“I’m offering you an amendment to that agreement.” Barely resisting the urge to pull her into his arms, he hastened to add, “You don’t have to make a decision about the move being permanent now. But I would like for you to give it some serious thought.” Unable to stop himself, he reached up to brush a wayward strand of hair from her soft cheek. “It would make life for you and Mandy a lot more comfortable than being cooped up in a space where there’s barely room for one.”
Before she could come up with any more excuses why she and Mandy shouldn’t live in the mansion permanently, he reluctantly dropped his hand to his side and crossed the foyer to enter the study. If he hadn’t put some distance between them, there had been a very real possibility that he would have acted on his first impulse to grab her and kiss her until she agreed to his proposal. And that would have been a huge mistake.
It would take a fool not to see that just like a magnetic force, the attraction between them was too strong to fight and impossible to resist. But at this point, she didn’t trust him anymore than she would a snake coiled to make a strike. And until he proved himself to her and they worked out an agreement to raise their daughter, he had no other choice but to bide his time and no doubt end up taking more than his share of cold showers.
He sighed heavily as he lowered himself into the chair behind the desk and reached for the phone. As he punched in his brother’s number, he thought about the irony of it all. The only woman he hadn’t been able to forget was back in his life, was the mother of his only child and thought him lower than the stuff she scraped off her boots after a trip through the stables.
“My life is just about as freaking wonderful as it can get right now,” he muttered sourly.
“As a matter of fact, mine is going pretty good, as well,” Luke said, laughing.
Wallowing in his own misery, Jake had missed hearing his brother answer the phone. “Good to hear, bro. How are things in Nashville?”
“We couldn’t be better. Haley has passed the point where morning sickness is an issue and we’re just waiting for the sonogram to see if we’re having a boy or a girl.” His twin sounded happier than Jake could ever remember.
“Glad to hear my favorite sister-in-law is feeling better,” he said, wondering if Heather had experienced a lot of problems with morning sickness when she’d been pregnant with Mandy.
They were both silent a moment before Luke asked, “So what’s wrong, Jake?”
“What makes you think there’s a problem?”
He wasn’t surprised by his brother’s intuitiveness. As with many twins, he and Luke shared a sixth sense where the other was concerned and instinctively knew when things weren’t going right. But Jake wasn’t entirely certain how to deliver the news that upon his arrival at Hickory Hills he’d discovered he had a daughter and avoid having to listen to the I-told-you-so speech that was sure to follow. Luke had been warning him for years that his “love ’em and leave ’em” ways were going to catch up to him one day.
“You’re talking to the only person who knows you better than you probably know yourself.” Luke paused. “So you want to tell me what’s going on?”
“I have a daughter.” Jake hadn’t meant to deliver the news quite so bluntly, but once the words were out, he realized there wasn’t any easier way to say it.
“Whoa! You want to back up and say that again?”
“You heard me,” Jake said, wanting to reach through the phone and throttle his twin. “I have a six-and-a-half-month-old daughter named Mandy.”
His brother was silent for so long, Jake wasn’t sure they hadn’t lost the connection. “And you found this out when you moved to the horse farm Emerald gave you?” Luke finally asked.
“Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “Heather’s the manager here at Hickory Hills. I’m betting when the old girl’s investigators found us, they discovered that a woman I met at a thoroughbred auction last year had become pregnant from our one night together.”
“That explains why you ended up in a place about as far removed from your life in Los Angeles as it’s possible to get,” Luke agreed. “Arielle and I wondered why you were given an enterprise that was totally out of your element when we were given businesses in our respective career fields.”
“I don’t know why Emerald didn’t just tell me about Heather and Mandy instead of blindsiding me like this,” Jake complained. “Didn’t she think I would step up and do the right thing?”
His brother made a strangled sound. “You’re getting married?”
It was Jake’s turn to choke. “Hell, no. You know how I feel about marriage. It’s not for me.”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” Luke advised. “I didn’t think I was husband material, either, and look at me now.”
“Whatever.”
They were silent a moment before Luke asked, “Why didn’t the baby’s mother tell you about the pregnancy?”
“She tried, but my secretary didn’t see fit to give me the messages.” Jake made a mental note to call the woman the first thing in the morning and discuss her not bothering to give him a list of callers.
“Ah, if you’ll remember, I told you—”
“Don’t say it, bro.”
Luke’s laughter grated on Jake’s nerves. “So when do we get to meet our niece and her mother?”
“That’s the reason I called. How would you and Haley like to come up to Louisville for the Southern Oaks Cup Classic in a couple of weeks? The favorite to win the race came along with the farm.”
“Sounds good,” Luke said. “I assume you’re inviting Arielle and Zach?”
“Of course, along with the rest of the clan.”
A few months ago, when he and his siblings learned that the most successful woman in the corporate jungle was their paternal grandmother, they’d also been informed that they had three half brothers. After meeting them at one of Emerald’s receptions and finding themselves in the unique position of being the unexpected heirs of one of the world’s richest women, they’d become friends.
“And before you ask, I fully intend to invite our illustrious grandmother and her stiff-as-a-board assistant, too. She and I are going to have a little talk about her withholding information about my daughter,” he added.