His gut clenched like a vise at the way her wet dress clung to her curvy, beautiful body in the candlelight, even as his heart throbbed painfully. Christ, he’d missed her. Just plain missed the sight of her. Thunder boomed and lightning struck, flashing blinding white through the windows behind her.
“What are you doing here, Apple?” he managed, his throat starting to tighten with emotion. All it took was one look at her sweet face, and his chest squeezed so hard he thought it might break him in half. He would do anything to have her back. Anything in the world.
It had stung that he’d tried to reach out to her today at the library and she’d slapped him down, but now he didn’t care. Not even remotely. Just the fact that she was there in his living room had him happy enough to weep.
Kicking off her flats, Apple pushed her glasses back up her nose and took a step toward him. “I came to ask you my three free questions.”
Jake frowned, not understanding, his pulse thickening at her nearness. God, the woman undid him. “But I thought you finished your book and turned it in.”
She nodded and took another step closer, her navy blue dress clinging to her every luscious curve. “I did. But we had an agreement, remember? The one for three nudity-free questions? I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and there’re some things we need to air out between us. So I’m here to ask my questions.”
“I thought you were done with me.” It hurt to even say the words. It had been killing him, accepting a life without her.
Thunder exploded then, lightning coming almost instantly on top of it. Dregs barked and came running as fast as he could on his stubby bowlegs, cowering beneath Jake. But he barely noticed because Apple was taking another step toward him, and the play of candlelight on her skin was mesmerizing.
Exquisite Apple.
“I’m not done.” She smiled shyly.
Thank you, God.
Breath exploded in his chest, and he sucked in air. Maybe he still had a chance.
“Ask me a question,” he said firmly. Definitively. Anything she wanted to know he wanted to tell her. No secrets. “I won’t lie. I’ll never lie or hide anything from you again. I promise.”
She chewed her bottom lip and eyed him, like she was considering the authenticity of his words. He crossed his arms to keep them from reaching for her. “Whatever it takes, I’ll make things up to you, Apple. Just give me a chance.”
“Not quite yet,” she said, smiling more fully now. “This first one’s a biggie.” Inhaling deep, she looked at him through her lashes and asked, “Do you still love me?”
Jake went very still. Then his heart thumped hard. Once. Twice. It began to pound hard in his chest. There was no lying. Only truth.
“I do.”
“You do?” she replied, her hands moving slowly up her body and over her hips, distracting him, making him yearn.
He nodded and swallowed hard. That stupid lump was back and bigger than ever. “I do.”
“Say it, Jake.” Her hands smoothed up her waist, around to the front row of buttons, and she began to play with them. “Talk dirty to me.”
His gaze zeroed in on her fingers between her breasts. “Are you doing what I think you’re doing?”
“Do you think I’m about to take off my clothes?”
“Yes.” He nearly groaned, his hands clenching hard. She was killing him.
“Then say it,” she urged, her nimble fingers undoing a button.
“I love you, Apple.” The words fell from his lips, naturally and easily, like they’d just been waiting there his whole life to be said.
And he knew they had. Always, just for Apple.
“I’m so sorry for keeping my vasectomy and family’s history from you,” he added, wanting it all out there and behind them.
“I know, and I forgive you.” She popped another button. “Just don’t ever do it again.”
“Never,” he promised. And meant it. He absolutely meant it.
Her smile became brilliant, and she took another step toward him, dropping her dress. She was almost within arm’s reach now—every inch of her gorgeous, luscious skin. “How much do you love me?”
He didn’t even have to think about it because he already knew, although it was going to hurt like hell. But he didn’t give two shits about the pain. “Enough to get my vasectomy reversed, Apple.”
Her eyes went huge. “You must love me a lot.”
She dropped her bra.
He growled, and lust pooled heavy in his groin at the vision of her. Love and desire mixed a heady concoction inside him. Christ, he loved her. Always had.
And that was the damn truth. But there were some things they had to get straight before he scooped her up in his arms and took her to bed to give her a personal demonstration of his love and devotion. “I’m not a perfect guy, Apple.”
“I don’t want perfect. I want to be loved.”
He nodded, reaching for her and pulling her into his arms. “I can do that, better than anyone else.”
“And I still want babies, Jake. I know the reversal will hurt, but I want them.”
“I can do that too.” He kissed the top of her head, relief and gratitude and appreciation for the woman in his arms flooding him. What had he done to get so lucky?
She cozied up to him, and he didn’t give a flying shit that she was cold and clammy from the rain. She was in his arms. And she was his. “I get one more question,” she said against his chest. “But this one’s for me. Ask me if I know what love is.”
Jake felt himself melting inside at the warm, sweet look of love in her beautiful eyes. The very look he’d dreamed of but never actually hoped to see. He’d always thought of her beyond him. But she wasn’t. She was right there in his arms, right within reach. And he wasn’t letting her go.
He lowered his forehead to hers. “What’s love?” he whispered.
She slid her arms around his neck and held close. “It’s acceptance. That’s what love is, Jake. It’s acceptance. And there’s no one who understands that more than you. The way you just accept your dad for the way he is amazes me. Humbles me. You have more loyalty in your pinky finger than most people have in their entire bodies.”
“But what about my family medical condition?”
Apple shushed him with a finger. “I don’t care about that. All I care about is being with you, for as long as we can have.”
Jake smiled as his heart filled with joy and love for this woman. “Then you’re in luck, because that’s what I want too. Every day for the rest of my life, honey. I want you driving me crazy.”
Apple smirked. “Oh, I can do that.”
“Nuh-uh.” Jake slid his hands around her hips, cupping them and pulling her close. His breath fluttered across her curls, and she went beautifully, achingly soft against him. “I have a better idea.”
Her head dropped back, and she sighed breathlessly. He was so in love, so filled with lust, and so incredibly, amazingly happy at life’s unexpected gifts. It was a beautiful thing.
Apple laughed joyously and leaned into him, eager to experience his one-of-a-kind magic—for the rest of their life. Together.
“Oh yes,” she whispered. “That can definitely work too.”
Epilogue
APPLE SIPPED AT her lemon and honey tea and flipped through the old Bible Jake had given her months ago. It was the end of October, just days before Halloween. Verle had died almost three weeks back from a second heart attack placing too much stress on his heart, and they all felt the grief and sadness. Jake the most. After the funeral, he’d spent a lot of time going through the books in the old miner’s shack. She figured it was how he needed to grieve.
But today, the two of them were enjoying a lazy morning fueled by the season’s first snow. Jake was in the living room going through some old photos.
“What is this symbol?” she called out to Jake, referring to the crossed axes in the top corner of the old scripture. “I swear I’ve seen it before. I just can’t place it.”
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Going back to puzzling, she absently heard Jake’s cell phone go off and him answer. She stared at the symbol and continued to ponder it while his voice sounded in the background. The nugget and crossed pickaxes looked so familiar. She just couldn’t figure out from where.
Jake appeared in the doorway then, a funny look on his face. “That was the doctor’s office.”
Apple tensed. Last week he’d gone in for the genetic test that had finally been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and made available to the public. It had the ability to code for the mutated gene linked to his family’s disease. “What did they say?” She couldn’t tell if the news was good or bad by the expression on his face.
A smile started slowly across his lips then, spreading until it was in full bloom. “We’re in luck, juicy fruit. I don’t have the gene. Somehow, some way that I don’t understand, it’s not in me.” He looked at her, his eyes huge. “Holy fuck, Apple, I don’t have it. I’m clean.”
Relief flooded Apple, and she squealed, leaping out of her seat, knocking over her tea as she went. “I’m so glad for you!” she said and kissed him. Then she pulled back. “Wait, I don’t have the gene, and now you don’t have the gene either . . . ” Joy flooded her when it sunk in. “Oh my gosh, we get to make babies!”
Jake wiggled his eyebrows in jest, but Apple could see the emotions beneath the amusement in his eyes. It must be life altering, knowing he was free. “We can start now if you’d like,” he offered with a naughty grin. “I could use the practice.”
Apple swatted his arm playfully and pulled away. Glancing down at her spilled tea, she let out a cry and pushed away from Jake. In her excitement she’d drenched the open Bible.
Wait a minute. Apple snatched it up as tea dripped from the last page. She stared at words that hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. Words that her tea had brought to the surface like exposed secret ink. They were written in a flourishing scrawl. Jesse Stone’s scrawl, to be exact. They said: Below the miner’s shack.—Jesse
Excitement bubbled under her skin. “Do you see that?”
Jake was looking over her shoulder. “I do, yeah. Do you think he was referring to my miner’s shack?”
She was already nodding. “Harvey’s shack, yes. Yes, I do.” She was about to pick up the book and had already bent over when she had a vision. And in it was a black-and-white photo of a young Harvey Stone. The same photo from the Mother Lode. The one with all of the prospectors standing together in front of that post. The post that had the same pickax symbol etched into it. “Holy shit.” She breathed heavily, her eyes huge when she looked up at Jake. “I know what the symbol is.”
“What is it?” Deep brown eyes looked into hers, excitement sparking in their depths.
“It means ‘the mother lode.’ Jake, I’ve seen the design at the coffee shop. It was in a picture that also had your grandfather in it. The photo was taken during that brief strike in the fifties. I bet your ancestor passed the symbol down the family tree.”
She could see how it would have worked. “I think we should to go to Harvey’s shack.”
Jake was already heading for the door.
Twenty minutes later they were standing in the middle of the old miner’s shack. A turn around the outside had yielded no door or hole to below ground, so they’d come inside to inspect. If there had been a gold strike below the shack, there’d be access to it somewhere.
She saw Jake look down at the wood floor. “Look to see if there’s a door on the ground or something.”
Apple was already on it. She’d spotted the only rug in the room under the kitchen table and was in the process of moving it so that she could roll the wool rug back and see if there was anything underneath. “I think I might have something.”
Jake came over and helped her finish with the table, then grabbed the edge of the frayed Oriental rug. “Here goes,” he said. With a flick of his wrist he pulled it back.
And revealed a trapdoor in the floor.
“Nice!” Apple laughed, excited by the adventure.
Jake grinned like the devil.
Then he pulled the door up by its leather strap and slid on a headlamp that he’d shoved in his back pocket earlier. He looked into the dark hole. “I’m going down.”
Nervous, but not willing to be left out, Apple ran out to his truck and quickly grabbed the extra headlamp he kept there and followed him down the hole. Jake’s hands guided her down from below, and when she landed on solid footing she saw that they were in an old mineshaft.
“Should we be doing this?” she said, suddenly unsure. But she couldn’t turn back when Jake grabbed her hand and tugged her along. Focusing her lamp on the ground to keep from tripping, she gasped when she noticed that there were footprints in the dust. “Jake, people have been here.”
“Pretty recently too, Apple. Look, that tread is clearly a running shoe.”
Weird. A little creepy.
And way exhilarating.
They’d followed the footprints for only about twenty feet when they rounded a bend and stopped in total shock.
“Holy shit,” Jake said.
There before them was a wall of shimmering gold.
“The mother lode!” Apple exclaimed. “I knew it! That is what the symbol was! Your ancestors found the mother lode!”
Jake picked up a small modern pickax lying on the dirt floor by his feet. “They weren’t the only ones.” Then he looked at a folding chair leaned up against the wall of gold, a look of surprise on his face. “I think this is what my dad was talking about, Apple. This is what he kept freaking out over when I talked to him about sharing the story with you. He thought you knew about all of this and were coming to take it from him.” He shook his head. “I’ll be damned. Him and Harvey, this whole time.”
“Maybe they weren’t so crazy after all.” His eyes went dark with emotion.
Apple hugged him tight. “Let’s do something with it that would have made them happy.”
Jake kissed the top of her head and seemed to perk up. “Yeah?”
She nodded. “Absolutely.”
He wrapped her in his arms. “I love you, juicy fruit.”
God, she was never going to get tired of hearing those words. Not from him. Because it turned out that Jake was her knight after all—in all his beautifully tarnished armor. And every day with him was a gift, an adventure of epic proportions. One for the record books.
And that was way better than any fantasy.
Keep reading for an excerpt from
GETTING LUCKY
The first book in Jennifer Season’s Fortune, Colorado series!
Born into the infamous Charlemagne equestrian empire, Shannon has been raised to do whatever it takes for the family business. Even if it means going undercover and digging up dirt on a competitor. It’s easy enough when she believes he’s a bad guy whose success seems too good to be true. In fact, Shannon’s excited to put the aggravatingly sexy Irishman in his place and get back in her father’s good graces. All she needs is to stay focused on the goal . . . and out of Sean Muldoon’s arms.
From stealing a thoroughbred racehorse from the Irish mob to striking gold in the mountains of Colorado, there’s little Sean hasn’t experienced. But when it comes to resisting his hot new stable manager, Sean’s out of luck. With the Irish mob hot on his heels, keeping Shannon off their radar is all but impossible, and he’s not about to put her in danger too. Sean wants Shannon, but how can he offer her a future . . . when he can’t even guarantee tomorrow?
Available now from Avon Impulse!
Chapter One
“BE PREPARED TO use the ladies.” Her sister pointed at her chest.
Shannon Charlemagne released a groan and bit her tongue, her patience already on the verge of deserting her. Her sister’s rather unhelpful suggestion about her breasts at this particular moment had that patience packing its bags and furiously scribbling a Dear John letter on a sticky note.
The crap her family put her through
.
Pushing away from the hood of the rental car she’d been sitting on, Shannon glanced at the entrance to a horse ranch in the mountains outside Fortune, Colorado, and sighed heavily. Where would she be without her patience? It was her armor, her protection. Losing it would be worse than being thrown to a bunch of wild jackals with bacon-wrapped sausages strung around her head like a Christmas wreath. And with the insanity she was about to fling herself into, she needed it more than ever. Not for the first time, she wondered how she’d been roped into such a stupid situation.
Oh, that’s right, because she could never really put her foot down and say no when it mattered.
If she had a dime for every time her family obligated her to something against her will, she’d be richer than Oprah and living it up on Martinique with a French cabana boy named Pierre.
Sometimes she really wished she were part of a nice, average, normal family. One where there weren’t so many expectations to live up to the legacy that was her family birthright. So much pressure to conform. She was a Charlemagne—the oldest and most prestigious family in all of American horseracing. The most renowned and well-respected family in the industry.
Yeah, it was like that. She was one of those Charlemagnes.
Which ultimately meant that, as much as she balked (which wasn’t as much as she’d prefer, granted), deep down she was a good girl who was loyal to a fault and never went against her father. No matter how overbearing and authoritative he might be. She understood her duties and responsibilities to the Charlemagne name.
Didn’t mean she had to like it, though.
Sighing again, Shannon pushed back a clump of her light auburn hair that had fallen loose from the braid she’d hastily made that morning and resigned herself to her ill-conceived fate. Her father had asked her to do this. Good idea or bad, it didn’t matter. He’d said it was important for the family—crucial even.
And that’s why, even though she disagreed with pretty much every aspect of his request, she was currently standing on a gravel road in the Colorado mountains about to do something not entirely on the up-and-up. She and her sister were squinting against the brilliant afternoon sun as they gave the plan one last run-through before she set off alone into the great unknown.
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