“Anyone who runs in the same crowd, anyone connected at all to the people who gave birth to me, is extremely dangerous. Given the chance, they would harm either of the children, and certainly you.”

“I understand. It won’t happen again. I’m sorry it happened this time. I really am.”

Jake bent his head and brushed his mouth across her temple. “I should have made the situation much clearer to you. Joshua should have stayed in that room with you every moment and Jerico should never have allowed her onto the property in the first place.”

“Wait.” Emma caught at his arm as he turned away. “I told Jerico to send her up and Joshua was protecting the children. You told me I ran this household when you were away. If either of them gets in trouble for doing what I asked, I’ll have no authority at all. It’s my fault, not theirs.”

He kept his expression blank. Yes, the men were to do what she said, unless it involved her safety. Joshua acted as Emma’s bodyguard, not the children’s, although she had no idea. Drake looked after the children. Both men should have been present. He had a lot to say to both Jerico and Joshua, whether Emma liked it or not. But she had that anxious look that made him want to kiss her until the look disappeared.

“Don’t worry. I won’t do anything to undermine your authority.” He was just going to make it very plain that if anyone ever got through security again, he was going to beat both of them within an inch of their lives. And he would make them very aware that Emma was to be protected at all times. He forced a smile. “I won’t be home for dinner. I have an important meeting tonight. A few investors are very interested in acquiring one of my companies. The company hasn’t made any money, and they’re offering way more money than the company is worth, so they have something up their sleeves. I need to meet with them face-to-face to figure out what it is. Don’t expect me until late.” He also suspected that the company manager was on his enemies’ payroll, and he intended to find out for certain.

Emma nodded. She had planned to call Greg Patterson and cancel her date with him, but after what had happened between her and Jake, she wanted to see if she reacted to Greg. If she did, then her problem was simply that she’d gone too long without a man. Let that be it.

Jake turned back to her, a slight frown on his face. “What did you say?”

She blinked in surprise. “I didn’t say anything.”

He stood there in the hall, tall, as sexy as sin, remote, his golden eyes drifting over her body with a little too much possession in his gaze, until Emma pressed herself back against the wall to keep from sliding down it. His stare came back up to her face, to her mouth, and his hand moved to the front of his jeans, his palm sliding over the hard bulge.

“Sometimes you make me wish I was a decent man, Emma.”

Emma’s breath caught in her throat as he turned away from her, an oath slipping out from between his clenched teeth as he strode away. She held on to the wall, trembling, shocked at the way she reacted to him, to his crudeness and his blatant sensuality, when she’d always been attracted to gentle, kind souls. There was little gentle or kind about Jake.

She retreated to her room to pull herself back together before facing Susan and the children. She could hear them in the distance, laughing, and the sound allowed her to breathe again. She just needed to go back to what she did best. The children were her first priority. She loved them and she provided a home for them.

Jake needed someone, whether he knew it or not. Not sexually—not in the usual way he related to women—but on a more emotional, intimate level. He needed someone to make a difference in his life and make his house a home. Emma had been happy in her role as his housekeeper, but she had to begin slowly separating herself from the close and very strange relationship she’d formed with him over the past two years.

In her room, Emma pulled a thick sweater over her thin T-shirt and tried to put Jake out of her mind. Tonight she was going on a date with Greg Patterson, a nice, uncomplicated man, and she intended to enjoy herself. She needed to get out and breathe. She’d allowed the ranch to consume her and she had to think about making a life for herself outside of it.

For now, however, she was going to be the mommy and make certain her children and her houseguest were happy.

She hurried down the wide, curving staircase and paused halfway down to look at the bronze statue of a crouched leopard. It was snarling, lips drawn back to expose sharp teeth, eyes fierce with ropes of muscle rippling beneath the rosette-dotted fur. The bronze leopard stood in the midst of several plants and appeared lifelike, a fierce wild predator, still and focused, hunting prey and all too reminiscent of Jake when he looked at her.

Her head went up when she heard Andraya shriek and Kyle laugh. Susan shouted something and Andraya and Kyle let out another round of high-pitched glee. She ran to the kitchen, only to stop in the doorway and see cake all over the floor and the table. Kyle and Andraya sat in their high chairs covered in frosting, and what remained of the birthday cake was a mass of crumbs and frosting between them. She could see the marks of fingers in the cake where the children had scooped out handfuls and eaten them, thrown them and dumped them on their heads.

“Susan?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at the teenager.

Susan opened and closed her mouth several times. “They said you fed them cake for breakfast. I have no idea how to cook, or what babies eat.”

Kyle glared at her. “I’m not a baby. ’Draya is.”