Courtney was doing double duty at the desk, too. “Nope. Jake took care of everything before he left.”
J.D. turned away. It would have been a more promising sign if he’d have ignored those details and chosen to stay with her.
But that was like wishing for the moon.
“Why don’t you come and stay with your father and me,” Maggie suggested when they reached her parents’ SUV. All around them, vehicles bearing the rest of the clan were departing, heading back to the Double-C to continue on with the day’s festivities.
“I’d rather be at home. I have things I have to take care of there.”
“Someone else can take over for a while,” Daniel said. “Your brother. Ryan.” He was silent for a minute. “Jake; if he knows what’s good for him.”
She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. For the first time in her life, she didn’t have horses at the forefront of her priorities. “The horses are my responsibility. Not Jake’s.”
She heard her father snort, and Maggie softly murmured, “Not now, Daniel.”
“Why not now,” he countered. “The guy’s the father of my grandchild, for God’s sake.”
“I know that.”
“Well, I didn’t, until today,” he muttered. “Any other little jewels of information you’re keeping quiet about, Maggie Mae?”
“It was J.D.’s place to tell everyone when she was ready,” Maggie returned without heat. “And you’d agree with me if you weren’t irritated that you didn’t figure it out for yourself first.”
“I’m sure Ryan will help,” J.D. told them, desperate to end the subject.
“If you won’t stay with us, then I’ll stay with you at your place,” Maggie said.
J.D. loved her mother dearly, but the only thing she wanted was to be left alone. To let her heart bleed out in private. She would have argued if she could have summoned the energy.
Instead, she sat there, pretending to doze off because it was simply the easiest path.
When they arrived at her place, there was no sign of Jake’s truck. It was proof that she’d held out some small hope that he would be there when her stomach sank to new depths. There also was no sign of Susan and the boys.
Her dad helped her inside while Maggie hurried ahead to her bedroom upstairs. There, she helped J.D. off with her boots and jeans again. “Do you want a nightgown?”
The idea of removing the sling and the scrub top was more than J.D. could stand. She shook her head and climbed awkwardly into the bed her mother had pulled back. She worked the quilt up to her nose with her good hand. “I don’t want you and Dad being mad at each other over me.”
Maggie sat carefully on the side of the bed. “We’re not mad at each other. Your father’s just feeling protective. It’s what fathers do.” She was silent for a moment. “Are you in love with him?”
She meant Jake, of course.
J.D.’s nose burned. Her vision glazed. “It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t love me.” The sling with her bent arm was folded across her abdomen.
“Is that why you didn’t tell him about the baby?”
“No!” Or was it? She was so confused about everything that she wasn’t even sure about that any longer. “He won’t let himself love this baby.” He would never allow himself to feel that sense of protection that her father did.
“Are you so certain of that?” Maggie smoothed the edge of the quilt beneath J.D.’s chin. “Before he left the hospital, he looked beside himself.”
“He’s angry that I didn’t tell him.”
“A reasonable reaction,” Maggie murmured mildly. “That doesn’t mean he won’t love the baby.”
“You haven’t seen him with his sons.” J.D. pressed her good arm over her eyes. “They’re dying for his love, Mom. But he won’t give it.”
“Then why’d he bring them here for Thanksgiving?”
Her mother wasn’t asking anything that she hadn’t already asked herself. Which only confirmed that her silence about their child was even more unforgiveable. “I thought I had him all figured out, but…” She trailed off, miserably. “Now, I don’t know anything.” She dropped her arm. “Why couldn’t I be more like you and less like my father?”
“I think you’re very much like Daniel, actually,” Maggie said, seeming a little amused. “You’re both as stubborn as the day is long.”
“I meant Joe Green.”
Her mother blinked, seeming startled. “How on earth do you think you’re like Joe?”
“He screwed up with the people he was supposed to love, too. He lied. He cheated.”
“Oh, J.D.” Maggie smoothed her hand over J.D.’s head as if she were still a little girl. “The only thing I believe you inherited from Joe were his green eyes.”
“But you’d have never made such a mess of things the way I have.”
“There are plenty of messes I can take credit for. That’s what being human is about. The question is how you go about cleaning them up. You’re a smart woman. I’m sure you’ll find a solution.”
J.D. shifted slightly and winced at the pain. “How’s there a solution to loving a man who doesn’t want to be loved?”
“Well.” Maggie’s gaze softened. “I found that loving him anyway was pretty effective.” She pushed off the bed. “You need your pain medication.”
She left, leaving J.D. completely bemused. A short while later, heavier footsteps came back up and she braced herself for a round with her well-intentioned father.
But it was Jake who came striding into the room.
She stared at him for an interminable moment. He’d changed clothes. His soiled silk shirt replaced by another. His trousers by black jeans. “What are you doing here?”
He held up a glass of water and a prescription bottle. “Your parents left once I assured them both that I would be at your side. Your mother took me at my word. Your father looked like he would’ve preferred to kill me.” He set the water glass on her nightstand and shook out a small round pill into his palm.
Yet he obviously wasn’t cowed by either one of her parents, or he wouldn’t be there.
“What about the boys?”
“They’re at the motel with Susan.” He held out his palm. “Take it.”
She chewed the inside of her lip, watching him warily. “You don’t have to stay here with me.”
“When I say I’ll do something, I do it.” He held out the water glass, too.
He did it, whether he wanted to or not. “I don’t want pain pills.”
“I called Dr. Keegan. She said it wouldn’t hurt the baby.” His palm didn’t budge from where it hovered three inches in front of her nose. “Riding around the way you do is a helluva lot more dangerous, as today ought to show.”
She grimaced and plucked the pill off his palm, tossing it back with a mouthful of water before handing him back the glass.
“Drink the rest.”
Feeling not much older than Zach and Connor, she took back the glass and forced down the water. “Satisfied?”
“Not even remotely.” He set the glass on the nightstand and took a seat in the upholstered wing chair opposite her bed, where she couldn’t fail to see him.
“Staying by her side” took on a whole new nightmarish quality.
She closed her eyes but the image of him sitting there, his hands casually folded together across his fine leather belt, seemed imprinted on her brain.
“The baby will have the same kind of trust fund that the boys have.” His words dropped like stones.
She opened her eyes. “It’s a boy,” she whispered.
His jaw whitened a little but he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “I’ll contact my lawyer to set it up. The papers can be here by courier in a few days. Essentially it will provide for all of his educational and medical needs until he’s 25. The principal will be distributed to him then. He’ll also receive an equal number of shares in Forco.”
Her throat tightened with protests that she knew would
be futile. Every word he said seemed to pound a nail in the coffin of hope that her foolish heart had been defiantly nourishing.
“You’ll receive a monthly allowance—”
She stiffened. “No. Absolutely not.”
“—that should more than provide for your living expenses and the like. In the event of your marriage, the amount is adjusted slightly, but will never be rescinded.”
She looked away, not even able to blame the sharp pang inside her on her shoulder. “Set up whatever you want for the baby,” she said dully. “But I don’t need or want your money.”
“You’re still going to get it.”
“Is this how you treated your ex-wife?”
“I never trusted my ex-wife,” he said after a moment. “I trusted you.”
The impact of that hurt far worse than when she’d hit the cold, hard ground. “I thought I was doing the right thing for everyone.”
“Keeping me away from your child is one thing.” He propped his boot on the opposite knee. “That’s the good sense of a mother talking. Not telling me he exists is something else.”
“Until now, you’d made it clear that being a father wasn’t anything that you wanted to be.”
“Being a father isn’t anything that I should be,” he corrected expressionlessly. “But you’re carrying my…son. So, you’d better know it all.”
The pain pill was taking quick effect, making her hands and feet feel oddly disconnected. “Know what all?”
“My father, rest his cursed soul, was a mean son of a bitch. When he was sober, he made sure you knew how much he regretted your birth with words. And when he wasn’t sober, he made sure you knew with his fists.”
Horror sucked through her, even penetrating the pain pill’s haze. “Your father beat you?”
“Until I was big enough to hit him back.”
She thought of all the rumors and gossip that had been rife at Forrest’s Crossing. Not once had such a thing even been hinted at. “Did your mother know?”
“Yes.”
She felt sick. “And she still left you and your sisters there with him?”
“Obviously. I was almost ten when she booked.”
About the same age that Zach and Connor were now and she ached all over again for the boy he’d been. And the man he’d become. “What about Susan? Did she know? Why didn’t anyone stop it? Step in?”
His lips twisted. “Because nobody crossed Jacob Forrest, Sr. And, yeah, Susan knew. She couldn’t divert him every time, but she made attempts.” His gaze slanted to her. “Just one big happy family we were. I made the mistake once of thinking I could have some sort of normal life when I married Tiff. I was wrong.” He lowered his boot and rose from the chair. “I can judge a business deal. I can sometimes judge horseflesh. But when it comes to relationships?” His lips tightened as he reached for the door. “I still can’t judge a damned thing.”
Then he turned on his heel. And left.
She wanted to call him back.
But what good were words now?
Chapter Fourteen
Jake was sitting at J.D.’s kitchen table with his laptop, forcing himself through the correspondence his secretary had sent him, when his aunt arrived the next morning with the boys in tow.
Zach and Connor barely offered a grudging hello before they escaped back outside, leaving Susan to dump an enormous camera bag on the table. “How’s J.D.?”
“Still sleeping.” At least she had been when he’d checked on her a short while earlier. Just as she’d been sleeping the dozen other times he’d checked on her.
When he’d realized he was falling asleep in that unexpectedly feminine wing chair across from her bed while he’d watched J.D. sleep, he’d made himself go down to the living-room couch.
It was too short, but not quite the torture device that the too-small chair was.
“What do you intend to do about her?”
“Take care of the baby the same way I have the boys.”
“I didn’t ask about the baby,” she pointed out mildly.
“There’s nothing else to talk about but the baby,” he said flatly.
“Don’t pretend with me, Jake. I know what you’re doing here.”
“Keeping an eye on Latitude.”
She laughed outright. “Darling, there’s never been a horse that matters so much to you that you’d rearrange your entire life like you have for these past three weeks. You’re here because of J.D. There’s no harm in admitting that you care for her.”
He tapped out a terse response to one of his e-mails, hit Send and closed the computer. “There’s nothing to admit.”
She gave him a pitying look. “And the baby? I suppose you plan to put up the money to pay for the best of everything. But not put out your own feelings.”
“The Forrest way.” He lifted the coffee mug in a macabre toast. Where had feelings ever gotten him? The only times he’d trusted in them, they’d bitten him on the ass.
His aunt pointed her finger at him. “Don’t use the excuse that it’s in your blood. You’re thirty-seven years old. You have every advantage in life to make the choices you want. Jacob wasn’t the best father. We all admit that. But he’s been gone for the better part of twenty years!”
“And the memory lives on,” he shot back. “You’re as guilty of it as the rest of us. You haven’t moved on, either. The old man should’ve just married you. You were his hostess at the parties he liked to throw. You managed his household. Instead of photographing babies, you should have had kids of your own. Instead, you got stuck raising us after our mother washed her hands of us.”
“And if I’d have done a better job, maybe you wouldn’t be terrified of being a parent!”
“I’m not terrified.” His voice was flat. “I’m realistic. And I want you to take the boys back to California today. This was only supposed to be for the holiday. They’re not going to care that I cut it short.”
His aunt slowly pulled out a chair and sat down. “I think you’re wrong. And frankly, I’d hoped the holiday was just an excuse. That it would lead to more. You’ve been here for three weeks. I’d thought maybe you were going to change things for good.”
He got up from his chair and refilled his mug with coffee he didn’t want. “I let J.D. make me think they needed to be here. With me.” And all the while, she’d been hiding her pregnancy.
Through the window over the sink, he could see Zach and Connor standing on the bottom rail of the corral next to the barn. The only horse out there was Ziggy. He and Ryan had managed to get Bonneville stabled the night before. But Jake hadn’t wanted to give the horse another opportunity to fight Ziggy by turning him out again that morning.
“Just because she didn’t tell you about the baby doesn’t mean she’s not right about the boys. They do need their family, Jake, not just a boarding school they hate, and the attention of their mother’s housekeeper. Start being a father to those boys. And to that baby that young woman upstairs is carrying. You have a whole new opportunity to be everything that you’ve convinced yourself you can’t be. It’s not too late.”
From upstairs, they both heard a soft sound.
J.D. was stirring.
“Just take the boys back to California, Susan.”
“No.” She rose from her chair and began buttoning up her coat again.
“What do you mean, no?”
“It’s a simple word,” she said evenly. “They’re your sons. If you want them in California, you’ll have to take them there, because I refuse to.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’ve never refused me anything.”
“And clearly, that was a mistake. I didn’t stay at Forrest’s Crossing after Olivia left Jacob because of him. I stayed because of you and your sisters. Because I loved all three of you. I didn’t have to have children of my own because you were the children of my heart. I wasn’t stuck. I made my choices. And I haven’t always agreed with you, but I’ve never been disappointed in you. Not until now.”
His jaw tightened. “This isn’t the most convenient time for you to develop a stubborn streak, Susan.”
She looked pained. “Better late than never. Don’t worry, Jake. I’m not abandoning you with the boys. I’m simply refusing to take them back to California right now.” She pulled a camera out of her bag and stomped out of the house.
He scraped his hands down his face.
Through the window over the sink, he saw her heading toward Zach and Con. Already, her camera was held up to her face.
He turned from the sight and went upstairs.
J.D., looking sleep-rumpled and leggy in just the drab green scrub top that barely reached her thighs, was coming out of the bathroom.
Her hair was a barely tamed mass of waves and she had a tiny smudge of toothpaste below the corner of her lips. But her eyes were alert and clear and they widened at the sight of him before she quickly turned toward her bedroom. “You’re still here.”
He followed her into the room. “I said I’d stay.”
She bent over a low drawer, giving him a view of skimpy lace panties and shapely rear that he knew was completely unintentional on her part.
Since he didn’t pretend to be a gentleman, he didn’t bother making himself look away before she straightened with a pair of jeans in her hand.
She shoved the drawer closed with her foot and looked at him through the reflection of the mirror above the dresser. “Well, I’m much better this morning, so there’s no need for you to worry about that anymore.”
“Your arm’s still in a sling and will be for weeks.”
“Thanks to those little pills, I can’t even feel it right now. I’ll manage.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Like you’re going to manage to get those jeans on with one hand?”
Annoyance glinted in her eyes but he knew she realized the challenge facing her with just this one, ordinarily simple task.
She nevertheless sat on the foot of the tumbled bed and shook out the jeans, awkwardly bending forward as far as her contained arm would allow, attempting it, anyway.
He let her struggle until he heard her catch her breath in the obvious pain that she supposedly wasn’t feeling, then he tugged the jeans out of her hands and crouched at her feet. “Lift.”
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