"Just a few scratches," Drake answered casually. "I've had far worse playing around with friends in leopard form."
Jake stretched his tired muscles. The rain had slowed to a fine drizzle. "I'm sorry, Drake. I could have hurt you."
Drake sent him another small grin. "I knew you wouldn't."
"Then you knew more than I did. Where's Joshua?"
The grin widened. "Sleeping like a baby. He wasn't worried about you."
"He does a good job of pretending," Jake said. "He worries. Why do you suppose he left the rain forest? He isn't all that happy here, but he doesn't want to go back."
"Joshua is Joshua. He doesn't share much about his life. Whatever happened must have been bad or he never would have left. No one leaves because they want to."
"You did," Jake pointed out.
"I couldn't stay in the forest without letting my leopard run, and I can't shift. It became . . . difficult."
"Did the doctors try grafting your own bone?"
Drake nodded. "It didn't work. I didn't understand the entire process, but some of us have the ability to regenerate bones and others don't. I apparently don't."
"Did you try using someone else's bone?"
"Like a cadaver?" Drake made a face. "We incinerate our dead immediately. It's the only way for our species to survive, to keep our existence secret. And it doesn't make much sense that if I can't use a piece of my bone, then someone else's would work, now does it?"
"They can do all sorts of things now, Drake. You just have to find the right man." Jake opened the door to the pickup and paused to look around.
He owned everything for miles. He'd patiently acquired acre after acre, adding on to the land his great-grandfather had given him until he had a sanctuary. He'd turned miles of that into a shaded, wooded area for his leopard. He had built a cattle empire. Step by step, patiently. And he had slowly begun drilling for the oil he knew was on other tracts of land he'd inherited. Recently he had acquired several large pieces of property he was certain concealed natural gas just waiting to be developed. Looking at Drake--his friend--the one person who had stood for him, he realized that all of his accomplishments stacked up to very little. Billions of dollars maybe, but the money was a tool for him. And he knew what he had to do with it.
Drake needed a solution. In comparison to his friend's problem, the years Jake had put into his plan to take down his enemies seemed a waste when a man as good as Drake was suffering.
Jake cleared his throat. He found it strange to think about another person, to worry about them. Emma's influence. She was doing something to him with her presence that he couldn't quite understand, but he knew she had changed him somehow in the brief two years she'd lived in his home. He didn't know when the change had occurred, but he knew Drake was more important than any revenge possible.
Jake pulled open the door. "Do you want me to drive?"
Drake shook his head. "I've got it. Just shove Joshua over."
Jake gave the other man a good-natured push and Joshua lifted his head and growled a warning. "Get in the back," Jake said. "You can sleep there."
Joshua snarled but complied, curling up to go back to sleep even before Jake slid into the passenger side. "Who did your surgery? Are there doctors in your village?"
"We have one doctor for our people, but no specialist like I needed, and my bones won't graft and shift."
Drake sounded matter-of-fact on the surface, but Jake listened with heightened senses. Drake didn't show by his expression that he was depressed, but Jake caught the heavy note in his voice and looked at him sharply. "I need you here, Drake." He kept his voice low, the admission churning his gut. He hated that feeling, the sudden clawing fear at the idea of losing his friend. He wasn't supposed to need anyone. It made him feel vulnerable and small.
He took a breath. No. It wasn't really fear of losing Drake. He had asked Drake to come to him, to leave the rain forest and help him. Drake was his responsibility. That was all. The way Emma and the children and even Joshua were his responsibility. He needed to find a way to help the man, to save him, because there were few good men left in the world.
Drake didn't pretend to misunderstand what they were talking about. "You're going to find out soon enough that a leopard can't be suppressed forever. I don't have a lot of time left, Jake. And frankly, what the hell is there left for me?"
"Surgery. Don't be an idiot. You don't give up until you've tried everything, and you haven't even begun to scratch the surface. Your bone won't work. We don't have a cadaver, but you have me. Or Joshua. One of us might have the ability to regenerate and if we don't, we'll find someone who does have it."
Drake shot him a look out of the corner of his eye. "I doubt it's that easy."
"Nothing worthwhile ever is." Jake's mind was already working at a fast pace. He could easily set several of his staff searching for the best team of orthopedic surgeons. With enough money, anyone could be bought. And the one thing he had was money. "I'll set it in motion tomorrow. If neither Joshua or I can be used, we'll keep looking for a donor until we find one."
Drake moistened his suddenly dry lips. "You think someone could really fix me? That I could go without the plate? I thought about having them amputate the leg."
"Why shouldn't they be able to fix it? We just need the right surgeon and the right donor." He glanced out the window. "You forgot to turn on the headlights. You're using your leopard's night vision."
He'd noticed both Joshua and Drake did that a lot, interchanged the leopard's senses with their own. Maybe their leopards weren't as destructive as his and were more easily controlled. He'd studied the animal quite a bit. They had bad tempers. Jealous rages. They were highly intelligent and cunning, and were secretive creatures. He was all of those, amplified a million times.
Drake didn't bother with the headlights. Instead, he changed the subject. They were driving over the trail back toward the ranch house. "You need to tell me everything you know about Emma's background. I know you must have had her investigated before you ever hired her."
"I've got her file, but there's not much in it. Where she went to school. Her parents." Jake gave another casual shrug.
"Have you read about or spoken about the Han Vol Don with anyone?" Drake asked.
"I've heard you use the term. What is it?"
"Females are very different from males in our species. No one knows what triggers the Han Vol Don. It isn't puberty or sexual activity. We have no idea, and believe me, we've tried to figure it out. For males the leopards shift when the leopard is strong enough or the boy is undergoing extreme stress. Maybe a combination of the two. It is very different for our women."
"And the Han Vol Don is . . ." Jake looked at Drake expectantly, a hint of impatience in his eyes. He knew about being male.
"Dangerous. To everyone. A female will suddenly go into a combined heat, both woman and leopard merging together. She throws off an alluring scent, and when in close proximity, her presence can trigger a thrall--the madness you experienced--in a mate. Mates find and recognize one another lifetime after lifetime. I think Emma may be leopard."
The moment he heard the word mate, the leopard in him leapt and the man in him recoiled. He wasn't anyone's mate, least of all Emma's. She was his. She belonged to him, but he belonged with no one. His life was a carefully built sham.
"That's impossible. There's nothing whatsoever in her past to make me think that. And she was married to someone else." The last came out too much like an accusation, and Jake kept his eyes fixed on the fences as they raced by them.
"That doesn't mean she wasn't your mate in a previous life. Are there ever times when she seems familiar to you? Do you have memories of her that you shouldn't have?"
Jake took a breath. "How could she be leopard and not know?"
"The heat comes on slowly and in small stops and starts. One day she's fine, the next she can be moody, with a heightened sexual stimulation throwing off the allure to any male in the vicinity. Ev
en the leopard can't scent her when the heat is in the diminished phase, but races to her when it rises."
"What happens to her if she's leopard?"
"Eventually her leopard will emerge, but it is always in the midst of a sexual heat. The leopard will affect the woman. She'll be as needy as her cat."
Jake's body responded to the thought of Emma in need. He could take care of her needs as no one else could. He had complete faith in himself that he could bind her to him with sex. He had learned a long time ago how to make a woman beg for him. Maybe he'd been taking the wrong tack with her all along.
Drake pulled the pickup down the long, winding drive and around to the back of the ranch house where the kitchen door was. "One more thing, Jake. While you were running, security radioed us. They found a microchip recording data, a voice-activated chip in the phone jack in the den. They've removed the chip and have it for you. We haven't had visitors other than the two who brought Susan to the ranch. I had security check their names. Dana Anderson is the governess, and Harold Givens is the tutor. We're running checks on them now."
"Thanks, Drake. For everything." Jake leapt out, but held on to the door, preventing Drake from driving away. "I meant what I said about the surgery. I'll put some people on it immediately." He forced himself to look at the claw marks on Drake's chest. "Make certain you take care of that. You don't want to get infected."
"Okay, Mom," Drake answered. "Good night." He tossed Jake his wallet and cell phone.
Jake caught the two items, slammed the door closed and stepped back, watching as Drake continued along the road toward the smaller cabins where several of the hands stayed. Then he turned and walked up the walk to the door of the kitchen. He paused a moment to text his lawyers with instructions to put adoption on a fast track for Emma, before going into the house.
He stopped immediately. Even in the dark he saw the cake and he knew he was meant to see it. Emma always cleaned up, but she had left the cake in the middle of the table, along with his painting and two other brightly wrapped gifts. He picked them up. One card said Kyle with green crayon scribbled over it, and the other said From Andraya, covered in messy purple.
His heart contracted. He'd screwed up big-time. He wasn't cut out for the father or husband thing. Even as he thought it he climbed the stairs and went into the children's room to kiss them good night before turning resolutely to Emma's room. He frowned, standing in front of it. The door was closed. As long as he'd known her, she'd never slept with the door closed all the way because she wanted to be certain of hearing the children. He put his hand on the doorknob and turned it. It was locked.
Fury swept through him, instant and ferocious, his temper ugly and black. She was angry with him and she dared to lock her door against him? He'd be damned if she started that.
8
EMMA pressed her face into the pillow to muffle the sound of her weeping. Although Susan was downstairs in one of the guest rooms, she didn't want to chance her overhearing. She especially didn't want the children to hear. She had thought herself all cried out after Andrew, but here she was, falling apart, feeling confused and alone and so upset without any real reason other than she'd accepted a date. Why had she done that? She didn't want to go out with Greg Patterson.
For pride's sake, of course. Jake had so casually dismissed her ability to be attractive to a man. So maybe no man had approached her since Andrew's death, but she hadn't really wanted them to. She'd been busy. Mourning Andy. Taking care of Kyle. Having babies. Keeping a large house. It had only been two years. Was she supposed to fling herself at the nearest man?
She turned over and wiped at her burning eyes. She hadn't cried like this in months. Life with Andrew had been straightforward and easy. With Jake it seemed so complicated. She was in a world she didn't always understand. As long as she stayed protected on the estate, far from people, she felt wrapped in a cocoon of safety. Jake had a strong personality, but she could deal with him if she just stayed on an equal footing. His acquaintances were another matter altogether.
His associates treated her like a piece of the furniture, or a servant--and technically, she was a servant. She was the housekeeper, not the mistress of the house. Jake gave her such free rein, she had grown complacent, believing that this house was her home. The petty meanness and raised eyebrows had never hurt until now--until she realized the precarious position she'd put not only herself in, but Andraya and Kyle as well.
She wouldn't call the men and women who came to the house Jake's friends. They were business associates, people looking for favors--or trying to get close to him. She could have told them, after watching him for two years, that Jake didn't let anyone close. There was always a distance between him and everyone else--including the children.
Was that why she was weeping? She had waited as long as she could for Jake, and when it was apparent he wasn't coming to his own birthday party, she'd let the children blow out the candles and eat. Quite a bit ended up in their hair and all over their clothes so she'd whisked them to their baths. As she washed the cake from their hair and skin she finally realized how alone she was--how alone they all were. They lived in the shadow of Jake's presence, day in and day out, yet he hadn't really made them a part of his life.
Jake listened when she told him of the children's progress and related all the cute things they did as they grew and began discovering the world around them, but his face didn't light up; he didn't laugh the way he should. He held himself back from them--apart from them. She'd felt sadness for Kyle and Andraya as well as for herself. In that moment she'd realized there was no real hope for her and Jake. As much as she loved and respected him, as much as her body craved his, she would need much, much more than he was capable of or willing to give her. She'd put the children to bed and come to her room, locking the door so they wouldn't walk in on her if they heard her unrestrained sobbing.
Now she had the added humiliation of her body burning day and night, desperate for Jake's touch. She could barely face herself, remembering how she'd practically thrown herself at Jake, kissing him--kissing him. She touched her mouth, her lips, remembering the feel and shape of him, his taste and texture. She wanted to crawl into him, devour him, the urges so strong and overwhelming she didn't trust herself near him. She was going to ruin everything she had. Or maybe she really didn't have anything at all.
Great sobs wracked her body, tightened her chest and tore at her throat.
"Why the hell did you lock me out?"
Emma nearly jumped off the bed, her eyes going wide with shock, her heart slamming hard in her chest, then pounding fast as adrenaline poured into her body.
"Are you crazy?" she demanded. "Jake, you scared me." She threw her pillow in the direction of his voice, unable to stop the aggression surging through her. "Get out."
The missile didn't slow him down. He stalked across the room to tower over her. She should have been intimidated, as was obviously his intent, but his behavior only made her angrier.
She shoved her hair back to glare at him. "You are such an ass. Don't you have any boundaries? My door was locked. Locked. That clearly means don't come in."
Jake's anger melted the moment he saw her sitting in the middle of her bed with her long hair tousled and unkempt as if she'd just been made love to. Her eyes were large, framed with thick lashes, staring up at him with sparks of fire radiating from them. She looked kissable, too kissable. He could barely resist leaning down and taking possession of her mouth. It was only then that he noted her face, pale with red splotches and traces of tears.
His gut clenched. He caught her chin and tipped her face up to his. "You've been crying."
She jerked back, turning her face away from him. "Hence the locked door and the need for privacy. Now please go and leave me to it." She wiggled her fingers toward the door dismissively.
"No."
Her head snapped back around, hair flying in all directions. "Jake. I'm clearly upset. Could you just for once have a little respect and let
me be tonight?"
"I'm not leaving you alone when you're upset." He sank down onto the bed, forcing her to scoot over a little to give him sufficient room. "I'm sorry about the birthday party. My absence was unavoidable."
"Don't flatter yourself."
He could see it made her even angrier that she had automatically moved over for him. So often in the past two years he'd come to her room and they'd lain side by side, talking when neither could sleep, and he counted on that familiar closeness.
"I'm not crying because of you or the fact that you didn't show up to your own birthday party. Although selfish, it wasn't entirely unexpected."
He winced at her accurately delivered punch. Emma sat with her knees drawn up, rocking back and forth in obvious distress. He doubted if she even knew how upset she was. She was curled up as small as she could make herself, her eyes drowning in tears. Jake reached over and scooped her up easily, cradling her against his body, holding her close to him.
"If it wasn't me that upset you so badly, what was it? I'll take care of it, but you have to tell me what's wrong first." He brushed a trail of kisses from her temple to the corner of her mouth and back up, stealing every tear with his lips.
Emma buried her face against his chest. She couldn't look at him. The moment his mouth slid over her skin, electrical charges raced from her breasts to her belly. She didn't dare look up--she might start kissing him, and then what would happen? She had no doubt that Jake would be willing to have sex with her. He was always willing to have sex with someone. She could feel him, hard as a rock, against the backs of her thighs, but she wasn't made for one-night stands or passionate flings that burned out fast. She had two children she loved and a home she wanted to stay in. Giving in to sexual desire would momentarily satisfy her, but would ultimately cost her everything. Jake just couldn't--or wouldn't--make an emotional commitment.
"Talk to me, honey. You can tell me anything, Emma."