Her Perfect Match (2 page)

“I
am
your friend,” Cole said now. “Have I ever told a single soul you were with me that night I stole the police car? Have I even admitted anyone was with me? I just didn’t see any harm in not continuing to deny a relationship when they wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

“But that’s probably why they don’t approve of me.”

“You don’t know that. Just because they’re married doesn’t mean Hope’s forgiven you. You have to see that she’s still jealous because she thinks you and Jeff were involved. It’s why they all assume we are. I don’t think anyone but you, me and Jeff believes you’ve only been friends to the two of us. And my aunt Meg actually likes you a lot. She just doesn’t think we suit each other, and we’ve both agreed that’s true. Right? You do still feel only friendship toward me?”

She noted the panic in his brown eyes. “Don’t get that worried look. You aren’t about to break my heart.” Then an idea occurred to her. “Oh. But you
have
broken that nice CJ Larson’s heart and you used me as an excuse to do it. Am I right?”

Cole gave her a soulful look. “I didn’t mean to.”

She wasn’t buying the innocent act for a second. “Oh? Did someone else put the words in your mouth? A fairy snuck in here and cast a spell on you?”

She was satisfied with the color that invaded his cheeks. He explained that he’d been trying to discourage CJ because he was a disaster with relationships and didn’t want to hurt the pretty trainer even worse later on. Cole was basically a nice guy with issues of his own to deal with. So Elizabeth decided to let him use her as a smoke screen until he had himself straightened out, though she felt she needed to attach a condition.

“Okay, but you have to get your family to believe I’ve never been more than a friend. Your father practically choked trying to describe our relationship to Jack Alton at dinner the other night. Now I know why ‘friend’ was so hard for him to say.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll do what I can as soon as I can.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Now about Jack Alton,” she said, taking the opportunity to change the subject. She was really bothered by the new Laurel Glen hire. Were they all wearing blinders? After the trouble with their former foreman, who was in prison for murder and several counts of attempted murder perpetrated at Laurel Glen, it boggled her mind that no one was
questioning Jack Alton’s suspicious resemblance to the entire Taggert family. She had to believe her extreme reactions to him were a signal that he was up to some sort of mischief. “Tell me about your new foreman,” she demanded.

Cole nodded as if on her wavelength. “Jack Alton. Spooky, huh? Dad and Amelia seem to think it’s coincidence. I think as good an influence as Amelia has been on Dad since they met and got married, she should have left a little of his cynicism intact. At least Hope and Jeff are suspicious.”

“What do you know about him?”

“He’s from Colorado, not far from Greeley. He attended the University of Northern Colorado there. Grew up on a ranch called the Circle A. He’s not getting along with his father so he decided to strike out on his own. His personal and business references checked out.”

“But what’s he doing here?” she asked. The resemblance was just too coincidental.

Cole shook his head, looking worried. “Good question.”

J
ackson Wade Alton—Jack to everyone at Laurel Glen and Jackson to everyone on the Circle A back home in Colorado—watched from the darkened doorway of Stable Four as Elizabeth Boyer climbed into her little sports car and drove off. The woman had haunted his thoughts from the moment he’d laid eyes on her at dinner the other night.

Actually it had started just before that. Somehow Jackson had known she was in the room before Ross Taggert had acknowledged her presence. Tall, blond and beautiful, she was every inch a lady and exactly like all the other women he’d ever found attractive and started courting, only to lose them or become disillusioned by them in the end.

What was it with him? he wondered impatiently. Had he inherited some self-destructive gene that drew him toward disappointment that bordered on heartbreak?

He pushed Elizabeth from his mind for probably the ten thousandth time since meeting her. This quest of his to get to know his biological family was enough for him to handle right now. He didn’t need attraction and heartbreak to distract him!

The day he’d come, at Ross Taggert’s invitation, to discuss the foreman’s job, Jackson hadn’t been prepared for the similarities between him and his family. Cole had been the first person he’d met, and their shared resemblance had shocked him nearly speechless.

Because Ross had already seen his resume and checked out his references, Ross had hired him within what felt like only minutes. He’d also invited him to dinner at Laurel House, the family’s impressive home on the hill beyond the farm’s stable compound. Jackson would describe it as a mansion, but Ross called it the house, as if it were a three-bedroom colonial rather than a brick and stone memorial to a proud family’s history.

Jackson thought it was a miracle he’d survived that first night at Laurel Glen with his job intact thanks to Elizabeth Boyer’s arrival at the dinner party Amelia, Ross’s wife, had arranged to welcome him. He’d been nervous going in but he’d been doing fairly well until he’d turned and encountered eyes the color of emeralds staring at him in worried confusion. After that he’d had trouble keeping his mind on the conversation swirling around him.

When they’d been called into dinner, he’d found himself seated next to Ross and across from Ross’s
daughter, Hope, and her husband, Jeff Carrington, who lived on a neighboring farm. Like Ross and his wife of less than a year, the couple was expecting a baby. The four of them fell into an earlier conversation, but time and again Jackson found his attention snared by Elizabeth, who’d been seated to his left. She wore a light scent that reminded him of the warm sultry evening outside, and it had wrapped itself around him the same way the garden had as he’d approached the rear door to Laurel House that evening.

After a while, he’d noticed Elizabeth wasn’t participating in the conversation any more than he was. He’d wondered if she was as distracted and aware of him as he was of her, but he’d tried to dismiss his musings as unimportant. She was clearly Cole’s, and he didn’t want to poach on his cousin’s territory. There was no way he would risk damaging any relationship he might be able to develop with Cole over some society debutante who’d dump both of them in the end anyway.

Then, just when he’d convinced himself he had no choice but to give Ms. Boyer a wide berth, she and Cole left, leaving the rest of the family making comments on their relationship. The family was divided about how serious they were, but they all felt the two were wrong for each other. Jackson told himself he didn’t care. Elizabeth was just as wrong for him.

He had a lousy track record with women. Time and again he’d tried to establish long-lasting relationships with what his father disdainfully called city girls.
Why he gravitated toward women fated to disappoint him he had yet to figure out, but he knew it proved he was as slow as they came in the romance department. Even he’d finally learned, however. Women like Elizabeth Boyer were not for him.

Besides, he didn’t need anything complicating his already complicated life. He’d come here to find his mother and meet his family. That was all he had the energy to handle.

After that he didn’t have enough time to think about anything but accomplishing the next task on his list. By then Cole had diagnosed CJ Larson’s mare with West Nile Virus, and a furious round of activity had followed that had lasted for days.

Jackson had had to supervise everything, from scouting possible sites of mosquito infestation to posting men to keep reporters off Laurel Glen property and away from the already skittish livestock.

He’d fallen into bed each night exhausted and sick to death of the smell of mosquito repellent. But at least Elizabeth Boyer hadn’t been the only thing he spent his days thinking about.

No. Thoughts of her were merely the
last
ones to go through his head before sleep claimed his nights. Consequently she was the star player in all his dreams, as well.

Evening was approaching when Jackson heard a booming laugh echo down the hill and the thunder of approaching hooves. He looked into the yard to see his cousin, Cole, ride into the compound, trailing an older woman by a length.

“You cheated,” Cole shouted, laughter in his voice as he jumped off his horse.

The woman dismounted and smiled mischievously. “That’s the prerogative of age, darling boy.” She had a voice that was low and a tad rough in a soothing sort of way.

“Shall I have a couple of men take care of your horses?” Jackson asked, approaching them.

The woman turned quickly and stared at him. She didn’t say anything for an uncomfortably long time. She just stared. He should be getting used to the shocked reaction everyone had to his resemblance to the Taggerts, but he wasn’t. He handled it this time the way he had all the rest, by acting as if he hadn’t noticed the similarity or their reaction to it.

The woman blinked, then smiled. “And who would this young man be?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Aunt Meg,” Cole said.

Jackson’s heart, which had begun to quicken with hope, pounded in his chest. This was his mother.

“This is Jack Alton,” Cole continued. “He’s the guy Dad hired to take Harry Donovan’s place. Jack, this is my aunt Meg. World traveler and surrogate mother to all of Laurel Glen.”

Jack wondered if his last name would tip her off to who he was, but she just smiled pleasantly at him. He studied her. She didn’t look feckless or uncaring—just the opposite, in fact. She had a kind face and a mature beauty he was sure most women would spend a fortune to have. From the smooth way she’d slid off her mount, he could see she still had a
dancer’s grace. And her wide, open smile told of an outgoing personality that must have aided her stage career.

The career he’d learned she’d abandoned for her niece and nephew. But there was something he might not have considered. How did he know there wasn’t another Taggert relative named Meg? After all, he had two aunts called Mary in Colorado, didn’t he? He might be getting all excited over the wrong woman.

“Would that make you Meg Taggert, Ross’s sister?” he asked.

Her eyebrows climbed, wrinkling her smooth forehead a bit. “Well, yes, it would.”

“Ma’am, this may sound like a foolish question but were you in
Hello, Dolly!
on Broadway in the sixties? I think I remember your name from a playbill my parents must have brought home from a trip to New York. It was before my time, of course, but just before I left to come here, I was looking over my mother’s effects and I found it in her memory box.”

“Actually, yes, I was in
Hello, Dolly!
I was in the chorus.” Meg frowned. “Your mother’s effects, you say? Then she’s deceased?”

Jackson heard the genuine sympathy in her voice, and his opinion of the woman went up another notch. He nodded.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Where did you say you hail from?”

“Out west, ma’am,” he answered vaguely, afraid perhaps his questions had given away too much. “I’d already talked to your brother about the job here, so
your name stuck in my head when I saw it in the playbill. It’s a small world, they say.”

He hated lying, but he wasn’t ready to tell her who he was. Especially not in front of a witness. This was between him and Meg Taggert.

Hoping to change the subject, Jackson quickly asked, “So, Cole, do you want me to have one of the men see to your animals?”

Cole hesitated then sighed. “I’ll take care of them. A bet is a bet, and she beat me even if she cheated. I’ll see you at dinner, cheater,” Cole called after his aunt.

Meg Taggert had an answer for her nephew but Jackson couldn’t seem to focus on what they were saying. He was too bowled over by the meeting. Then he heard her laughter floating behind her on the summer breeze as she sailed toward Laurel House.

“Now that your aunt’s gone, why don’t you let me take care of the horses? You probably shouldn’t even have been riding with that separated shoulder of yours,” he told Cole.

“Oh, it’s coming along.” Cole glanced after his aunt and rotated the recently separated shoulder a bit, wincing. “But now that you mention it, maybe I did overdo it a little.” He turned the reins over to Jackson with a grin. “Besides,” he said, a chuckle in his voice, “she really did cheat. Thanks a lot, Jack.”

He watched Cole walk toward the barn where he probably planned to check on the recovering mare, then Jackson whistled for a couple of the kids Ross hired from a teen program at the local high school.
He gave orders for the care of each animal then turned and headed for his office. Minutes later he sank into the chair behind his desk, his thoughts on the woman he’d just met.

So that was his mother.

Elizabeth had fled to Laurel Glen and Glory after a particularly nasty scene with her mother. It seemed Louise Boyer had found yet another son of yet another friend who was simply perishing to take her out.

He had money. Gobs of money. And, better yet, he was lonely. He worked eighty hours a week as an associate at O’Connor, Belzer, Creasey and McAllister, one of Philadelphia’s top law firms. And he was wife shopping. It was time, he’d decided—the next step if he was going to advance his career.

If only Elizabeth would be charming and smile and be nice, her mother told her. If only she’d bring him up to scratch and marry him, he would surely bail them out of the financial mess her father’s poor investments had caused.

At first Elizabeth hadn’t been able to believe her ears. Her mother had never before been so forthright about her plans. It told Elizabeth her parents’ money troubles were worse than she’d thought. It also sounded annoyingly like the plot of a Victorian novel, Elizabeth had informed her mother. She was not for sale. She’d gone on to explain that she was a woman of the new millennium and her parents’ financial problems were not hers.

Two hours later, she was finally feeling human
again. The pasture fence leading into the yard near Stable Two loomed, challenging her and Glory. None of the workers was anywhere nearby, so she gave Glory her head and they flew over the fence—two parts of a whole. She reveled in that moment of weightlessness just before Glory began the downward arc to the ground.

She laughed and patted her seven-year-old Irish draft horse on her gracefully curved gray neck as they slowed to a stop. It had been five long days since she’d had the opportunity to put Glory through her paces, and the wonderful freedom of riding filled her.

“That could be dangerous, Ms. Boyer,” Jack Alton declared as he marched up to her. “If you don’t care about your own safety at least care about your animal and the handlers. Suppose one of the men had walked in front of you. I don’t need another man injured right now, especially because someone got careless.”

Irritated, Elizabeth looked at him from her position in the saddle. He was so handsome yet so provoking. And the afternoon had been going so well. Until now! She tilted her head a bit and tried shooting her best imperious look at him. “Mr. Alton,” Elizabeth said, mimicking the formal tone he’d used with her. “I was taking jumps like that by the time I was twelve years old. My father is an Olympic equestrian coach. Believe me, Glory was in no danger. I know what I’m doing.”

“Fine. But what if someone had walked in your path?”

Elizabeth gritted her teeth. Did he think she was a
complete idiot? “Had anyone been near, I assure you, I wouldn’t have made the jump. I have enough brains in my head to check to make sure the yard is empty.” She dismounted and glared coolly at him. “If, however, it bothers you this much, I’ll only jump this fence when Ross is around. Then you can take your objections up with him, since he is the first one I ever saw do it.”

That said, she slapped Glory’s reins against his chest. Looking nothing if not astonished, he made what looked like an automatic grab for them as she let go.

“Glory’s had quite a workout,” she snapped. “After she’s been shampooed, kindly see her legs are bandaged. She tends to have a problem with swelling after hard work. CJ Larson knows all about it.”

Elizabeth didn’t wait to see Jack’s reaction to her imperious demands. She pivoted on her heels and stalked toward the clinic to check on CJ’s mare, Morning, and to see how Cole’s separated shoulder was coming along. Behind her she heard Jack Alton growl, “A real rider takes care of his own mount.”

She took a deep calming breath and kept walking. As she approached the big stone barn, she shook her head, and thought about her reaction to Jack Alton. Elizabeth didn’t know why she let him get to her, but at least all she’d felt was pure, clean anger. That was a definite improvement.

Through the years she had always been able to either intimidate or ignore the men she couldn’t avoid but she found either impossible with this one. She was
at least able to console herself with the lack of fear she’d felt. Anger continued to feel good. Really good.

Then a disturbing thought struck. This was the second time anger toward him had overshadowed the uneasiness she felt around Jack. Had she overreacted to his criticism? Been mean rather than righteously annoyed? Was she trying to make him pay some arbitrary price because he’d looked at her with interest and because he made her uneasy—a feeling she hated?