A Weaver Baby. Allison Leigh

is still eight months away, anyway. Tell Miguel to put his nephew Pedro on his back for the Champagne Stakes. I’ve seen the kid on the track and with Latitude. He’ll do fine. And if Miguel isn’t the right handler, you’ll find someone else who is.”

      “I already did,” he said pointedly.

      The back of her throat felt tight and achy. On any other day, she might have felt like she was coming down with the bug that was going around the place. For Jake, everything revolved around him winning. And it was the height of irony that it was the colt she so loved that was now making it more impossible than ever. “I can’t stay, Jake.”

      “Because of what I did to you.”

      She closed her eyes for a moment, pained. “What we did.” Honesty wouldn’t allow her to let him shoulder that. “For heaven’s sake, Jake, I was more than willing, in case you’ve forgotten.”

      He shoved his hands through his hair, then scrubbed his palms down his face. “Willing or not, I should’ve known better.” He dropped his hands, but the grimace was still there. “You’re the kind of woman who probably thinks you’re supposed to want to marry a man when you’re sleeping with him. Or at least be in love with him.”

      She folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

      He lifted an eyebrow. “You’re saying that you’re not old-fashioned when it comes to sex? You, who hadn’t done this in a long while?”

      She flushed. Trust the man to remember what she’d said to him that night. “Being discriminating doesn’t necessarily mean a person is old-fashioned.”

      “Then why the hell can’t you work here, anymore?”

       Tell him.

      The command circled inside her head. Her lips parted; the words sitting on the tip of her tongue, ready to trip off.

      That ache returned to the back of her throat. She’d seen him with his sons. She looked up at Jake. “Because I’m going home,” she finally said.

      His brows drew together. “Home. What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

      Her eyes stung and she looked back at her practical, dusty pickup that looked so incongruous sitting behind his expensive sports car. “It means home. Where I belong,” she finished huskily. “Home to Wyoming.”

      Chapter Five

      J.D. swallowed the knot of nervousness inside her when she pulled up at the big house, which was how most people referred to the main house at the Double-C ranch where her father and his four brothers had grown up. There were already a dozen cars parked on the circular gravel drive, meaning there were twice that many people inside.

      She’d been back in Wyoming for two weeks now, and aside from the first weekend when everyone had descended on her parents’ place to welcome her home, she’d been busy enough looking at properties to buy to avoid too many family get-togethers.

      But today was her niece’s birthday and there was no way she could get out of making an appearance.

      She wove her way through the haphazard congestion, parking almost at the back of the house, right on the grass.

      It hadn’t snowed yet that year, but signs of the dropping October temperatures were visible all around, most notably on the grass that was turning brown and crisp. She climbed out of her truck, her eyes roving over the wide-open expanse of land surrounding the outbuildings. For as far as the eye could see—and beyond—the land was owned by one member of the Clay family or another. They ran cattle, raised dairy and bred horses.

      And she, she would be boarding horses, just as soon as she could get the run-down property she’d bought that week for a song into decent enough shape. She didn’t mind the work ahead of her.

      It would leave her with little time to think about everything—and everyone—she’d left behind in Georgia.

      “You gonna stand out here and daydream, or go inside?” The slightly rough voice brought her attention around to the tall man leaning against the house, a thin trail of smoke winding upward from the cigarette he held.

      The sight of her cousin, Ryan, was still enough to jar her.

      For one thing, he’d gone missing years earlier. And after years of searching and years of hoping, they’d accepted the worst. They’d grieved. They’d had a funeral for him. Then, earlier that year, he’d miraculously shown up on the night of their cousin Axel’s wedding. For another thing, the smiling, wry Ryan with whom she’d grown up was nowhere in evidence within the utterly solemn, grim man who’d returned. He was only five years older than she was, but could have passed for ten.

      They’d all wept for joy, anyway. He was still Ryan. He was still one of their own. And the fact that he hadn’t explained his absence to a single member of the family was his business. And frankly, something she sort of understood a little better these days.

      “Cigarettes will kill you, you know,” she told him, instead of answering.

      “Something ought to.” His lips barely twisted as he lifted his hand to his mouth to inhale.

      She rounded her truck, heading to the stairs that led to the rear entrance of the big house. “Guess we’re all hoping that doesn’t come any sooner than we’d already believed.” Before he could comment, she snatched the cigarette from between his fingers and ground it beneath her heel. “Nobody around here wants second-hand smoke, either.”

      His blue eyes narrowed. “Still bossy, J.D.?”

      She patted his unshaven cheek. “Come inside.”

      He grimaced. “You know, there are twenty teenage girls in there.”

      “Surely you’re not afraid?”

      “Hell, yeah.” He practically shuddered.

      She tucked her arm in his and tugged him toward the stairs. “Be brave.” She winked at him as if she’d had no reservations of her own about showing up there. “There’ll be cake and ice cream afterward if you’re good.”