ranch house, he immediately spotted a whole other kind of trouble.
Lana Largeant’s champagne-colored Lincoln Navigator was parked up by the house, sparkling in the sun, looking like one of her daddy’s men had just given it a fresh wax job. He eased his dusty truck past the showy vehicle and saw that it was deserted, meaning Dad had let Lana into the house, despite Jake’s instructions not to.
He suppressed the familiar irritation at his father. The poor old man couldn’t remember what day it was, much less keep the complications of Jake’s relationship with his ex-wife straight. Lana treated Dad like a dear old pet, and his confused mind lapped up her attention.
At least Jayden was at school. This time Lana wouldn’t be able to work her manipulative magic on their daughter.
Another reason not to get involved with some cute little number, he reminded himself as he jerked the parking brake. Relationships brought all kinds of entanglements—like unplanned pregnancies that could complicate your life for good.
Not that he regretted having Jayden. Oh, no. That child was the only joyous thing about his life these days. Besides the horses.
What he resented was the tie Jayden had formed to Lana. As he climbed out of the truck, that fact coiled up in his gut, mean as a sidewinder. Over the past year or so, he had succeeded in setting aside his resentment of Lana for Jayden’s sake, and, thanks to some long, honest talks with his brother Aaron, he had found a measure of peace about the whole deal. But Lana still found clever ways to disrupt that peace, keeping him lightly tethered, silently bound, through Jayden.
He always ended up asking himself the same circular question. How could he raise a daughter without giving the child the benefit of some kind of mother? Wasn’t any mother—even a seriously flawed one—better than no mother?
But last year he’d sworn that if Lana called Jayden one more time when she’d been drinking, he’d order Edward Hughes to find a way to terminate the woman’s parental rights. And, true to form, that’s exactly when Lana had stopped her boozing. Just dried out. Like she’d read his mind or something.
But, sober or not, Jake didn’t trust the woman. As far as he could tell, Lana’s life always revolved around Lana, what she wanted, how things affected her—and to hell with everyone else. The woods seemed full of those self-centered types these days. What he wouldn’t give for one sensible, honest, decent, unselfish…sexy woman.
The screen door banged and Lana stepped out onto the porch, into the morning sun. The newel posts and white siding on the east-facing house glowed around her slim silhouette. Lana’s sleek blond hair and svelte form—wrapped in some kind of clingy high-fashion dress that was printed to look like army jungle fatigues—created a sharp contrast to the simple homey setting. She jutted a bony hip against a newel post and shaded her eyes.
“Well, hello!” she called brightly, as if she were surprised to see Jake walking up to his own home at ten o’clock in the morning.
Instead of returning her chipper greeting, he sighed and planted a boot on the bottom step. “Lana, what are you doing here?”
She immediately adopted a stunned expression. “Don’t be like that,” she sighed. “Just when Dad and I were having so much fun, remembering when Jayden got up on Arrestado and rode him all the way down to the river. Remember that? When she was only six?”
Jake narrowed his eyes at the woman. She had a lot of nerve, persisting in calling his father “Dad” a full two years after the divorce. And she had a lot more nerve, bringing up the memory of the time she’d been so drunk she hadn’t even noticed that their daughter had run off on the back of a dangerously high-spirited animal—commiserating about it with his addled father as if it were something cute, instead of the most terrifying day of Jake’s life. Nothing pissed him off more than when Lana tried to rewrite history this way.
“Lana, look. This is not a good time.”
“That Jayden!” Mack Coffey exclaimed from beyond the screen door. Poor Dad had always had a way of falling right into Lana’s hands, even before the Alzheimer’s had eaten away at his good sense. “That child always was a real cutter, even as a baby!”
Even with the shadow of the screen over his dad’s face, Jake could see that Mack was overexcited—his cheeks flushed, his eyes unnaturally bright. Lana didn’t give a thought to getting him all worked up like this, the same way she never gave a thought to feeding Jayden too many sweets.
Jake turned his attention away from the task of getting rid of Lana. “Dad, you look tired. Where’s Donna?”
Before the old man could get his mind around the question, Lana answered. “I sent her to the store, Jake.” She moved down the steps, closer to him. “I hope you don’t mind. Y’all never have any of those cookies Jayden likes. And Dad and I need a pack of smokes.”
“Dad—” Jake tried not to grit his teeth, but he was losing what little patience he had left over from the confrontation up on The Heights “—does not smoke anymore.”
“Now see here, sonny.” The screen door creaked and Mack Coffey tottered forward. “I can have a smoke if I want to. I don’t recall ever giving up that particular pleasure. That’s your notion.”
You don’t recall anything, Jake thought, then hated himself for being mean-spirited. It was wearisome, caring for someone so fragile, someone who could be contrary and combative and confused all at once.
“Dad, it’s chilly out here.” Jake angled up the steps past Lana and clamped a friendly hand on his dad’s arm. He had learned how to finesse his father without hurting Mack’s pride. “Let’s go inside.”
Lana, naturally, followed Jake right through the door.
Jake steered Mack to his familiar rocking recliner by the window, then turned a level gaze on Lana. He was not about to give the woman an inch. “Okay, Lana, tell me what you want. I’ve got some skittish mares down at the barn that I need to tend to. I’ve already wasted half the day as it is.”
Her eyes widened. “Nothing’s wrong with the Andalusians, I hope!”
The Andalusians, prized mares from a province in southern Spain, were Lana Largeant’s bread and butter. The mares had come from Lana’s father’s stock, and at the time of the divorce settlement, Jake had felt lucky, getting Lana to let him keep six Andalusians to breed along with his other Cottonwood Ranch mares, mostly thoroughbreds. In exchange for breeding the mares with his own rare Andalusian stallion, Arrestado, Jake had agreed to let Lana sell every foal that was born from certain mares.
An Andalusian foal could sell for as much as thirty thousand dollars, so neither Jake nor Lana had ended up exactly broke, even after they split their operation. This arrangement had satisfied Lana, tenuously, for the past three years.
For his part, Jake had to bear the enormous overhead of getting Cottonwood Ranch back in the black. His father’s slow deterioration was written all over the books in red. Jake didn’t mind the back-breaking work of training and tending the stock on freezing cold nights and blazing hot days. But Jake felt now, just as he had during their ten-year marriage, that he did the work and Lana got the profits.
“The Andalusians are fine.” Jake tried to sound confident. “Mainly, I don’t want my quarter horses to foal before January first.”
“Of course not! Lord knows, you can’t run a yearling like it
