Harlequin Superromance February 2016 Box Set

by Anna Sugden

  Kayla settled behind the wheel of the Volvo and started the engine. She was disgusted by her lack of restraint, but it wasn’t Jackson’s fault that she was an idiot.

  Perhaps if an attractive guy had come along at the right moment back in Seattle, the same sort of thing might have happened. Of course, in her normal environment she probably wouldn’t have succumbed so easily. A number of her single friends claimed vacations were hell on self-control when it came to the opposite sex. That had to be the explanation. It was like the perfect storm, with every condition falling into place and tipping over the balance of her life.

  So it actually had little to do with Jackson, other than an echo of the old teenage affection that had tugged at her. But now she was an adult and so was he. They’d changed. She still believed real love was out there, at least for some people, while he doubted it even existed, and certainly not for him.

  In a few days she would return home. Thankfully, after that, her occasional contacts with Jackson would be insignificant.

  * * *

  JACKSON TRIED TO locate Kayla’s swimsuit in the dark, but without luck; the black fabric faded into the shadows too well. So he turned on the pool lights, dived down to get it and hung it up. Outside he scoured the pool area for anything having to do with condoms.

  Jackson glanced at the large, empty house. He ought to be exhausted, but instead he burned with energy.

  He dived into the water and swam lap after lap, pushing for more speed, heart beating, living over and over again the feel of Kayla against him and the pleasure of making love to her. Curiously, it was a sensation that had both satisfied him and left him hungry for more. Finally, with muscles aching, he stepped from the pool, his lungs sucking oxygen from the warm night air, his heart rhythm gradually returning to normal.

  He looked up at the sky.

  The eclipse was beginning, and he felt curiously lonely that no one was there to watch it with him.

  Still, he should feel good. Things were getting sorted out with Morgan and though he didn’t imagine everything would be easy from now on, at least they’d made a start. And a terrific thing had happened—he and Alex had actually talked. Not a brief word here or there. Not a sentence on the way to someone else. Not with a glance over his shoulder to see how soon he could get away from his inconvenient birth father. Alex had looked him in the eye and shared a conversation.

  Jackson knew he had Kayla to thank for that. She’d done her best to keep him from coming on too strong with Alex, urging him to let things happen naturally.

  It had been risky asking Alex to talk to his mother; he could easily have blown up and told him to butt out. And since his son had seemed interested in hearing and seeing some of the McGregor family history, it had been doubly perilous to introduce the issue. Regardless, it had been the right thing to do as a parent.

  But what bothered Jackson was that he’d talked to Alex as much for Kayla’s sake as for his son’s.

  “Hey, boss, you out here?” called a voice from behind the fence, dragging Jackson’s thoughts into the present.

  “Yeah, Greg, what’s up?”

  “Ruby is edgy. She doesn’t show sign of getting ready to drop her foal, but you might want to check her.”

  “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Jackson got dressed and headed to the barn where they kept the broodmares. Most of them had dropped their foals in May and June, but they’d bought Ruby from a rancher down south, who’d bred her late. She was younger than Jackson liked, too, for a first-time mother.

  “Hey, girl.”

  Ruby pushed her nose into his chest and he rubbed her neck. She was a sweetheart, a purebred Appaloosa like Thunder, and he hoped one day to breed them together.

  “Do you just want attention?” he asked the mare.

  She stepped uneasily from foot to foot and he checked her over carefully. As Greg had said, there weren’t any indications she was going into labor, but it wouldn’t hurt to watch her.

  “Go on, I’ll stay,” Jackson told the foreman.

  “Could be a long night, boss.”

  “I’ll have Ace call if anything happens.”

  Ace was the cowhand assigned to the night watch that week. Going from barn to barn and corral to corral all night long wasn’t popular, so they rotated the duty between the hands, Jackson taking his turn along with the others.

  “Go,” he ordered. “She doesn’t like you as much as me anyhow.”

  “Yeah, it’s your killer charm with the ladies,” Greg said, and ambled out.

  Jackson got a grooming cloth and began wiping Ruby down, knowing it would calm her. He’d been grooming horses every day for as long as he could remember, and the familiar task didn’t demand as much of his attention as he would have liked.

  Why was he so restless?

  He’d just enjoyed the best sex of his life. He should be supremely relaxed. After all, he’d gotten what he’d laughingly wished for in the pool. But he couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling that he’d settled for much less than he could have had.

  It was strange. He’d been determined never to get seriously involved with another woman, fiercely resolute never to let another Marcy or Patti come near him. But Kayla wasn’t the least bit like the other two women, which was something he needed to think about very carefully.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  LATE THE NEXT morning Kayla pulled up in front of Jackson’s house and assumed her best game face.

  “Hi,” she called as he stepped out on the porch. “Are the kids here?”

  “Not yet. At the moment they’re eating my mother’s pancakes and deciding whether to take a detour up to Halloran’s Meadow. I told Mom we’d call if we wanted them to come straight back.”

  Jackson’s eyebrow lifted in what she interpreted as a challenge, but Kayla refused to react. “We’re going home in a couple of days. Let them have a little more vacation fun.”

  He frowned, though she didn’t try to interpret what it meant.

  “You look tired,” she added, trying to look as bright-eyed as possible, despite having gotten little rest herself.

  “I was up all night with a foaling mare,” he explained. “I just came in to change my clothes and then head back out to the barn. But now that you’re here, I’d like to show you something.”

  With a neutral smile Kayla followed him into his office. After all, she was an expert at survival. At worst, Jackson was a passing heartache. That was all.

  She hoped.

  Silently she examined the papers he showed her. He’d established a trust fund for Alex.

  “You don’t have to tell him about it,” Jackson said, “but it’s there if needed.”

  Kayla returned the documents. “I’d rather he didn’t know. Aside from anything else, his relationship with you should be separate from money.”

  “I guess you’re right.” He tossed the papers into a drawer and locked it.

  Kayla didn’t know what else to say, so she suggested visiting the new foal. Luckily two of the ranch hands were there when they arrived, keeping things light the way she wanted.

  * * *

  AS THEY RODE IN, Alex followed as Morgan veered toward the barn she’d said was for their broodmares. A truck with some writing on the side was parked next to the door.

  “Hey, guys,” Morgan called over her shoulder. “That’s our vet. Dad’s new mare might be foaling. Let’s go check.”

  They tied their horses at the corral fence and trooped toward the large doors.

  “We’ve gotta be quiet,” Morgan said in a low voice. “Ruby is real nervous.”

  His heart thumping, Alex walked carefully toward the large stall where he saw his mom and Jackson with an Appaloosa mare. She was mostly white with black spots, which was kind of opposite to Thunder, who was mostly black with white spots on his butt and face. In the corner of the stall another man was examining a baby horse.

  “Shoot,” Morgan whispered. “She already foaled.”

  Alex blinke
d. “It looks as if they’re trying to keep the baby away from its mother.”

  “Well, yeah,” Morgan agreed. “The foal sometimes fusses at the mom when she’s still hurting from the birth, so you gotta try to help her not get upset.”

  “Wow,” Sandy said. “I thought horses loved their babies right off.”

  “Some do,” one of the hands told them as he walked by carrying a nursing bottle. “But Ruby is a first-time mom, and she’s taking a while to get the hang of it.”

  “Can’t the mother feed her baby?” Keri asked as the man with the bottle started giving it to the foal.

  “Just being careful,” Jackson said, looking up and smiling. “We’re giving it colostrum, to help with protection against germs and such.”

  “What’s coloster...whatever?” DeeDee breathed.

  “It’s something the baby gets when it nurses right off,” Morgan explained. “But you can buy it, and we don’t take chances with our foals.”

  Alex wished he’d been there to see the foal come, even though it might have been as gross as seeing the lamb born on his church youth group trip. The next time he visited the ranch... He stopped suddenly, startled. Whoa. He actually wanted to come back?

  Go figure.

  * * *

  JACKSON WAS DETERMINED to keep things friendly with Kayla—no fights, and no challenges to the status quo.

  He wanted more time with her, but it was a commodity in short supply; she’d soon be driving away. It was disturbing because Alex should be his first and only thought in connection to the Anderson family’s departure.

  They left the five kids in the barn and returned to the house. Flora had gone shopping, but there were sandwich makings in the fridge for lunch. He pulled everything out and bantered back and forth with Kayla as to whether French rolls or sourdough bread was better.

  “I’ll concede that since you can’t get the best sourdough away from the West Coast, French rolls are probably best in Montana,” Kayla finally said.

  “We have sourdough bread in Montana.”

  She didn’t have a chance to retort; the kids arrived and descended on the sandwiches like a pack of starving wolves.

  “The new baby is awesome,” DeeDee declared. “I wish I could have seen him getting born.”

  “Maybe another visit,” Jackson told her.

  “What are you going to name it?” Alex asked.

  Jackson shrugged. “Not sure yet. Do you have something in mind?”

  “There was an eclipse last night, so how about that?”

  “Eclipse?” Sandy repeated. “That’s a racehorse name, not a cow pony.”

  “Maybe he’ll be a racehorse,” Alex argued.

  “Eclipse is a good name, no matter what he turns out to be,” Jackson said firmly.

  Jackson thought Kayla seemed to be avoiding looking at him, but he couldn’t be sure. She wanted to leave early so they could spend the rest of the day with her grandparents but waited while the youngsters properly groomed the horses they’d ridden and mucked out the stables.

  She finally got them into the car around four and waved absentmindedly as she drove away.

  Looking at Morgan, Jackson saw her shoulders slump.

  “Something up?” he asked. “You seem a little funky.”

  “I’m going to miss Alex, that’s all.”

  He sighed. “Me, too. It’s been great having him here.”

  “Yeah, but at least you’ve got a son now.”

  Turning she went back into the house and Jackson stared at the door, instantly ready to chew nails. He had to remind himself that he hadn’t truly expected all of Morgan’s issues to be resolved in one conversation.

  Well, he wasn’t letting it go the way he’d let too many other things slide by with her. He strode through the house and found her in the backyard, petting Cory.

  “Okay, we’re going to have this out right now,” he announced. “Do you really think I appreciate Alex more than you because he’s a boy?”

  His jaw clenched when she wouldn’t even look at him. “I don’t know. But you wanted a boy. Mom said so. She told me that you wanted her to get fat and ugly again, and she wasn’t about to do it just so you’d have the son you wanted.”

  Jackson was sure his blood pressure had gone sky-high. How could Marcy have been so insensitive? And how could she have lied that way? He’d never once suggested having another baby because he wanted a boy; it hadn’t even occurred to him. He’d have been thrilled to have another girl.

  Suddenly, he did a double take, remembering how Kayla had repeatedly accused him of bad attitudes toward women. He hadn’t wanted to admit she was right on any level, but she was.

  He shook his head; Morgan was the important thing right now.

  Jackson breathed deeply, searching for the right words. It wouldn’t help Morgan to know her mother had lied. Besides, maybe Marcy had genuinely believed that nonsense.

  Cory’s chin was on Morgan’s knee and he gave Jackson a mournful look. She was his favorite person and hated it when she was unhappy.

  “Morgan, honey, I think your mother misunderstood,” Jackson said, sitting next to her. “I did hope for more kids, but I would have been just as happy with another girl. And no matter how big a family we might have had, none of them could have taken your place.”

  She stared at him, almost suspiciously. “You gave me a boy’s name.”

  “It’s also a girl’s name. I liked the sound of it and your mother did, too. If we’d had a boy, it would have been Jake, not Morgan.”

  His gaze dropped to the jeans she was wearing. For years she’d ignored all of the dresses in her closet.

  “Morgan, is that why you won’t wear dresses or jewelry?”

  “Uh, sort of.”

  “Hon, you can be any sort of girl you want to be. I’ll love you just the same if you dress in lace or jeans. Or...you can dress in lace and jeans. Find your own style.”

  At that, she laughed a little. “Okay.”

  “And remember, we can talk about this anytime. Or anything else you want to discuss.”

  She nodded, still petting Cory, and he painfully recalled Kayla’s accusations that he didn’t trust women. She was right about that, too. Was it possible that his anger and sense of betrayal had unconsciously touched Morgan?

  Uneasily, Jackson remembered a few occasions when she might have overheard him talking to one of his brothers, saying he’d hang before giving another woman the chance to stab him in the back again.

  Truthfully, his ex-wife didn’t deserve to have that much influence over him. And the women he’d socialized with since the divorce hadn’t been any prizes, either, so maybe he’d set himself up to keep seeing the opposite sex as untrustworthy, unconsciously trying to justify the way he felt. It might even have been the reason he’d dated Patti, deep down recognizing what she was really like.

  That could have affected Morgan.

  And there had to be a reason his sisters had drawn away from him. He’d assumed it was because they’d grown up and had new interests, but what if it had something to do with him and his attitudes? Alaina and Madison had once visited often, even enduring Marcy, whom they’d increasingly disliked. Now they mostly stayed away except for family gatherings.

  Maybe if he’d done a little more soul-searching and spent a little less time trying to be strong and impassive, he would have figured out the problem a long time ago.

  All at once Morgan jumped up and asked if she could go in the pool.

  “Sure.”

  “Will you swim with me?”

  There was an appeal in his daughter’s eyes, perhaps to know he wanted to spend time with her. He nodded. “That sounds great. We’ve been in a group so much, we haven’t had a chance to just be together.”

  Jackson ran up the stairs two at a time and donned his swim trunks. Though the fabric had dried, he was still reminded of the previous night with Kayla. Desire jolted through him, but there was more to what he felt than just physical need. Kayla
challenged him. She made him want to be a better man, and how many times did you meet someone who did that?

  He needed to sort out how he felt about her, but now wasn’t the right time. He needed to focus on his daughter.

  * * *

  AS KAYLA DROVE back to her grandparents’ house, the kids were full of excitement about everything from the eclipse to the new foal.

  “We saw, like, a thousand shooting stars,” DeeDee proclaimed.

  “Uh-uh,” Alex corrected. “Dozens.”

  “I counted fifty-six,” Sandy said.

  “Do you think Eclipse could be a racehorse someday?” Alex asked. “I bet he’d be happier on a ranch than some dumb racetrack.”

  Kayla’s eyebrows rose. Alex obviously had a growing fondness for ranch life. Of course, he’d only seen the fun parts—riding and play—but there was no question that he’d come to like Montana. But, as if to prove her wrong, Alex immediately began talking about the computer programming class he wanted to take and how exciting it would be.

  “You’ll be the only geek cowboy in school,” DeeDee told her brother. “We’ll call you a cow-punching computer nerd—sort of like cowcompnerd.”

  “You’re soooo funny,” he told her, rolling his eyes.

  The teasing was good-natured, so Kayla didn’t put a stop to it.

  At the house, the two younger girls ran upstairs to the attic bedroom, a place that had enchanted Keri as much as it had DeeDee. Sandy and Alex looked at each other with complicated expressions, then Sandy went to Elizabeth’s sewing room, which had been set aside for her to use.

  Kayla sat down with her computer to check emails, but as she was opening her mailbox, Alex came in.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Um...Jackson wanted me to talk to you.”

  Jackson had convinced him to open up? Perhaps it was the man-to-man influence he seemed to think was so important. She didn’t care, as long as it happened.

  “Sure. What’s on your mind?”

  “It’s about why I came to Montana. Jackson says you’ve been really worried and I should tell you the real reason I ran away. The thing is... I guess I wouldn’t have gone if not for the whole adoption thing, but I kind of wanted to, even before Brant blabbed.”