Higher Than Eagles (Donovans of the Delta) by Peggy Webb Read Free Book Online Page A

The shirt is merely one we missed when we cleared out Bob’s clothes. Keep it, throw it away; I don’t care. After today, I don’t want to see it again.”
    “Or me. Isn’t that what you told me?”
    “Yes.”
    His piercing eyes told her he knew the truth: Every fiber in her body ached to see him, over and over again. She could never get enough of Jacob Donovan.
    “I came upstairs to tell you that I won’t make a fuss over today—for Benjy’s sake. But afterward, I’ll move heaven and earth to keep you away from me and my son.”
    Without waiting for his reply, she stalked from the room. Jacob stood still a few seconds, pondering Rachel’s reaction. It seemed to him that her outrage was out of proportion to the problem. He simply wanted to know how the love they’d had could have been forgotten so quickly, how she could have married two months after he left the country.
    What was she hiding? Why was she so determined to keep him out of her life?
    He’d find out. The Donovan men always got what they wanted, and he wanted the truth.
    As he left the room, he realized he was following a faint scent of roses. The fragrance made him feel warm inside. He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the times he’d pressed his face into her rose-scented skin.
    “Are you coming, Jacob?”
    Her voice, calling up the stairs, brought him out of his trance.
    “Coming.”
    The truth, he thought as he caught up with Rachel and followed her out the door, that’s all he wanted.

 
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
    Bayside Park was only four blocks from Rachel’s house. It was a quiet neighborhood playground with monkey bars, swings, sliding boards, teeter totters, lots of green grass, and a sand lot for baseball.
    Rachel and Vashti sat on a redwood park bench underneath a live oak tree and watched Jacob playing ball with Benjy.
    “Isn’t that a sight?” Vashti had hardly quit beaming from the time Jacob had intruded into their early morning routine. “He’s a natural with kids. Just look at the way Benjy responds to him. My, my. A body would think they were father and son.”
    Rachel stilled the panic that rose in her chest. Vashti didn’t know. And she had no reason to guess. Martin Windham had arranged a very private birth. The small clinic he owned in Mountain City, Tennessee, had been closed to all patients except Rachel when her son was born. Benjamin had been a small baby, just over five pounds, and she had gotten by with telling everyone he’d been born prematurely.
    Now, watching Benjamin and his natural father, Rachel decided that only she would notice the way they stood, both of them with feet apart, stocky legs at precisely the same angle. And their hair. Although Benjy’s was now blond, more like hers than Jacob’s, the glints of red were beginning to show. As he grew older, his hair would darken and turn redder, almost as red as his father’s, she guessed. Benjy’s cowlick bobbed in the sun. She hoped Jacob didn’t remember his own cowlick, tamed now.
    “Jacob grew up in a large family,” she told Vashti. “You aren’t seeing fatherly instincts. You’re seeing the little boy that’s still in the man. He always did enjoy having fun.”
    “That’s what I always loved about him. Show me a man who knows how to have fun, and I’ll show you a man worth having.” Vashti pulled a folding fan out of her purse and began to fan herself.
    Rachel reached over and patted the old woman’s hand. “I know how you loved Jacob.”
    “You did, too.”
    “Once, long ago. But it’s over between us. I don’t want you to have any false hopes.”
    “Ha!”
    Rachel knew better than to argue with that one-syllable proclamation. Vashti was as immovable as Big Sugar Mountain. No doubt she knew more matchmaking tricks than Dolly Levi. Rachel would just have to keep the two of them apart; for if she knew Jacob Donovan, he’d take swift and gleeful advantage of his ally, once he found out exactly how Vashti felt.
    “Mommy,