Secret Love - Brenda Jackson [59]
Ignoring their audience, Jake kissed her more deeply. Holding her tight in his arms he leaned back and lifted her feet off the stair.
“Well, Lordy, look at that. I don’t believe it. Jake got himself a diamond,” Jake heard one of his brothers say from the crowd below.
“And she got herself a Madaris,” one nephew’s wife added proudly.
“And we got a movie star in the family,” a third person, a teenager, piped in.
Catcalls, wild applause, whistles and shouts thundered loudly in the room, but all of that was lost on Jake and Diamond. Neither took them as interruptions. A hard wind could have blown the house down and they would not have noticed. For the moment, nothing else mattered to them but each other.
Their secret love was not a secret any longer.
Jake stood across the room, leaning against the wall, watching while Diamond stood comfortably talking to the women in his family. It was evident that everyone was completely taken with her. She had been so sure his family would not forgive her for holding him to their secret. But she had been wrong.
Together he and Diamond had given his family and close friends the complete story. He knew that after listening to Diamond explain why she had wanted to keep their marriage, their special love, from under the media’s scrutiny, everyone had understood because they knew her fears of what the media would do were justified.
His family had thought it amusing how they had eluded the media by letting them continue to assume that there was more between Diamond and Sterling than friendship. It had been a ruse that had worked until Sterling had gotten married.
Jake was about to walk off, to go claim his wife when he found his way blocked by his nephew Dex.
“You surprised the hell out of us, Jake,” Dex Madaris said as a slow smile touched his lips.
Jake crossed his arms over his chest, and his own lips curved into a grin. “Figured I did. I guess I’ll be thanking Sterling for the rest of my life for sending Diamond to Whispering Pines to rest and relax.”
Dex nodded. “Yep. Just like I’ll always be grateful to you for Caitlin. It was sheer luck that you had to go out of town on business that day, and I’m the one who had to interview her for that summer job here.”
Dex looked across the room at his wife. Like most of the other women present, she stood in a crowd surrounding Diamond. “I think I fell in love with Caitlin the moment I laid eyes on her. I just didn’t know it at the time.” He chuckled. “It took me all of a little over two weeks to find it out, and with a little help from Clayton.”
Jake chuckled, remembering. He looked over at the group when he heard Diamond’s throaty laugh. The rush of sexual desire that made him tremble from just looking at her didn’t surprise him. Only Diamond could do that to him. “I was a goner the moment Diamond walked off that plane onto Whispering Pines land,” he said to Dex. “Because of Jessie, a city woman was the last person I wanted to be attracted to. But after a mere few days, I came to the stunning realization that my mind was saying one thing but my heart had its own private agenda.”
Dex studied his uncle for a long spell before asking, “So now that chances are high that your secret is going to get leaked to the press, how are you planning on handling the media? You may want to come up with some sort of game plan. None of us were prepared for what happened to Syneda. What the media put her and her father through was totally uncalled for.”
Jake nodded in agreement. “Yes, and I’ve prepared myself. I’m just about ready to deal with anything. I’ve had to put up with a lot of garbage being written about Diamond, and none of it will stop just because she’s married to me. In fact, I’ve got a feeling things will get worse. Everything she’s tried to avoid and protect us from will happen once the secret gets out.”
It wasn’t going