Kentucky Heat Read Online Free Page A

wasn’t black. She dropped her head between her knees and willed herself to tears. Her eyes remained dry. Everything always came at a price. Now she was going to lose the two people she loved most in the whole world.
    Nick was just a boy, and now he was married. She struggled to remember how much older than Nick Willow was, but she couldn’t remember. In the end, it didn’t matter. Her age isn’t going to change the fact that she married my son. And he didn’t think enough of me to call and share his news. Or wait to have a wedding here at the farm. It hurt that he thought so little of her not to want to share one of the happiest days of his life.
    Hot tears pricked her eyelids. Was there another way to handle things? If there was, she didn’t know what it was. How could she? She knuckled her eyes. Maybe she should have been more caring, more gentle, more . . . something. The plain simple truth was, she didn’t know how to be that way. An inner voice demanded an answer. Then how can you be so caring and gentle with the horses and not your own flesh and blood? “I don’t know,” she wailed. “I don’t know.”
    Nealy lifted her head and stared ahead of her. Her adopted mother Maud’s words rang in her ears loud and clear. “No matter what, the horses always have to come first.” Jess had echoed those same words. Even hateful Josh Coleman had said the same thing. She’d lived by those words all her life because she’d been so grateful to Maud and Jess for taking her and Emmie into their lives and giving her a good life and then adopting her. In death they had provided for her by leaving Blue Diamond Farms to her and Emmie. To this day she felt she had to prove herself worthy of their love and unselfishness by making Blue Diamond Farms the best horse farm in the state of Kentucky. She’d done that, too. But the price had come high.
    She thought about Emmie and how much she loved her. Back then in the early days, everything was for Emmie. Everything. Emmie was hers, her flesh and blood, and it was up to her to provide for her. She’d done that the only way she knew how. By working from four in the morning till eight at night. To prove to Maud and Jess that she was as good as any man. And to thank them, and to pay for their keep.
    And now this. The one time when Emmie really needed her mother, she’d gone it alone. “I would have found the right words to say to her. Maybe they wouldn’t have been pretty or flowery, but they would have come from my heart. My arms would have circled her. Together we could have cried. Like Nick, she didn’t want me. Didn’t trust me to do the right thing. I would have. I know I would have. You just didn’t give me the chance.”
    Hot, scalding tears rolled down her cheeks. “I love you both so much.” She cried into the flannel sleeve of her shirt. “So very, very much.”
    Â 
    Â 
    â€œMake yourself at home, Nick. You’ve been here often enough to know where everything is. You, too, Willow. Take any room you want on the second floor. Before you can say it, Nick, Buddy must have had someone come in and move all his things out while we were on the cruise. It doesn’t look like he ever lived here. I was so shocked, I just caved in. I wish you could have seen me. I was like a maniac going through everything for some little scrap of something that was left behind. There was nothing, not even an empty shaving-cream can. Not even a stray sock. I just don’t understand how he could do this to me.”
    â€œDo you want me to go to Ohio and kill him?” Nick asked. He grimaced when Willow jerked her head sideways to indicate he should go upstairs while she talked to Emmie.
    â€œHe planned it very thoroughly,” Emmie said, flopping down on the couch. “He let me talk and plan for a baby, he arranged the cruise, said it would be like a second honeymoon and then