He unfolded the knife and deftly cut the apple in quarters. Another horse—a handsome dappled gray—stuck his head over his stall as if he scented the fruit, but Latitude showed no interest.
Jake rubbed his hand over Lat’s neck. “It’s okay, bud.” But it wasn’t. Not really. Next to those peppermints of J.D.’s, Lat was a fiend for apples.
Jake finally went over to the gray and began feeding the quarters to him. “How many horses do you have here?”
“Six. Five are boarding. They’re all pretty good-natured. Ziggy there is mine.”
The gelding’s ears swiveled at his name, but he was too busy wolfing down the apple quarters to do much more than that. “When’d you get him?”
“When I was seventeen. He’s always been out at my parents’ place, but now that I have my own place…” She kept working. “You might want to watch out for Bonneville next to him. He likes to nip. He came just this week. His owners are gonna dump him for a quick sale if I don’t break him of the habit.”
Jake tossed the buckskin an apple quarter as he put a few feet of distance between them. The stocky, muscular horse snatched it midair.
“Was Ziggy your first?”
At that, she lifted her head, and something came and went in her eyes. “My first horse was Bonita. My parents gave her to me for my twelfth birthday. She came out of my uncle’s farm like Ziggy there. We were almost as inseparable as Angeline and I were.”
“Were?”
She jabbed her pitchfork into the straw, returning to her task. “My father put her down when I was seventeen.”
Her voice was even, her tone practical. But he was beginning to recognize a particular nuance within that combination—and knew that there was a lot of emotion shifting around beneath that smooth surface. “Why?”
“She got spooked by a rattler and threw me. The snake managed to bite her a few times.” Her movements slowed. “She was in a panic and ended up shattering several bones before she stomped the snake to death.”
“Were you hurt?”
Her shoulder lifted and her movements quickened again. “She ended up stomping me a few times in the process, but she kept the snake from getting at me.”
He had a very vivid memory of kissing his way along a faint scar low on her belly. At the time, they’d both been more interested in other matters than the history behind her scar, but now he was imagining her, as a girl, trying to escape the dangerous hooves of a terrified horse. “Stomping you how badly?”
Her gaze lifted to his and she looked about ready to say something, only to close her mouth again. “I recovered,” she finally said briskly. “Bonita obviously didn’t. The next summer, I picked out Ziggy. He’s a good ol’ boy. Even tempered. Eager to please.” She poked the pitchfork back into the straw, punctuating the end of the subject.
Jake looked around the barn. There were eight stalls running down the center. A couple more built against one of the outer walls. The one she was preparing for Latitude was closest to the barn door. “Your barn looks bigger than your house.”
“Lot of ’em are around here. Gotta have a pretty successful spread to sink needless money into personal comfort.” She evidently deemed the straw bed finally satisfactory, because she stuck the pitchfork back on a peg inside the tack area, filled Latitude’s water, then went over to him, coaxing him with soft murmurs into the stall. While the colt gingerly stepped around the new space and tried nibbling at the collar of her coat, she used the knife Jake had returned to her to cut the other apple in pieces and slowly, patiently, talked him into taking two.
Jake figured he was a sad case when he was jealous of the affectionate praise she bestowed so easily on his horse.
She was plainly pleased when she finally stepped out of the stall and closed the gate. Pleased that was until she addressed Jake without really looking at him. “You might as well come in the house,” she said in a tone that said she wasn’t thrilled with the idea. “Please tell me that you didn’t drive Latitude all the way from Forrest’s Crossing.”
“We flew into Cheyenne and drove from there.”
She looked only slightly less disapproving. “What if I hadn’t been here?”
“But you were.” He wasn’t stupid enough to tell her that he’d checked on her to make certain that she was, indeed, exactly where he’d expected her to be. Where she’d been every day since she’d bought the place, using up nearly every speck of savings she’d possessed in the process.
“Never mind the fact that I might have had plans today.” She pushed the barn door closed when they were on the other side of it with more force than was probably necessary. “Must be nice to have the world always accommodating itself for you.” Her long legs began eating up the distance toward the house.
He let out a snort as he easily kept pace with her. “Oh, hell yeah. Everything falling into place for me. That would explain my mother walking out on me and my sisters when we were kids. My selfish bastard of a father. Tiff’s defection. Even yours, for that matter.”
She stopped dead still. “I didn’t defect.”
“You left us when we needed you most.” Story of his life, when he thought about it. Which he usually didn’t, since he’d learned long ago that wishing for something never changed what was.
Her hands had gone to the hips of her thick jacket and temper snapped in her eyes. “Do you hold such a grudge against all of the Forrest’s Crossing employees who’ve had the nerve to quit? Or am I just special that way?”
His gaze dropped to her lips and she seemed to realize it about the same time that he did, because those soft lips went into a tight little line and she whirled around, crossing the gravel with even quicker steps.
She darted up the back steps and yanked open the door, disappearing inside without a single glance back at him. He was almost surprised to find she hadn’t tried locking him out when he followed her through the mudroom and into the welcome warmth of the kitchen where she was washing her hands at the sink.
He realized the source of the chocolate aroma when she whipped a white-and-blue dishtowel off the pan it was covering on the counter. She wielded a knife over the pan, then scooped out neat squares onto a white plate and didn’t speak until she was finished. “Do you want a brownie?”
His mouth was pretty much watering and it was definitely not for the chocolate dessert. “No, thanks.”
“Good.” She snapped off a length of plastic wrap and covered the plate. “There’s barely enough for dinner as it is. And thanks to you, I’m already running late.”
“For what?”
“My plans that you interrupted.” She finally turned to look at him, bracing her hands on the edge of the counter behind her. “Dinner. Obviously. When is your flight back to Georgia?”
“Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry? You that anxious to get rid of me?”
“Of course not.” Her steady gaze didn’t flinch at the obvious lie.
“Don’t worry. I won’t interfere with your dinner plans.” Though he wanted to know who exactly she was baking brownies for. “But I don’t have a flight to catch. Not anytime soon.”
Something shifted in her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I didn’t come here just to dump off Latitude on you. I’m staying with him.”
“I can’t see you bedding down in the barn with him,” she scoffed, but that something in her eyes had coalesced into outright alarm.
“I saw a few hotels driving through town.” From the cars parked outside of them, neither looked in danger of being overbooked.
“Motels,” she corrected. “And while both are perfectly clean and acceptable, neither is at all close to the kind of accommodations that you’re used to.”
“I’m not expecting the Plaza.”
“That’s a good thing, because you’re not going to get anything remotely close. No swimming pools. No business centers. No spas. No gazillion-starred restaurant. Satellite television is about the newest comfort of home that eithe
r one is offering.”
“I’m not here to watch television.”
“Then what are you here to watch? If you don’t trust me with Latitude, why on earth did you bring him here in the first place?”
“You know damned well that I trust you. But I’m not going back until he’s either truly recovering, or—”
“Not,” she finished in a clipped tone. “And how much time are you allotting from your precious schedule for Latitude to prove whether or not he deserves to live?”
His jaw felt tight. “As much time as it takes.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That could be months.”
“Then I’ll be here for months.” His office was used to him conducting business from the road because of his frequent travels. Of course, those travels were ordinarily textile related, but that was beside the point. “I don’t expect it’ll take that long, though. At the rate that Latitude has been declining, it’s not going to take all that long for him to get to such a bad stage that—”
“Don’t even say it.” She lifted her hand as if to ward off the words. “Thanksgiving is in just a few weeks.”
“So?”
She blinked. “So? Don’t your sons have a school break for the holiday?”
“Yeah, and they’ll be at Tiff’s place in San Francisco.”
“She’s out of the hospital, then?”
“No. But Lupe’s there. Tiffany’s housekeeper,” he provided at her blank look.
She was clearly appalled. “They should be with family.”
“Lupe will take them to see Tiffany at the hospital. It’s what Tiffany wants,” he added.
“What about what the boys want? Or what you want?” She waved her hand. “I’m not saying that they shouldn’t see their mother, but surely it would be better if you were there.” Her gaze was searching. “Don’t you want to see them, Jake?”
“Thanksgiving is just another day out of the year in my family. The boys will have the long weekend at home with Lupe spoiling them rotten, they’ll have dinner with their mother, then head back to Penley again.”
“Penley! But I thought they were expelled after the lab accident.”
The goo explosion had been no accident, which she knew, but he let it stand. “Enough money erases even an expulsion.” Even aided by his aunt’s charming attempts, he’d been unable to get them into any other suitable school. It had cost him a lot to get them back into Penley. But now there’d be a new wing of the library dedicated to the generosity of the Forrest family.
J.D. looked like she wanted to say more, but instead, she ran her hand over her head, tangling her fingers through her hair. “I’m a mess,” she murmured, then sent him a sighing glance. “I guess you might as well come to dinner, too. Room service isn’t on the menu at the motels, either. And heaven help me if they find out I didn’t show you some Weaver hospitality.”
“They?”
“My family.” She picked up the plate of brownies and held them in front of her like a shield. “You can explain to my mother why we’re late.”
“Your family,” he repeated, feeling abruptly wary. The last time he’d met a woman’s family it had been his ex-wife’s upon their engagement. It had been more like a business merger meeting than anything.
And the fact that he drew any comparisons between that relationship and J.D. wasn’t something he was anxious to study very closely.
“Yes. My family. Something wrong with that?” She’d lifted an eyebrow and was watching him as if she could read every single thought in his mind. As if she expected him to back away from the very idea of it.
Which meant, of course, that he couldn’t.
He smiled slowly, enjoying a little too much the way her pupils dilated with her own sense of alarm. “Not at all,” he assured her. “In fact, I think it’ll be very interesting.”
The smile she gave was pinched. “Lovely.”
Chapter Nine
Since the horse trailer was still hooked up to Jake’s truck, J.D. had a good reason to insist on driving out to her parents’ place where that week’s Sunday dinner was being held. And, if she was driving her own truck, they could leave whenever she wanted.
For her, that couldn’t come too quickly. She didn’t want Jake spending a minute more than necessary with her family, lest they start drawing unwanted conclusions.
She’d told them she was pregnant only a few weeks ago and as she’d expected, once their shocked surprise passed, they were all supportive and delighted at the idea of another baby in the family.
It had annoyed her father to no end, though, when she’d refused to talk about who the baby’s father was. And where the baby’s father was, for that matter.
Men who didn’t honor their responsibilities when it came to their offspring was something that Daniel Clay still felt strongly about. It was one of the reasons why he’d been such a wonderful father when J.D.’s biological father had abandoned Maggie and her.
Not that J.D. had any particular memory of Joe Green. She’d been a baby when he’d left and to her, he was just a name. But she knew the facts and, even though she’d never had a reason to grieve over his abandonment or his death a few years later, she’d come to realize that some things were just inherited no matter how much she’d wished otherwise. Daniel was the only father that had ever mattered to J.D., but she knew it was from Joe Green that she’d gotten the faulty faithful gene. When it came to Daniel and Maggie, they were as true as true could be.
J.D.’s mother had been the one to get Daniel off his riled high horse when he’d demanded to know about the guy who’d gotten his little girl pregnant.
But J.D. was acutely aware that even though they were kindly allowing her some privacy over the matter, they were still full of questions and wanting answers.
As a result, walking through the side entrance of the home where she’d grown up—with Jake on her heels—was one of the most awkward moments of her entire life.
Not surprisingly, they immediately ran into all of J.D.’s aunts, who were in the kitchen along with her mother. She quickly stuck out the plate of brownies, rapidly plowing through the introductions that would only have to be repeated again when she encountered her father and the rest of the family. “Jake’s brought Latitude to stay with me for a while,” she finished, hoping that would be the end of it, considering they all knew her feelings about the colt.
Immediately, Jake was welcomed into the kitchen. J.D.’s aunt Emily took his jacket and Jaimie tucked her arm through his, drawing him farther into the house as she and J.D.’s other aunt, Rebecca, peppered him with questions about Latitude’s condition.
Maggie, though, just held the tray of brownies and eyed J.D.
“I didn’t know he was coming,” J.D. said quickly, “or I’d have given you some notice that there’d be another seat at the table.”
“You know adding another seat is hardly cause for alarm around here.”
She did. There were times when they had upwards of thirty people around the family’s weekly dinner table. And sometimes when they had only six. It all just depended on who was around and available. “Well, anyway, that’s why I didn’t have a chance to change into something more presentable.”
“The mud on the jeans is a bit much,” Maggie murmured. She finally set the plate of brownies on the counter where it joined a pie and a tray of cookies. “But we’ve all seen you in worse. Go on in. Squire and Jefferson have both been champing at the bit to talk to you about some mare they’re having trouble with.”
J.D. started out of the kitchen. “I’d just as soon Jake not hear about the baby,” she said casually. “He might worry that working with Latitude would be too much.”
She’d rehearsed the comment in her head every mile of the drive from her place. There was nothing but truth in her words. There was also nothing but a big fat lie of omission, too.
Fortunately, her mother didn’t pounce on that statement the way she’d been known to ferret out the occasional prevarication of J.D.’s
while growing up.
But this wasn’t a homework assignment that had been forgotten in favor of an afternoon horseback ride, and before her mother’s usual discernment could see through her, she escaped into the family room.
Before the afternoon was over, J.D. lost any hope that her family wouldn’t be enamored of Jake. It also became readily apparent that her pregnancy wasn’t a topic of remote interest with him around.
For one thing, the fact that he’d brought Latitude all the way out to J.D. made him a pretty decent guy right off the bat. Add in the way he charmed every female in her family from young Hannah Taggart—who didn’t take to strangers easily at all—to Gloria Clay—whose ability to size up a person in two seconds rivaled that of her husband and J.D.’s grandfather, Squire. Given Jake’s infernal ability to talk horses with her uncles, construction with her father, and most every other subject that could have conceivably come up, she almost believed that they were more interested in his presence at dinner than hers!
She wasn’t even able to leave at a reasonable hour. Her father had rolled out his blueprints for an addition he was set on building and he and Jake perused them for at least an hour.
Finally, she used Latitude as an excuse to tear them all apart. It wasn’t a false excuse, either. She did want to check on the horse as it had been several hours since they’d settled him in the barn.
“Jake,” Maggie offered as they headed to the door, “we have plenty of room here if you’d like to stay. A room at the Sleep Tite is fine for a night or two, but it’s hardly comfortable for much more than that. J.D. so enjoyed working with you in Georgia that it’s the least we can do.”
J.D. nearly choked but Jake shook his head, managing to look rueful and gracious and—damn it—attractive, all at the same time as he refused. “That’s really kind of you, Maggie, but I’ll be in and out a lot and at J.D.’s most of the day, anyway.”
A Weaver Baby Page 9
