Secret Love (10 page)

She smoothed her hair back and glanced around, not wanting to think of her father any longer. “This is such a beautiful place. I don’t think I’ve seen anyplace on Whispering Pines that doesn’t leave me completely breathless. I’m really going to miss it here, Jacob.”

He gazed at her. “Are you?” he asked, wanting desperately to believe that she would, and that she did care something for the land he loved.

“Yes,” she replied.
And most assuredly I’m definitely going to miss you,
she wanted to say.

Jake reached out and traced a finger alongside her face. He felt her body tremble beneath his touch. He didn’t want to think about her leaving. He refused to do that. For now, he wanted to think about kissing her, loving her and being an intimate part of her. He didn’t want to think about why he was feeling that way, but the truth of the matter was that he was. He shook his head as if to clear it, but it didn’t work. Leaning toward her, he captured her lips with his, searching for some way to exorcise her from his mind before she wiggled her way into his heart.

Jake and Diamond spent the next couple of days together at the cabin or riding the range of Whispering Pines land. The more she saw of it, the more she fell in love with it. Whenever he had to leave to take care of things at the ranch, she would go with him. With all the men gone, the ranch looked deserted. Blaylock had taken advantage of the men’s short vacation to go and visit his sister, who lived in Waco.

The more time Jake and Diamond spent together and the more they got to know each other, the more their protective layers began peeling away. Both had
had what seemed like a lifetime of protecting themselves against hurt and pain.

Spending time with Jake also had its drawbacks for Diamond. The more times they were together, the more she was challenged to care more deeply for him and not to concern herself with making it to the top of her career. For the first time in a long time, she thought about having children and watching them grow under her and their father’s watchful eyes. In her thoughts, that man, the father of her children, would always be Jacob.

Each and every time those thoughts surfaced, she would push them away. She knew she had to be realistic. Both of them had endured former marriages that had left a bad taste in their mouths. They had suffered pain that they were both still trying to get over and deal with.

And then there would be the prying eyes of the world that would be fed by the gossip-hungry tabloids. They would never have a normal marriage. Diamond knew the only thing they could do was enjoy the time they had together and treasure the memories. And they were both content to do just that.

One afternoon Jake and Diamond had returned to the ranch after riding the range. They sat in his kitchen, sharing cups of tea that he had made. Dusk began covering the earth and silence surrounded the ranch. Blaylock and the men were still away.

“Jacob, this tea is delicious. What’s in it?”

Jake smiled. “I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.”

“A secret?”

“Yes,” Jake said, pouring more tea into their cups.
“It’s an old family secret that can be shared only with the men in the Madaris family, and only after they’ve reached the mature age of thirty-five.”

Diamond became intrigued as she always did whenever he spoke of his family. There was always warmth and love in his voice whenever he discussed them. “And just whose idea was it to exclude the women from this secret?”

“My great-great-grandfather. He made that decision after finding out his money-hungry wife had plans to sell the family secret to some major tea company and run off with the proceeds and with one of his cowhands.”

The aroma of the succulent brew of herbs and spices filled the room. Diamond lifted a brow as she took another sip of her tea. “And from then on it was felt that the women in the Madaris family couldn’t be trusted,” Diamond concluded.

Jake smiled. “I won’t go that far, but the men in the family figured why dangle a carrot in front of them when they knew they were better at keeping secrets than the women.”

Diamond met Jake’s gaze over the rim of her cup. “You know what they say about keeping secrets, don’t you?”

“No. What do they say?”

“Nothing is safe as a secret forever,” she said softly. She remembered how her ex-husband had found that out the hard way. His secret affair with the young daughter of one of his financial backers had come to light when the eighteen-year-old had gotten pregnant.

Jake stared at Diamond for a long time. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

Her gaze met his. “Trust me, I do.” Diamond suddenly felt the need to switch subjects. Remembering Samuel’s betrayal only brought pain. She stood. “It’s getting late, Jacob. I guess it’s time for me to get back to the cabin.”

A part of Jake wasn’t ready for her to go back. He wanted her to stay here with him and spend the…

He sucked in a deep breath to rid his mind of that thought before it fully formed. He refused to break the “house rule” that he had established for himself. He had made a decision over twenty years ago that no woman would ever share his bed at Whispering Pines in this house that he had built. Any affairs he got involved in would not take place under this roof. This house was his sanctuary, his haven against the wiles of any woman, their demands, their greed, their betrayals. He never wanted the complications that getting serious with a woman caused a man. His bedroom, like his boots and hat, was private. He didn’t want the memory of any woman left there to haunt him.

But the truth of the matter was that Diamond’s memory was already there in his bedroom, and had been ever since Blaylock had informed him that she had taken a nap in his bed.

Jake took another deep breath, deciding to take her back to the cabin and away from the ranch. He had to put a stop to this madness once and for all. Diamond was getting to him. Thoughts of her were consuming his every waking moment. And even while he was asleep, she invaded his dreams. He had thought that making love to her would help rid his body of wanting her, but it had only increased his desire.

“Jacob?”

He looked up at Diamond when she called his name. “Yes?”

“Are you ready to take me back to the cabin?”

Jake opened his mouth to say yes, but instead he said, “No.”

He saw her eyes draw together quizzically. “No?”

“No.”

He slowly stood and walked around the table to stand in front of her. Lifting his hand, he fingered the side of her face, the smooth skin there. As always he was stunned speechless by her beauty. She was everything he should be avoiding—sleek and sophisticated. But then again, she was everything he wanted, and admitted defeatedly that he would willingly break every rule for her.

He leaned down and let his lips hover close over hers. “Stay with me tonight, Diamond,” he whispered huskily. “Stay here. In my home. I want to make love to you in my bed. I want to wake up beside you in the morning, here. Say you’ll stay.”

D
iamond could not respond.

Although she didn’t fully understand what was happening between them, she was intuitive enough to know Jake was asking for more than her to spend the night with him. The relationship they shared had escalated beyond a mere physical attraction. She had acknowledged that for herself in accepting she loved him, but now looking into his dark eyes she saw more than desire there, and what she saw took her breath away. She knew he was inwardly acknowledging some feelings for her, too, although it was obvious that he was fighting them.

She had a gut feeling that spending the night with him would mean more than the two of them satisfying some basic urges. During all the times they had made love, it had always been more than that to her.
Oh, there had been the satisfying of wants and needs, but she had always felt there had been more. There were those unspoken and unaffirmed feelings lurking deep down that neither of them had wanted to surface or explore. Whenever they had made love, there had been the tenderness, the sensitivity and the passion. He had made love to her with all the things she had been missing in her life from a man. They were feelings she hadn’t hidden, although a part of her had known revealing them would lead nowhere. Considering everything, there was still no way they could ever have a future together. She knew it and accepted it. But she wanted her memories. She would need them. It would be the memories of her time with him that would sustain her for the rest of her life.

She met his gaze and said, “Yes, I’ll stay here with you tonight.”

Diamond knew in reality that she was offering a lot more and added, “I may be a little late in telling you this, but I feel I need to say it now, to set things straight between us. No matter what you may have ever read about me, Jacob, and no matter what we’ve done together since I’ve been here, I want you to know that I don’t sleep around. I’ve slept with only two men in my lifetime, my ex-husband and you.”

Jake was stunned speechless. Somehow this beautiful woman had retained her traditional values while in an arena of people who were reputed as not having any. He knew that more times than not, the lives of the rich and famous were exploited and degraded unfairly. The majority of the stuff people read in the tabloids wasn’t true. He had been friends with Sterling long enough to figure that out. Half the time when Sterling
was reported as being somewhere in seclusion with some beautiful woman, he’d been here at Whispering Pines. And the only thing he’d been romancing was a rod, a reel and his favorite fishing hole.

Jake reached out and traced the tender skin of Diamond’s upper arm, skimming his fingertips and palms over its softness. “So you’re a nice girl,” he whispered teasingly against her cheek. His lips brushed her temple then moved down to capture her earlobe.

“I believe that I am,” Diamond said, trying to disguise the tremble in her voice and the flood of emotions going through her. He knew all the right buttons to push to make her body shift smoothly into overdrive. Sensuous sensations were oozing through her veins. The warmth of his lips against her neck made her breathing thicken. This was first-class seduction, Jacob Madaris’s style.

“I believe that you are, too,” Jake whispered against her ear. “I believe you are a woman of the highest quality and standards. I believe that you are a woman with a heart of gold. Everything about you is goodness, richness and right.”

He wanted to also say that despite her ex-husband’s stupidity, there was a man out there who would appreciate her and who would be worthy of her, but he couldn’t. The thought of any other man being intimate with her bothered him. For some reason that he was too emotional at the moment to think about, he wanted to brand her his. Tonight he wanted to make her Jake Madaris’s woman.

Jake refused to think about what doing that would mean. Not only would he be breaking his “house
rule,” he would also be breaking his “heart rule,” which was to never let another woman get under his skin and into his heart.

Too late,
he thought as he stared into Diamond’s eyes. Diamonds are forever, and the one standing before him, shining brilliantly with a smile that sparkled so radiantly was undoubtedly so. She would be forever. At that exact moment, he knew he had to face the final truth. He loved her. And when Jake Madaris loved, he loved hard.

He reached out and slid a hand around her waist and brought her body close to his. He needed to hold her in his arms now that he had come to terms with what he had been fighting for the past few weeks. As crazy as it seemed, he had fallen in love with a woman he had met less than three weeks ago. A woman who in less than a week would be walking out of his life.

Jake shook his head. Maybe falling in love with her wasn’t so crazy after all. His nephew Dex had fallen in love with Caitlin less than three weeks after meeting her. And like him, a woman had been the last thing on Dex’s mind at the time. Of all his nephews, the family claimed he and Dex were more alike. He would even admit they usually thought alike. And now it seemed they fell in love alike as well.

“Diamond…” He said her name huskily, tenderly, before slanting his mouth over hers, hungry for whatever she offered, and for the love he had for her. Memories of past hurt, pain and mistrust had no place here. He kissed her like a man dying for the next breath of love, a man hungry for the mere taste of it. When he finally released her mouth to take a soul-cleansing breath, he heard her whisper his name, breathlessly, sensuously.

He took his lips and smoothed the side of her throat, warming her skin, drowning in the taste of it. Making love to her tonight would be different. After tonight she would wear his brand. There would be no mistake that she was his woman. And by golly if she didn’t love him now, she soon would. He would see to it. Jake knew with every breath in his body that there was no way he would let her walk out of his life. He would fight for her with every bit of his strength. Love was a lifetime commitment, one he intended to share with this woman, no matter how the odds stacked up against them.

He picked her up in his arms and took her up the stairs, holding her close to his heart, where she belonged and where he intended for her to stay.

Jake placed Diamond in the middle of his bed. Drawing away, he stepped back to look at her. As incredible as it was, this woman had completely captured his heart. And now because of her, he could allow himself to have hopes and dreams. For the first time in years, more than he cared to count, he was filled with a deep sense of inner peace. It was an emotion he thought he would never experience again.

For a long minute he continued to stare at her, inhaling her scent, analyzing her striking features. He watched her take a sharp intake of breath when his hand went to his belt buckle and begin tugging it through the loops. He saw the heat darken her eyes when he pulled his shirt free and began unbuttoning it. And he saw the slight trembling of her hands when he removed it.

The bedroom lamp’s soft incandescent glow danced
shadows across her clothed body. She looked right in his bed. But, he thought, as he reached for the snap to his jeans, she would look even better with no clothes on.

Diamond sank into the soft covering on Jake’s bed as she watched him take off his clothes, piece by piece. She drew a steadying breath, thinking no man had a right to look so masculine. She watched the pulse in his throat, thinking that it matched the irregular beating of her heart.

She continued to watch him, captivated by his broad shoulders, hairy chest and the dark line leading down into his jeans. When he removed his pants, her gaze ran down the full length of his nude body. The startling evidence of his physical need for her caused her bones to tremble within her flesh. For a moment, she was rooted to the spot on his bed and held immobile by the hungry look in his eyes. Diamond barely breathed a sound when Jake began walking back toward her.

When he got to the bed, he reached out his hand to her. When she placed hers in the palm of his, he gently tugged her upright and brought her smoothly against the solid wall of his chest. Then he wrapped his strong arms around her and lightly, ever so lightly, his lips unerringly found hers.

Driven by a desire greater than any of the other times they had made love, Diamond kissed him back as a heat, hotter than any she had known, spread through her. He feasted on her mouth; he devoured it. She tried to wiggle closer and found her clothing restrictive. She wanted to be skin-to-skin with him.

As if reading her thoughts, Jake’s hand moved
lower to her jeans, searching for the snap. She gasped when he found it and undid it. She cried out when he touched her, letting his fingers come in contact with her belly. Drawing in a deep stuttering breath, she expelled it. With a hungry growl, he broke off the kiss and immediately reached for her shirt. His impatient fingers popped the buttons free.

From there he didn’t waste any time undressing her. He tossed her clothes in a careless heap on the floor atop his. When he turned back to her, he knew that tonight would be a critical turning point for the both of them. Their silence was strangely comfortable, wordlessly soothing. But now, he had to break the silence that encased them. He could no longer fight the flood of emotions consuming him.

When he moved in place over her and kissed her again, he lifted his head and met her gaze and whispered, “I love you,” before smoothly entering her body in a single stroke. He then began making love to her slow and easy.

His body devoured her and all of her emotions. His mouth took possession of hers, fueling a need within her. He made love to her as he tried to ignore the demands of his own body, knowing what he had to do before that time came and hoping he would have the control to do so.

Jake gritted his teeth when Diamond curved her body more fully around him. He sucked in a deep groan when she locked her legs around him.

Pull back,
his mind commanded, but instead he instinctively drove farther into her when the rhythm of their motions became one. He felt the heat inside him build low in his belly, and flood all the way to his toes.

Pull out,
his mind screamed.
Now!
Jake had every intention to withdraw before he lost control.

And he would have if Diamond had not chosen that exact moment to whisper, “And I love you, too, Jacob,” when the power of passion overtook her body.

Too late. He lost it then—control, focus, all rational thought.

He also lost himself in her as ripples of intense passion tore through him, and he closed his eyes as his body shattered in a long scalding release that jetted into her. He tightened his arms around her as their bodies trembled together, both accepting the love they had never acknowledged to each other, until now, until tonight.

“Marry me, Diamond.”

Jake was amazed at what he had just asked her. It was something he had promised himself he would never ask a woman ever again. At first he thought that he would push only for an affair, but his heart couldn’t let him do that. He needed permanence. He wanted a forever commitment. He craved something with her that he thought he would never want again with a woman.

Diamond lay there, counting the seconds and hoping she had not heard Jacob correctly. She loved him but there was no way she could marry him. Them getting married would lead only to pain and regret.

Jake felt her tense, and a sudden tightness gripped his chest. He refused to let her just walk out of his life and at her silence decided to take another approach. “You might be pregnant. I didn’t protect you this time,” he said. “It wasn’t intentional and in truth it was down
right irresponsible, but I don’t regret anything I’ve done with you tonight. If we’ve made a baby, I’ll be happy about it.”

He shifted their bodies to a more comfortable position before continuing. “When I love someone it means a lifetime commitment. I’m not asking you to give up anything to become my wife, Diamond. You have your career, and I understand and respect that. All I’m asking is for you to be my partner in love by marrying me.”

Diamond forced herself to swallow past the lump in her throat. Slowly, carefully, she eased out of Jake’s arms, knowing what she had to say would require distance. She wouldn’t be able to say the words while he was holding her in his arms. She never realized giving up the person you love could hurt so much. She sat up in bed and looked at him.

“I can’t marry you, Jacob. We’ve shared some wonderful and special moments together, but when I leave here next week, I’ll walk away without looking back. I can’t look back, and I won’t.”

Her words hit his heart. They tore into the very soul of him. He remembered a time when another woman’s words had done that very same thing, and his body was about to reerect that shield that had always protected his heart. But when he looked deeply into Diamond’s eyes, he saw the raw pain there. Her lips might be saying one thing, but her heart was feeling another.

“Tell me, Diamond,” he said huskily, determined. “Tell me that you lied and you really don’t love me, that you really don’t care, and I’ll leave you alone.”

Tears stung her eyes, but she didn’t even bother to fight them back. She had a good cause to cry. She was
giving up the best thing to ever come into her life, but she knew what she had to do for both their sakes.

“I don’t love—” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t get the lie she was about to say past her throat. She covered her face with her hands. After a few agonizing moments, she took her hands away and looked at him, seeing how concentrated his gaze was on her. Waiting.

“I can’t say it because I
do
love you, Jacob,” she whispered raggedly, against the lump in her throat. “If possible, I love you more than any woman has a right to love any man. You and Whispering Pines are the best things to ever happen to me. Being here has meant more to me than you’ll ever know. It has given my life so much meaning. Every day I’ve spent here I’ve felt safe, protected and special. You made me feel all those things, Jacob.”