Jed's Sweet Revenge by Deborah Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

chief among them—and good powers of love and serenity that would capture his heart no matter how much he resisted. “This place is special.” She pointed to his plate. “Eat, and I’ll try to explain why.”
    Jed nodded. His thoughts completely distractedfrom food, he took a bite of the wheat biscuit and noted dimly that it was buttery and hot and wonderful. His woman was beautiful and very smart—he could tell that by the educated insults she had flung at him in the past two days—and a fantastic cook. Oh, yes, and she read
National Geographic
.
    His woman? Great gosh a’mighty. He mentally kicked himself back to the real world, where scruffy cowboys, even rich ones, didn’t win the affections of island princesses.
    “Sancia Island,” she began, “is nearly thirty square miles in size.” Thena wrapped her arms around her updrawn knees and looked out over the ocean. “It has ten miles of virgin beaches. Loggerhead turtles come here to lay their eggs. The forest is full of wildlife.” She leaned forward and touched his arm, her eyes gleaming with almost maternal pride. “I have indigo snakes here.” When he didn’t register recognition—he couldn’t think about much else other than the pressure of her warm fingers on his skin—she looked dismayed. “Those aren’t found anywhere in the world except on these barrier islands, Jed.”
    Jed
. He liked his name for the first time in his life, because she made it sound lyrical.
    “All that’d still be here,” he told her blankly. “We’d work it out.” Something had softened his vengeful desire for bulldozers and condominiums, he realized in the back of his mind. Jed knew as soon as he got away from here and her that he’d set his revenge on course again.
    She released his arm and shook her head a second time. “No development. None at all. That’s what you’re going to have to concede.” Thena thought for a moment, then looked at him with renewed enthusiasm. “Horses! That’s what you need to see! Did you know that your grandmother kept Arabians here?”
    “No, I never cared to learn what she did. I’m a quarter horse man, myself. Arabians are a might too dainty for my tastes,” Jed muttered. Her enthusiasm wilted. “But pretty,” he quickly added.
    “Magnificent,” she corrected. “Your grandfather left them after Sarah was killed. When he went back to New York, he took his little girl—your mother—with him and left the horses and everything else. My grandfather told me all about it. And we always wondered what became of the little girl.”
    “She fell in love with a dirt-poor cowboy named Roarke Powers. She married him and they had a son. A few years later she died an ugly death.” Jed held up a warning hand to stop the flow of shock and curiosity into Thena’s eyes. “Tell me more about the horses.”
    Shaken, Thena assessed the old resentment and deep pain that simmered underneath his hard exterior, and she felt sorry for him. This man hadn’t had an easy life.
    “The Arabians,” she continued softly, “bred with our island horses. The island horses are the descendants of horses left here by the Spanish, back in the sixteen hundreds. They bred with the Arabians over the past fifty years, and the combination produced some wonderful foals. The herd numbers about twenty-five head. My parents sold horses to the mainlanders, occasionally.”
    “Tell me about Cendrillon. I’ve never seen a horse that reddish palomino color in my life.”
    Her eyes gleaming, Thena smiled. “She’s the best. I watched her being born and that makes her even more special to me. My father taught me how to train horses, and I put everything I learned into training her.”
    “What’s that name of hers mean?”
    “It’s old French for ‘Cinderella.’ She was stunted and ugly when she was born, and no one except me ever thought she’d grow out of it. She had hidden beauty.”
    Thena continued talking about Cendrillon and the island’s other