Secret Love

“Probably not, unless you need something. I’ll be out on the range most of the day. Blaylock, my housekeeper and cook, will be here, and he’ll be glad to help you anyway he can. Just pick up the phone.”

“All right. Is there any particular day that you might be expecting visitors to the ranch?”

Jake knew the reason she was asking. That would be the day she would want to stay out of sight. “My veterinarian comes by every Thursday morning between ten and twelve to check on the cows. And then there’s my family. They may drop by anytime. But most of them know that this time of year is a busy one for me here at the ranch and they usually limit their visits.” Jake let out a deep chuckle. “Except for my mother. She thinks anytime is the right time for her visits. Usually one of my brothers will let me know in advance of her visits since one of them has to bring her. I’m her youngest son, and she won’t let me forget it.”

“Sounds like the Madaris family is a rather close one.”

“We are.” He couldn’t help but grin when he thought about his brother and the nieces and nephews that he was close to. “It’s been nice talking to you, Diamond. Good night.”

“Good night, Jacob, and thanks again for calling.”

After hanging up the phone, Jake closed his eyes to visualize Diamond’s features, as he had last seen them that day. The darkness of her eyes, the full lushness of her lips and a mouth that had definitely been ripe for kissing had held him captive.

“Is there any reason you’re standing in the middle of my kitchen with your eyes closed and looking downright silly?”

Jake’s eyes snapped open. Blaylock, the elderly man who had worked for him more years than he cared to count, stood in the doorway staring at him.

“Uhh, no reason. Well…I guess I’d better finish up with this,” Jake said, holding up the book that contained the cows’ breeding records.

Before Blaylock could ask him any more questions, he quickly moved out of the kitchen, went into his study and closed the door behind him.

Diamond placed the mystery novel she had been reading aside. The plot was a good one, and the characters were interesting, but the book could not hold her attention. No matter how hard she tried to get into the story, her mind and thoughts kept drifting.

She could not get Jacob Madaris out of her mind.

Standing, she walked across the room to look out of the window. The night was lonely and black, and the smell of the rich, wet earth filled the air. She turned her attention back to the room and looked around. Once again she marveled at how beautiful the cabin was. Jacob had built it, yet he had never stayed in it.

Returning to the overstuffed leather wing chair, she curled her legs beneath her. What was there about Jacob Madaris that she found so intriguing, so overpowering and so beguiling? Oh, he was a good-looking man, there was no doubt of that, but there was something else about him that pulled at her.

It would be absolutely, positively foolish to deny she was attracted to him, but then it would be just as equally foolish if she even considered doing anything about it. She thought about all the hell she’d gone through in her short one-year marriage to Samuel. There had been the arguments, the accusations, the bouts of jealous rages and then the betrayal. In the end, a man she had loved, and whom she thought had loved her in return, had shown his true colors. He had shown her just what he was capable of and had ended up being her worst enemy.

And that had hurt.

During the days and months following her divorce, she had worked herself into a frenzy, making one movie after another, allowing no rest in between and not allowing time for her pain to heal.

Sterling, being the good friend that he was, had detected her turmoil. He had known she wasn’t as strong as she had pretended to be. And so, with her doctor’s advice, he had decided to do something about it. He had thought that three weeks in a secluded cabin on the grounds of Whispering Pines would heal all. But what he probably had not counted on was her having such a gripping and profound attraction to his friend.

Diamond gave a quiet laugh. In his haste to help her, Sterling had unknowingly placed her right smack in the middle of the lion’s den.

Chapter 3

As Jake rounded the corner of his barn, he came across a group of his men who were standing together talking.

“I’m telling you guys the truth. I did see Diamond Swain,” Lowell Brown was saying to the men gathered around him. “I saw her from a distance. She was in the south pasture picking berries.”

Jake stopped in his tracks and shook his head, frowning. It had been three days since Diamond had arrived and already there had been more Diamond Swain sightings on Whispering Pines than there were Elvis sightings around the country. At least half a dozen of his men claimed to have gotten a glimpse of her at one time or another. He couldn’t help but wonder if any of them had actually seen Diamond or if it was just a figment of their overactive imaginations. He doubted she had even left the cabin since she didn’t have any sort of transportation to do so. She was to call him when she wanted to use one of his horses to go riding. So far, he had not heard from her. Nor had he seen her since the day he had picked her up from the airstrip and taken her to the cabin. He had no idea what she’d been doing the last three days, and frankly, he didn’t want to know. Just like he had originally planned, he was trying his best to ignore the fact that she was there.

Hearing his men talk about her wasn’t helping matters.

“Don’t you guys have work to do?”

Just as he’d known they would, the group of men disbanded immediately. Jake continued inside the barn to saddle his horse. The computerized range monitor had detected that a part of the fencing was down near the south pasture. If that was the case, it needed to be repaired as soon as possible. It wouldn’t do for a bull from another breed to get on his land and mate with his pureblood Longhorns.

A brisk breeze ruffled the treetops as Jake rode away. One part of his mind was on the business he had to take care of with the fence. The other was on Diamond. He didn’t want to think about her, but he did. And although he kept trying to convince himself that he really didn’t want to know, he couldn’t help wondering what she had been doing the last three days.

As he trotted his horse up the narrow slit of a trail that led to the south pastures, he knew that before he returned to the ranch he would stop by the cabin and find out.

A satisfied smile played at Diamond’s lips as she stood back and gazed at the tray of cookies she had just taken out of the oven. She couldn’t remember the last time she had taken the time to bake anything. But after finding that cookbook in one of the kitchen cabinets, she’d been tempted to do it. Baking had stirred up memories of how as a child, she used to work alongside her grandmother in the kitchen. Those had been happy times for her.

Diamond inhaled the aroma that filled the kitchen. She hoped the cookies tasted as good as they smelled. The recipe had been a fairly simple one to follow and upon discovering that the cabin’s kitchen was stocked with all the ingredients she would need, she had gotten busy, enjoying herself immensely. Baking the cookies had kept her from thinking about Jacob. But now that she was finished, thoughts of him began to fill her mind again.

Sighing deeply, she removed her apron and placed it over the chair before opening the door and stepping out on the deck. Other than the mere bits and pieces she had gotten out of Sterling, she knew very little about Jacob Madaris, and a part of her knew she should leave it at that. But then another part of her couldn’t. In their brief meeting, the man had stirred feelings inside of her that she had thought she would never feel again.

At thirty-one she no longer believed in love for ever after. If she had been smart, she would have stopped believing in love altogether at the age of twenty-two when her father had married for the fifth time. But somehow after meeting Samuel at a fund-raiser for AIDS Awareness, she had convinced herself that Samuel Tate, race-car driver extraordinaire, was the key to her happiness.

A year later, she had painstakingly discovered that no one was the key to her happiness. She had accepted the fact that just like her father, when it came to love, it wasn’t for her. But unlike him, she didn’t need five failed marriages to convince her of that.

Actually Jack Swain still wasn’t convinced. After recently meeting the woman he was currently involved with, Diamond had a feeling that her father of seventy-one was about to tie the knot for the sixth time, with a woman young enough to be his daughter.

Some people never learned. But she was not one of them.

She squinted her eyes against the fading bright sunlight when she heard the sound of a horse and rider coming toward the cabin from across the high prairie. Her pulse quickened as she leaned against the post and watched their approach. Horse and man seemed attuned to each other.

The grounds surrounding the cabin were covered by a huge shadow as the sun began making its slow descent beyond the mountains. The setting was beautiful. But nothing, she thought, looked more beautiful than the man approaching on horseback. His movements were fluid and in full control of the huge animal beneath him. As she watched Jacob come closer, she became painfully aware of just how much she had wanted to see him again.

Unbeknownst to Diamond, Jake was thinking that very same thing about her, and that admission wasn’t easy for him. In fact, it downright irritated him. He managed a tight smile when he reached her and sat up straighter in his saddle. His fingers gripped the reins tight as he tried to still his horse, not to mention the wild beating of his pulse.

Jake looked her over, suddenly realizing just how young she was. With him being forty-two, there had to be at least a ten-to twelve-year difference in their ages. He wondered why that fact seemed important to him now. He lifted his brow when he noticed something else about her. He couldn’t help smiling a little when he asked, “Who won the fight? You or the flour?”

At first Diamond looked confused. Then a chuckle escaped her when she realized what he was talking about. She looked down at herself and chuckled again. Flour covered most of her clothing. She then raised her head and smiled up at him. “Would you believe I actually had on an apron?”

Jake shook his head. With a smile like the one she had just given him, he could believe just about anything. “I don’t even want to think about how the kitchen looks.”

She laughed. “I have to admit it’s not the neat, clean place it was when I arrived three days ago. But I promise to get things back to normal.” A huge grin covered her face. “I had so much fun baking.”

Jake chuckled and nodded. There was even a dab of flour on her nose and cheek. “Yeah, I can tell.”

Diamond looked up at him. Even sitting on a horse, he looked tall, lean and muscular. There were some qualities about him that reached out to her: strength and capability. “I was just about to sit down and enjoy some of the fruits of my labor. Would you like to join me for cookies and milk?” she found herself asking him.

Jake looked at her thoughtfully as he shifted in his saddle. Common sense told him to decline her offer. After all, it was pretty close to dinnertime and as usual Blaylock had probably prepared a feast. But the thought of sitting down at a table, eating cookies and drinking milk with Diamond was a whole lot nicer than sitting down to dinner with Blaylock and a few of the men who lived on the ranch. He glanced at the cabin before glancing back down at her. “Cookies and milk, huh?”

Diamond smiled. “Yes. Fresh-baked cookies and a tall, cold glass of milk. You can’t go wrong with that, Jacob.”

Jake nodded as he dismounted, thinking that in truth, he could easily go wrong with just about anything involving Diamond. He followed her inside the cabin, gritting his teeth and calling himself all kinds of names for having such a weak resistance to her.

The echo of his boots sounded on the hardwood floor when he stepped inside the kitchen and glanced around. Pots, pans and dishes were piled in the sink and a dust of flour covered the floor. For once the kitchen actually looked used. When he had built the cabin, he had added additional square footage in the kitchen on the assumption that it would get plenty of use. But Jessie had had other plans.

Diamond saw Jake glance around and mistook the meaning of his silence. “I’ll clean up the mess,” she said warily as she watched his expression.