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“Well, your son is the president of Southern Oaks Bank and Trust.”
“Pish posh. It doesn’t matter what job somebody ends up with, they should never forget where they came from.” Mrs. Wainwright grinned. “I’ll bet you didn’t know that John grew up the son of a tobacco farmer who was land rich and dirt poor.” She pointed an arthritic finger toward Jake. “But your young man seems to be different. You can tell he’s got money, but he doesn’t appear to act like he’s better than everyone else. I’ll bet he hasn’t forgotten who he really is and where he came from.”
Heather stared at Jake. She still knew very little about him. Busy getting ready for the race, she hadn’t had the opportunity to ask where he grew up, about his childhood or his family.
Were his mother and father still alive? Did he have siblings? Could Mandy have family that Heather knew nothing about?
She didn’t have a clue. But she had every intention of finding out.
As Heather continued to think about it, she had to admit that Mrs. Wainwright was correct in her assessment of him. Jake had never made her or anyone at the farm feel as if they were beneath him. Even Clara had commented that he went out of his way to make everyone feel comfortable.
Heather had watched him with the grooms and stable boys and he never failed to greet them by name or stop and talk to them for a few minutes. And he was probably the only billionaire she’d ever heard of who sat at the kitchen table to eat his meals with his housekeeper, her teenage grandson and his farm manager.
“Are you ready to thank our host and hostess for a nice evening and head home?”
Heather jumped. Lost in thought, she hadn’t realized that Jake had ended his conversation with the bank president and crossed the lawn to join her and the man’s mother.
Introducing him to the elderly Mrs. Wainwright, she smiled. “It was nice chatting with you.”
“It was my pleasure, dear.” Mrs. Wainwright placed a bony hand on Heather’s arm and motioned for her to lean close. “You hang on to your young man,” she said in confidence. “Mark my words, he’s the real deal.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Wainwright.” She smiled. “I’ll try to remember that.”
* * *
After bidding the Wainwrights a good evening, Jake waited until he and Heather were seated in his car before he apologized. “I’m sorry, honey.”
“What for?” She looked thoroughly bewildered and so damned beautiful it was all he could do to keep from stopping the car and taking into his arms.
“Wainwright had no right to ignore you the way he did.” When the man dismissed Heather as if she didn’t exist, a protectiveness he’d never known he possessed had consumed him and Jake had wanted to punch the bastard in his big pretentious nose.
They fell silent for some time before he felt Heather staring at him. “What?”
“Tell me more about yourself.”
Glancing her way, he frowned. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything. Where did you grow up? Do you have siblings?” She laid her soft hand on his thigh and he had to concentrate to keep from steering the car into the ditch. “Does Mandy have an extended family?”
“What brought this on?” he asked, covering her hand with his to keep her from moving it. He liked when she touched him.
“Jake, we have a child together and beyond the fact that you’re a successful divorce attorney in Los Angeles, I know very little else about you,” she said quietly.
“There’s no big mystery. My siblings and I were born and raised in San Francisco. I have an identical twin brother named Luke—”
“My God, there are two of you?” She sounded truly shocked.
Grinning he nodded. “But don’t worry. He’s always been the quiet, more serious one of us.”
“In other words, your exact opposite.” She looked thoughtful. “Is he married?”
“As a matter of fact, he just got married a few months ago. He and his wife, Haley, are expecting their first child in about six and a half months.” To his surprise, Jake found that he liked sharing details about his family with Heather. “And we have a sister, Arielle. She’s ten years younger. She got married last month and is five months pregnant with twin boys.”
Heather was silent so long, he thought she might have fallen asleep. “I’m so happy that Mandy is going to have aunts, uncles and cousins.” She paused. “What about grandparents? Are your parents still alive?”
“No, our mother was killed in a car accident when Luke and I were twenty.” He took a deep breath. No matter how long it had been, he still missed the woman who had give him and his siblings life.
“I’m so sorry. What about your father?”
He snorted. “We only met our father once. After he made our mother pregnant with me and Luke, he took off and she didn’t see him again until we were almost ten. That’s when he showed up, stuck around only long enough to make Mom pregnant with Arielle, then took off again.” It was his turn to pause. “We recently got word that he was killed in a boating accident a couple of years ago.”
“Who finished raising your sister after your mother died?” she asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
“Luke and I were in college and managed to work out a pretty good system. He would work one semester and take over most of Arielle’s care while I went to school. Then I’d lay out the next semester, get a job and I’d be responsible for her while he attended classes.”
“My God, Jake, that had to have been so hard for both of you.” She turned her hand, palm up, to clasp his. “Did you try to get in touch with your father to see if he would send money to help out with your sister?”
Stopping the car at the entrance to Hickory Hills, he used the remote Clara had given him to open the wide iron gates. “We tried, but it proved to be impossible. We didn’t even know his real name.”
Her mouth dropped open. “He lied about who he was?”
Jake nodded. “We didn’t find that out and who he really was until we were told he was dead.”
When he drove the car through the gates, he pushed the button to swing them shut and as they traveled the long oak-lined drive, he decided to omit his newly discovered grandmother’s name. Emerald Larson was Mandy’s great-grandmother but he still wasn’t comfortable with the fact or with the way she manipulated her grandchildren.
“Mandy does have a great-grandmother,” he said, watching Heather from the corner of his eye. “We learned about her at the same time we found out about our father’s death.”
She smiled. “It’s nice that you finally found each other.”
“More like she found us.” He shrugged. “She knew how wild and unsettled her son was and after he died, she had a team of investigators search to see if he had any children so that she could set things right with all of us.”
“That’s when she got in touch with you and your siblings?” Heather asked, seemingly fascinated with what he was telling her.
“Among others.”
He could tell from her expression that Heather was thoroughly shocked. “You mean…he fathered more children than just you and your siblings?”
“It turns out our father took the biblical passage where it says ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ to heart.” He smiled as he parked the car in the circular drive in front of the mansion. “He also fathered three other sons by three different women in the ten years between fathering me and Luke and Arielle.”
Her eyes grew even wider. “Wow! He certainly was…um, active.”
“To say the least.”
Jake got out of the car and as he walked around to open the passenger door for her, he couldn’t help but see the parallel between the way he’d been living his life and the way his father had. And he wasn’t overly proud of it. But he was different from his father in one very important way. Jake was going to be there for Mandy where his father had failed his children in every way possible.
When Heather got out of the car to stand in front of him, he didn’t hesitate to put his arms around her. “I know it seems like I’ve been living my life a lot like my father did, and maybe to a certain extent, I have. But let me assure you, I’ll always be there for Mandy…and for you.”
“Jake—”
“I mean it, Heather. I’m not the irresponsible jerk my father was.”
Deciding that enough had been said about his notorious father and atypical family, he let his gaze travel from her silky hair swept up into a stylish twist, down the length of her black strapless cocktail dress, to her impossibly high, black heels. In L.A. they had a colorful phrase for those kind of shoes and he seriously doubted that she realized some women wore them to send a message that they were open to a night of unbridled passion.
Groaning, he raised his head to rest his forehead against hers. “Do you have any idea how sexy you are? How beautiful?”
Before she had the chance to speak, Jake teased and coaxed her mouth with his own until she granted him the access he sought. But he was completely unprepared and not at all disappointed when Heather took control of the kiss and touched her tongue to his.
At first tentative, her shy stroking sent electric sparks to every nerve in his being. As she gained confidence and engaged him in a game of advance and retreat, the sparks touched off a flame in the pit of his belly that quickly had him wondering if he was about to burn to a cinder.
The reaction of his body was instantaneous. He hadn’t become aroused this fast since his teens.
With his knees threatening to buckle and his head swimming from a serious lack of blood to the brain, he reluctantly broke the caress. If he didn’t put an end to the kiss, and right now, he was in real danger of making love to her right there on the steps of the veranda.
“Honey… I can’t believe… I’m going to say this.” He stopped long enough to draw some much needed air into his lungs. “Unless you’re ready to go upstairs with me—to my room, my bed—we’d better call it a night.”
He watched her passion-flushed cheeks turn a deep shade of rose a moment before she shook her head. “I’m sorry… I…not yet.” She suddenly clamped her mouth shut, then took a step away from him, then another. “I mean…no. That’s not going to happen.”
When Heather turned and fled up the steps, across the veranda and disappeared into the house, Jake reached up to unknot his tie and unbutton the collar of his shirt. Then, stuffing his hands in his pants pockets, took off at a brisk walk back down the long drive toward the entrance gates.
He couldn’t believe how the evening had turned out. He wasn’t in the habit of divulging personal information to the women he dated. It kept things from becoming complicated when he went his way and they went theirs.
But Heather was different. For reasons he didn’t care to contemplate, he wanted her to know all about him. And he wanted to learn everything about her. What had inspired her to choose her career? Did she have siblings? Were her parents still alive?
Shaking his head, he fell into a steady pace as he started back toward the house. He had no idea what had gotten into him. Yet as he got better acquainted with his only child, he had every intention of getting close to her mother, as well.
* * *
Checking on her daughter sleeping peacefully in her crib, Heather crossed the hall and, entering the bedroom she’d been using since Jake moved her and Mandy into the mansion, closed the door. What on earth had possessed her to take control of that kiss? And why had she the same as told him that at some point she would be ready to make love with him again? Had she lost her mind?
As she removed her heels and unzipped her dress, she thought about the details he’d shared with her about his family. There was a lot more to Jake Garnier than first met the eye or that he allowed people to see.
He was a self-made man who hadn’t always had an easy life. He’d been there right along with his twin brother to step in and accept the responsibility of raising their younger sister, while still managing to complete his education. That had been a monumental undertaking and she could tell that he wouldn’t have considered doing it any other way. He and his siblings had struggled to stay together and they’d made it. That certainly wasn’t something a self-indulgent playboy would do.
She slipped out of her dress and hanging it in the closet, took down her hair and changed into her nightgown. When she climbed into bed, she closed her eyes and hugged one of the pillows tightly against her.
The more she learned about Jake, the more she admired him. Considering she was finding it almost impossible to resist him, that was extremely dangerous. She couldn’t afford to let go of her preconceived notion that he cared little or nothing about anyone but himself. If she did, there was a very real possibility that she and her daughter would both end up getting hurt.
Lying there hugging the pillow, she must have drifted off to sleep because the next thing she knew, her daughter’s cries coming through the baby monitor awakened her. She tossed the pillow aside and, getting out of bed, reached for her robe. But the sound of Jake’s voice stopped her.
“What’s wrong, Mandy? Did my little honey bunny have a bad dream?” He must have taken the spare receiver to his room before he turned in for the night.
As she listened to him comfort their daughter, tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. It was clear from the tone of his voice that he loved Mandy, and Heather knew as surely as she knew her own name that he would be just as committed and protective of their daughter as any father could possibly be.
Without a second thought, she quietly opened her door and tiptoeing across the hall, watched Jake gently cradle Mandy to his bare chest. She waited until he put their sleeping daughter back in the crib, then walked out into the hall. “I appreciate your trying to let me sleep.”
Running his hand through his thick hair, he shook his head. “Too bad it didn’t work out.”
When they both fell silent, Heather found it hard not to stare. Dressed in nothing but a pair of navy silk pajama bottoms, he looked absolutely…yummy. She suddenly felt warm all over.
“Heather, are you all right?”
“I…um, yes.” She needed to make her escape while she still had the presence of mind to do it.
His slow smile said that he knew exactly what she’d been thinking. “I like the way you look, too.” Reaching out, he traced one of the thin spaghetti straps of her gown with his index finger. “You make turquoise look real good, honey.”
“I thought that was supposed to be…the other way around,” she said, realizing that she’d forgotten all about her robe when she’d heard Jake talking to the baby. “Isn’t the color supposed to complement the person wearing it?”
“Not in your case, Heather.” He trailed his finger down the strap to the gown’s rounded neckline. “You make everything you wear sexy.”
A shiver flowed through her when the tip of his finger lightly grazed the slope of her breast. “I’m…going back to…my room.”
He took her into his arms. “I’d rather you stay with me.”
“Out here in the hall?”
Staring up at him, she knew she was playing with fire. The feel of him holding her and the rich sound of his voice lowered to an intimate timbre caused an ache that she knew for certain only he could ease.
“I was thinking more like my room.” His seductive smile sent her pulse into overdrive.
What she wanted was to go with him. What she needed was peace of mind. And that would be in serious jeopardy if she let her heart overrule her head. She took a deep breath as she summoned every ounce of strength she possessed. “I want you to go to your room and… I’ll go to mine.”
“Are you certain that’s what you really want, Heather?”
They both knew she was telling a huge lie. The last thing she wanted was to go back alone to the big empty bed across the hall. But making love with Jake would only add another wrinkle to their already complicated situation, not to mention pose a serious risk to her heart.
“Y-yes.” Turning to go across the hall to her room, she wished she’d sounded more convincing. “Good night, Jake.”
When he placed his hand on her shoulder to stop her, the look in his amazing blue gaze caused her heart to beat double time. “You can only run from this—from us—for so long.” He leaned forward to kiss her with such tenderness she thought she might do something stupid like give in. “Sleep well, sweet Heather.”
As she watched him stroll down the hall toward the master suite, she had to lean against the door frame to keep her knees from folding beneath her. How on earth was she ever going to be able to resist such blatant sexuality?
She somehow managed to walk into the bedroom and close the door. If it was just a matter of physical attraction, she was pretty sure she’d be successful. But the more she learned about Jake and the more she saw how much he cared for their daughter, the closer she came to listening to her heart. And that was something she couldn’t let happen again.
She climbed into bed and hugged the pillow close again. There was no doubt about it. If she intended to survive Jake’s visit to Hickory Hills, she was going to have to keep her emotions in check. She was in danger of losing a lot more than her heart if she didn’t. They still had yet to discuss how they were going to raise Mandy, and considering the high-handed way he’d relieved her of most of her duties, she might end up losing her job.
But as she lay there thinking about how it felt when he touched her, held her, she knew that keeping her wits about her was going to be all but impossible to do. She was falling for him all over again and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to stop it.
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