Envious

  OUTSTANDING PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF LISA JACKSON

  PARANOID

  “Jackson gradually builds up the layers of this tangled psychological thriller, leading to a stunning finale. Jackson knows how to keep readers guessing and glued to the page.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  LIAR, LIAR

  “Bestselling Jackson jam-packs the plot of her latest nail-biting novel with plenty of unexpected twists and turns, making Liar, Liar a terrific choice for readers who enjoy their literary adrenaline fixes on the darker side of the suspense spectrum.”

  —Booklist

  “Twisty . . . suspenseful. The many threads of this action-packed mystery are tied together by the mesmerizing, larger-than-life character of Didi Storm, who haunts the book to its final pages.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  YOU WILL PAY

  “This suspenseful thriller is packed with jaw-dropping twists.”

  —In Touch Weekly

  NEVER DIE ALONE

  “Jackson definitely knows how to keep readers riveted.”

  —Mystery Scene

  CLOSE TO HOME

  “Jackson definitely knows how to jangle readers’ nerves . . . Close to Home is perfect for readers of Joy Fielding or fans of Mary Higgins Clark.”

  —Booklist

  TELL ME

  “Absolutely tension filled . . . Jackson is on top of her game.”

  —Suspense Magazine

  Books by Lisa Jackson

  Stand-Alones

  SEE HOW SHE DIES

  FINAL SCREAM

  RUNNING SCARED

  WHISPERS

  TWICE KISSED

  UNSPOKEN

  DEEP FREEZE

  FATAL BURN

  MOST LIKELY TO DIE

  WICKED GAME

  WICKED LIES

  SOMETHING WICKED

  WICKED WAYS

  SINISTER

  WITHOUT MERCY

  YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW

  CLOSE TO HOME

  AFTER SHE’S GONE

  REVENGE

  YOU WILL PAY

  OMINOUS

  RUTHLESS

  ONE LAST BREATH

  LIAR, LIAR

  BACKLASH

  PARANOID

  ENVIOUS

  LAST GIRL STANDING

  Anthony Paterno/

  Cahill Family Novels

  IF SHE ONLY KNEW

  ALMOST DEAD

  YOU BETRAYED ME

  Rick Bentz/

  Reuben Montoya Novels

  HOT BLOODED

  COLD BLOODED

  SHIVER

  ABSOLUTE FEAR

  LOST SOULS

  MALICE

  DEVIOUS

  NEVER DIE ALONE

  Pierce Reed/

  Nikki Gillette Novels

  THE NIGHT BEFORE

  THE MORNING AFTER

  TELL ME

  Selena Alvarez/

  Regan Pescoli Novels

  LEFT TO DIE

  CHOSEN TO DIE

  BORN TO DIE

  AFRAID TO DIE

  READY TO DIE

  DESERVES TO DIE

  EXPECTING TO DIE

  WILLING TO DIE

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  ENVIOUS

  LISA JACKSON

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Compilation copyright © 2020 by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  A Family Kind of Guy copyright © 1998 by Susan Crose

  A Family Kind of Gal copyright © 1998 by Susan Crose

  A Family Kind of Wedding copyright © 1999 by Susan Crose

  All three titles comprising Envious were originally published by Silhouette Books by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4201-4986-9

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4201-4987-6 (eBook)

  ISBN-10: 1-4201-4987-3 (eBook)

  Table of Contents

  OUTSTANDING PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF LISA JACKSON

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  A FAMILY KIND OF GUY

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  A FAMILY KIND OF GAL

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  A FAMILY KIND OF WEDDING

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  A FAMILY KIND OF GUY

  The books in the FOREVER FAMILY miniseries are dedicated to my family, those who are living and those who have passed on. I was lucky enough to have lived an enchanted childhood thanks to my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and sister. My adulthood has been blessed with two incredible sons, a fabulous niece, three great nephews, and a host of new members. Thank you all!

  Prologue

  Bittersweet, Oregon

  Ten years past

  She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes upon and she was mad. Mad as hell. At him. He had the sting of her slap to remind him. “Just listen—”

  “You listen, Mason, okay? I love you and I don’t want to. That’s the bottom line.”

  Blue eyes snapped furiously above cheeks that were flushed in anger. One fist clutched the reins of her intended mount’s bridle, the other hand looked as if it itched to slap him again.

  “You don’t.”

  Thin lips compressed and she hooked a thumb at her chest. “Don’t tell me what to feel, okay? Or what to say or do. Got it?”

  “Yes, princess.”

  She stiffened. “And don’t ever, ever, call me that again.” She stepped forward a bit,
dragging the pinto’s head with her. “And get this straight, okay? You can’t tell me what to do, Lafferty,” she said in a voice that reminded him he was but a hired hand and she was, in fact, “the princess”—the daughter of his millionaire boss. “Don’t even try.” She placed one small, booted foot in the stirrup and hoisted herself into the saddle, then yanked on the reins. “A-di-os.” The horse whirled before Mason had time to take hold of the reins.

  “Bliss, come on. Don’t be a fool.”

  “Too late for that, don’t you think?” she asked with more than a trace of irony. The anger drained from her face and was replaced by sadness. “Way, way too late.”

  The sky was dark, threatening, the air hot and cloying as a storm brewed over the hills. Clouds moved in the barest of breezes, and Mason wished that he could shake some sense into her.

  “Wait a minute, Bliss.” Again he reached for the bridle, but she was quick. Too quick. She slapped Lucifer on his rump.

  “Just stay away from me!” Leaning forward, she pressed her knees into the pinto’s sides. “Hi-ya!”

  “No—”

  Ears flattened to his head, the colt bolted forward at a dead gallop. His hooves flung mud and dirt. Aptly named Lucifer, the demon tore across the paddock and through the open gate to the grassy fields beyond.

  Mason’s back teeth ground together. He was torn. Bliss Cawthorne was a stubborn, prideful creature who deserved to get caught in a downpour, but then again, the storm might be worse than just a summer shower.

  I love you. Words he’d longed to hear but which scared the stuffing out of him. There was no future for them; there never would be.

  You can’t tell me what to do, Lafferty; don’t even try! Just stay away from me!

  As if he could. Hadn’t he spent the past weeks trying to do just that?

  Thunder rumbled over the surrounding hills and he silently cursed himself up one side and down the other. He shouldn’t have let her go. Should have physically restrained her, but short of hog-tying her, there’d been no way to keep her at the house.

  You could have told her you loved her, too, and right this minute you might finally be in bed with her, feeling her hands on your body, kissing those pouting lips and making love to her.

  Hell. He didn’t love her and wouldn’t lie, so he’d been between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

  Eyes narrowing against the first spattering of rain, he rubbed his jaw where she’d slapped him as he’d argued with her. The skin stretched over his cheek still stung, but he’d been turned on by the fury in her eyes. “Dammit all.” He kicked at a rock and sent it careening into the fence post, but his gaze was fixed on Bliss again, now far in the distance astride Lucifer.

  Just the sway of her rump as the horse loped gave him an arousal that ached against his fly. What the devil was wrong with him? The boss’s daughter was off-limits. Way off-limits. No one who worked on the ranch knew it better than he, yet he’d found excuse after flimsy excuse to be next to her, or close enough that he could watch her.

  The smell of her skin aroused him, the way she angled her chin and wrinkled her nose caught him off guard and was sexy as all get-out. But why?

  Sure, she was pretty with her pale blond hair and cornflower-blue eyes. Her cheekbones were high, her jawline strong, her eyebrows arched, but, come on, Lafferty, there were lots of pretty women in the world. Yet, this woman—no, make that girl, she wasn’t quite eighteen yet—was different and appealed to him on another level, a level that scared the living tar right out of him.

  She was like no other.

  For a fleeting second, he thought of Terri Fremont, the girl he’d dated before Bliss had come to visit her father this summer. At twenty-one, Terri still looked like a pixie. Petite with freckles, short brown hair and huge brown eyes, she’d chased Mason down mercilessly and vowed to love him despite the fact that he had, at the time, been dating several women.

  A little prick of guilt jabbed at his brain because he knew in the deepest parts of his soul that he’d never cared for Terri the way she’d cared for him. He’d tried to explain it to her, over and over again, but she had refused to listen, assuring him instead that he would “learn to love her” as much as she loved him.

  She was wrong and he’d been forced to break it off with her. They had no future. He had dreams and they didn’t include a wife. He glanced at Bliss’s form again, just as horse and rider disappeared into the dark shadow of pine trees that skirted the base of the hills. Maybe a woman like Bliss would eventually change his mind. But not now.

  The rain began in earnest. Thick, fat drops shimmered from the dark, foreboding sky. In the next field, the horses, sensing the change in the atmosphere, lifted their heads, noses to the wind, nostrils quivering in anticipation. This storm would be a bad one. And Bliss Cawthorne, headstrong fool, was out in the middle of it.

  He had no choice but to follow her and haul her back to the ranch.

  Just stay away from me.

  “No way, lady,” he growled, as if she could hear him. He squared his hat on his head and whistled sharply to Black Jack, a rawboned ebony gelding blessed with the speed of Pegasus and the temperament of an angel.

  “You and me, partner,” he said as he hitched Black Jack to the fence, ran to the stables for a bridle and threw it over the gelding’s head. He buckled the leather straps with deft fingers and climbed onto the beast without a saddle. “Let’s go,” he said, digging in his heels as Black Jack took off.

  Lightning sizzled above the hills.

  Great. “Come on.”

  The horse’s strides lengthened and they were through the open gate, flying over the bent grass and wildflowers mashed by the rain. Thunder rumbled ominously through the dark heavens.

  He should never have let her go and he silently swore at himself as the wind pressed hard against his face and the downpour flattened his hair. There were too many things he shouldn’t have done to count them all.

  He’d had no right to touch her. No reason other than lust to kiss her. No sane excuse for taking off her clothes and . . . “Oh, hell.” This wasn’t the time to think about how yielding she’d been, or how, out of some vague sense of duty he hadn’t, when offered the chance, made love to her.

  “Come on, you miserable piece of horseflesh!” His knees prodded his mount as rain drenched his shoulders. Maybe he should have made love to her and been done with it, but he’d realized, almost too late, that Bliss Cawthorne wasn’t the kind of woman to love and leave. Nope, she was the type of female who crawled into a man’s blood and settled there—the kind of woman who spelled trouble with a capital T.

  He gave Black Jack his head and the game horse flattened his ears, stretched out his neck and sprinted through the fields, his legs eating the sodden ground in quick, even strides. Wind tore at Mason’s face and hands and he smiled grimly to himself. Bliss Cawthorne, princess and only daughter of John, was in for one hell of a surprise when he caught up to her.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, swiping at the water on his face. He glanced at the spot in the trees where she’d vanished, then cursed himself for being a fool. Bliss wasn’t his kind of woman; but then no one was. He’d make sure of it.

  * * *

  Bliss ignored the rain. She dug her knees into Lucifer’s sides and urged him ever upward along the old cattle trail. The colt, incited by the storm, streaked forward, his hooves digging into the soft mud, his sides heaving with the effort. Bliss felt free and unfettered, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Her hair, bound in a ponytail, streamed out behind her.

  The rain fell more steadily, in thick, heavy drops, sheeting in the distance. Still she didn’t stop. If she got a little wet, so what? Her anger was slowly dissipating, but the thought of Mason with his arrogant high-handedness telling her what to do after . . . after . . . Oh, Lord, she’d nearly made love to him just last night; practically begged him to take away her virginity when he, poised above her, muscles straining, sweat dampening his brow, had
rolled away.

  “Bastard,” she muttered. “Come on, come on,” she urged. The pinto, wide-eyed, with nostrils quivering at the smell of the storm, began to lather. Grasshoppers scattered. A startled pheasant flew away in a rush of glistening feathers. Bliss yanked out the rubber band restraining her hair as she leaned over Lucifer’s shoulder, encouraging him to speed even faster along the path—upward, through thickets of spruce and oak toward the cliffs that guarded the river. “Run, you devil.”

  The horse responded, his legs a flash, the wind causing tears to run from her eyes and fly off her cheeks with the rain. Trees were a blur.

  The crest was close, just through this last copse of trees. As the saplings gave way, she pulled back on the reins and looked over the valley, this southern part of Oregon her father often called his home. Lucifer, tossing his head, slowed to a mincing walk.

  “Thata boy.” She was winded and breathless, her heart drumming, exhilaration replacing anger. Who cared about Mason Lafferty, anyway? If she had any brains at all she would forget him.

  Telling herself that she’d get over the creep, she urged Lucifer to the crest near the edge of the ridge. From that vantage point she could see for miles, over the tops of the surrounding hills, past wineries and ranches and toward the town of Bittersweet.

  Lucifer was spooked and blowing hard; the storm was getting to him. She’d only stay for a few minutes, then double back. By then she wouldn’t have to face Mason again. At that thought her heart wrenched and she silently called herself a dozen kinds of fool.

  She’d get over him. She had to. When she got back to Seattle—