“Really, Jared, as you say, she’s been running for a year. What has you so upset over it now?” Carolyn’s voice was lightly amused and more than a little curious.

Jared stopped his pacing before turning his head to look at his petite, conservatively dressed mother. Her soft graying brown hair was upswept and held at the back with a silver clasp his father had given her for their tenth anniversary. Around her neck she wore pearls he had bought her for a birthday. She wore a plain wedding band on her left hand; on her right she still wore the simple engagement ring and thicker band she had worn as Judge Victor Raddington’s wife.

She was still a beautiful woman, one of the most beautiful Jared had ever known. With her pretty features and dark blue eyes, she wasn’t classically beautiful, but there was an air of calm stateliness about her that always comforted him. At least, at most times.

“I’m tired of this,” he finally sighed roughly as he turned back to her and paced over to the light oak kitchen table and returned to his seat. “I can’t get her out of my head. I can’t let her keep running like this.”

She was destroying herself. He had seen that much, had glimpsed the bitter rage that filled her the moment before he kissed her. And that kiss. He breathed in deeply, still affected by the sensations that had swept through him. It was wildfire. It was an explosion of the senses, too intense to fight, too deep to ever let go.

“And how do you intend to stop her, Jared?” His mother lifted her coffee cup to her lips, but he saw the grin edging her lips. “Kimberly is a grown woman. You can’t force her into a relationship with you. Those days have long since passed, son.”

She was amused. Hell, had there ever been a time when she hadn’t been amused when he and his father displayed what she called their “male quirkiness”?

He leaned back in his chair, watching her silently for long moments. She was married to Senator Madison, and though she didn’t appear deliriously happy, she did appear content. The shadows still lingered from her first husband’s death, though. That veil of sadness that he knew would never completely lift.

Her relationship with Victor Raddington had been tempestuous, passionate and, he knew, deeply loving. He had been raised in the shelter of their love, and later, after his adult years, in the unspoken knowledge of the fact their sexuality wasn’t what others would consider “normal”.

His father had helped found The Club. The secretive membership of highly public figures that had created the group had done so out of a need of privacy and protection. A judge, a governor, a vice president hopeful. Their sexuality would have been a smear on their public images.

“What do you know about this Trust her father’s holding over her head, Mother?” He finally asked the question eating at his mind. There had to be an answer to this, though after his meeting a few hours before with Senator Madison, it wasn’t looking as though it could be answered in his favor.

Carolyn glanced back at him with some surprise before a glimmer of understanding entered her gaze.

“She told you about it?” she asked curiously.

Jared shook his head. “Not in so many words, but this is Washington, you forget—there are few secrets.”

She sighed in acknowledgement. “It was established generations ago. It states that she must marry a man her father approves of and that she must be a virgin to inherit Briar Cliff, the estate that has passed down in her mother’s family for generations.” She held her hand up when Jared would have protested. “It’s entirely legal, Jared, I checked this myself. Her father enforces an exam every three months to ensure that she’s fulfilling the terms of the trust. It’s all entirely legal and unbreakable. In five years, the conditions of the Trust will become null and void. If there is no female child, or the female child has lost her virginity and not married with the approval of the father, signed and notated before the Trust lawyers, then Briar Cliff reverts completely to the oldest male heir or to the father. If neither father nor surviving male heir is in existence, then and only then, does it revert to the female child unconditionally. Daniel is determined that she will marry a man who can restrain her passions, not someone who will encourage them.”

Rage tightened his chest, clenched his jaw as he stared back at her. The bitterness in her gaze, the pain in her voice was beginning to make sense now. He had hoped, hell, prayed that the information he had been given at The Club had been wrong. Though he had suspected it wasn’t.

“Why did you marry this…” he bit off the words with a snap of his teeth, “…person?”

A soft smile curved her lips as he covered the more explicit terms he would have used.

“Really, Jared, my marriage to Daniel has nothing to do with his relationship to his daughter. Though I was unaware of the conflicts between them at the time.” She shook her head as she wrapped her fingers around her cup, staring into the remains of her coffee pensively. “It pains him, the distance between him and Kimberly, but he does what he feels is right. And the terms of the Trust were not his doing. It was done five generations ago by a strict, straight-laced mother who entirely disapproved of what she called the ‘unnatural’ desires of the females of her family. She was determined that her ancestors would comport themselves with all respectability, and she made it stick.”

Jared breathed in roughly as he began to suspect the obstacles that now stood in the way of possessing the woman his heart seemed attached to.

“If it pained him, he would do something to right the situation, such as allowing her to marry someone she cares for rather than someone he chooses.” He restrained the fury burning in his gut. “Are you aware he considers me unacceptable as a husband to his daughter?”

Why he had bothered to approach the Senator that morning he still wasn’t certain. He hadn’t formally stated an intention to marry Kimberly, but he had been curious as to the qualifications the Senator approved.

Carolyn’s lips thinned with carefully controlled anger. The news didn’t sit well with her any more than it had with him.

“I understand why he feels that way,” she surprised him with her statement. “Wait, Jared.” She shook her head when he opened his mouth to argue. “As you said, this is Washington, there are few secrets that aren’t told in glistening detail. The rumors of The Club, the Trojans, and their lifestyle have been prevalent in the past year or so. Your name was linked to it no sooner had you joined. Daniel considers The Club and its members, the epitome of what he’s determined to save his daughter from.”

Jared rubbed his hand over his face wearily. Some people couldn’t keep their mouths shut if their lives depended on it. In this case, a bitter divorce and a less than sober ex-wife had broken the secret of the exclusive men’s club to a society that soaked up the rumors.

“His daughter’s sexuality isn’t his business,” he growled.

“No more than yours is my business,” she pointed out. “Yet, I’ve fielded questions concerning your membership there for several months.”

There was no censure in her voice, only the acceptance he had always known from her.

“I’m sorry.” He could only shake his head wearily. “I won’t apologize, I knew the risks.”

Carolyn sighed deeply. “Tell me, are the rumors concerning Kimberly’s membership there exaggerated, or true?”

She picked up her cup as though the question wasn’t dropped like a bomb.

Damn! The leak was worse than he had been warned it was. They were going to have to find the person or persons responsible for it.

Jared watched her carefully. Anything between them, he had no doubt, would stay between them, but this was Kimberly’s secret to bear, not his.

“You’re so like your father,” she chuckled then. “I will assume she is, and I will assume that your temper this week is due from learning of it yourself.” She leaned forward somberly then, her blue eyes dark and intent. “Jared, that estate means everything to Kimberly. Everything. Her mother’s last words were a plea for her to stop the cycle that the women of her family have endured for over five generations. If she loses her virginity, her father gains control of the estate, the house, everything that has been passed down, mother to daughter, for so very long now. In each case, the mother was forced to wed a man chosen by her father, one deemed capable of restraining her passions and her sexuality. The cycle is destroying her and, in many ways, Daniel as well.”

“He can break it,” Jared pointed out, aware that the anger pulsing inside him colored his voice as well. “He’s destroying her.”

“He believes he’s saving her.”

“For God’s sake.” He came out of his chair in a surge of energy born of the fury pulsing inside him. “When did we return to the Middle Ages, Mother? She’s a woman, not a child.”

“Jared, you can’t fight this,” she said softly, regretfully. “I’ve discussed this with Daniel until I’m blue in the face. He won’t relent. It’s the only conflict we’ve had in our marriage in a year now. He believes he’s right. He believes Kimberly should marry a man of restrained passions, one capable of controlling what he considers her ‘wild inclinations’.”

“He’s a self-righteous prig,” he snapped.

“Why do you care?” she asked him, frowning now as he paced the room. “I understand your desire for her, Jared, but there have been other women you’ve desired and couldn’t have as well. What makes her different?”

“She makes me crazy,” he growled, pushing his hands into the pockets of his slacks as he hunched his shoulders against the tension invading them. “She makes me want to throw her over my shoulder like a damned caveman, and at the same time I want to wrap her in cotton and protect her from anything and everyone who could hurt her. I want her happy.”

His voice, his body, vibrated with that need, with the complete certainty that he could make her happy.

“And you think marrying her will do that?” she questioned him with a shadow of mockery. “Jared, Daniel will never allow Kimberly to marry a man as sexually intense as you so obviously are. And she’ll lose everything she’s fought for to this point if she accepts you.”

“She’s mine.” He winced as the words tore from him. “Damn, didn’t that sound arrogant enough?” He laughed with an edge of self-mockery.

But he couldn’t escape the claim he had just made. As the words came from his lips, the knowledge wrapped around his heart. She was his, even if he couldn’t have her. He had seen the pain in her eyes, the sexuality that tormented her, the ache that shadowed her eyes. And so much more. He saw the need to be touched, to be held, to let go and share the passion, the heat that built within her.

“Do you love her, Jared?” his mother asked again, her voice firm now, demanding.

He stared back at her, meeting her gaze with a determination of his own.

Did he love her? He sighed with weary acceptance. Yeah, he loved her, more than he had thought it possible to love a woman.

“More than you know,” he finally said, his own need echoing through his body. “More than you could ever know, Mother.”

For a moment compassion filled her eyes. She had waited years for him to find the one woman he felt he could spend the rest of his life with, and settle down into a relationship that fulfilled him, as much as her marriage to his father had fulfilled her.

“Then you have a choice to make,” she said gently. “All her life Kimberly has been forced to choose, and always it’s been a choice that’s ripped another wound in her soul. Can you ask her to add your heart and your needs to her burden?”

He stared back at her, restraining the fury erupting inside him. Swallowing tightly, he shook his head with a rough, negative movement. He couldn’t force her to make such a choice, and they both knew it. But he didn’t know if he could force himself to let her go, either.