The Cowboy

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  "You'll like this one." Rafe swallowed the last of the Scotch. "It's just outside of Tucson. I grew up there. Inherited it when Dad died."

  "No."

  "You don't have to worry," Rafe said gently. "You won't be alone with me. My mother will be there."

  "I thought she lived in Scottsdale."

  "She does. But she's paying me a visit. My sister, Julie, is going to drop in on us, too. She lives in Tucson, you know. I thought you'd feel more comfortable about going down there if you knew you weren't going to be completely alone with me."

  "Look, I don't care who's going to be down there. Rafe, stop stalking me like this. I mean it."

  "There'll be someone else there, too, honey."

  "I just told you, I don't care who's there. In case you didn't realize it, knowing your mother will be around is not much of an incentive for me to go to Tucson. She undoubtedly hates my guts. She thinks the sun rises and sets on you. She made her opinion of me clear that one time I met her last year and I'm sure she thinks even less of me after what happened between us. I'm sure she blames me for your losing Spencer Homes to Moorcroft. I wouldn't be surprised if your sister feels exactly the same."

  "Now, Maggie, love, you've got to allow for the fact that people change. My mother is looking forward to seeing you again."

  "I don't believe that for a minute and even if it's true, I'm not particularly anxious to see her."

  "You'd better get used to the idea of seeing her," Rafe said. "She's going to marry your father."

  "She's what?" Margaret felt as if the world had just fallen away beneath her feet. She clutched at her brandy glass.

  "You heard me."

  "I don't believe you. You're lying. My father would have said something."

  "He hasn't said anything because I asked him not to. I wanted to handle this my own way. He's the other person who will be at the ranch while you're there, by the way."

  "Oh, my God." She felt physically sick as she put the untouched brandy down on the table.

  "Are you all right?" Rafe frowned in concern.

  "No."

  "It's not as bad as all that. They make a great couple, as a matter of fact."

  "When… where… how did they meet?"

  "I introduced them about four months ago."

  "For God's sake, why?"

  "Because I had a hunch they'd hit it off. Your father wasn't too keen on the idea at first, I'll admit. He was more inclined to string me up from the nearest tree. Seems he was under the impression I was the bad guy in that mess last year. When I straightened him out on a few details, including the fact that I still wanted to marry you, he settled down and saw the light of sweet reason. Then he met Mom and fell like a ton of bricks."

  Margaret stared at Rafe in bewildered horror. "I don't understand any of this. What's behind it? You never do anything unless the bottom line is worth it. What is going on here?"

  He smiled his thin smile. "If you want to find out you'll have to take a couple of weeks off and come down to the ranch." He reached inside the jacket he'd slung over the back of the chair and removed an airline ticket folder. "I've made the reservations for you. You're scheduled on the eight o'clock flight to Tucson next Monday."

  "You're out of your mind if you think you can just walk in here and take control of my life like this. I'm not going anywhere."

  "Suit yourself, but I think you'll want to find out what's happening and the only way to do it is to come down to Arizona."

  "If my father is crazy enough to get involved with your mother, that's his affair. I'll give him my opinion when he asks for it, but until then, I'm staying out of it."

  "It isn't just their relationship that's at stake," Rafe said calmly.

  Margaret dug her fuchsia-colored nails into the white leather upholstery. "I knew it," she bit out. "With you there's always a business reason. Tell me the rest, damn you."

  "Well, it's true your father and I are thinking of doing a little business together."

  "Good Lord. What kind of business?"

  "I'm going to buy Lark Engineering."

  It was the final bombshell as far as Margaret was concerned. She leaped to her feet. She wanted to call him a liar again, but even as the words crossed her mind, she was terribly, coldly afraid. "My father would never sell the firm to you. He built it from the ground up. It's his whole life. If he's thinking of selling out, it's because you're forcing his hand. What have you done, Rafe? What kind of leverage are you using against him?"

  Rafe rose slowly to his feet, looming over her. He dominated the elegant room—a dark, dangerous intruder who threatened Margaret's hard-won peace of mind as nothing else ever had. She looked up at him, feeling small and very vulnerable. But she refused to step back out of reach. She would not give him the satisfaction.

  "You really don't think very much of me, do you?" Rafe's mouth was taut with his rigidly controlled anger. "It's a good thing I learned something about handling my own pride this past year because the look in your eyes right now is enough to make a man feel about two inches tall."

  "Really?" Her voice was scathing. "And do you feel two inches tall?"

  "No, ma'am," he admitted. "But I probably would if I were guilty of whatever it is you think I'm doing to your father. Lucky for me I'm as innocent as a new foal."

  "Are you saying you're not forcing him to sell out to you?"

  "Nope. Ask him."

  "I will, damn you."

  "You'll have to come down to the ranch to do that," Rafe said. "Because that's where he is and he won't reassure you on the phone."

  "Why not?"

  "Because he knows I want some time with you down there and he's agreed to act as the bait. You'll have to fly to Arizona if you want to convince yourself that I'm not pulling a fast one."

  "And if I don't go?"

  "Then I reckon you'll sit here in Seattle and worry a lot."

  She shook her head, dazed. "I don't believe any of this. Why are you doing it?"

  "I've told you why I'm doing it. I want another chance with you. This is the only way I know to get it."

  "Even if that disaster last year didn't stand between us, we have no business thinking about getting involved again. I've told you that. I could never marry you, Rafe. Not for long, at any rate."

  "I'll make you change your mind."

  "Impossible. I know you too well now. The truth is, I knew you too well last year. That's the reason I didn't give you an answer the first time you asked. Or the second or the third. Your first love is business and your overriding passion in life is for making money, not making love."

  Rafe contrived to look hurt. "I don't recall you complaining too loud in bed."

  Margaret clenched her fists. "On the rare occasions you managed to find time to take me to bed you performed just fine."

  "Why, thank you, honey. It's real sweet of you to remember."

  "You're missing the point," she hissed.

  "Yeah?"

  "The point is, you don't have a lot of time in your life for a relationship of any kind. During the two months we were dating you were always flying into Seattle for a weekend and then flying out again Monday morning. Or you would show up on my doorstep at midnight on a Wednesday, take me to bed and then disappear at six the next day to get to a business conference in L.A."

  "I admit I used to do a fair amount of traveling, but I've cut back lately."

  "And when you weren't traveling, you were tied up at the office. Remember all those times you called from Tucson and told me you wouldn't be able to make it up here to Seattle? I was expected to rearrange all my plans to accommodate you. Or else you'd arrive with a briefcase full of work and Doug Hatcher in tow and the two of you would take over my living room for a full day."

  "Now, honey, there was a lot going on at the time."

  "With you there always will be a lot going on. It's your nature. Your mother was kind enough to point that out to me. Said you were just like your father. You thrive on your work. Beating
the competition to the draw is the most important thing in your life."

  "You're getting carried away now, Maggie, love. Just take it easy, honey. I'm dead serious about this. I want to get married."

  "Oh, I believe you. You'd find a wife useful. You want a wife who will be a convenience for you—someone to handle your entertaining, your home, your social life. Someone who will warm your bed when you want it warmed and stay out of your way when you've got other things to do. Someone who knows how to live in your world and who will accommodate her entire life to yours. In short, you want the perfect corporate wife."

  "Give me the next couple of weeks to prove that I'm willing to make a few accommodations of my own."

  Margaret's head came up sharply. "You're hardly starting out on a promising foot, are you? You're trying to blackmail me into going down to your ranch."

  He sighed. "Only because I know it's a sure-fire way to get you there. Maggie, listen to me…"

  She glared at him. "Don't call me Maggie. I never did like the way you called me that. No one else ever calls me Maggie."

  Rafe's brows rose. "Your dad does."

  "That changes nothing. I dislike being called Maggie."

  "You never said anything about it before."

  "It didn't seem worth arguing about last year. Good grief, there wasn't time to argue about it. This year is different, however. I'm not putting up with anything from you this year."

  "I see. That's too bad. I always kind'a liked Maggie."

  "I don't."

  "All right," he said soothingly, "I'll try to remember to call you Margaret."

  "You don't have to try to remember anything. You won't be around long enough to make the mistake very often."

  "You're not going to give an inch, are you?"

  "No." Margaret eyed him defiantly.

  Rafe's mouth curved faintly. "I had a feeling you were going to be like that. Which is why I went to so much effort to set this whole thing up the way I did. I need you to give me a chance to prove that I've changed. I'm only asking for two weeks."

  "You're not asking, you're demanding. That's the way you always did things, Rafe. You haven't changed at all."

  Temper flashed briefly in his eyes and was almost immediately overlaid with something far more dangerous: frustrated desire. Rafe lifted a hand to slide around the nape of Margaret's neck beneath the neat chignon of her hair. She froze.

  "How much have you changed, Maggie?" he asked softly, his mouth only inches from hers. "Do you still remember this?" He brushed his lips across hers in the lightest of caresses. "Do you still go all hot and trembly when I do this?" He caught her lower lip gently between his teeth and then released it.

  Margaret flinched from the jolt of deep longing that knifed through her. She did not move. She was not sure she could have moved if she'd tried. She was paralyzed—a rabbit confronted by a mountain lion.

  Rafe's mouth slanted across hers again and she was thoroughly confused by the unexpected tenderness of his kiss. His fingers stroked her nape, feather-light against her sensitive skin. A tremor sizzled along her nerve endings. She shivered.

  "Yeah, you still do, don't you? I've been thinking about this for the past year," Rafe muttered. "One whole year, damn you. Every night and every day. There were times when I thought I'd go clear out of my mind with wanting you. How could you do that to me, Maggie?"

  She was shaken by the bleak depths in his voice. "If it was the sex you missed, I'm sure there must have been someone around to give you what you wanted."

  "No," he stated harshly. "There was no one. There hasn't been anyone since you, Maggie."

  She stared up at him in shock. When he finally had found time for bed, Rafe had proved himself to be a deeply sensual man. She remembered that much quite vividly. "I don't believe you."

  "Believe it," he growled as his mouth grazed hers one more time. "God knows I do. I had to live through every night alone and it nearly drove me crazy."

  "Rafe, you can't walk back in here after a whole year and do this to me," Margaret said desperately. "I won't let you."

  "Let me stay tonight."

  "No."

  He drew back slightly, releasing her. "I had a hunch you'd say that but I had to ask. Don't worry about it, I've waited this long, I can wait a little longer."

  "You'll wait until hell freezes over," she said crisply. "You've said what you had to say, Rafe. Now leave."

  He hesitated briefly. Then he nodded and picked up his hat. He jammed it down low over his glittering eyes. As he reached for his jacket, he glanced at the airline ticket he'd left on the table. "Next Monday. The eight o'clock flight."

  "I won't be on it."

  "Please."

  Margaret's mouth fell open in amazement. "What did you say?"

  "I said please. Please be on the eight o'clock flight. Come to Arizona to talk to the woman who will probably be marrying your father. Come to Arizona to find out what kind of evil deal I've cooked up to get your dad to sell his company to me. Come to Arizona to see if I really have changed. Come to Arizona to give us both a second chance."

  "I'd be a fool to do it."

  "There hasn't been anyone else for either of us for the past year, Maggie. That should tell us both something." He hooked the jacket over his shoulder and strode to the door.

  "Rafe, wait, I'm not going to do it, do you hear me? I won't be on that plane." Margaret managed to unstick herself from the carpet and go after him, but she was too late.

  The door closed softly behind him before she could ask him how he knew there had been no one else for her during the past year.

  2

  « ^ »

  It had been the longest year of his life, Rafe thought savagely, and Maggie looked as if she'd spent it sleeping on rose petals and sipping tea. It was almost more than he could take to see her looking so serene and untouched by the past twelve months.

  He clung to the knowledge that she had been as celibate as he had. It was the only thing that gave him any real hope. On some level she had been waiting for him, he told himself. On some level she was still his and knew it.

  Outside on the street in front of her apartment building he managed to find a cab for the ride back to his hotel. Knowing he was heading toward a lonely hotel room when he should have been spending the night in Maggie's bed did nothing for Rafe's temper. Still, the players in the game were finally in position at last and the first moves had all been made. The action was ready to start.

  She was as striking as ever, he admitted to himself as he sprawled back against the seat in the cab. More so. She was a little more sure of herself now than she had been a year ago. And a hell of a lot less willing to accommodate herself to his schedule, he thought with grim humor.

  The sight of her tonight had nearly shattered his carefully honed self-control. He had promised himself he would remain in command of the situation, but when she had walked through the door his first instinct had been to pull her down onto the carpet of her elegant living room and make love to her until she was wild. He needed desperately to feel her respond to him the way she had the last time on that memorable night before everything had gone up in smoke. Lord, he was starving for her.

  He had never been so hungry in his life and he had to be patient. He stared moodily at the cheerfully garish lights of the public market as the cab driver turned east on Pike Street. It had been a year since he had seen Seattle at night.

  The cab halted in front of the lobby of the expensive hotel and Rafe got out. He reached for his wallet.

  "Nice boots," the cabbie remarked as he pocketed the excessive tip.

  "Thanks." Rafe turned toward the lobby.

  "Hey, if you've got nothin' else to do this evenin'," the cabbie called after him, "I can give you a couple of suggestions. I know where the action is here in town. No sense spendin' the night alone."

  "Why not? It's the way I spend all of my nights lately."

  Rafe went on into the marble and wood-paneled lobby. He couldn't
stop picturing Maggie as she had looked tonight standing framed in the doorway of her apartment. Her sleek black hair had been pulled back to accent the delicate lines of her face. Her aquamarine eyes were even larger and more compelling than they had been in his dreams.

  The sophisticated silk dress she wore glided over subtle, alluring curves. She looked as if she'd put on a couple of pounds but they had gone to the right places. She still moved with the grace of a queen.

  Maggie had obviously found her footing in her new career as a writer. In fact, she looked depressingly content. Rafe felt like chewing nails. It seemed only fair that she should have suffered as much as he had. But apparently she hadn't.

  He reminded himself once more of the report from the discreet investigative agency he had employed. Maggie dated only rarely and never seriously. Until recently she had spent a lot of her free time with two other women who had been friends of hers for the past couple of years.

  Rafe had never met Sarah Fleetwood and Katherine Inskip but their names showed up so often in the reports that he had come to think of the unknown women as duennas for his lady. Somewhere along the line he had unconsciously started depending on them to keep Maggie out of trouble.

  Trouble meant another man in Maggie's life, as far as Rafe was concerned. But as luck would have it, Sarah and Katherine had been the ones who had found the other men. He wasn't making his move any too soon, Rafe told himself. No sense leaving a woman like Maggie at loose ends for very long.

  Rafe went into the hotel bar and found a secluded booth. He ordered a Scotch and sat brooding over it, analyzing the scene in Maggie's living room, searching for flaws in the way he'd handled the delicate negotiations, wondering if he'd applied just the right amount of pressure.

  He'd spent months putting the plan together and he'd used every lever he could find. He would have bargained with the devil himself to get Maggie back. But tonight he'd played the last cards in his hand. Now he could only pray Maggie would be on that Monday morning flight to Tucson. His whole future was hanging in the balance and Rafe knew it. The knowledge made his insides grow cold.