LITMIR.BIZ

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just wasn’t Faith Bailey’s secret desire, she thought as she looked wistfully out the window at the rolling grassland and the rugged edge of the Missouri Breaks in the distance.

      “I had to add a baby bootie knitting class at the shop,” Georgia whispered to her. “Something about getting pregnant makes a woman want to knit. It’s really spooky.”

      Faith laughed, imagining her sister McKenna knitting booties in the near future. McKenna had started her Paint horse farm, and her husband, Nate, was busy building them a home on a hill overlooking the place, but neither had made a secret of their plans to start a family right away.

      It was her older sister, Eve, who Faith thought would be hesitant. While all three Bailey sisters were adopted and not related by blood, Eve was the one who was driven to find her birth mother. Before bringing a child into the world, Eve would be more determined than ever to know about her genes and the blood that ran through her veins.

      Faith watched Laci and Laney open one beautifully wrapped box after another of darling baby clothing and the latest in high-tech baby supplies, all the time wishing she was out riding her horse. After all, she was only home for the summer, and she’d promised herself she was going to spend every waking moment in the saddle.

      “If I see one more breast pump, I’m going to be sick,” she whispered to Georgia who laughed and whispered back, “Do you have any idea what some of that stuff is for?”

      Before Faith could tell her she didn’t have a clue, Laci’s water broke, and not two seconds later, so did Laney’s.

      Faith smiled to herself. She was going to get in that ride today after all.

      SHOWERED AND CHANGED, Jud came out of his trailer to find Chantal Lee waiting for him beside his pickup. He groaned under his breath as he noticed Nevada Wells sitting in the shade of his trailer with a half-empty bottle of bourbon on the table next to him. Nevada was watching Chantal with a look of unadulterated hatred on his face.

      The two stars had made front-page tabloid news for months beginning with their scorching affair, their torrid public shows of affection and their scandalous breakup—all in public.

      Jud wondered what director Erik Zander had been thinking, throwing the two together in this Western thriller, given their recent past. How were they going to get an audience to believe they were crazy about each other in this film and not just plain crazy?

      As Jud neared his pickup, Chantal sidled up to him in a cloud of expensive perfume and a revealing dress that accented her every asset. She looped her arms around his neck and smiled up at him.

      Across the compound, Nevada grabbed up his bourbon bottle and stormed into his trailer.

      “If you’re trying to make Nevada jealous,” Jud said to Chantal, “you can stop now. He’s gone back into his trailer.”

      “Don’t you read the tabloids?” she asked as he disengaged her from around his neck. “I’ve moved on. So,” she said, “how about showing me the town tonight?”

      “Whitehorse? As flattering as the offer is, I’m afraid I have other plans.”

      “Brooke.” Chantal made a face as she said the stuntwoman’s name.

      He shook his head, knowing whatever fueled this battle between the two women had started long before now. “I don’t date anyone I work with during filming. I’m having dinner with my family.”

      Chantal brightened. “Take me,” she pleaded. “I am bored beyond belief out here in the middle of nowhere. You’ll be saving my life.”

      “Sorry,” he said, thinking about what would happen if he took her home with him. He’d dodged a bullet by sacrificing his brother Shane to the marriage pact he and his four brothers had made. But he was still in the line of fire.

      It would be fun, though, to see his family’s expressions if he pretended interest in Chantal for a wife. But even he couldn’t do that to them.

      No, the last thing he wanted was to call attention to himself right now. He’d hoped that karma would be on his side when he and his brothers had drawn straws to see who would have to find a wife first. Then he’d drawn the shortest straw and known he had to do something fast, so he had. He’d found the perfect woman—for his brother Shane.

      That little maneuver had really only delayed the problem, though. Jud knew in his heart that what his father wanted wasn’t so much for each of his sons to marry but for them to settle in Montana closer to Trails West Ranch, the ranch Grayson Corbett had bought for his new bride, Kate.

      Grayson was no fool. He had to know that getting all his sons to settle down in Montana probably wasn’t going to happen, no matter what kind of carrot he dangled in front of them. But it was some carrot.

      Grayson’s first wife, the boys’ mother, had written five letters, one to each son, before she died. The letters, only recently found, were to be read on each son’s wedding day. Her dying wish in a letter to Grayson was that the boys would marry by the age of thirty-five—and all marry a Montana cowgirl.

      It was hard to go against the dying wishes of his mother, even a mother Jud, the youngest, couldn’t remember, since she’d died not long after he and his twin brother, Dalton, were born. Being a Corbett demanded that he go along with the marriage pact the five brothers had made—and eventually live up to the deal.

      The problem was that he’d never met anyone he wanted to date more than a few times, let alone marry.

      But then most of the women he knew were like Chantal, he thought, as beside him she pretended to pout.

      “You’re going to hate yourself in the morning for leaving me behind,” she cooed.

      Jud nodded ruefully. “Ain’t that the truth.”

      “Your loss,” she said, and turned in a huff to storm off, again putting a whole lot of movement into those hips of hers.

      Jud smiled as he headed for his pickup. He had a weakness for beautiful women and a whole lot of oats left to sow, but his real-life exploits could never live up to those that showed up in the movie magazines about him.

      When he thought about it, what woman in her right mind would want to marry a man who did dangerous stunts for living? And he had no intention of quitting until he was too old to climb into the saddle, he thought, as he headed for the ranch.

      FAITH BAILEY RODE her horse to the spot where she always went when she wanted to make sure no one saw what she was up to. She’d been coming here since she was a girl. It was far enough from the ranch house and yet not too far away should she need help.

      As she got ready, she recalled too vividly the time she’d taken a tumble and broken her arm.

      “Were you thrown from your horse?” her mother had demanded when she returned to the house holding her arm after one of her “rides.”

      Not exactly. “All of a sudden I was on the ground,” Faith had said, determined not to lie—but at the same time, not about to tell the whole truth, which she’d feared would get her banned from horseback riding altogether.

      She’d kept the truth from even her two older sisters, Eve and McKenna. They couldn’t have kept her secret, afraid she’d break her fool neck and they’d get blamed for it.

      Now with her mother remarried and living in Florida, Faith still didn’t like to upset her family. They’d all been through enough without that. So she kept her trick riding to herself. It was her little secret—just like her heart’s desire.

      Faith had taken more precautions after the broken arm incident, and while she’d gotten hurt occasionally as she’d grown older, she’d also kept that to herself.

      She made a few runs along a flat spot at the far end of a pasture before she got her horse up to a gallop and slipped her boots from the stirrups to climb up onto the back of the horse behind the saddle.

      It was a balancing act.

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