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Her nerves felt like a match had been lit against them. It’d never been a secret that Evan hadn’t been her first choice where WITS was concerned. “What’s the matter, Evan? Feeling second-best?”
It didn’t matter that Evan’s one-time crush on her felt about a million years ago; not when it had been inspired just because he’d been fighting with his girlfriend—who’d happened to be her cousin, Lucy. Leandra still felt catty the moment the words left her lips.
He didn’t look fazed, though, when he leaned his hip against the wood cabinet about a foot closer to her than was comfortable. “I guess if either one of us were worried about that, we wouldn’t be here, now would we.” His deep voice was smooth. Friendly. Easy.
Yet…not.
She frowned, feeling off-kilter. And she didn’t know why. Evan had never been serious about her despite that one time when he’d claimed otherwise. He’d been too busy being in love with her cousin. Only Lucy had gone on to New York after high school for a career in dance, and Evan had never been serious about anyone since.
Particularly in college when, according to Jake, Evan had become a complete love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of man.
“I’ll take your silence as agreement with me,” he said after a moment. He reached past her and shut off the water, his arm brushing her shoulder as he did so.
She barely managed to keep from jumping out of her skin. “I’m not worried about a single thing,” she assured him.
His lashes drooped for a moment, as if he were studying something. “Good. Thanks for breakfast.”
Then he handed her the dishtowel that was folded over a knob, and walked out of the kitchen.
Leandra squeezed the towel between her hands and tried to ignore the unfathomable shivers that were sliding down her spine.
What had she been thinking?
Chapter Two
The sun had still not quite risen when Leandra returned to Sarah’s place. The little house was located in the center of Weaver, across from a park and the high school. The bungalow had been home to Leandra’s various aunts, and now Leandra’s cousin called it hers.
Not until now, though, had Leandra ever appreciated the charm in the little place.
No, she’d been too busy wanting to get out of Weaver to understand some of the nicer aspects of her hometown.
She parked behind the house near the garage and let herself in the back door. Like Evan’s place, it opened right into the kitchen and again, like Evan’s, it was as unlocked as it had been when Leandra had bolted out of it earlier.
She tried to be quiet as she dumped her purse in the second bedroom and padded into the single bathroom, where she flipped on the shower and waited for the hot water to steam up the small room. She felt cold to the bone.
She hadn’t exactly dressed for a cold morning trek over to Evan’s, after all. That was why she still felt haphazard shivers attacking her.
No way were they caused by Evan Taggart himself.
She stepped under the streaming water, nearly groaning with relief as the hot needles stung her skin.
“I thought I heard you leave already.” Sarah’s voice rose above the rush of water, breaking through Leandra’s dazed heat-giddiness.
Leandra looked around the tastefully striped shower curtain to see her cousin peeking around the corner of the door. “I did. I’ll just be a sec. I know you need to get ready for school.”
Sarah pushed the door open farther and entered. “Sorry,” she said as she flipped on the faucet and reached for her toothbrush. “Have a parent meeting before school this morning. Time’s tighter than usual.”
Leandra ducked back under the shower, which ran even hotter now that Sarah was using some cold water, and rinsed the shampoo out of her hair. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I could have stayed at the motel with the rest of the crew and not put you out.”
“You are not putting me out.” Sarah’s voice was muffled by the toothbrush. “Idiot.”
Leandra made a face and hurried through the motions. When she turned off the shower, Sarah tossed her a thick towel over the shower curtain. Leandra quickly toweled off and wrapped it around herself, then stepped out so her cousin could take over occupancy. “All yours.”
“Where were you earlier, anyway?” Sarah reached beyond the curtain and turned the water back on.
“Evan’s.” She dragged her fingers through her hair.
“In the middle of the night?” Sarah looked amused. “Anything you need to confess to Auntie Sarah?”
Leandra just shook her head as she left the bathroom. “I’ll put coffee on if you’ve got the time to drink it.”
“I always have time for coffee.” Sarah’s voice followed her down the short hall.
Sarah was a Clay, too. For the most part, the Clays were all inveterate coffee drinkers.
Leandra quickly dressed and started the coffee. The grind-your-own-beans kind that she’d sent Sarah the Christmas before. There was a half pot brewed by the time Sarah entered the kitchen. Her long, strawberry-blond hair was twisted into a thick wet braid that roped down to the middle of her back. She wore a loose-fitting knitted beige sweater over an ankle-length red skirt and looked exactly like what she was—a somewhat prim elementary school teacher.
Only Leandra knew her cousin wasn’t all prim and proper. They’d been thick as thieves while growing up, after all. “Here.” She handed Sarah a tall travel mug filled with black coffee.
“Thanks.” She took a sip, winced a little, and set the mug on the small kitchen table. “So, what was the deal with Evan? He trying to back out of the show?”
“He might hate every minute, but I’m not worried about him doing that. It’s been a long time since I moved away from Weaver, but I doubt Evan has changed in that regard. Particularly when the first episode airs in a few days.”
“True. He’s generally a reliable guy. But in what other regard is he supposed to have changed?”
Leandra shrugged. “None.”
Sarah looked skeptical, but she didn’t pursue the point. “So, you’re still going to be free tonight for supper, right? Family is all meeting at Colbys to talk about Squire’s surprise party.”
Squire Clay was their grandfather. “Friday night at Colbys. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Good. You’ve been so busy with the shoot since you arrived that hardly any of us have had a chance to sit down for long and visit with you.” She grinned as she tossed a jacket around her shoulders and grabbed up her satchel. “Everyone’s been bugging me to fill them in on all your latest, and I had to break their hearts by telling them there has been no latest, even for me.”
Leandra felt a quick knot in her stomach. Not even with Sarah had Leandra been able to share everything over the past several years.
Not since Emi had died.
How could she? Sarah—nobody—could ever understand just what Leandra had endured.
Endured because of her own failings.
“I’ll be there,” she promised. “After spending a day shooting with Evan and my crew, I’ll be more than ready to sit back and chill for a while.”
“Well, I promise we won’t make it too late of a night.”
Leandra smiled faintly. “There was a time when late nights didn’t stop us.”
Sarah’s light blue eyes twinkled. “True. But right now, you look like you need about twenty hours of sleep, my friend. And those days when we could play all night have passed me by. Too old, I’m afraid.”
“Old? Please. We’re only twenty-eight. I can still hold my own, even against Axel and Derek.”
“I seriously doubt it. Particularly where Axel is concerned. I know he’s your little brother and Derek is mine, but even he has said that Axel can wear him out. And they’re the same age.” She glanced at the round clock on the wall. “Gotta run. Hope things go well today.”
Leandra hadn’t even gotten her “thanks” out, before Sarah had hurried out the door.
She exhaled, her gaze slipping around the confines of the kitchen. Currently, it was painted in muted green tones. There were pretty pale yellow canisters lined neatly on the counter, matched in color by the placemats on the table and the woven towel draped over the oven door latch. The only mishmash of anything was the collection of photographs sticking to the front of the off-white refrigerator door.
She hadn’t looked closely at Sarah’s collection before. Hadn’t dared.
She still didn’t really want to look but, for some reason, her feet inexorably closed the distance until she was standing only inches away. Her heart was in her throat. Nausea twisted at her insides. She felt hot and cold all at once as she looked.
Her mind automatically dismissed the tiny snapshots that were distinctly school photographs. Sarah’s students, undoubtedly. And she really didn’t pay much attention to the assortment of milestones marked by someone’s trusty camera.
But the more she looked, the more she’d convinced herself that she did not want to see that beautiful, perfect face, the more she realized that the one face that was not captured here was the one face Leandra most wanted to see.
Her daughter’s. Emi.
Eyes burning deep inside her head, Leandra turned away. She felt shaky and her stomach pitched even more turbulently.
Sarah had removed Emi’s photographs.
There was no doubt in Leandra’s mind that her cousin’s refrigerator door had once been graced with many pictures of Emi.
Emi’s birth had marked the beginning of the family’s next generation. There had been dozens of pictures. Leandra had sent them herself. Taken them herself.
Her heart ached and she bolted for the bathroom, overwhelmed by nausea. But even after, huddling on the cool tile floor with a washcloth pressed to her face, there was no peace for her.
Coming home to Weaver, no matter how temporarily, was only making the pain inside her worse.
When she heard the distinctive ring of her cell phone from the kitchen, she dragged herself off the floor. There was only one caller programmed into her cell phone with that particular ring tone.
Beethoven’s Fifth.
It had been Ted’s idea of a joke when he’d been messing around with Leandra’s latest cell phone to link the dramatic tune to their boss’s phone number. Leandra hadn’t had a chance to figure out how to change it. Given her propensity for losing cell phones at the rate of two or three per year, was it any wonder that she didn’t sit down with the programming guide every time?
She made it to the kitchen and wearily pulled out one of the chairs as she flipped open her latest phone. “What’s up, Marian?”
“Have you talked to that vet of yours yet about our problem?”
A fresh pain crept between Leandra’s eyes. Only this pain, at least, was not one that tore her soul to shreds. “I don’t consider Evan’s love life our problem, Marian. That’s not the focus of WITS. Remember?” Her tone went a little dry. “We’re presenting his life as a veterinarian.”
“Hon, if that were all we were doing, we’d call WITS a documentary. Not reality TV.”
The only reason Marian wanted to call her show reality TV was because it sounded more contemporary. More appealing than a documentary series to her all-important demographic—women aged 24-35. The fact that Walk in the Shoes had been just that—a small, but relatively well-respected documentary series about people and the careers they chose—before Marian came on board over a year earlier was obviously unimportant to all but a few.
And arguing the point had been getting Leandra absolutely nowhere. “I’ll see what I can find out.” She crossed her fingers beneath the table. Childish, perhaps, but the best she could do for her conscience.
“Don’t just see, Leandra. Do. This guy you found may be eye candy, but sweets only go so far. I want spice!” Marian’s voice rose. “Either you find it for me, or I’ll find someone who will.” Marian let out a huge breath. “Now,” she said more reasonably and Leandra could picture her sitting there, smiling through her big white teeth. “Are we on the same page here?”
Leandra grimaced. “I understand your page perfectly, Marian. Unless there’s something else, I need to get on with it. We’ll be taping again in a few hours.”
“Fine. But don’t forget. Spice, Leandra, spice.”
Leandra hung up her phone and shoved it in her purse. “Spice,” she muttered. No doubt the reason why Marian had sent Ted unannounced into Evan’s house that morning. A quest for spice.
“Artificial insemination. Ought to look sexier than it is.”
Leandra frowned at Ted. It was late afternoon and they’d been taping since midmorning. It was a toss-up who was more tired. Leandra and her crew set up on the outside of a small arena, or Evan and his, working with a showy black horse on the inside.
“Breeding horses is not just a business. There’s an art to it.” She kept her voice low, not wanting to add any more disruption to the day’s already frustrating attempts. “And the insemination isn’t happening right now, anyway.”
“No, they have to get that black horse to shoot his—”
“Yes,” Leandra cut him off. She’d been listening to jokes about the semen collection process long enough.
“Well, I guess you’d know all about it, growing up here.”
Here was Clay Farm, the horse ranch that her father had founded when he and her mother had been newly married. “Mmm-hmm.” She kept finding herself more distracted by the action they were trying to film than by her duties behind the scene. More specifically, she was more distracted watching Evan.
It was ridiculous, really. The man stood the same height as her own father, Jefferson, who was working alongside Evan. He wore similar clothing—dusty blue jeans and a T-shirt. His short black hair was slightly disheveled and there was definitely a hint of a five-o’clock shadow darkening his jaw—and it was only around two in the afternoon.
What was it about the guy that was so intriguing?
“Earth to Leandra.”
She moistened her lips, dragging her gaze from Evan to focus on Ted. “What?”
“I asked if you’d ever done that to a horse?”
“Only a stallion,” Leandra reminded wryly, ignoring her cameraman’s suggestive tone, “and, yes, I’ve helped collect semen before. And before you start making comments, it’s business. Big business. Do you know how high stud fees can run for a really impeccable pedigree?”
It was a moot question, since they’d been talking about such matters most of the day. Northern Light had yet to prove himself at stud, but his sire had commanded stud fees in the six figures. “They’re having some problems with Northern Light there because he’s never been ground collected before. He’s inexperienced.”
“Inexperienced?” Ted grinned slightly. “I’ll bet it’s more like he wants a warm body to snuggle up to instead of that cold tube thing Evan’s holding.”
“It’s called an A.V.—an artificial vagina. Oh, heads-up,” Leandra warned. “Howard is bringing out the mare again to tease Northern Light.”
Ted trained the camera again on the group of men surrounding the stallion and started filming. Leandra stepped slightly away, watching Northern Light’s reaction to the mare. His ears perked. The horse’s gleaming black coat twitched. His tail swished.
Bingo, Leandra thought, smiling to herself as the horse tried to lunge forward against the teasing rail, wanting to get at the mare.
Her father, at Northern Light’s head, kept the stallion from getting light in the front, making the horse resist his natural urge to rear up and mount something. Preferably the mare that had clearly, finally, spurred the young stud’s libido.
Even Ted jumped a little at Northern Light’s sudden interest, and in Leandra’s memory, there were few occasions that managed to startle the cameraman. But, she was pleased to note, the camera didn’t waver.
A nervous hand tugged at Leandra’s elbow from behind. Janet Stewart, another crew member, was frowning mightily, looking worried about the sight of the half ton of horse flesh seeming to struggle against his handlers. The girl put her mouth close to Leandra’s ear. This was only her second shoot, but so far Leandra had been pleased with the quiet girl’s work. “The horse can’t hurt the men, can he?” she whispered.
Leandra shrugged. The truth was, a stallion could crush a man if he chose. But she’d grown up around horses. She knew her father’s capacity to handle the animals. He might be in his 60s now, but he was fitter than many men half his age. And she knew Evan’s capacity equaled her dad’s.
