“That’s great news! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Evie wanted to spring the news herself at Sunday dinner, so be sure to act surprised.” Randy moved an arm across his chest. “She’s a very, very strong woman, a survivor, just like you. You need to think only about your blessings, Jake Harkner, and blessing number five will be here in about six months.”
He smiled sadly. “When those two little girls put their arms around my neck and give me kisses, I wonder sometimes what they will think of me when they find out the truth about Grandpa’s past.”
“They will always know and remember you the way you are now. Your past won’t make a bit of difference, because they never knew the old Jake.” Randy leaned up to meet his gaze. “And you are going to keep your promise that all the grandchildren will know everything when they get old enough to understand. We aren’t going to hide anything from them like you did with Lloyd, Jake. We both know how that turned out.”
Jake reached up to toy with her hair. “I can’t very well avoid it, now that Jeff’s book about me is in stores. According to Jeff’s last letter, the Evening Journal is even serializing the story in weekly segments.” He sighed. “I just worry that the past isn’t through with me.”
Randy rested her head on his chest. “Jake, that book needed to be written so people would understand, and we can set the money aside for the grandchildren. It’s something you can leave them.”
“Oh, I’m leaving them with something, all right. A legacy they have to live down.”
“Nonsense. No trouble has come from any of it. If anything, it’s made people in Longmont and Boulder and Denver and anyplace else we go look at you like some famous character they want to get to know.”
He caressed her ash-blond tresses. “Yeah, well, maybe for all the wrong reasons.”
Randy kissed his chest. “The Holmses and the Larsons are good neighbors, and a lot of people we’ve met since coming to Colorado truly want to be your friend, Jake.”
“I find that questionable. My only real friends are my family, and maybe the men who work for me and Lloyd. Some of them might seem like worthless drifters to someone on the outside, but I know a good man when I see one, and Cole and Pepper and the rest of them are good men.”
“I suppose, but that cattle buyer’s wife who flirted shamefully with you when they visited the ranch a few weeks ago also wanted to be a real friend.”
Jake frowned as he rolled her onto her back, then moved on top of her again. “You jealous of that cattle buyer’s wife?”
“Maybe.”
“Hell, you know I’m a good boy. There isn’t a woman in all of Colorado who can hold a candle to you.”
“And there isn’t a woman in all of Colorado who can resist your gloriously fetching smile.” Her eyes teared. “It’s so nice to see you smile more often, Jake.”
“Well, for once I have plenty to smile about.”
Randy traced a finger over his lips. “I so love lying here in your arms, everything so quiet, me so safe right here with you.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Make love to me again.”
He kissed behind her ear. “That an order?”
“Yes. You’re a hard man to give orders to, but you’re so obedient when I get you in bed.”
“I aim to please.”
“And you please me just fine.”
There was no foreplay this time, just a slower buildup of kissing and touching that led to the ecstasy of mating again. Jake took her with a little more deliberateness, his way of making sure she knew she was the only woman in his life, his only reason for existing. He loved this new peace they’d found, prayed it would not end this time and that nothing could separate them ever again. He still had trouble with blaming himself for the hell his son went through after learning about Jake’s past and losing him for the four years he spent in prison—or the guilt over what Evie suffered at the hands of his enemies back in Oklahoma.
But that was all behind them now. Surely the worst was finally over.
Two
Peter Brown set his pipe aside when he heard the jangle of the doorbell. As he rose from the mahogany-colored leather chair behind the desk in his den, his wife walked past the doorway. The several slips under the taffeta skirt of her deep blue dress rustled with each step.
“I’ll get it,” she told Peter.
“We have servants for that,” he reminded her.
“I am perfectly capable of answering a door, Peter,” she answered.
Peter smiled sadly. After losing his first wife, and then falling in love with the wrong woman back in Oklahoma—a woman who would never belong to anyone but Jake Harkner—he felt protective and possessive of Treena, a woman in her forties who was quite beautiful and who understood lost love. She’d been widowed for two years when he married her within a year after returning to Chicago—a move he’d made in an effort to forget Randy Harkner.