Leaping Hearts
Page 1
“PURE TALENT. IF YOU HAVE NOT
READ A BOOK BY JESSICA BIRD,
YOU ARE MISSING OUT.”
—Huntress Book Reviews
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS
OF J. R. WARD
WRITING AS JESSICA BIRD
Leaping Hearts
“This romantic drama has it all…an emotionally enthralling read.”
—Romantic Times
“A strong romance.”
—Midwest Book Review
“A fascinating book from beginning to end.”
—The Best Reviews
An Irresistible Bachelor
“Mystery, intrigue, power, passion, and a love story too beautiful for words.”
—The Best Reviews
“Irresistible…a well-written, engaging, and intelligent love story.”
—The Romance Reader
“[An] emotion-filled romance.”
—Booklist
An Unforgettable Lady
“Sensational romantic suspense.”
—Romantic Times
“I anxiously await her next book.”
—The Romance Readers Connection
“Exhilarating romantic suspense.”
—The Best Reviews
By J. R. Ward
The Black Dagger Brotherhood Series
Dark Lover
Lover Eternal
Lover Awakened
Lover Revealed
Lover Unbound
Lover Enshrined
The Black Dagger Brotherhood: An Insider’s Guide
Lover Avenged
Lover Mine
Lover Unleashed
Lover Reborn
Novels of the Fallen Angels
Covet
Crave
Envy
Writing as Jessica Bird
Heart of Gold
Leaping Hearts
An Unforgettable Lady
An Irresistible Bachelor
LEAPING
HEARTS
J. R. WARD
Writing as Jessica Bird
A SIGNET BOOK
SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
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Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in an Ivy Books edition. Published by arrangement with the author.
First Signet Printing, July 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © Jessica Bird, 2002
ISBN: 978-1-101-58690-7
Excerpt from Heart of Gold copyright © Jessica Bird, 2002
Excerpt from Envy copyright © Love Conquers All, Inc., 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
Printed in the United States of America
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
For my husband, for my mother and my father,
but also for Ben.
Dear Reader:
Leaping Hearts is my first-ever-published book, and so not surprisingly, it’s close to my heart—always will be. This is where everything started for me: I got “the call” that I was going to get a publisher on its manuscript; I got to be professionally edited for the first time; I got to hold a bound set of pages with my words on them in my hands; and I got to drive to a bookstore in Quincy, Massachusetts, to actually see my work on the shelves for sale.
I can pretty much trace everything that’s in the story back to two teenage passions: approximately six liquor boxes full of about five hundred Harlequin Presents, and the fact that, like every girl where I’m from in New York, I loved horseback riding. Of course, both are now in my past. Those wonderful white-covered novels with the gold swirls and the circle pictures of couples on the front have long been given away—and I don’t ride anymore (gravity tends to get a harder pull on you as you age)…but that intersection between falling in love and Thoroughbreds was what led me to this wonderful book.
Here’s how it all came together: throughout prep school and college and law school, I’d always written stories—some I finished, some I abandoned, but everything I put to the page was about two people falling in love. It’s just what came out of my head—and not a shocker, considering all those Harlequins I’d devoured. After I got out of all that schooling, and started working in corporate America, I kept up with the noodling and the typing and the thinking—until I finally, after so many years of missteps and half-assed stuff, got to a “The End” that really worked.
Ironically, it was right about then that my boyfriend (now my wonderful husband) and I were going down to Cape Cod to visit my mother for the weekend. The road we took once we got off Route 6 always brought us by this fenced-in field that had horses in it. For some reason, on that particular day, I looked to the right, saw a Thoroughbred cantering around and BAM! the story that became Leaping Hearts took off in my head.
Always a seat-of-the-pantser back then (I’m now all about outlines,) I actually jotted down some things about the story, instead of throwing myself in at Chapter 1 with no clue what I was doing. I also took a steno book (still have it) to a horse show and jotted down notes to refresh my memories about hunter/jumping competitions. And then it was off to the races—or over the oxers, as the case was. I wrote the thing fairly fast, and by the time it was finished, I was making the trip to New York City to meet my first agent for the first time.
Over lunch at a French bistro, I told her I had something better than the manuscript she had on her desk, and she agreed to wait to see my new project before sending anything out. About a month or so later, I FedExed it to her—and then promptly took a trip to meet my future in-laws (not that any of us knew that was in the cards at this point).
Cue Sue Grafton. Yup, THAT
Sue Grafton. While I was down there, my husband’s father learned that I was dallying around with the whole writing thing and offered to introduce me to her. (He knows a lot about guns and ammunition and stuff like that, and he’d provided her with some info for one of her books.) I’ll never forget walking into Sue’s house for that initial time. She and her amazing husband had just bought this wonderful old home and were doing the interior-decorating bit. First thing she asked me was what I thought about a carpet sample.
She and I chatted (while I tried to keep my cool—I mean, not only was this A Real Writer, but Sue-frickin’-Grafton.) She offered to read the first fifty pages of my manuscript, but warned me she was really tough and brutally honest. I said please and thank you (and considered throwing up.) Two days later she called me and gave me, in the space of five minutes, the advice I now impart to every newbie who approaches me about their work (I don’t read anyone else’s manuscripts, but these three little ditties have never not been right): 1) take out your goddamn adverbs (the “goddamn” here is my addition, not Sue’s.) Literally, do a word search with -ly and rip ’em out. Most newbies push too hard to make sure every nuance is on the page, not trusting their dialogue or descriptions to go far enough with the readers; 2) get rid of dumb-ass dialogue tags (the “dumb-ass” here is my addition, not Sue’s). No “she exclaimed,” “he derided,” “she demurred,” “he intoned.” He said, she said. That’s it; 3) cut the frickin’ drama (um, yeah, the “frickin’” is my word, not hers). Most people don’t emote at a high-pitched frequency all the time, flapping their arms and jumping around like monkeys. Yes, this is fiction, and as such, you don’t want everyone acting like boring tax attorneys, but this isn’t a silent movie, either.
It was like someone had shown me the path out of the jungle. (She also told me I “could actually write”—something she seemed to be a little surprised about. Frankly, so was I. In spite of all the time I’d spent plugging away, I still wasn’t sure I could do it.) As soon as I hung up with her, I called my agent in New York, and told her to Stop!
The thing was, my agent had liked Leaping Hearts much more than the other manuscript and was ready to send it to editors at the big publishing houses. She’d actually made the copies, done her letter, gotten on the phone with people—it was about to happen. And here I was, a not-yet, maybe-never, unpub’d idiot telling her her business? But then I told her I’d gotten Sue Grafton to read part of it: “How in the hell did you do that?” “Long story. Just don’t send it out yet!”
(I’m thinking at this moment of the scene in the movie Wall Street when Bud Fox gets the call from the big fish he’s been courting—and the guy next to him whispers in awe, “Gekkkkkkkko.” Just imagine, “Graffffffffton,” and you get the gist of my agent’s and my conversation that day.)
While I was still “on vacation,” I went through that manuscript from start to finish, doing everything Sue said to. It was amazing—I saw exactly what she was talking about. The story was there, but my word choices and insecurities were getting in the way, the heavy veil of adverbs and stock phrases and yelling and screaming blocking the reader from the people.
Long story/short (too late,) the book was bought and it made it to the shelves and I got to write three more of these single titles (and then Wrath came along and everything changed!) Devlin McCloud is a classic, romance hero type with his dark past, his injury, his gruff exterior. And A. J. Sutherland is a lot like me, focused on her goals to the exclusion (almost) of everything else. And Sabbath—well, he’s the horse my teenage self would have loved to own and ride…and win with.
I hope you adore the three of them as much as I do. This was the beginning of the ride for me, on so many levels, and along with Dark Lover, one of the best things that has ever happened to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your support, and as always…
Happy Reading!
J. R. Ward
December 2011
Table of Contents
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2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Heart of Gold
Envy
1
A. J. SUTHERLAND was captivated by the stallion from the moment she saw him. And she wasn’t the only one. Like believers in front of a hypnotist, the whole audience was under a spell and had the dreamlike eyes of zombies. Called by the master to come forward, the crowd moved like a glacier, pushing its way toward the auctioneer’s stand and bulging out of the cordoned-off area where the horse was displayed.
A.J. did her best to get through the throng but others were doing the same. A bottleneck formed and elbows were used like hockey sticks as people fought to come forward. Being no slouch, especially when it came to getting things she wanted, she mounted pointy defenses of her own until she made it to the front. Wrapping her arms around herself, she released her breath in a rush as she got an unobstructed view of the black stallion.
She’d seen a lot of good Thoroughbreds in Virginia but nothing like him.
Head held high, the horse stared out at the crowd with hostile uninterest. He was the king; he ruled the world. Everyone else just took up space.
Under the lights, his coat glistened with flashes of black and navy and his tail whipped back and forth impatiently. Dark hooves stamped the dirt as he threw his head against the halter and lead line that tied him to his handlers. With his powerful body dwarfing the men around him, he was the one in control despite being outnumbered by the five grooms who’d been assigned to try to hold him. The men around him circled cautiously, tense.
Like the crowd, they knew his reputation. It wasn’t a good one.
A.J.’s eyes feasted on the stallion. In every move he made, there was a promise of strength and agility that was both athletic and poetic. And, behind his disdain, she sensed a fierce intelligence and an iron will.
At the head of the crush of people, she made up her mind. He was the most magnificent thing she’d ever seen. And she was going to have him.
“We’re opening the bidding at ten thousand dollars,” the auctioneer said.
Her hand flew up.
It was an outrageously low price considering the horse’s bloodlines, high if you thought about his penchant for trouble.
“That’s ten thousand dollars. Do I have eleven?”
Somewhere in the crowd another hand was raised. A ripple of speculation went through the arena. Many had come to get a look at him up close; few had come with the idea of buying. Everyone wanted to know who was going to take him.
“That’s eleven. Do I hear twelve?”
She nodded.
The other bidder countered at thirteen and she immediately raised the price to fourteen. There was a pause and then the price came back at $15,000.
“Do I have sixteen?” The auctioneer looked her way. She inclined her head without hesitation.
Just then, her arm was grabbed by her stepbrother.
“What are you doing?” Peter Conrad’s eyes were bulging.
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Like you’re making another rash decision. Throwing yourself heedlessly into another mess that I’m going to have to pay for.” As the price continued to climb, he escalated the argument along with it. “Have you heard about that thing’s reputation?”
“Excuse me,” A.J. said, moving around him. The two did a cramped box step, trading places.
“We are at twenty-two thousand dollars,” the auctioneer said.
A.J. reestablished eye contact with the gavel man and nodded. The crowd’s murmuring elevated, surging in waves with the bidding.
“Stop this,” Peter hissed.
A.J. paid no attention to him. Her focus was on the other bidder. Like a train slowing down, her competit
ion was losing steam but wasn’t out of the game yet. There was a long pause and then the price was raised again. Without blinking, she tacked on another thousand.
“Don’t you dare buy that animal!” Peter demanded. Turning toward the auctioneer, he started shaking his head and drawing his hand across his neck to dispute her authority.
When the bid came back, A.J. fixed her stepbrother with fierce blue eyes and spoke up loudly over the crowd. “I’ll pay thirty thousand for the stallion.”
The audience gasped in surprise and the auctioneer looked amazed at his good fortune. And her recklessness.
Peter began to sputter, overwhelmed by her audacity.
“Er, I have thirty thousand dollars,” the auctioneer said, looking into the crowd at the other bidder. “That’s thirty thousand going once.”
“You’re crazy!” her stepbrother said. He tried frantically to get the auctioneer to stop but the man shook his head at Peter’s theatrics. It was a valid bid and everyone knew it.
“Going twice.”
Rebuffed, Peter curled his fists in frustration and then tried a different tactic, assuming an air of haughty scorn.
“I won’t be responsible for the trouble you’re creating,” he told A.J. “I’ve cleaned up the results of your enthusiasm one too many times. If you do this, you’re on your own.”
He straightened his cashmere jacket with a curt tug at the cuffs. The tan color was played off by his silk pants and cream turtleneck but did little for his pale complexion. He was a study in bland tones. The only bright spike in the outfit was a jaunty red handkerchief in his breast pocket. It looked like a pimiento that had fallen into a bowl of oatmeal.