The #1 Bestsellers Collection 2011(248)

The chance she was taking was worth it. She had to believe that. She had to try. Otherwise, she’d always wonder if she’d given up on Adam too soon.

“I know that, Mama, I do,” she said, her voice getting more determined with every word. “But sometimes, you can only get to happy by going through the pain.”





“That wife of yours is a real hand with horses,” Sam Ottowell said as he thumbed through a sheaf of receipts for ranch supplies.

“Yes.” Adam smiled. “She is.” Then he leaned over his foreman’s desk and pulled a notebook toward him. Making a few quick notations, he dropped it again. “I want you to call Flanagan’s. Get an extra order of oats out here. With Gina’s horses here, too, we’re going through twice as much.”

“Right,” Sam said, leaning back in his chair, propping his hands on his abundant belly. “She’s really something, you know? Got those damn animals following her around like trained puppies or something. Girl’s got a gift with horses.”

She had a lot of gifts, Adam thought. Most particularly, she had a gift for throwing his perfectly organized life into turmoil. He’d hardly had a moment to himself since entering into this little wedding bargain. And the moments he did manage to find, his thoughts usually turned to her anyway.

“You hear those kids?” Sam asked, cocking his head as if to better hear the laughter drifting to them from the corral.

“Hard not to,” Adam snapped. Though God knew he was trying.

Sam’s features went stiff and blank in a heartbeat. He sat up, reached for the Rolodex and asked, “You going to call Simpson about the hundred-acre lot he wants to lease?”

“Yeah,” Adam said, grabbing on to the change of subject with both hands. He checked his watch, then said, “I’ll call his office tomorrow. We can work out—”

Whatever else he might have said was cut off at the sound of a scream shredding the air.

With Sam right behind him, Adam raced out of the barn, heart in his throat and skidded to a stop when that scream turned into peals of laughter. His gaze shot to the corral and everything in him fisted into a tight knot.

A boy, no more than four or five, was seated on the back of one of the Gypsy horses. The child’s parents were standing outside the corral, watching the scene with indulgent smiles as a daughter, no more than ten, hopped up and down impatiently awaiting her turn on the horse.

Gina walked alongside the tiny would-be cowboy, her hand on the boy’s thigh, holding him in place while she grinned up at him. The boy’s delighted laughter spilled into the air like soap bubbles and Adam wrestled with the pain lodged in the center of his chest.

He couldn’t move. Couldn’t tear his gaze from Gina and the boy as they moved slowly around the inside of the corral. He noticed everything. The sunlight on the boy’s blond hair, the steady gait of the horse, the patient smile on Gina’s face. Again and again, the boy laughed as he petted and stroked the mare’s neck, his tiny fingers getting lost in the thick, black mane.

“Uh, I’ll just head on back to the office,” Sam said, and slipped away unnoticed.

While his vision narrowed to that solitary child, Adam’s mind filled with images of another boy. On another sunny day. Another lifetime ago.

“I want to stay with you, Daddy.” Jeremy’s big brown eyes were filled with tears and his lower lip trembled.

“I know you do,” Adam said, checking his wristwatch and inwardly wincing. He was already late for a meeting. There were offers to be made, documents to be signed, dreams to be crushed. Instead of that wince, he smiled to himself. Since taking over the family ranch, he’d already made a difference.

He’d found new buyers for their grain and cattle. New tenants for the farmland and he had plans to rebuild the King stables.

If that meant spending less time with his wife and son than he would have liked, that’s the price he would pay. He was doing this for their future.

“Please let me stay,” Jeremy said and a single tear rolled down his cheek. “I’ll be good.”

“Jeremy,” he said, going down on one knee long enough to look his son in the eye. “I know you’d be good. But I’ve got work. I can’t play now anyway. You’ll have more fun with Mommy.”

Adam lifted his gaze to the woman standing behind his son. Monica didn’t look any happier than Jeremy, but rather than tears in her eyes, there was fire. Anger. An expression Adam had become more and more used to seeing.

Jeremy’s chin hit his chest and his narrow shoulders slumped in dejection. He rubbed the toe of his bright red tennis shoe in the dirt, sniffed loudly and ran one hand under his nose. “’Kay.”