Free Believe in Me: A Rosewood Novel by Laura Moore Page A

Travis married that enhanced her beauty and fueled her modeling career.
    When Travis reached up to stroke the side of Margot’s face and then twined his fingers in her hair to draw her closer and offer a kiss of his own, Jordan and Jade exchanged looks. Silently they rose from the long kitchen table.
    “Jeesh,” Jade said in an undertone as she turned the faucet on and began rinsing one of the pans before placing it in the dishwasher. “One minute they’re fairly normal and then
wham
. Do you think they’re ever going to get tired of all that stuff?”
    “Not if they’re lucky.” At moments like this she really felt for Travis and Margot. It couldn’t be easy to have her, Jade, and the kids around all the time. If her sister and brother-in-law were alone right now, she seriously doubted they’d be limiting themselves to a few kisses. Fortunately, the house was big and their bedroom suite offered them a private haven. She thought back to Margot’s comment about how she and Travis loved the bed she’d selected for them when she’d redecorated their room. An image sprang to life in her mind’s eye, of herself wrapped in a man’s arms—a man who bore a startlingly uncomfortable resemblance to Owen Gage. Her cheeks grew hot with acute embarrassment.
    It was hours since the lunch at Nonie’s and Owen was still bothering her. Her cheeks burned even hotter as her wayward imagination offered yet another scenario: his strong body covering hers, pressing her into the soft mattress.
    “Jade, tell Travis I’ve slipped outside to get some fresh air.” Please God, let the cool evening air clear the very graphic fantasy that had formed in her mind—not that there was anything wrong with fantasizing, just as long as Owen Gage didn’t play a starring role.
    “Sure,” she said, glancing up from the pot she was scouring. “Hey, you look funny. You’re not sick or anything?”
    “I’m fine. It was probably that second glass of champagne,” she said, seizing the most obvious excuse.
    “A real lightweight, huh?”
    “Something like that,” she replied.
    The broodmares’ barn, with its spacious double stalls, was softly lit and comfortably snug from the heat of the horses’ bodies. It was especially peaceful at this hour, the mares’ snorts and whickerings, the rustling of the straw bedding muted and occasional. Like Jordan’s own children, the new foals, some barely a month old, were almost all asleep, worn out from their day romping in the fields under their dams’ watchful eyes.
    Jordan and Travis were standing in front of Allure’s stall, watching the mare and her new foal, who was lying quietly in the straw, inches from her hooves. A protective mother, Allure didn’t leave her colt’s side. And having already foaled five offspring, she was used to the routine of the evening barn check, aware that the humans would depart shortly.
    Although the foal’s fuzzy ears twitched, it continued to lie quietly on its side, its spindly legs folded neatly against its belly, its ribs rising and falling with each breath. Jordan wasn’t surprised to see the three-week-old colt dozing so soundly. This morning he’d been tearing around the pasture with all the spirit of his sire.
    They had named the colt Grayson. His sire, Stoneleigh, had been a magnificent dapple gray Thoroughbred, their father’s favorite stallion and Rosewood’s top stud for the past twenty-two years. Last spring he’d covered Allure but now he was enjoying a well-earned retirement. They had high hopes for this last of Stoneleigh’s get, and equally high expectations for the foals sired by their new stallion, Nocturne.
    They shut and latched the stall door and then moved onto the next stall, where Margot’s own mare, Mystique, and her foal, Cascade, were both on their feet. More curious than Allure, Mystique ambled over to them. Cascade followed, his chestnut ears swiveling back and forth like a radar.
    “He’s going to be a real beauty,” she