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A Weaver Baby
Allison Leigh
One night – one baby! JD Clay has long ago given up her dream of having children and poured her heart and soul into her career as a horse trainer. Until a night of passion with her jet-setting boss, Jake Forrest, results in an unexpected but desperately desired consequence.But when Jake offers JD financial support, a place in his bed and not much more, JD bolts home to Weaver, Wyoming. Jake might be drop-dead gorgeous, wealthy and brimming with Southern charm, but JD knows he’s not daddy material. Or so she thinks…
“What are you nervous about?”
If her face got any hotter, her blood was going to steam right out of her ears. “Nothing, and good night, Mr Forrest. You should go play with your debutantes,” JD said as she turned to go.
His hand on her shoulder stopped her dead in her tracks. “I’m not interested in any debutantes.”
She sent up a breathless prayer for her fleeing common sense to get back where it belonged. But the light touch of his fingers on her shoulder didn’t move away, nor did her common sense trot on back to the barn. “Mr Forrest–”
“Most of the crew calls me Jake.” His fingers finally moved, sliding down her shoulder, grazing over her bare elbow beneath the short-sleeved shirt, only coming to a stop when they reached her wrist. He pressed his thumb against her frantic pulse. “But not you, not even after all these years. Why is that?”
“I like to keep things professional.” Unfortunately, her low, husky voice sounded anything but.
A Weaver Baby
by
Allison Leigh
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ALLISON LEIGH started early by writing a Halloween play that her school class performed. Since then, though her tastes have changed, her love for reading has not. And her writing appetite simply grows more voracious by the day.
She has been a finalist for the RITA® Award and the Holt Medallion. But the true highlights of her day as a writer are when she receives word from a reader that they laughed, cried or lost a night of sleep while reading one of her books.
Born in Southern California, Allison has lived in several different cities in four different states. She has been, at one time or another, a beautician, a computer programmer and a secretary. She has recently begun writing full time after spending nearly a decade as an administrative assistant for a busy neighbourhood church. She currently makes her home in Arizona with her family. She loves to hear from her readers, who can write to her at PO Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772, USA.
Other books by
Available in September 2010
from Mills & Boon®
Special Moments™
The Texas Billionaire’s Bride
by Crystal Green
&
The Texas Bodyguard’s Proposal
by Karen Rose Smith
Kids on the Doorstep
by Kimberly Van Meter
&
Cop on Loan
by Jeannie Watt
The Texan’s Tennessee Romance
by Gina Wilkins
&
The Rancher & the Reluctant Princess
by Christine Flynn
Loving the Right Brother
by Marie Ferrarella
A Weaver Baby
by Allison Leigh
A Small-Town Temptation
by Terry McLaughlin
A Not-So-Perfect Past
by Beth Andrews
For my family.
Prologue
“Heads up.” The warning came in accented English. “He’s got her highness with him.”
J. D. Clay gave Miguel a wry smile. “She can’t be that bad.” The man who owned the thoroughbreds she and Miguel Perez worked with had married the “highness” after all. Jake and Tiffany Forrest even had twin sons, though in the short time since Miguel had hired J.D. to work in the stables at Forrest’s Crossing, she hadn’t yet seen the boys.
“She’s worse,” Miguel said under his breath as he put a wide smile on his face while the couple in question strode along the hectic shed row toward them. “Beautiful an’ no good for da boss.”
J.D. frowned a little, but she’d quickly learned that gossip and rumor were always ripe in the stables, particularly when it came to Jake and his beauty-queen wife. They looked like they belonged on a movie screen rather than here, with dirt under their feet and the perfume of horse manure in the air.
Tiffany Forrest was ivory skinned and black haired. A modern-day version of Snow White, only this one had an elaborate race-day hat perched on her head that would have cost the dwarfs their entire mine. And her tall, athletically built husband, Jake, was simply the description in the dictionary beneath TallDarkandHandsome. Together, the two were—well, striking didn’t even come close.
They stopped next to the stalls that had very tasteful bronze FC plaques on them, and J.D. watched the man’s brown, intensely sharp gaze rove over his thoroughbreds there. One, Metal Cross, was running in the Kentucky Derby later that afternoon. His stable mate, June Cross, had won the Kentucky Oaks—a race for fillies only—the day before. “Everything set to go, Miguel?”
“Sí, sí.” Miguel was head trainer for Forrest’s Crossing and the diminutive Peruvian grinned widely. “Metal here, he gonna do it for us this year. Bring you the roses jus’ like when your daddy won ’em.”
“That’s what I want to hear.” Jake’s coffee-brown eyes skipped over Miguel’s head. “J.D.,” he greeted. “Everything looking good with our filly, there?”
Before J.D. could offer a response, the glossy woman at his side looked up at him with a smile that was only exceeded in brilliance by the jewels draped almost nonchalantly around her throat. “Jake, everyone’s waiting for us up top,” she reminded.
“We’ve got time,” Jake assured. He was still looking at them and missed the sexy pout his wife aimed his way.
J.D. didn’t. “Junie’s in great shape, Mr. Forrest,” she said as she ducked under June’s neck and moved to the far side, running the soft brush over the beautiful filly’s flank. She didn’t need to see the superior glint in Mrs. Forrest’s eyes to confirm that she was much more suitable inside the stable, than outside of it. “Metal’s going to run just as great as Junie did, yesterday.”
Jake’s smile was slightly crooked as he tucked his hand around his wife’s rail-thin waist and turned to go. “Then we’ll see you in the winner’s circle, won’t we?”
“Oh, Jake.” J.D. could hear Tiffany laughing lightly as she walked away with her husband. “Don’t go getting that poor girl’s hopes up. She’s not going to be there with us.”
J.D. kept grooming June. She already knew that if Metal ran his way to the winner’s circle, it would only be the owners, their trainer and the jockey smiling for pictures and accepting trophies and winnings. She’d be back here, mucking out the stalls and polishing up tack.
She was part of the stable woodwork while the couple was definitely Millionaire’s Row.
They were welcome to it.
Give J.D. horses any day of the week. They never disappointed her. And she never disappointed them.
Chapter One
Five years later
“You didn’t go out with the rest of the boys?” Jake’s voice was deep and in some fanciful part of J.D.’s mind, she imagined it felt like a soft blanket sliding down her bare skin.
“I didn’t want to cramp their style.” She sent him a smile over her shoulder, but the wryness of it was mostly for herself. As the only female in the entire stable crew at Forrest’s Crossing, she’d never been one of “the boys.” She was simply an assistant horse trainer on Jake’s sizable payroll who—according to Miguel—usually had one too many opinions of her own.
Though this time, her opinion when it came to Latitude had proved right on the money.
Literally.
From the first burst out of the starting gate to the way the thoroughbred sailed across the finish line of The Sanford, the horse had been pure poetry in motion. He’d raced as brilliantly as J.D. had known he could, so of all the crew from Forrest’s Crossing, she was probably the least surprised.
And except for Latitude Crossing’s owner, Jake—who’d collected the tidy first-place purse he didn’t remotely need—she was probably the happiest.
Satisfaction curved her lips all over again, and it didn’t even matter that Miguel had been the one to claim the glory of Latitude’s unlikely win. He’d been so elated, he’d told the stable crew that drinks were on him, and they’d all tumbled out of the barn, looking ready to continue the celebration that had been going on since they’d touched down in Georgia from Saratoga.
Even though it was late, J.D. was still celebrating, too; but she preferred to do it in the company of the real winner.
She folded her arms over the top rail of the stall, looking at the gleaming bay contentedly munching his way through fresh feed as if he had done nothing remarkable at all. “Look at you acting all modest,” she chided the colt. “You ought to be wearing a crown.”
“The Triple Crown,” Jake murmured behind her.
That shiver dashed down her spine again. She’d like to blame it on the prospect of Latitude joining those few elite horses in history that had attained the coveted achievement, but she’d never been one to lie to herself.
The shiver came from Jake. Not from the idea of Latitude finding the elusive Triple Crown glory in the coming year.
“His chance at that is nearly a year away,” she said. The famous races that comprised the Triple Crown were run by three-year-old thoroughbreds only, beginning in May with the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes two weeks later and capped off with the Belmont Stakes in early June. Which meant a thoroughbred had one chance in their lifetime to accomplish the feat. “And who knows what Miguel will want to do between now and then,” she added practically. Miguel fired people at the drop of a hat. The fact that she’d survived his mercurial nature for five years was a record for Forrest’s Crossing.
“If he’s smart, he’ll leave you alone with Latitude. Miguel’s more interested in Platinum Cross, anyway.” Platinum was sired by one of Forrest’s Crossing’s most successful horses. But even Metal Cross hadn’t brought home the “crown.” He’d won both the Preakness and the Belmont. But he hadn’t won the Derby. Nor had any other horse for Jake.
They still made the trek every year to Churchill Downs. The only things that changed were the names of the thoroughbreds running for him, and the names of the glossy women on his arm who’d revolved through his world since his divorce shortly after J.D. came to Forrest’s Crossing.
He folded his arms over the top rail next to her, holding an open bottle of Cristal in one hand and a slender champagne flute in the other.
He held them just as casually as if they were a dime-store mug and a long-neck beer. But the expensive champagne was much more in keeping with the off-white silk shirt he wore. And the crystal flute was probably of the irreplaceable, antique variety, inherited from his father and great-grandfather just as he’d inherited Forrest’s Crossing.
It wasn’t the quality of the champagne or the stemware that made her nerves jumpy, though. There was wealth in her upbringing, too. Just not on the scale of Jake’s.
His family owned Forco, one of the largest textile firms in the country. For him, thoroughbreds were merely a personal passion that he could well afford to indulge. And where his family was into jets and setting, hers was more into jeans and settling down.
No, what made her nerves want to dance a jig had one, simple cause.
Him.
She slid her gaze away from his arms and those long, lean fingers, focusing again on the oblivious colt as she discreetly tried to put a little space between their arms. She needed every inch she could get just to breathe around the man.
“Miguel will take over again now that he’s seen for himself what kind of heart Latitude has,” she predicted, clinging to the thread with a desperation that she prayed didn’t show. Miguel was the head trainer. J.D., an underling. He had every right to make whatever decisions he wanted.
“Does that bother you?” Jake shifted slightly and his arm grazed hers, right across that spare inch she’d managed to gain.
She sucked in a silent breath and made herself remain still. It was no easy task. “Crossing the finish line first isn’t what I love about horses.” Her voice was blithe.
Latitude lifted his head, his large, liquid eyes looking into hers. He blew out a noisy breath, as if he were laughing at her nonchalance.
She stared back into the colt’s eyes. Mind your own business, Lat.
He snorted again and stretched his long neck over the rail, butting his nose against her shoulder.
She fell back a step, laughing softly despite herself.
Jake steadied her and he nudged Latitude’s head away. “Behave.”
“He just wants this.” J.D. pulled a peppermint out of the pocket of her FC-emblazoned polo shirt. She unwrapped the mint and held it out.
Latitude eagerly nipped the candy off her palm.
“Can’t blame him for that.” The corner of Jake’s mouth curled slightly and his gaze seemed to linger on her shirt.
More specifically, on the pocket above her breast.
Admittedly, it had been years since she’d even flirted with a man, but she wasn’t so out of practice that she didn’t recognize interest when it—all six-plus feet topped with thick brown hair and hooded eyes—was staring her in the face.
Her cheeks heated when her nipples pinpointed eagerly beneath the butter-yellow cotton.
She stepped back to the rail, careful to keep that space between her arm and Jake’s. Squashing her breasts against the hard rail didn’t do a thing, though, to squash the warmth zipping around in her veins.
