payroll because he chooses to be here. He could go anywhere in the world if he wanted and work with two dozen owners instead of just one. But he stays, and you let him run the stable the way he wants to run it because he brings you winners. And I know for certain that he wouldn’t put me in charge of Latitude.”
“Lat won his first two races because you were working with him. Miguel took over again before the Hopeful and he barely wanted to finish.”
Her eyes widened and her bow-shaped lips pressed together. Evidence that she’d thought he was unaware of some details. “Just because I’ve been away on business for two weeks doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s going on in my own stable,” he said. “Miguel may not want to face the fact that you have the magic touch where Latitude is concerned, but I have, which is why I’m assigning you specifically to him. Miguel can focus all of his energy on bringing along Platinum. Of course, that means your fee will increase and—”
“Stop.” She shook her head. “This is all wrong.”
“You don’t want to work with Latitude?”
She tossed up her hands. “Well, of course I want to work with Lat. I love that colt, but you need to know—” Her voice cracked to a stop. She looked away from him again. “You need to know that I’m, well, that I’m—”
“Excuse me, Jake?”
They both stared at the woman who’d had the audacity to open his closed office door. Only it wasn’t his secretary, who would have known better. It was Jake’s aunt Susan who rushed into the office.
“What’s wrong?”
His aunt barely gave J.D. a glance as she hurried toward him, her slender hands twisting in front of her.
“Bill Franks just called me. Mabel put him through to me since you were busy.” Her gaze flicked for a moment to J.D. “There’s been an accident.”
Everything stilled except Jake’s guts. Bill and Jennifer Franks were his ex-wife’s in-laws. “The boys?”
She hurriedly waved her hands. “No, no. Connor and Zachary are fine.”
Relief slammed through him. His twin sons were fine. “Sidney? Charlotte?” They were his sisters, and aside from Susan who’d lived at Forrest’s Crossing since he’d been a boy, the only other family who mattered to him.
Again his aunt shook her head. “It’s Tiffany. She and her husband were driving—the boys weren’t with them—they had an accident.”
“I, um, I’ll just excuse myself…” J.D. was edging toward the door, looking pale and even more awkward.
“Wait.” He focused on his aunt’s face. He generally didn’t think about his ex-wife, except to curse her very existence. And to know that even she was a better parent than he was to their precocious twin sons. “How bad was it? Is Tiff hurt?”
“Her injuries are critical. Her husband—”
“You can say his name.” They all knew it, after all, since the man had been in the picture long before Tiffany decided marriage to Jake was no longer her heart’s desire.
Before Adam Franks had become Tiffany’s lover, he’d been Jake’s friend. His best man, in fact.
Susan hesitated, looking grave. “Adam’s injuries were extremely severe. He didn’t survive.”
Jake slowly sat down in his chair as he absorbed that. There’d been plenty of times he’d cursed his one-time friend. But he’d never wished him dead. “Where are the boys?”
“With Bill and Jennifer still.”
Adam’s parents.
“Obviously they’re not up to keeping them for any length of time,” his aunt continued, looking worried. “But I just can’t see sending Zach and Connor back to boarding school under these circumstances. They were very close to Adam.”
Jake’s gaze fell on J.D. She’d reached the door. “We can finish this later,” she said softly. “You have more important things right now.”
He grimaced and wanted to insist that she stay. He wanted her to stay at Forrest’s Crossing. Period. And just acknowledging the thought was enough to remind him that he was the selfish bastard Tiffany had called him.
He’d barely given a short nod before J.D. slipped out the door.
It felt like she took all of the fresh air there was right along with her.
He looked back at Susan. “You talked with the boys?”
She nodded. “They’re upset, naturally.”
He didn’t ask the next obvious question. There was no need.
If he’d been a better father, his boys would have wanted to speak to him.
He rubbed his hand down his face. “I’ll have to go to California. You’ll come, of course.”
The boys were always more comfortable with her than they were with Jake.
“I can’t.” Susan’s face was torn. “The gallery showing is Friday, and then I’m hosting the charity ball on Saturday in Charlotte’s place since she had to go to that conference in Florence in your place.”
He’d forgotten his aunt’s photography showing. “Sidney can host the ball.”
“Sidney is in Germany trying to buy that horse she’s got her heart set on.” Susan paced. His mother’s sister was in her mid-50’s, but there wasn’t a gray hair to be found in her soft blond hair. The only real hint of her age was in the soft lines that had begun forming alongside her dark brown eyes. “There are times when I wish y’all would just settle on textiles or on horses.”
“Textiles help pay for the horses,” he reminded needlessly. Raising and running thoroughbreds wasn’t a poor man’s game. It hadn’t been for his grandfather or his father before him. “The boys’ll have to make do with me.”
“Oh, Jake. Don’t talk that way. Naturally, the boys will want you.”
She was trying to protect his feelings, as if he had some. But that was his aunt. The eternal optimist.
He, however, was about the exact opposite. He didn’t have faith in the positive outcomes of life. He couldn’t see the bright side of every situation.
He saw things exactly the way they were and when something needed doing, he did it. Right or wrong.
Bill and Jennifer were the only grandparent “figures” his sons possessed. Tiffany’s parents had died when she and Jake were still married. Jake’s father was dead, too. And he didn’t know, or care, where his mother Olivia was, much less whether she was still alive. After she’d profitably washed her hands of them all, they’d never seen nor heard from her again.
Susan was twisting her hands together again. “I can join you after the charity ball is over.”
He
