his, and knew with feminine instinct that it felt as torturously perfect for him as it did for her.

He sucked in another hard breath. “You’re dangerous.”

“Next time, think twice before you give me Cristal.”

She felt his bark of laughter down to the very center of her, and then neither one of them was laughing as he rolled her in the straw and sank even deeper. “You feel incredible,” he breathed against her ear.

What she felt was a climax bearing down on her with the speed of a freight train. Her head twisted in the soft straw. “Jake—”

“Forget the warm summer night.” He pushed up on his forearms, tendons tight in his neck. His shoulders. “You’re a storm.”

And she felt suddenly buffeted. She cried out, the cataclysm spiraling even harder because Jake was right there with her, his own satisfaction flooding through her.

It seemed endless, that pure pleasure that streaked through her veins, heating her from fingertips to soul. And maybe it was endless, because by the time Jake finally drew in a deep, shuddering breath and rolled over on his back, his arms splayed in the straw, J.D. knew the world could have come to a halt and she wouldn’t have noticed.

She let out a long, shaking breath of her own. She couldn’t have moved just then to save her soul.

“Wow,” he murmured after a while.

She almost giggled. And she’d never much been a giggling sort. “I think I’m still vibrating.”

He huffed out a faint laugh. “Honey, flattering as that is—” his voice was a low, sexy drawl “—I think that might be my cell phone.” He pushed himself up until he was sitting, his intoxicating gaze roving over her as he tugged the edge of his trousers out from beneath her hip. He pulled out his vibrating cell phone, his gaze meeting hers with a devilish humor. “Never going to be able to talk on this thing again without thinking about…today.”

She wanted to roll over and bury her hot face in the straw, but his hand settled on her bare flank. It was vaguely appalling that she felt a stirring all over again, even when her entire body drifted in satiated stupor.

But then his phone vibrated again and he checked the display. The humor in his face died and he drew back his hand.

Despite the hot night, J.D. felt a sudden chill.

Then he hit a button and set the phone to his ear. “Tiffany. What have the boys done now?”

Chapter Two

“Thanks for agreeing to meet me.”

Jake rose from his chair and eyed J.D. where she stood, just inside the door of his study. “Of course.” He waved at the leather chairs situated in front of his desk. “Have a seat.”

Her green eyes didn’t meet his as she crossed the room. But instead of sitting, she stopped behind the chair closest to the opened French doors. She closed her fingers over the back of it and her knuckles were white.

He bit back a sigh.

Since that night in the barn more than a month ago, they’d only seen one another a handful of times. For minutes only, when it came right down to it. But even then, the brief encounters had felt awkward.

Not because he regretted touching her.

But because it was so clear that she did.

“You didn’t tell Mabel why you wanted to meet with me.” His personal secretary had been quite put out as a result. But Jake could have told Mabel that he already had a good idea why J.D. had requested a meeting. It was something she’d never done before in all the time she’d worked at Forrest’s Crossing. If there was an issue at the stable, she would have gone to Miguel.

Which, to Jake, meant only one thing.

She was going to quit.

“I thought it best not to tell Mabel the specifics.” J.D.’s fingers whitened even more over the back of the chair. “Actually, I tried to get an appointment with you at your office at Forco, but your secretary there was even less accommodating than Mabel. She said you had nothing available on your calendar there until November.”

“Lucia is my assistant, actually. And she controls my schedule at the plant more than I do.” He wanted to go around to her and peel those fingers away from the leather, urge her down into the seat and tell her anything that would make her relax.

He remained where he was. Things would be better all around if he refrained from touching her, since he already knew he seemed unable to exercise much control where she was concerned. Touching her was flammable. They’d already proven that. “You could have just phoned me directly, you know. Avoided the others altogether.”

Her face looked a little pinched. “I don’t have your direct number.”

He frowned a little at that and immediately pulled out a business card. He scribbled on the back of it. “Now you do.” He handed it to her. “Would you like a drink? I can call Mabel—”

“No.” She took the card gingerly. “No, thank you.” She glanced over her shoulder as if she were afraid that his secretary would already be standing behind her.

But the door to his office was firmly closed.

They had all the privacy either one of them could want.

He dragged his mind out of that dangerous direction.

“How are things down in the stable?”

Her slender throat worked. “They’re not too happy, needless to say. Everyone had high expectations for the Hopeful last week. I’m sure you did, too.”

Despite the thrilling success at Latitude’s maiden race, followed up by an even more spectacular finish at the Saratoga Special, Latitude had fallen far short at the Hopeful Stakes, coming in damn close to last. “Yes, I did. My sisters and I expect winners, not losers.” That’s what Forrest’s Crossing did—produced world-class, winning thoroughbreds. “And you?”

She lifted one shoulder and her yellow FC shirt tightened over the subtle, high swell of her breasts, needlessly reminding Jake of that night. “I’m never disappointed in Latitude.”

Because she was the only one in his stable crew who wasn’t motivated by winning, he knew.

“I think you’ll have him more than ready for the Champagne Stakes,” he assured.

If anything, J.D. looked even more strained. “The Champagne isn’t until next month. But I didn’t come to talk about Lat, actually.”

Which just confirmed his fear that she was there to resign.

“Well, before you get started, I do want to talk about him.” He took shameless advantage of still being the boss. “I’m telling Miguel that I don’t want anyone but you working with Latitude. Not even him.”

At that, her lashes flew up and those gut-wrenching green eyes of hers finally met his. Even the waves in her pale blond hair seemed to spring with shock. “If this is about what happened between us, then—”

“It isn’t.”

She very nearly snorted. She even released that whitened grip on the chair to lift her hands up in the air. “You’ve never made decisions around Miguel before. He’ll have a fit.”

“Miguel works for me,” Jake reminded.

At that, she laughed out loud. “You yourself said nobody was in charge of Miguel. He allows you to keep him on the payroll because he chooses to be here. He could go anywhere in the world if he wanted and work with two dozen owners instead of just one. But he stays, and you let him run the stable the way he wants to run it because he brings you winners. And I know for certain that he wouldn’t put me in charge of Latitude.”

“Lat won his first two races because you were working with him. Miguel took over again before the Hopeful and he barely wanted to finish.”

Her eyes widened and her bow-shaped lips pressed together. Evidence that she’d thought he was unaware of some details. “Just because I’ve been away on business for two weeks doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s going on in my own stable,” he said. “Miguel may not want to face the fact that you have the magic touch where Latitude is concerned, but I have, which is why I’m assigning you specifically to him. Miguel can focus all of his energy on bringing along Platinum. Of course, that means your fee will increase and—”

“Stop.” She shook her head. “This is all wrong.”

“You don’t want to work with Latitude?”

She tossed up her hands. “Well, of course I want to work with Lat. I love that colt, but you need to know—” Her voice cracked to a stop. She looked away from him again. “You need to know that I’m, well, that I’m—”

“Excuse me, Jake?”

They both stared at the woman who’d had the audacity to open his closed office door. Only it wasn’t his secretary, who would have known better. It was Jake’s aunt Susan who rushed into the office.

“What’s wrong?”

His aunt barely gave J.D. a glance as she hurried toward him, her slender hands twisting in front of her.

“Bill Franks just called me. Mabel put him through to me since you were busy.” Her gaze flicked for a moment to J.D. “There’s been an accident.”

Everything stilled except Jake’s guts. Bill and Jennifer Franks were his ex-wife’s in-laws. “The boys?”

She hurriedly waved her hands. “No, no. Connor and Zachary are fine.”

Relief slammed through him. His twin sons were fine. “Sidney? Charlotte?” They were his sisters, and aside from Susan who’d lived at Forrest’s Crossing since he’d been a boy, the only other family who mattered to him.

Again his aunt shook her head. “It’s Tiffany. She and her husband were driving—the boys weren’t with them—they had an accident.”

“I, um, I’ll just excuse myself…” J.D. was edging toward the door, looking pale and even more awkward.

“Wait.” He focused on his aunt’s face. He generally didn’t think about his ex-wife, except to curse her very existence. And to know that even she was a better parent than he was to their precocious twin sons. “How bad was it? Is Tiff hurt?”

“Her injuries are critical. Her husband—”

“You can say his name.” They all knew it, after all, since the man had been in the picture long before Tiffany decided marriage to Jake was no longer her heart’s desire.

Before Adam Franks had become Tiffany’s lover, he’d been Jake’s friend. His best man, in fact.

Susan hesitated, looking grave. “Adam’s injuries were extremely severe. He didn’t survive.”

Jake slowly sat down in his chair as he absorbed that. There’d been plenty of times he’d cursed his one-time friend. But he’d never wished him dead. “Where are the boys?”

“With Bill and Jennifer still.”

Adam’s parents.

“Obviously they’re not up to keeping them for any length of time,” his aunt continued, looking worried. “But I just can’t see sending Zach and Connor back to boarding school under these circumstances. They were very close to Adam.”

Jake’s gaze fell on J.D. She’d reached the door. “We can finish this later,” she said softly. “You have more important things right now.”

He grimaced and wanted to insist that she stay. He wanted her to stay at Forrest’s Crossing. Period. And just acknowledging the thought was enough to remind him that he was the selfish bastard Tiffany had called him.

He’d barely given a short nod before J.D. slipped out the door.

It felt like she took all of the fresh air there was right along with her.

He looked back at Susan. “You talked with the boys?”

She nodded. “They’re upset, naturally.”

He didn’t ask the next obvious question. There was no need.

If he’d been a better father, his boys would have wanted to speak to him.

He rubbed his hand down his face. “I’ll have to go to California. You’ll come, of course.”

The boys were always more comfortable with her than they were with Jake.

“I can’t.” Susan’s face was torn. “The gallery showing is Friday, and then I’m hosting the charity ball on Saturday in Charlotte’s place since she had to go to that conference in Florence in your place.”

He’d forgotten his aunt’s photography showing. “Sidney can host the ball.”

“Sidney is in Germany trying to buy that horse she’s got her heart set on.” Susan paced. His mother’s sister was in her mid-50’s, but there wasn’t a gray hair to be found in her soft blond hair. The only real hint of her age was in the soft lines that had begun forming alongside her dark brown eyes. “There are times when I wish y’all would just settle on textiles or on horses.”

“Textiles help pay for the horses,” he reminded needlessly. Raising and running thoroughbreds wasn’t a poor man’s game. It hadn’t been for his grandfather or his father before him. “The boys’ll have to make do with me.”

“Oh, Jake. Don’t talk that way. Naturally, the boys will want you.”

She was trying to protect his feelings, as if he had some. But that was his aunt. The eternal optimist.

He, however, was about the exact opposite. He didn’t have faith in the positive outcomes of life. He couldn’t see the bright side of every situation.

He saw things exactly the way they were and when something needed doing, he did it. Right or wrong.

Bill and Jennifer were the only grandparent “figures” his sons possessed. Tiffany’s parents had died when she and Jake were still married. Jake’s father was dead, too. And he didn’t know, or care, where his mother Olivia was, much less whether she was still alive. After she’d profitably washed her hands of them all, they’d never seen nor heard from her again.

Susan was twisting her hands together again. “I can join you after the charity ball is over.”

He knew his aunt would turn cartwheels if it meant helping someone else. And he also knew he would take complete advantage of that fact, just like he always had.

Just like his father had before him.

Jake was exactly like his old man. They didn’t just share the same name. They shared everything else. From looks to temperament to talents. Jacob Forrest, Sr., had been a selfish bastard, and Jake Forrest was carrying on the tradition in the best of old-South ways.

“Tell Mabel what’s going on. I’ll fly out this afternoon.”

Susan looked relieved as she quickly left his study. Which made him wonder if even his devoted aunt had doubted his ability to do the decent thing where his sons were concerned.

He pushed out of his chair, looking out the bay windows behind his desk. From his vantage point, he could see only the steeply pitched roof of the main barn well off in the distance.

His bedroom upstairs afforded a better view. Not only of the barn, but of the rest of the stables, and the training track.

He’d spent a lot of mornings standing at the window of his room waiting for a glimpse of J.D. to arrive.

She always appeared shortly after dawn, when the first glimmer of sunlight would catch her slender, leggy form that was so easily eclipsed by the massive horses she tended. Often, he’d see her riding Latitude, her long curls flying out behind her as she leaned low and close over the horse’s back.

Even before Jake had gone to the barn that unforgettable night, those mornings spent watching J.D. even from afar had been the best part of his day. A slice of private and pure sanity in an otherwise insanely pressured life.

But now, unless he could talk her out of quitting, he was going to lose even those simple moments.

He shoved his hand through his hair and left by the French doors that opened to a spacious deck.

It would have been easier to drive one of the plentiful farm vehicles down to the stables. Instead, he walked across the acres of richly groomed lawn, taking the time to file away his feelings about the situation awaiting him in California.

It was the middle of the morning, and the track—when he reached it—was a beehive of activity.

He immediately spotted J.D. hosing down Latitude while Jake’s wizened head trainer stood alongside her. Miguel stood a full head shorter than she did. Hell, the diminutive former jockey stood a head shorter than everyone.

Jake walked closer until they noticed him and the hose in J.D.’s hand jerked a little, though she said nothing.

“Jake,” Miguel greeted him in his thickly accented voice. “I’m glad you come down today. I wan’ you to sign off on some—”

“Actually, I need to speak with J.D.,” he interrupted. If he let Miguel get his hooks in, it’d be hours before Jake would break free. And right now, that was time Jake couldn’t afford. “Now.”

Miguel’s graying eyebrows pulled together in a fierce frown. He snatched the hose from J.D., his displeasure evident.

For that matter, J.D. didn’t look any more enthusiastic, but she accompanied him into the sprawling building nearby that housed Miguel’s office. He waited until she was inside the untidy room before closing the door.

She glanced from the door to his face. “I’d rather leave that open.”

“I’m not going to jump you.”

Her lips tightened. “I didn’t think you would.”

Problem was, he was always thinking about touching her. It had only gotten worse since he’d found out exactly how addicting that particular delight was. “I have to go to San Francisco,” he said, corralling his thoughts. “Tiffany needs—”

“Of course,” she cut in quickly. Dismay darkened her eyes from brilliant green to a soft moss. “I’m sorry to hear your wife—”

“Ex-wife.”

Her head dipped a notch. “Well, I’m sorry about the accident. I’m sure your children will be relieved when you get there.”

He doubted it. “I want your promise that you’re not going to cut and run while I’m gone.”

Sympathy drained away as she stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“The reason you wanted to meet with me was to turn in your resignation, wasn’t it?”

Her silky lashes drooped, shielding that wide gaze. “And that’s why you dangled Latitude in front of my nose?”

“I dangled Latitude because I want you training him to win. It has nothing to do with what happened between us.”

A hint of pink bloomed over her cheeks. “And if I told you I hadn’t been planning to give you my notice?”

He wouldn’t believe her. There was no other reason to explain why she’d asked to meet with him. She never had before. And it wasn’t as if she wanted a repeat of that night. She’d made that abundantly clear when she’d raced out of the stable that night, barely taking enough time to pull on her shirt and jeans.

“Lat runs best for you.” He focused on the facts. “And I want to go to the Kentucky Derby next May knowing he’s going to run his heart out for you. Bringing home a Derby winner’s the only thing my father and grandfather succeeded in doing that I haven’t.”

J.D. looked pained. “That’s just it. By May, I’ll have other things I’ll be focusing on.”

“What? Like offers? Honey, I know you get job offers from other trainers every time we go to a meet. But I’m asking you not to decide anything yet. Wait until I get back from California, at least.” He caught her slender shoulders, ducking his head to look into her face when she tried looking away. “Don’t let what happened a few weeks ago make you leave Forrest’s Crossing. I’ll talk to Miguel about you taking over Latitude before I go.”

“Six weeks ago.” Her gaze flicked up to meet his, only to skitter away again. “This is not going at all how I intended.”

She exhaled and looked weary as she pushed a racing schedule off the seat of a hard-backed chair and sat down. “Go to California, Jake. Your family needs you. We’ll talk when you get back.”

She hadn’t agreed to stay beyond that, but for the moment, he’d take what he could get.

When he got back, there’d be plenty of time.

Chapter Three

The last thing J.D. expected to see were two brown-haired heads sticking up over the side of her pickup bed when she came out of the Chinese restaurant. The brown paper bag of take-out she held slid right out of her nerveless fingers, landing with a plop on the pavement next to her feet.

It was Friday evening at the end of a very long, miserable week; she’d just spent over an hour fighting rush-hour traffic into the city, and the only thing she’d been looking forward to was a meal that required no work, and then bed. Maybe not even in that order.

“Zach. Connor.” Her voice was excruciatingly pleasant, as if she greeted Jake’s twin sons in the back of her pickup truck every day of the week. “What are you doing?”

“Going for a ride,” Zach replied with a “duh” sort of tone.

“That wasn’t very bright of you when you had no way of knowing where I was going.”

“You’re going home,” Zach returned just as quickly. “Arentcha?”

J.D.’s lips tightened a little. Jake had brought his sons back with him less than a week ago, and in that space of time, they’d managed to cause all manner of mischief around the place—from painting the legs of one of Miguel’s favorite broodmares fluorescent pink, to parachuting out of their upstairs bedroom using bedsheets.

It was a testament to their true creativity that they hadn’t managed to break their legs in that particular endeavor.

This, however, was the first time they’d directly involved J.D. in one of their stunts.

“Does it look like I live here?” She gestured at the busy little restaurant behind her where she’d just retrieved the food that was now sitting on the ground.

Connor frowned a little. “She’s not home,” he whispered to his brother. “And I gotta pee.”

“You always gotta pee,” Zach muttered. He sat up on his knees and folded his arms over the side of the truck, looking at J.D. with vivid curiosity. The hot, humid evening had caused messy tendrils of his brown hair to stick to his rosy cheeks. “I told Connor that you wouldn’t know we was back here, and I was right.”

A roadster waiting for her parking spot tooted its horn, and J.D. absently waved it on. “I have to call your father.”

Zach rolled his eyes. “Jake won’t care. He knows you’ll take us back.”

“Oh? Why are you so sure of that?”

“’Cause he said you always do what’s right.”

Her jaw tightened so much that it hurt. “Does he?” She wasn’t entirely certain how Jake would have come to that conclusion. “Get out,” she ordered, and watched while they scrambled out of the truck bed.

She felt like an idiot for not having noticed them back there before now, and supposed it was a measure of her preoccupation that she hadn’t.

The two boys came to a stop next to her.

Connor stooped to pick up the bag of food and peered inside. “I bet they’re fixing dinner by now.” He held the bag toward J.D. with a slightly more sheepish look on his face than the one on his brother’s. “You’re lucky it didn’t all spill out,” he told her. “Are those egg rolls?”

She ignored his hopeful look and took the bag from him before yanking open the truck door. “Yes. Get in.”

She waited until the boys were inside, then set the bag on her seat while she dragged out her cell phone and the business card that he’d given her. But all she got was his voice mail. She left a message, but then also dialed the house at Forrest’s Crossing.

Despite the hour, it was Mabel who answered. “I’m sorry, Ms. Clay,” Mabel told her in the same stiff voice she’d used two weeks earlier when J.D. had refused to tell the woman exactly why she’d needed to meet with him, “but Mr. Forrest isn’t available for calls.”

J.D. turned her back on the boys, only to turn around again just as quickly to keep her eyes on them. For all she knew, they’d decide to go joyriding in another person’s vehicle. “He hasn’t left town again, has he?” She’d have heard so from Toby, the new groom, who seemed to take great delight in following the activities of their wealthy boss.

“No, he’s in town.”

“Then this is a call he might want to take,” she advised flatly. “Regarding his sons.”

“Perhaps you misunderstood. Mr. Forrest is not available.”

Her hands tightened around the phone. “Mr. Forrest’s sons are with me in the city,” she returned through her teeth. “They were hiding in the back of my truck. Somehow, I think he’s going to want to know that, Mabel. Just in case he gets to wondering where they are when they don’t sit down at the dinner table!”

“Good heavens.” The woman’s tight voice softened a fraction. “But I’m afraid he really isn’t here. He ran out to the plant a few hours ago.”

J.D. pressed her fingertip to the pain that began throbbing between her eyebrows.

The two boys were sitting in the truck watching her with wide eyes and listening with wider ears. She pulled out the container of crispy, fat egg rolls and handed them to Connor, along with the napkins.

Then she turned away from the children and lowered her voice. “In that case, you’d better tell his aunt.” Someone had to care where these boys were. “It’s the middle of rush hour. It’s going to take me more than an hour to drive them back home again.”

“I’ll be sure to tell her right away. The twins were really hiding in your car? This is going to upset Mr. Forrest,” the woman fretted.

Considering it was the twins’ first week at Forrest’s Crossing, J.D. privately thought Jake might have been wise to forgo matters at Forco for a few more days. Forrest’s Crossing might have been a little safer.

Instead, the very day he’d arrived with them, she knew he’d left town that night and hadn’t returned until just a few days ago.

Even though she knew she should, she hadn’t found a moment to speak with him privately again.

“I’m leaving the city right now,” she said. Then caught the way Connor was wriggling in his seat. “Well, after a quick pit stop, anyway.” She didn’t wait for some response from Jake’s personal secretary, but ended the call and tossed the phone onto the dashboard.

Then she waved the boys out of the truck. “Come on. You can hit the bathroom inside.” She locked up the truck after them and followed them back into the busy restaurant, pointing the way to the restrooms down a narrow hallway.

They came out within minutes, craning their necks around as if to take in every inch of the busy, congested little restaurant. The hunger in Connor’s expression was perfectly obvious, and she silently bid goodbye to the food waiting in the truck. “Did you wash your hands?”

Zach made a face. “We’re not kindergartners.”

That was plainly obvious. Even at nine years old, the Jake miniatures seemed tall for their age. “No kidding. Did you wash your hands?”

Connor snickered a little as he nodded.

Zach—obviously the more blasé of the two—just rolled his eyes before finally nodding.

She gestured toward the exit again. “Then let’s go.”

There were even more cars lined up in the full parking lot when they reached her truck again, and the moment the boys were buckled into their seatbelts and she pulled out of the spot, another car pulled in. “You might as well eat the rest.” She gestured at the bag sitting in the console.

They didn’t need any more urging and they practically tore apart the bag in their eagerness.

“When did you have lunch?”

Connor lifted a shoulder. He was wearing a red T-shirt and cargo shorts. Zach, busily unwrapping a plastic fork and spoon on the other side of him, wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt with some unreadable logo on the front.

“We didn’t,” Connor said. He didn’t wait for a plastic utensil, but picked out a piece of sweet-n-sour pork with his fingers and popped it in his mouth before handing off the container to his brother and fishing in the bag for another.

They were gulping at the food so fast she regretted not stopping long enough to buy them something to drink. As it was, she didn’t even have her usual bottled water with her. And her air-conditioning was barely keeping up with the heat billowing up from the nearly grid-locked interstate. “Do you always call your dad Jake?”

Connor looked inside the paper bag as if he were hoping that more containers would magically appear inside of it. “Adam is our dad.”

Zach jabbed his fork into the sweet-n-sour pork. “Was,” he muttered.

Which had J.D.’s heart squeezing.

Was it any wonder they were now finding some mischief? “I heard about what happened,” she said quietly. “I’m very sorry.”

Connor’s head ducked, focusing harder on the rice.

“No big deal,” Zach said.

J.D. gave them a glance before turning her attention back to the traffic crowding it’s way along the interstate. Both boys were focusing intently on their food.

“I think it would feel like a very big deal to me,” she told them.

“That’s ’cause you’re a girl.” Zach looked out the side window. “Guys don’t get all upset like girls do.”

“Ah.” She tucked her tongue between her teeth.

“Can I turn on the radio?” Connor asked. He was clearly ready to change the subject.

“Sure.”

He leaned forward and fiddled with the dials and buttons and within minutes, he and Zach were squabbling over what station to listen to. J.D. just let them go at it.

They might be boys, but as far as she could tell, they didn’t sound a whole lot different than she and her sister Angeline had sounded when they’d been kids.

She and Angel had argued together just as much as they’d laughed together. And when J.D. had landed in Georgia, Angeline had soon followed. Only instead of mucking out stalls and hot-walking blood horses, her sister had become a paramedic. They’d rented a small house together in a quaint old neighborhood and that’s where J.D. had stayed after her sister moved back to Wyoming and became Mrs. Brody Paine.

She sighed faintly. She still missed Angel.

Now, more than ever.

The pain between her eyebrows deepened.

The sun was nearly set by the time she pulled up in the stately drive outside the mansion.

Jake’s lethal-looking sports car was parked in front of the marble steps and J.D. didn’t have to wonder if he’d received her voice mail or been informed of the boys’ activities, because he was standing on one of the steps. Obviously waiting.

J.D. pulled to a stop behind his car and gave the boys a sideways glance. “Judging by your dad’s expression, I’d say he cares quite a lot about what you’ve been up to.”

Even from the distance and the dwindling light, they could see the dark expression on Jake’s face.

And the twins looked as if they’d just as soon spend eternity sitting in her cab to getting out and facing the music.

She had a small bit of sympathy for them on that score. She was none too anxious to face Jake right now, herself. And given that, the smile she sent into the boys’ disgruntled faces was a little less sharp than it might have been. “Out you go.”

“He looks kinda mad,” Connor said.

Zach huffed and snapped off his seatbelt. “What’s he gonna do? Send us back home to boarding school? He’s already said that’s what he’s gonna do.” He shoved open the door and slid out onto the ground, all bravado and cockiness.

Connor followed a little more slowly. “Thanks for the food.”

Bemused, she could only nod.

She could have put the truck into gear and driven away, but instead, she hovered there long enough to see the boys trudge up the shallow, wide steps toward their father. She could see them speaking, but couldn’t hear the words.

A moment later, the boys were stomping through the ornate front door and J.D. was wishing that she’d resisted her lingering hesitation and just driven away, because once Jake’s focus was off his sons, it turned like a laser toward her.

Something sharp jangled through her.

She swallowed around the constriction in her throat and rolled down the window when he came down beside her truck.

He ducked his head so he could see through the window and she could see the rough shadow forming on his angular jaw and smell that faint, lingering scent of him that her memory had been hanging on to with fiendish delight.

“You’re not really sending them home to boarding school, are you?” she blurted.

His brows drew together. “Excuse me?”

The words were out there, so she couldn’t very well take them back even if she wished she could. At the very least, though, she might have phrased the question more tactfully. “Zach mentioned you planned to send them back home to school.”

“And you clearly disapprove.”

The growing heat in her face owed nothing to the hot day. “I’m sorry. It’s really none of my business.”

Before she could stop him, he’d pulled open her door. “I don’t know. They chose your truck to stow away in. Maybe that makes it your business. So yeah. Mabel’s already made the arrangements. They’ll be back terrorizing the halls of Penley next week.”

Knowing it wasn’t her business wasn’t enough to keep her from protesting. “But, Jake, they’re still upset about the accident. They should be with family. If you’re worried about them missing school, enroll them here. Or hire a tutor or something!”

“They’ll be better off at Penley than here with me. And they’ll be able to visit their mother if they’re back at school. Tiff’s housekeeper will cart them back and forth.”

She tried to imagine it and failed.

And Jake obviously read her expression all too accurately. “Tiffany’s the one who enrolled them. She wants them near her, now,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with a boarding school. I went.”

“Did you like it even when you weren’t grieving?”

The arrow seemed to find its mark and his face tightened. “At least they won’t be pulling more stunts like this.”

“They’re upset and acting out.”

“They always act out,” he returned. “Upset or not.”

“Don’t you wonder why that is?”

“Yeah.” He looked annoyed. “And when you have kids of your own, maybe we’ll sit down and solve all the mysteries that come with them.”

She swallowed. Hard. What did she know about raising a child? Her nerves jangled and she brushed her hands down her dusty jeans. “I’m sorry. And I’m sorry that I didn’t realize they were in the back of my truck right away. I don’t know why I didn’t.” Yes, she did. She was too busy thinking about her own particular problem than to notice anything else. She flushed even hotter under his steady gaze.

“And I’m sorry they inconvenienced you. Come in the house.”

“No, really.” She tried to pull the door shut again. “I should be getting home.”

“Plans?”

Her lips flapped uselessly. She couldn’t seem to come up with a lie to save her soul. “Not…really.”

His gaze went past her to the spent Chinese-food containers. “Connor said they ate your dinner. The least I can do is feed you in return.” He reached right in and pulled her keys from the ignition and took her elbow. He tugged her inexorably out of the cab and weak-willed woman that she was, she went.

But when her boots clomped on the marble steps, she held back again. “I smell like stable.” The last—and only time—she’d been inside the mansion had been two weeks ago. And she’d made darn sure she hadn’t smelled like horse sweat and manure first. She wasn’t a beauty-queen type by any stretch. But even she had her pride.

Then she wished she’d just kept her mouth shut, because Jake lowered his head until she could practically feel his soft inhalation.

“Smell okay to me,” he murmured. His gaze—much too close—caught hers. “So, what’s the problem?”

She swallowed hard and carefully took a step away from him. “No problem. No problem at all.”

Of course that was one big, fat lie considering she was nearly eight weeks pregnant.

With his child.

Chapter Four

Eating dinner in the mansion wasn’t anything like J.D. had expected it to be.

They were seated in the formal dining room around a linen-draped table that could have sat a football team, but there was nothing formal about the meal.

Jake had a stack of papers next to his plate and seemed content to split his attention between them and J.D.

Of his sons’ actions that afternoon, he was evidently not planning to make any more comment. At least not in front of her.

Zach and Connor sat at the table, too, but since her Chinese food had taken the edge off their appetites, they paid more attention to the electronic hand-held games they were playing than they did to the meal. And that was set on the table by Jake’s aunt.

Her legs felt unsteady and she sank down into her chair again looking from Jake to his boys and back again.

Would he show as little interest in their child as he seemed to show for his twins? Would he have his secretary make arrangements to pack her off to boarding school when she inevitably got up to mischief? Would he practically ignore her every time they sat down together for a meal?

The thoughts made J.D. a little dizzy and she quickly reached for the crystal water goblet, inelegantly sucking down half of its contents.

Of all things, that Jake seemed to notice. “Are you all right? You look pale.”

Heat streamed through her cheeks, right on up to the tips of her ears. “Fine. It’s just been a long day.”

His lips twisted. “That it has been.”

Her gaze flicked to the boys. Neither one looked up from their hand-held games, despite the plate of food their aunt set in front of them.

Susan took the seat next to J.D.

“Put your papers aside, Jake. What sort of example are you setting?” Her gaze went to the boys. They’d stopped playing their games in favor of pulling ghastly faces at each other.

“Zach, Con, put the games away,” he said. Though he didn’t set aside his papers at all, J.D. noticed. She also noticed just how tired and drawn he really looked. It seemed plain that the past few weeks had taken a toll on him.

Then Jake’s gaze encountered hers and try though she might, she couldn’t quite make herself look away.

Susan’s intentionally cheerful attempts at conversation with the boys faded into the background.

J.D.’s field of vision seemed to narrow and pinpoint on the quizzical lift of Jake’s eyebrow.

Even the air seemed to thicken until her lungs struggled for oxygen.

“Whoa.” Jake suddenly bolted from his chair, catching her before she slid sideways off her chair.

“Dude,” she heard one of the boys—probably Connor—breathe.

“Take it easy.” Jake’s voice came close to her ear and she frowned, focusing with an effort.

Her head was swimming. “What?”

“You looked about ready to faint,” Jake said.

His hands were on her shoulders, she realized. She could feel the press of his fingertips through her T-shirt and much too easily she remembered that night.

The night they’d conceived a baby that she’d believed she’d never have.

Her stomach clutched. “I’m sorry.”

“Here.” Susan was nudging a water goblet toward them. “Give her some water.”

Jake lifted the glass to J.D.’s lips and it was just easier to succumb than to fight. She sipped at the water, and gradually, the room seemed to straighten.

The line between his brows had deepened even more. This close, she could see his eyes were bloodshot.

How long had it been since he’d slept?

She straightened in her chair, pressing her shaking hands along the sides of the upholstered seat. “I’m fine.”

“We can all see that.” Jake didn’t smile.

“Here you go, dear.” Susan had managed to fill a plate with food and she set it in front of J.D. “A little food and you’ll be good as new.”

There was nothing unappetizing about the juicy pot roast and roasted vegetables, but J.D.’s stomach lurched horribly anyway. “Actually, if I could just freshen up for a moment?” Still feeling dizzy around the edges, nausea forced her rapidly to her feet and she practically ran out of the room when Susan pointed out the directions.

J.D. barely made it to the fancy powder room near the marble foyer before she lost her lunch.

After, she rinsed her mouth and sat on the closed commode with the sink faucet still running, and pressed her face into her hands.

Since the moment that the big blue plus sign had appeared on the home pregnancy test she’d taken, she’d felt myriad things. But this was the first time she’d felt the slightest hint of morning sickness.

It made her pregnancy seem a little more real. She didn’t know whether that made her want to laugh or cry.

“J.D.?” The concern in Susan’s voice was evident even through the closed door. “Do you need anything?”

J.D. dropped her hands and looked at her reflection in the mirror opposite her. A husband?

“No.” She cleared her throat, and looked away from the mirror. Becoming pregnant had thrown her for a loop, a joyous one certainly, but that didn’t mean she was entertaining ideas about orange blossoms and I do’s.

She was 31 years old and more than ready to be a mother. But a wife?

She hadn’t been able to stay faithful to Donny and he was the closest she’d ever come to even considering marriage.

“No, thank you,” she finished more clearly, and turned off the water before opening the door. “I’m fine,” she insisted. “It’s the heat. It’s just getting to me more than usual today.”

Susan’s eyes, so like her nephew’s, weren’t convinced, but it was probably her good manners that kept her from arguing the point. “It is awfully hot,” she agreed, and fell in step with J.D. as they headed back to the dining room. “I’d like to think the boys were simply miserable hiding in the back of your pickup truck the way they did,” she confided softly. “It might make them think twice next time before pulling another stunt.”

“Did’ja throw up?” Zach asked the second she entered the dining room.

“Zach,” Jake admonished.

The boy hunched his shoulders and jabbed his fork back into the slice of pie on his plate. “What? I was just curious.”

“Maybe you got the flu,” Connor suggested. “I got it last year. I got to miss a whole week of school ’cause of it. It was cool even if I did gotta throw up. Do you get to miss work now?”

“I don’t have the flu,” J.D. said. “I certainly don’t have to miss work.”

“Maybe you should,” Jake suggested. “Miguel told me there was a bug going around down there. Maybe you’ve caught it.”

The bug she had wasn’t exactly catching.

But it did provide an excuse and she greedily latched onto it. “Maybe so. Which means I should go before I spread it to all of you.”

“Jake, she shouldn’t drive,” Susan protested.

“No, really—”

“My aunt is right.” Jake set down his pen and stood. “I’ll drive you home.”

“No!” She seemed to be saying that quite a lot now, when she ought to have said it that night in the stable, eight weeks ago. “Truly,” she tried in a more reasonable tone, “it’s not necessary. I’ll be fine.” She started backing out of the room again. “I, um, I even have the entire weekend to rest up. Stay here with your family. Enjoy your meal.” Though, with the exception of Sophie, it didn’t look like anyone was enjoying themselves much. “Thanks.” She gave a little wave and turned on her boot heel, hurrying back toward the foyer.

Rude or not, she wanted—needed—to get out of there.

The stress inside the Forrest mansion was absolutely palpable and while she felt some sympathy for Jake’s boys, she wasn’t in any position to change anything.

She had a pretty good-sized situation of her own to resolve already.

She made it all the way to the front door and out to the wide front step before Jake caught up to her. “Hold it.”

Feeling like a disobedient schoolgirl did nothing to improve her sense of awkwardness.

She forced her tight shoulders down where they belonged and looked back at him, lifting one eyebrow.

She worked for him, and yes, she’d been unthinkingly careless to have unprotected sex with him, but that didn’t mean she was his to order around. Not when she wasn’t on his time clock. “Excuse me?”

His tired face tightened. “Wait, J.D., please,” he amended. “I’ll drive you home. You’re in no condition—”

She quickly went down the shallow steps. “I said I’m fine!”

Again, he caught up to her, this time taking hold of her arm to stop her flight.

Her pulse stuttered as she looked from his hand to his face.

A muscle flexed in his jaw and his hand slowly fell away. “Do you dislike me that much now that you can’t accept a simple offer?”

Shock swept through her. Dislike wasn’t at all what she felt when he touched her. “I don’t dislike you.”

His hands spread slightly. “Well, honey, it’s definitely feeling that way.”

She raked her hand over her hair, and yanked out the band around her ponytail when her fingers tangled in it. Her hair fell loose and heavy past her shoulders. “Jake, it’s just not a good idea. Okay?”

“Why? Because you’re afraid that people might—” he ducked his head toward her and lowered his voice “—talk?”

“Go ahead and make fun. You’re up here in your ivory mansion.” She jerked her chin toward the copse of trees that led down to the stables. “I’m down there with a half dozen guys who gossip worse than any quilting circle they have back home.” She came from Weaver, Wyoming, a small town with its own highly developed grapevine. She knew gossip, and the guys she spent most of her time with were some of the worst. “All I need is for someone to catch a glimpse of me riding around in that car of yours, and I’ll be suffering through their trying to get me to trip up where you’re concerned.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Miguel believes you assigned Lat exclusively to me because I exercised my feminine wiles over you!”

“I told him—”

She huffed out a breath. “It doesn’t matter what you told him. It doesn’t matter what you say. They judge based on what they see and what much more interesting story their minds can create. They’re a group who believes in the theory of where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” And heaven knew there’d been plenty of fire between Jake and J.D. that night.

When she wasn’t trying to figure out what was the best thing to do now, she was still feeling scorched by the memory of those flames.

“I’ll get Miguel straightened out.”

She couldn’t help but laugh a little, though there wasn’t much humor in it. “The more you try to fix the situation with Miguel, the more he’s going to think what he already thinks.” Her hands lifted to her sides. “And the fact of the matter is, he’s right. You assigned Lat to me because…because—”

“I thought we’d gotten that straightened out.”

“All we did was put off the matter while you dealt with your wife’s accident.”

“I told you before. Ex-wife,” he corrected.

Her gaze snuck to the mansion behind him. The gracious dwelling had never possessed a replacement for her—the only woman he’d ever cared enough about to marry. “It doesn’t matter anyway.” She drew her thoughts away from that direction back to where they belonged. Everything that went on in the tight, surprisingly small world of thoroughbred racing had to do with reputation. All Miguel had to do was voice one hint that J.D.’s “promotion” where Latitude was concerned occurred because of her personal relationship with Jake, and she’d never be judged on her real merit again. She’d never be taken seriously as a trainer once she left Forrest’s Crossing.

That would be true even if there were only rumors.

Jake’s gaze sharpened even more. “If it doesn’t matter, why are you making an issue about it?”

No matter what Jake’s reaction would be when he learned about the baby, she knew she couldn’t continue to work for him. And thanks to the gossip about them, she wouldn’t be able to work anywhere else. Not in the blood horse world, anyway.

She hadn’t gone to him before to resign, though he’d thought so at the time. It was almost ironic, really. Even without knowing she was pregnant with his child, he’d seen that reality before she had.

“I can’t work here anymore, Jake,” she said. “I’m sorry.” And she really was.

“I don’t want you to go.”

Something inside her clutched—hard. Her hands went sweaty and she swallowed. “Why?”

His jaw flexed. “Latitude runs for you, J.D., and you know how much I want to be in the winner’s circle at the Derby next May.”

She prided herself on having her eyes open where Jake was concerned. So the pang she felt was considerably sharper than it should have been. “Latitude runs because he loves it. But Miguel will have Platinum ready for the Kentucky Derby, too. He has just as good a chance as Latitude. And the Derby is still eight months away, anyway. Tell Miguel to put his nephew Pedro on his back for the Champagne Stakes. I’ve seen the kid on the track and with Latitude. He’ll do fine. And if Miguel isn’t the right handler, you’ll find someone else who is.”

“I already did,” he said pointedly.

The back of her throat felt tight and achy. On any other day, she might have felt like she was coming down with the bug that was going around the place. For Jake, everything revolved around him winning. And it was the height of irony that it was the colt she so loved that was now making it more impossible than ever. “I can’t stay, Jake.”

“Because of what I did to you.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, pained. “What we did.” Honesty wouldn’t allow her to let him shoulder that. “For heaven’s sake, Jake, I was more than willing, in case you’ve forgotten.”

He shoved his hands through his hair, then scrubbed his palms down his face. “Willing or not, I should’ve known better.” He dropped his hands, but the grimace was still there. “You’re the kind of woman who probably thinks you’re supposed to want to marry a man when you’re sleeping with him. Or at least be in love with him.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “You’re saying that you’re not old-fashioned when it comes to sex? You, who hadn’t done this in a long while?”

She flushed. Trust the man to remember what she’d said to him that night. “Being discriminating doesn’t necessarily mean a person is old-fashioned.”

“Then why the hell can’t you work here, anymore?”

Tell him.

The command circled inside her head. Her lips parted; the words sitting on the tip of her tongue, ready to trip off.

That ache returned to the back of her throat. She’d seen him with his sons. She looked up at Jake. “Because I’m going home,” she finally said.

His brows drew together. “Home. What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Her eyes stung and she looked back at her practical, dusty pickup that looked so incongruous sitting behind his expensive sports car. “It means home. Where I belong,” she finished huskily. “Home to Wyoming.”

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