Читать книгу Secret Love - Brenda Jackson - Страница 9

The telephone rang—loudly, repeatedly.

After about the fifth ring, Jacob Madaris bolted upright in bed when the shrill sound finally infiltrated his sleep-entrenched mind. He took a deep breath, dragged a hand across his face then reached out to grab the phone before it reached its eighth ring.

“Yeah?” he said, glancing at the illuminated clock on the nightstand. It was three in the morning.

“Jake, it’s Sterling.”

There was a peculiar sound in his good friend, Sterling Hamilton’s, voice that made Jake throw back the covers and move to sit on the side of the bed. He could think of only one reason why Sterling would be calling him at this hour and sounding so strange. Jake’s heart suddenly began racing and knots began forming in his stomach.

“Diamond,” he said raggedly, almost fearful. His mind suddenly clamored with images of what could be wrong. “What is it? What happened?”

Sterling, to Jake’s way of thinking, didn’t respond quick enough. “Answer me, Sterling!” He was on his feet now and his voice had escalated to a shout.

“Calm down, Jake. Diamond’s fine, but—”

“But what!”

“She needs to come home.”

More images, worse than the ones before, flashed through Jake’s mind. “What happened? For Pete’s sake, Sterling, what happened to Diamond?” The racing of Jake’s heart increased.

“Someone broke into her home…and tried to attack her.”

“What!” After that explosion several earthy expletives poured from Jake’s lips.

“Jake, she’s okay. Diamond’s fine, Jake. Listen to me, she’s fine.”

But Jake Madaris was past listening. “Who was it? What happened?” One hand balled into a fist at his side, and the veins in his neck nearly popped.

“Some obsessed fan climbed over the wall and came in through a window, Diamond’s bedroom window. Luckily she was able to get away from the intruder and call the police.”

Jake closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Thank God for that. “What about the security system? I thought that place was wired tight.”

“The intruder managed to get past it.”

More earthy expletives poured forth from Jake’s lips.

“Your anger won’t help Diamond, Jake. She needs you to be calm when you see her. She’s pretty shaken up.”

“I’m on my way.”

“No need. She’s on her way there. I’m sending her on my plane. In fact she should be arriving in less than an hour. Just be at the airstrip when the plane gets there.”

Jake shook his head, angry with himself. He should have been with her tonight. He should have been there to protect her. Or better yet, she should have been here at his ranch, Whispering Pines, and not hundreds of miles away in California. He was her husband. The two of them should not be living apart.

His shoulders slumped when he remembered that their living arrangements weren’t the tip of their problems. The real scorcher was the fact that very few people even knew they were married. His own mother didn’t know, and only one of his brothers knew.

“I’ll be at the airstrip, waiting.”

“Call me after you get her settled in, and let me know how she’s doing.”

“All right and thanks.” As soon as Jake hung up the phone, he quickly began getting dressed.

Slow down, calm down, he ordered himself, but it didn’t work. He moved around his bedroom, putting on his clothes at a frantic pace.

When he and Diamond had married a little over year ago, he had gone along with her request that they keep their marriage a secret for a number of reasons. The main one had been for their privacy. If the tabloids knew that Hollywood’s most sought-after African-American actress, Diamond Swain, was married to wealthy Texas rancher, Jacob Madaris, they would have a field day at their expense. Diamond had not wanted their special relationship, their extraordinary love, scrutinized, criticized or placed under the media’s attention. She had been determined to protect the love they shared at any cost.

“Yeah, but not this cost,” Jake muttered as he finished putting on his boots. He didn’t care about the media. But Diamond, who was always in the spotlight, and constantly hounded by the press and paparazzi, had felt differently. She had wanted a secret place she could always come to when she needed to escape. He and his ranch had become her loving and safe haven.

Another reason for the secrecy was that there was no way he could ever give up his life as a rancher. Knowing that, he knew he could never ask her to give up her life as an actress. The decision to keep their marriage a secret had been a difficult one for him. The Madaris family was a close one. But he had gone along with her request, although he hadn’t liked it, because at the time all the reasons for doing so had seemed for the best.

But now, none of that mattered. What mattered most was keeping her safe. As far as she was concerned, their secret had run its course.

As he rushed out of the house, he couldn’t help but remember how it had begun. He couldn’t help but call to mind another time, nearly eighteen months ago, when he had gone to the airstrip to await Diamond’s arrival.