double-timed it to keep up with Jake’s long legs. “Bailadora and Encantadora just about kick their stalls down every time that damn thing starts going ka-boom.”
As he reached the barn door, Jake could hear the disturbed whinnying of his two most beautiful Andalusians. The plaintive sound made his chest tight. He opened the heavy steel door, and once inside the dim barn, the echoes of the horses’ cries felt suffocating to him. Jake never broke stride on his way to the mares, but reached into a coffee can nailed to a post and grabbed a handful of sugar cubes on his way by.
He went straight to the mares, soothing them with his voice. “Whoa, girls. Facil. Fah-ceel. Easy. Easy.”
The whinnying stopped, and first one, then the other, came to the stall’s bars to nip a sugar cube off his palm. He popped one into his own mouth while he patted the mares’ withers, each in turn.
Jake found that the ritual calmed him as much as it did his animals. For the first time all day, he felt his shoulders relax, felt his breath filling his lungs fully. This was where he found peace—in the barns, in the fields, with the smell of clean hay and healthy horseflesh around him. These beautiful animals, their solidity, their strength, their warmth, had calmed him ever since he was a small boy, reaching up into his grandfather’s pocket for a sugar cube. Even as a man of thirty-five, with all the responsibilities a man could bear, Jake still found that a little time out in the barns, with the taste of a plain sugar cube melting in his mouth and the feel of horseflesh under his palms, could make the world seem sane again.
“It’s the same for you, isn’t it, my lovely ladies.” He spoke to the horses. “A sugar cube and a pat from old Jake can soothe just about anything.”
But even under his calming touch, the tension in the mares’ muscles communicated loudly to Jake through his fingertips. How long could they go on like this? This constant noise was an untenable situation, one he’d never encountered on the peaceful Ten Mile Flats. If C. J. McClean started blasting with dynamite, he’d have an early, or perhaps even dead, foal on the ground before the week was out. He’d wager these mares would drop early, or he hadn’t been a horseman for the past twenty years.
LANA LARGEANT WHEELED her Lincoln Navigator around the first bend in the road that climbed the Sullivan ridge and sucked in a breath. Glorious!
Even in their skeletal state, anyone could see that the homes in The Heights were destined to be first class. They rose up on the hillsides with the steeply pitched roofs and magical lines of the rambling English country manors that she’d grown to love when she and her parents had traveled to equestrian shows in Europe. The midmorning sun created long shadows over pockets of mist under the tall trees and along the deep sandstone creek.
Oh, my! The landscaping possibilities on this slope were endless. Already this developer, this C. J. woman, had erected curving rock retaining walls, gradual terracing and winding stone pathways, all of which lent a quaint, fairy-tale charm to the common grounds. The place embodied the kind of character and style that women like Lana lusted after.
Lana had always fancied this piece of land. Coveted it. When married to Jake, she had occasionally ridden her personal Andalusian mare, Isadora, up onto the hillside. Nowadays she didn’t get over to this side of the Flats often.
Twice, she’d secretly contacted Helen and Caroline, the elderly Sullivan sisters and begged to buy the property from them. But the sisters had said that would never happen. So why, now, had the old ladies finally sold it to this C. J. McClean person? And how on earth had that woman managed to get the development under way so quickly? In a way, the overnight change in the place unsettled Lana, as if some interloper had sneaked in during her absence and stolen something from her.
One. Two. Three houses under construction, and pads cleared for six or seven more. She slowed the Navigator to a crawl, unconcerned that the construction workers might notice her. The Navigator was new, she was wearing her shades and it had been ages since her picture had been in the paper. As she circled the cul-de-sacs, she might have been any well-to-do woman out scouting for properties—not the daughter of Stu Largeant, the longtime mayor of the City of Jordan. Not the ex-wife of horse rancher Jake Coffey, who had apparently already been up here this morning, throwing his weight around with that McClean woman.
Lana wondered what this C. J. McClean looked like. Mack had called her young, but the woman couldn’t be too young if she was overseeing a costly development like this. Unless, like Lana, she was using family money to make her way. Hadn’t there been some McCleans in the home-building business in Jordan, way back when? Hadn’t there been a scandal? Didn’t somebody die or something?
The Heights. Already Lana was itching to live in one of the mansions on these slopes. Right above Cottonwood Ranch. Right next door to Jayden…and Jake. Daddy would definitely have to see this place. But at the thought of her father, Lana stopped her dreaming. Hadn’t she told herself that the Navigator was the last expensive thing her father would ever buy for her? How would his control over her ever end if she didn’t end it?
On her way back out of the brick gates, Lana passed a white pickup coming in. A burgundy Dream Builders logo was on the door and the woman behind the wheel looked petite, blond and definitely young.
Lana’s curiosity strummed as she wondered if that was her. Lana Largeant fancied that she knew Jake Coffey awfully well. Knew when his blood was running high. And when he had mentioned C. J. McClean’s name, Lana could already tell that the man’s blood was up. Way up.
CHAPTER THREE
TWO DAYS LATER Jake Coffey and Cassie McClean stared at each other as they climbed the steps of the Cleveland County Court House. Their faces couldn’t have registered more shock if they’d been naked as jaybirds instead of dressed in their finest business apparel. Both had apparently turned out in their best for this confrontation, although, Cassie surmised, in Jake’s world business attire was by definition more casual, more Western.
Still, he looked so polished that he didn’t even seem like the same man.
He wore cowboy boots again, although this pair, cut of a fine suede in a muted shade of cognac, could have taken him to lunch at the governor’s mansion. Under a Western-cut sports coat in a dark khaki and olive windowpane blend, a cream-colored basket-weave Polo shirt contrasted against the tanned skin at his throat. The jacket was obviously made from a superior cloth—Cassie recognized the blend of silk and wool—and it coordinated flawlessly with his dark wool trousers, which had pleats that bulged subtly below his flat abdomen. His hair, which the battered Stetson had concealed at the job site, was close cropped—a clean, classic shade of chocolate brown that matched his eyes exactly, offset by a few tantalizing strands of gray at the temples and nape. To make the whole effect utterly devastating, the chill November wind carried from his person the scent of an aftershave that filled Cassie with a bad craving.
Cassie herself had pulled together her best power look: a pencil-slim suit of the finest red worsted wool, giant diamond ear studs, and a chunky solid gold watch. Oh, yes, and black heels. Very high black heels.
“After you,” Jake said, when they reached the top step. He opened one of the heavy double doors and inquired, “Where’s your attorney?”
“Inside. Yours?”
“The same.”
Cassie was relieved when they were directed to a smallish office where Judge Jewett sat behind an ordinary-looking desk with a fake floral arrangement at one end. She had anticipated with dread the cold, mahogany-paneled courtroom of her father’s trial. She imagined the judge, remote and punitive, high up behind a bench surrounded by seals and flags.
Her lawyer, Miles Davies, whispered near her ear, “We are meeting in chambers because the judge is in the middle of a big criminal case in the courtroom.”
Cassie liked Miles. He was a kindly old eccentric. Her grandfather had considered him to be so competent and trustworthy that he had hired Miles to defend Boss fifteen years ago, and that was good enough for Cassie.
She