A Weaver Proposal. Allison Leigh

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      She crossed her arms and managed to look down her narrow, turned-up, sexy nose at him, even though she stood about a head shorter than his six-three. “I did call for help,” she reminded him as if he were dense enough to have somehow missed that point.

      “Did you call the number for the Double-C that Jake left you?” He didn’t need to see the chagrin she tried to hide to know that she hadn’t. He’d been at the Double-C since before dawn that day working with his father, Matthew Clay, who ran the family ranch. If Jake’s sister had called, he’d have known about it.

      She hadn’t called.

      “I didn’t want to impose.” Now that enticing sway to her voice had gone all stiff.

      And he was irritated all over again with himself because he felt some regret for that. “Nobody in the Clay family would consider it an imposition. Maybe you’d know that if you’d have bothered to come to Jake and J.D.’s wedding last summer and taken time to get to know us.”

      Her jaw dropped a little. “Is that what Jake said? Or is this just your know-it-all take on it?”

      Jake hadn’t said a word against his sister. “Weddings tend to bring out the crowds in my family.”

      “As they do in mine,” she returned coolly. “If I could have made it, I would have. I was here for my Aunt Susan’s wedding to Stan Ventura a few months ago. He’s sort of family to you Clays now, isn’t he, yet I don’t recall seeing you there.”

      He had missed that wedding, but not because he’d wanted to. “I was in Cheyenne. On business.” He gave the lie with no regret. He’d been attending a funeral.

      She smiled with no humor. “Is that an excuse that only applies to you? Maybe I was away on business when Jake and J.D. were married.”

      “Were you?”

      Her head tilted slightly and her shining blue-black hair slid away from her high, patrician cheekbone. “Yes.”

      “And what is your business, Sydney Forrest? I hadn’t heard that you worked for Forco.”

      Her chin rose a little. “My sister and brother run Forco. I sit on the board.”

      “Anything else?”

      “Racehorses and art.”

      In her Southern warm-honey voice, art came out more like ahhht, and it sent heat down his spine that he didn’t welcome. “Art like those monstrosities you hung on the wall in there?” He jerked his chin over her shoulder.

      “I suppose you prefer a paint-by-the-numbers nude lounging on black velvet?”

      “Don’t go knocking the combination of velvet and naked skin until you’ve tried it.” He leaned closer. “Kissin’ cousin.”

      She jerked back, a flash coming and going in her eyes. “I cannot believe you are even related to J.D. She is perfectly lovely and you are—”

      “—not a woman, that’s for sure.”

      “Odious,” she finished, witheringly.

      “And you’re a snob,” he countered. “You work on that little problem, cupcake, and I’ll work on mine.”

      “Cupcake?” Her eyes narrowed to slits and she took a step back, shutting the door smack in his face.

      Not that he didn’t deserve it.

      If he had a door to slam in her face, he’d probably do it, too.

      “Nice meeting you, cuz,” he said loudly through the door. Then he turned away and headed toward his truck.

      He’d give her about a week, and then she’d be hightailing it back to her pampered life in Georgia.

      As far as he’d ever been able to tell, that’s what spoiled rich girls always did when the going got tough. Ran.

      He reached the truck and swung up into the driver’s seat, looking back at the cabin despite his intention not to.

      She was looking back at him.

      Hard to tell which one of them looked away first.

      Derek’s pride hoped it wasn’t him. But with the tires crunching over the snow as he turned a wide circle, he had to admit that it might well have been.

       Chapter Two

      Sydney had come to Weaver for lots of reasons. Some were more immediate than others, but none of them were unimportant. Rebuilding a relationship with her brother was one. Or—she thought with brutal honesty—establishing a relationship with her brother was a better way to put it since—aside from the occasional racehorse she found for Forrest’s Crossing, which Jake still ran even though he’d moved to Wyoming—they’d had little to do with one another for years.

      And yes, she had missed his wedding to J. D. Clay. She still felt guilty about it, because she could have made it if she’d really tried. But she truly hadn’t believed that he would care much one way or another, and despite her Aunt Susan’s urging, she’d pulled her usual Sydney act. She’d commissioned a crystal statuette of Latitude—a Thoroughbred her brother was particularly fond of—and had it delivered to him and J.D. before the wedding.

      But she hadn’t left Antoine’s side where they’d been staying in Antibes at the home of a particularly discriminating art collector. Mostly because she was well aware that Antoine was taking his newest assistant with him on the trip, and said assistant was ten years younger than Sydney, particularly pretty and clearly looking to be more than an assistant.

      Despite Sydney’s absence from the nuptials, J.D. had called her, thanking her for the incredibly beautiful gift. Sydney wasn’t surprised by that. She’d met J.D. on a few occasions when she’d been working for Jake at Forrest’s Crossing. The other woman had always been professionally courteous. But after J.D.’s call had come Jake’s, and he’d been rather less courteous when he’d told Sydney that J.D. assumed Sydney didn’t approve of their marriage.

      It couldn’t have been further from the truth.

      Which was why Sydney was now picking her way through the snow behind her cabin to the shed that acted as a garage and storage for a bunch of tractor-size tools.

      Maggie Clay—J.D.’s mother and yet another one of the seemingly endless Clays that Weaver possessed—had called her the evening before to insist that she join the family for dinner out at the family’s ranch. “Sunday” dinner, which Sydney knew from her brother was usually a family affair. Since Sydney had some bridges to build, she knew she might as well start doing it now, even if J.D. and Jake were in California.

      And if nothing else, the place where the meal was being held—the Double-C—was bound to be warm, which was more than could be said of her cabin right now, since the furnace had quit on her again this morning.

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