The envelope slid out of her nerveless fingers. It fluttered to the sand beneath her knees. Latitude brushed his nose against it. Briefly curious. Just as quickly losing interest. “You’re serious.”
“I told Windsor when I saw him earlier. He doesn’t think it’s likely to change the end results, but he’s agreed to come back if Lat needs more surgery.”
She could hardly breathe. “Why are you doing this?”
He looked at Latitude.
Ran his hand slowly down his sleek, powerful body.
“Because you love this horse.” His voice was low. Gruff. “And I love you.”
Her heart climbed right into her throat. The words were so perfect to her ears. And so impossibly unexpected. “No.” She shook her head. “You don’t let yourself love anyone.”
“That’s true.” He looked at her. “Until I shared a glass of Cristal with you one hot summer night, and everything started to change.” His gaze dropped to her belly. “I just didn’t know how much until I came here.”
She swallowed. Her pulse was thundering inside her. “I wish I’d told you from the first.”
“I think this is where we’d still have ended.” His voice was hushed. “I want to believe it is.”
Her nerves squeezed. “Ended?”
“Ended up,” he amended. His gaze ran over her face. “I talked to the boys last night after I took you home. Yeah.” He grimaced when her eyebrows rose. “It was pretty damn late. And I was heading toward being pretty damn drunk.”
“No.”
“Ask Ryan someday. He’ll tell you.” He moved his hand over Latitude’s back again. His fingers stopped inches shy of hers. “I don’t want to be my father,” he said abruptly. “I don’t want my kids—any of them—pushing away the people that matter because they’re too afraid of getting hurt. I want them to be the kind of person who can look at a lost cause and still believe that it’s not…too…late.”
His deep voice cracked and her heart seemed to crack open right along with it.
She moved her fingers those few inches until they grazed his. “You’re not a lost cause.”
His eyes searched hers. “Are you sure?”
She looked from the envelope and back to him. “I would be certain of it, even if you hadn’t done this. Made this…incredible…gift.” A gift that would leave her reeling for some time. “But if this is about the baby—our baby—you don’t have to worry. I’ll never make the mistake again of thinking he’s better off without a father. Without you.”
He turned his hand and slid his fingers through hers. “You said you loved me. Did you mean it?”
She was simply incapable of holding anything back. “Yes.”
“Is that just because of the baby?”
Her brows drew together. She shook her head. “No.” Her admission dropped like a pebble in the silence. “I love you even more because of the baby.”
His fingers tightened around hers. “Then can’t I feel the same way?” He leaned closer. His eyes burned fiercely. “I never expected you in my life, J.D. Clay. Not like this. I never expected another chance to be a better man. But now I’ve got it and I’m scared to death of blowing it. And I’m giving you Latitude because he’s the one thing I have that I know matters to you.”
“Oh, Jake.” She let out a broken laugh. Her heart wasn’t in her throat anymore. It was in her chest, and just about ready to explode. “You still don’t get it, do you?”
His eyes darkened. His body tensed.
She slid her arm out of the sling and leaned closer to him. “There’s something you can give me that I value even more than Latitude.” She settled her palm against his chest. “Your heart.”
His jaw twisted. He closed his hand over hers, pressing it hard against the beat that she could plainly feel. “The horse is a better bet.” His voice was harsh.
But she heard the uncertainty lurking there, anyway.
She could show endless patience with a skittish horse.
How could she give Jake anything less than a lifetime, if that’s how long it took?
She slowly leaned over Latitude until her lips were only a breath from his. Her eyes stared into his. “I was never much of a gambler,” she whispered. “I only bet on sure things.”
His hands slid to her face. They were shaking. “And are you sure? It’s not like you’re getting a bargain, J.D. My family’s barely functioning. I have responsibilities at Forco. There’re going to be times when I can’t be here in Weaver. Times when I know I’m going to mess up. I swear to you, I’ll try not to, but marriage to me—”
“Marriage!” She straightened like a shot, staring at him with fresh shock.
“What’d you think I was talking about?”
She blinked. “I didn’t know you wanted to marry me!” Just like that, she was the one shaking.
Jake slowly drew her back to him. “Then let’s be clear.” He gently nudged her chin up until her eyes met his. “I love you, J. D. Clay. I’m not sure I even had a heart, until you came along. But you did, and it’s yours. So will you forget all good sense and logic that should tell you to choose otherwise, and agree to be my wife?”
“My good sense and logic are smart enough to listen to my heart,” she returned tartly, only to ruin it with the tears that crept down her face.
This time, though, the tears had nothing to do with grief.
And everything to do with hope.
His thumb slid slowly over her cheeks, drawing up the moisture, and the tenderness there would have undone her resistance if he hadn’t already succeeded in dissolving it to bits. “And what’s your heart saying?”
She pulled in a shaking breath. Let it out in an even longer one. “It’s saying yes.”
Jake didn’t move. Only the gleam of his dark brown eyes ranged over her face, as if he wanted to memorize the moment.
“Yes, Jake,” she whispered again. “Yes. I will be your wife.”
It seemed forever in coming. But the smile that hinted around his lips finally took hold. It widened. It spread. Until it slowly slid to his eyes and pushed aside the shadows that were there.
Then he let out a bark of laughter and pressed his mouth to hers.
Neither one particularly noticed when Latitude huffed and pushed out of their way, shuffling ungainly to his feet. Or when he stuck his head down and nosed around into the bag of peppermints…
Epilogue
May
“Happy Birthday, Mommy.” Jake leaned over J.D. and the blanket-draped infant she held to her shoulder, and pressed a kiss to both of their heads.
J.D. leaned against the wooden rail fencing beside her and looked up at him. Beyond them, acres of rolling fields were only a shade lighter than her dancing emerald eyes. “It’s not my birthday. Nor is it Tuck’s.”
Tucker Reeves Forrest. Jake peeled the blanket farther away and grazed his third son’s velvety cheek with the edge of his finger. Tuck had come almost eight weeks early, giving them all a healthy scare and derailing their original wedding date. But their son had his mother’s emerald eyes and both his and J.D.’s determination.
And now, exactly two months since his birth, he was as strong and feisty as they could have prayed. “It’s his two-month birthday,” Jake said. “Let me celebrate.”
J.D.’s laughter was soft. The breeze tugged her hair, scattering a few white blossoms from the curling mass where they’d been pinned. “You don’t have enough to celebrate today?” She leaned up and kissed his lips, taking a gentle nip along the way. “You’re the one who chose Derby day when we had to reschedule our wedding,” she reminded.
It was the first Saturday in May and for the first time in more years than he could remember, he had no horses running in the Kentucky Derby. Not even Platinum Cross, who’d been one of the favorites coming into the season.
Right now, Latitude was in the field behind them, tearing around like he was on fire with Ziggy hard on his heels when he wasn’t stopping next to J.D. to drag at the flowers
in her hair.
“And I’ll never be able to forget I’ve won a prize worth more than any race,” he told her. Which is exactly why he’d chosen Derby day. And why Forrest’s Crossing was not running any horses there this year.
Her eyes went soft and mossy. She rested her palm along his jaw. “I love you, Mr. Forrest.”
“And I love you, Mrs. Forrest.”
“Enough kissing already,” Maggie came over to them and lifted Tuck out of J.D.’s arms. “Susan’s been trying to catch your attention for the last half hour!” She kissed his son’s tiny nose. “Squire’s getting impatient for that cake to be cut so he can get on with his fishing trip with your best men and I swear, I wouldn’t put it past the old coot to start cutting it himself.” She gestured toward the barn, where guests milled around the laden tables. “Move it!”
“Are you going to be like your mother when you’re her age?” Jake asked, watching Maggie stride away, the folds of her airy yellow dress floating behind her, along with the trailing edge of Tuck’s blanket.
J.D. ducked again from Latitude’s affectionate nudges and leaned across the fence, swatting him on the rump. “Go play.” The horse lifted his head and blew out a noisy breath. Then he spotted Ziggy and launched himself after him running with an ease and an enthusiasm that proved all of J.D.’s faith had been well placed.
His wife’s smile was more brilliant than ever as she turned back to Jake and tucked her hand through his arm. The wedding ring he’d placed on her finger only a few hours earlier winked in the sunlight. “We can only hope I’m like my mother.” She shot him a teasing look. “My parents are still hot for each other.”
He laughed and they made their way toward the rest of the reception. “I’ll give you hot.”
She slanted him a look. “I know,” she said, dulcet.
It was a mistake for him to ever think he’d have an edge on this woman.
It had been five months since he’d started his life, thanks to her. Five months of arranging schedules, of them both shuttling back and forth to Forrest’s Crossing while he realigned things at Forco so Charlotte could assume more responsibilities, and J.D. supervised the plans to bring Crossing West into fruition on the Hanks spread that they’d closed on after Christmas. Between the kids and Latitude’s rocky recovery—three more surgeries and a half dozen casts—along with everything else, it seemed there’d hardly been time to breathe.
But J.D. had made sure he remembered there was always time to love.
They reached the linen-draped table that sat in the shadow of the deep red barn that Ryan had finished painting well before the snow started to melt off. All around them, J.D.’s place—their place—was decorated with white flowers. They swayed in the breeze where they draped over the corrals, hung in bunches from the opened barn doors, and twined around the house’s porch. The sky was a perfect crystal-blue. But the real perfection didn’t come from the agreeable weather, or the setting that J.D. and her family had created.
It came in the crowd joining them. In the shrieking giggles as kids raced back and forth. In the hugs and the laughter and the talk.
Loving J.D. hadn’t just gotten him Tucker. Or his sons. He’d found himself in the middle of more family, more friends, than he’d ever dreamed possible.
He was pretty sure that every member of the Clay family was present and accounted for. And even though J.D. had warned him just how many there were, it was still a startling sight to see.
Then J.D.’s hand slid into his and she tugged him to the side of the towering wedding cake, sized to satisfy the sweet tooth of everyone there.
“Where are the best men?” Susan looked vaguely frazzled. “Jake, you said you’d keep an eye on them!”
“And I have,” he assured. He went to the barn and yelled inside. “Zach. Con. Get out here and get your pictures taken.”
A moment later, his sons trotted out. Their gray suit jackets were gone, their white shirts smudged with dirt. They looked pretty much like they’d been rolling around in the barn, and maybe they had been.
That day, Jake wasn’t going to care and he knew that J.D. wouldn’t, either. His aunt, though, just tsked when she saw them. She swiped her hands down Zach’s shoulders and pushed back Connor’s tumbled hair then shooed them toward Jake and J.D. “What are we going to do with you two?”
With a grin, Connor just shrugged and followed Zach around the table. “Dunno,” Zach said. He licked the finger that he’d slyly swiped through a curl of white icing. “What’re you gonna do with us, Jake?” They were already grounded for two weeks, thanks to a science experiment that had gotten out of hand. They only had another few weeks of school left, and then they would be heading to San Francisco for a month with Tiffany.
The accident she’d narrowly survived had left her forever changed. When he and J.D. had approached her to share the boys’ time, she’d actually agreed that it was a good thing.
He glanced at Zach. “I can tell you that fishing with Squire this weekend is off.” But he grinned before Zach’s expression fell too far. Both he and Connor had found a buddy who was just as wily as they were. The fact that he happened to be J.D.’s aging grandfather was immaterial to all of them.
Susan had her camera in hand again, and was gesturing for them to move closer together. Jake took Tucker and propped him against his shoulder, facing the camera.
“Now that is a beautiful family.” Susan lifted her camera.
“Wait.” Jake gestured to Brody, the sardonic lawyer who was standing next to his very pregnant wife. “Take the camera, will you? She should be in this picture, too.”
Brody strolled over and lifted the camera from Susan’s hands. “You heard the man.”
She dashed her hands down her dress and moved over, joining them. Jake handed Tuck to her. “There you go, auntie.”
Susan’s eyes were a little damp. She rubbed her cheek against the tuft of blond hair on Tuck’s otherwise bald head.
“Smile into the camera,” Jake advised, and wrapped his arms around J.D.
And smile, they did.
Mills & Boon® Special Moments™
brings you a sneak preview…
Turn the page for a peek at this fantastic new
story from Victoria Pade, available next
month in Mills & Boon!
When Tate McCord caught reporter Tanya Kimbrough
snooping around the McCord mansion for business
secrets, he had to admit–the housekeeper’s daughter
had become a knockout! The real scoop–this Texas
Cinderella was about to steal the surgeon’s heart.
Texas Cinderella
by
Victoria Pade
“Sometimes I don’t understand you, Blake. You open up enough to let me know the business is in a slump, that you think we really can find the Santa Magdalena diamond and use it to pull us out of the fire. But you bite off my head for asking how things are going.”
Tanya Kimbrough froze.
It was nearly eleven o’clock on Friday night and she had no business doing what she was doing in the library of the Dallas mansion of the family her mother worked for. But her mother had gone to bed and Tanya had known the McCords were all at a charity symphony that should have kept them out much later than this. And she’d gotten nosy.
But now here she was, overhearing the raised voice of Tate McCord as he and his older brother came into the formal living room that was just beyond the library. The library where she’d turned on the overhead lights because she’d thought she would be in and out long before any of the McCords got home…
Make a run for it the way you came in, she advised herself.
She certainly couldn’t turn off the library lights without drawing attention since the doors to the living room were ajar. But maybe Tate and Blake McCord would only think someone had forgotten to turn them off before they’d left the house tonight. And if she went out the way she’d come in, no one would guess that she’d used her m
other’s keys to let herself in through the French doors that opened to the rear grounds of the sprawling estate. If she just left right now…
But then Blake McCord answered his brother and she stayed where she was. What she was listening to suited her purposes so much better than what she’d already found on the library desk.
“Finding the Santa Magdalena and buying up canary diamonds for a related jewelry line are in the works,” Blake was saying. “And we’ve launched the initial Once In A Lifetime promotional campaign in the stores to pamper customers and bring in more business. That’s all you have to know since you—and everyone else—are on a need-to-know-only basis. Your time and interest might be better spent paying some attention to your fiancée, wouldn’t you say?”
“What I’d say is that that isn’t any of your business,” Tate answered in a tone that surprised Tanya.
The sharp edge coming from Tate didn’t sound anything like him. The brothers generally got along well, and Tate had always been the easygoing brother. Tanya’s mother had said that Tate had changed since spending a year working in the Middle East and suddenly Tanya didn’t doubt it.
“It may not be my business, but I’m telling you anyway because someone has to,” Blake persisted. “You take Katie for granted, you neglect her, you don’t pay her nearly enough attention. You may think you have her all sewed up with that engagement ring on her finger, but if you don’t start giving her some indication that you know she’s alive, she could end up throwing it in your face. And nobody would blame her if she did.”
Katie was Katerina Whitcomb-Salgar, the daughter of the McCord family’s longtime friends and the woman everyone had always assumed would end up as Mrs. Tate McCord long before their formal engagement was announced.
“You’re going to lose Katie,” Blake shouted, some heat in his voice now. “And if you do, it’ll serve you right.”
“Or it might be for the best,” Tate countered, enough under his breath that Tanya barely made out what he’d said. Then more loudly again, he added, “Just keep your eye on finding that diamond and getting McCord’s Jewelers and the family coffers healthy again. Since you want to carry all the weight for that yourself, you shouldn’t have a lot of spare time to worry about my love life, too. But if I want your advice, I’ll be sure to ask for it.”
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