The Rivals Read Free

hone in on her signal.
    She wondered what had brought Drew DeWitt here at this time of year. He owned half of a ranch called Forgotten Valley outside Jackson, but it was run by a manager. Drew sometimes came to hunt in the fall, but deer and elk season was long past. Maybe he’d come to ski.
    She wondered if Clay Blackthorne was with him. The two men were cousins. Their mothers, Ellen DeWitt and Eve Blackthorne, had inherited Forgotten Valley from their mother and decided to give it to two of their sons. Libby had no idea why Clay and Drew had been chosen, when both of them had siblings. Maybe their mothers had drawn straws.
    Libby wondered if Clay had ever told Drew the awful truth about what had happened all those years ago. How sixteen-year-old Elsbeth Grayhawk had misled and seduced twenty-seven-year-old Clay Blackthorne.
    Libby felt her face flush as she remembered how foolish she’d been. It had all been a childish game to her, one which she’d deeply regretted when she’d realized just how much pain she’d caused. What she’d done was unforgivably cruel. No wonder Clay had been unable to forgive her.
    Libby tried to remember what was going through her head at the time. Excitement at attracting the attention and admiration of a man so much older than she was. Brand-new—and very powerful—feelings of arousal and desire. And a cockeyed notion that she could finally avenge the wrong done to her father.
    It was asinine, immature sixteen-year-old thinking.
    But not surprising, considering how often during her youth she’d heard her father damn Clay’s father, Jackson Blackthorne, to hell for stealing the woman he loved, Evelyn DeWitt, right out from under his nose.
    King Grayhawk had married and divorced three times and had indulged in an equal number of affairs seeking a replacement for Eve DeWitt. But no woman had been able to measure up to his lost love.
    Libby had learned to hate and blame Blackthornes for every ill wind that blew in her life. But most especially for the women who came and went in her father’s life, none of them willing to mother some other woman’s brat.
    She and her two older brothers, North and Matt, had been the offspring of her father’s first wife. The two stepmothers passing through her life had given her two half brothers and two half sisters that she was left to care for.
    When the chance had come for revenge against the Blackthornes, she’d wrapped her arms around the son of her father’s enemy, whispered lies in his ear, and kissed him until she didn’t know which way was up. It had seemed a sweet irony to have Clay Blackthorne fall in love with her—and then walk away.
    They’d spent the whole glorious month of June making love every day. Morning picnics. Afternoon assignations. Secret evenings under the starry night skies. She’d planned to spend the Fourth of July with him and, after the fireworks, simply disappear without a word or a clue as to who she really was or where she’d gone.
    She hadn’t counted on falling in love with him. Hadn’t counted on getting pregnant. Hadn’t counted on her father’s damaging interference when Clay Blackthorne had wanted to do the right thing and marry her.
    â€œWhat he did was statutory rape,” her father had said in a steely voice. “You go after him and I’ll have him arrested. You let him near my grandchild and I’ll have him arrested. I want him out of your life. Is that clear?”
    It had been years before she stopped to wonder why her father hadn’t had Clay arrested anyway. Years before she’d realized that Clay’s father had had enough money and power and influence to keep his son out of jail despite her father’s threats.
    Because she’d loved Clay, she’d sent him away, telling him enough lies to make sure he never came back.
    She’d left home with her two-year-old daughter on the day she turned