by Janet Dailey
Maggie murmured a suitable response and tried not to think about what the woman had said, but the words lingered as she continued with the housework, instilling her with an unconscious pride of possession that hadn’t existed before. She found herself rearranging furniture, letting her personality assert its influence on the house. It didn’t occur to her that, in effect, she was allowing her role as mistress to assume certain permanence. Too many of her conscious thoughts were spent worrying about the miniature noose and what kind of threat it might signify. That afternoon she rode the hills of the Shamrock Ranch searching for her brother without success, her hope to dissuade him from carrying out his unknown plans unrealized.
Chase wasn’t home by seven that evening. When Ty came downstairs after showering and changing clothes, he noticed the table was set for only two, and the place at the head of the table was bare.
“Where’s Dad?”
“He said not—” Maggie faltered, realizing how automatically Ty had referred to Chase as his father—and how automatically she had known to whom he was referring. “He said not to wait for him for dinner. He had business away from the ranch today, so he could be late.”
“He’ll probably eat at Sally’s,” Ty decided and pulled out his chair to sit down.
The mention of the other woman hit a raw nerve. Maggie suddenly remembered the desire that had been in Chase’s eyes that morning before he’d left. He had needs that she, as his wife, hadn’t fulfilled. She was suddenly tormented with images of Chase in the arms of the red-haired widow. It was crazy, but it was true, nevertheless. She was jealous.
Chapter XXXII
It was nearly ten o’clock in the evening when she went upstairs to her bedroom. She wasn’t tired, but Chase hadn’t returned yet and she didn’t want to give him the impression that she was waiting up for him. So she tossed and turned sleeplessly in her bed, watching the luminous hands of the clock on the bedside table tick off the minutes.
A little before eleven, Maggie heard the car drive into the ranch yard. She knew it was Chase—just as she knew where he had been all this time and who he’d been with. The hurt that caused her was disguised as the anger of disgust.
Tired from the long session with the attorneys and the long drive, Chase was rankled by the sight of the darkened house; not a single light shone. Maggie could have at least left a light on for him. There was a flatness to him as he climbed the porch steps and crossed to the door. He hadn’t eaten, but the prospect of raiding the refrigerator and eating alone in the kitchen didn’t appeal to him.
He entered the house and didn’t bother to turn on a light. He could find his way to the stairs in the dark. Two steps into the living room, he crashed into a table, cracking his kneecap on the corner of a leg and tipping the table over. Whatever was on top of it clattered to the floor. Grabbing his knee and cursing, Chase lurched sideways and bumped into a chair that had no business being where it was, either.
The racket from below brought Maggie out of bed. It sounded like someone was down there knocking things over. Grabbing her robe in alarm, she rushed out of the bedroom and paused at the head of the stairs to flip the wall switch that turned on the light above the staircase. She heard the muffled swearing, but she didn’t see Chase crouched over in the living room shadows until she reached the landing. Her first thought was that he was drunk. Then he looked up and saw her, poised on the landing.
“What’s going on down here?” she demanded in icy anger, viewing the table and broken vase in front of him.
“I ran into that damned table!” He released his knee long enough to gesture at the fallen table.
“Why didn’t you turn on a light so you could see where you were going instead of crashing into things and waking up the whole house?” she snapped.
“I didn’t think I needed a light!” His voice was just as tight and just as angry. “What the hell was the table doing in the middle of the floor?”
“I re-arranged the furniture—that’s what it’s doing there!” Maggie retorted.
“There was nothing wrong with the way the furniture was arranged! That table and chair had been sitting in that corner for more than thirty years!”
Her hand moved to her hip in challenge. “Then it’s time it was moved!” The robe whirled about her ankles as she pivoted to climb the steps.
“Come back here!” he ordered, but Maggie just went up the stairs more quickly. “Don’t you walk away from me!” He started after her, tripping over the table leg and swearing savagely.
Maggie had never seen him so angry before. She was suddenly alarmed at what he might do if he caught up with her. She heard him coming after her and ran the last few steps to her bedroom door, hurrying inside and turning the lock. Then she stepped away from it and held her breath. She didn’t want him near her. She didn’t want to smell another woman’s perfume on his skin or know that his hands had touched someone else earlier that night. Every part of her rebelled at the thought.
There was no thought in his mind beyond catching her and putting down this insurrection in his home. He grabbed the doorknob, but it wouldn’t yield to the pressure of his hand. The realization that she had locked the door ran through him like a white-hot knife. There were enough barriers between them without a locked door added to them.
His fist pounded on it. “Maggie! Open this door!” The command was a low roar.
“Go away!”
“You unlock this door, or I swear I’ll break it in!” he warned and rattled the knob again.
This time there was no reply, only silence from within. He leaned a shoulder against it and pushed, but nothing happened and he cursed the solidness of the door. Once he’d made his intention clear, he couldn’t back down. Stepping back, he kicked at the center of the door near the lock. It shook and held. With the second kick, Chase heard the faint splintering of wood. Putting all his force behind the blow, he kicked at the door again and felt the sickening give of the wood. When his boot hit the same weakened area again, there was a ripping sound as the metal lock was torn out of the frame and the door whipped open.
Breathing heavily from the exertion, he saw Maggie standing well back from the door holding onto the bedpost that was behind her back. A wariness blazed from her. The satin gown was molded to her figure, outlining the taut nipples of her breast, the little hollow of her belly button, and the exciting vee where her legs came together. She was his wife. The knowledge rose hot within him, arousing him beyond the point of remembering any promise.
Maggie read it in his eyes, but, however much his look aroused the same sweeping passion, her pride wouldn’t let her accept him when he’d come here from the arms of another woman.
“Don’t you come near me,” she warned. “This is my room, and you have no right to be in it unless I invite you. And I don’t want you to touch me!”
Her icy rejection was a slap at his manhood. Chase retaliated in kind, his lip curling in disdain. “What makes you think I would be interested?” He had the satisfaction of seeing her wince at his contemptuous reply. It soothed his bruised ego. “Just remember, there are no locked doors in this house.” His warning had a figurative meaning, as well as a literal one. Maggie might “shut” him out of her life, but he would never permit her to “lock” him out.
Turning on his heel, he started toward his own room and stopped when he saw Ty staring at him from the end of the hall. The bewildered look of alarm in his son’s face washed away his rage. Chase shuddered inwardly when he realized how close he had come to raping Maggie—unaware that Ty was looking on. Tiredness swept through him, slumping his shoulders.
“Go to bed, son,” he said in a voice weary with regret for the apprehension he’d caused. “It’s all over.” He saw Ty cast an anxious look toward Maggie’s open, now unclosable, door. “I won’t hurt her,” Chase added. “I won’t go near her tonight, so you can rest easy.”
There was a glimmer of uncertainty in Ty’s look, as if he had caught what Chase had not—he had said tha
t he wouldn’t go near her “tonight.” But Ty accepted his father’s word and retraced the steps to his bedroom. Chase continued slowly to his own room.
Dawn came in changing sheets of color. As the sun peered over a hill at the new day, Chase shaved and dressed. Ty was walking down the hall when he left his room. They nodded a good morning and continued toward the staircase. As they passed Maggie’s room, where the broken door sagged open, Ty glanced inside and paused.
“Mom isn’t up.” He darted a questioning look at Chase.
His stride didn’t falter as he passed the door, briefly glimpsing black hair against a white pillow. “Let her sleep. We’ll fix our own breakfast.”
After the meal, Ty left the house to do his morning chores, and Chase went to the ranch office to check the previous day’s reports and make any last-minute adjustments in the day’s schedule for the crews. An hour later he returned to The Homestead. It was silent, nothing and no one stirring. He climbed the stairs to Maggie’s room.
Crossing the threshold that he had not stepped past the night before, he walked to the bed to wake her up. Uncovered, she was lying on her stomach, her face turned toward the center of the bed. Chase looked at her sleeping form, the slim, white shoulders bare, except for the narrow straps of her nightgown. His gaze followed the smooth line of her spine, the satin material tracing its path past her slender waist to its culmination point. There, he became distracted by the heart-shaped roundness of her bottom, so arousingly defined by the clinging fabric.
He knew it was either slap it or kiss it. He slapped it, bringing the flat of his hand down sharply on a soft cheek. She woke up with a gasping cry of shock and rolled onto her side, facing him and protecting her vulnerable backside with her hand. Confusion, shock, anger, and sleep were all mixed in her expression as she pushed the weight of her rumpled hair away from her face.
“It’s time to get up,” he said, his gaze drifting to the front of her nightgown as it gaped open to show the curved slope of a breast.
She turned her head to see the morning sun shining in the window. Irritation set a frown on her features as she hurriedly swung her feet out of the bed. “Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?”
“There’s no need to rush. Ty and I have already had breakfast. We fixed our own.”
“Why did you wait until now? You could have gotten me up before.” She stood beside the bed, still slightly disoriented.
Chase was totally unnerved by the scene—Maggie standing there, all soft and rumpled from sleep, the turned-down covers of the bed behind her, and the emptiness of the house. He started out of the room while he still had the willpower to walk away.
“I thought you needed the rest,” he said as his strides carried him toward the hallway. “I would have let you sleep longer, except one of my men will be over shortly to repair your door and I didn’t think you’d want to be in bed when he came.”
“What?” Her bare feet made little sound as she followed him into the hall, hurrying to keep up with him, an incredulous expression on her face. “What did you say?” she demanded.
Chase paused for only a second at the head of the stairs to glance over his shoulder. “George is a carpenter. He’s going to fix your door.” He was halfway down the first flight of stairs when her temper exploded over him.
“When he comes, you can just send him somewhere else on some other job!” she stormed.
He stopped and looked up. She was standing in the hallway above him, her hands gripping the protective railing around the stairwell. “The door has to be repaired.”
“You broke it. You can fix it,” she retorted.
“I have more important things to do.” He started down the stairs again.
“Damn you, Chase Calder!” She rushed down the steps after him. “Did you tell that man how the door was broken?”
“No.” He rounded the landing.
“You know what he’s going to think when he sees it, don’t you?” she demanded in hot anger.
When he reached the base of the stairs, he stopped to confront her and Maggie paused on the landing. “He’ll guess that you locked your door and I kicked it in. That’s what happened, Maggie.” He eyed her with a cool challenge. “And that’s all that happened.”
“But his imagination won’t stop there!” She was trembling, on the verge of losing control.
“I have no control over what else he might imagine,” he replied.
“Don’t you realize how embarrassing—how humiliating—it is for me to have some cowboy thinking that you broke my door down to get into my room last night?!” she stormed, then came down two more steps to where she was eye-level with the top of his head.
“It never occurred to you last night that I might find it humiliating to be locked out of my wife’s room,” Chase reminded her harshly. “It isn’t so amusing when the tables are turned, is it? Too bad you didn’t consider the possible consequences before you locked the door last night.”
His gibe stung and her hand lashed out to strike his tanned cheek, the contact with his hard flesh jarring her arm. She had little time to enjoy the satisfaction of hitting him before her wrist was seized and she was jerked off balance, stumbling down to the bottom step, where the solid wall of his body checked her fall. A large hand was on her waist to hold and support her. The shock of being brought so abruptly and so firmly in contact with his muscled frame stunned her for an instant. The rough laugh that came from his throat lifted her head sharply to find him regarding her with a smoldering satisfaction that was lazy, yet hard.
“That fiery-tempered girl still lives behind all that polished sophistication, doesn’t she?” He half-drawled the sentence. She started to struggle, but he held her easily, his hand spreading over her spine to press her closer. She stopped trying to fight free of his arms, because when she moved against him like that, it made her sharply aware of his male build and incited all her mating instincts. She stared at the shoulder seam of his shirt and tried to block from her mind all the disturbing sensations that attempted to crowd in. She felt his breath on her hair, and the palm of his hand rubbed the back of her shoulder while her own hands lay motionless on his chest.
“I had forgotten how little you are,” he mused. “Strange.” There was a trace of irony in his voice. “I remember so many things, yet I forgot that.” His mouth moved against her hair, wandering downward toward her ear. Maggie lifted a shoulder, tucking the side of her face against it to prevent him from reaching his objective. His warm, male lips brushed her forehead while his hands roamed leisurely over her back and hips, testing the feel of her in his arms. The satin material of her nightgown was no barrier, able to shield her sensitive nerve ends from the force of his caressing hands. It was a second skin against her body, letting her feel every imprint of his fingers.
“Chase, please don’t.” But she knew he would pay no attention to her whispered protest. It was only her pride that wanted him to stop. All the rest of her wanted him to go on.
“We were so young, Maggie.” His mouth grazed her cheekbone as he spoke. “So young and foolish. We didn’t know the first thing about living. It was all sunshine and green grass for us—all smiles and kisses, with no tears or pain.” Her eyes were shut as his mouth covered her lips in a sampling kiss, then left, taking a little of her breath.
“We can’t go back, Chase. We can’t find what we lost,” she murmured.
“I don’t want what we had in the past.” He rubbed his mouth along her lips as he talked, stimulating her with its warmth and moistness. “I want to build on what we have today so there will be a tomorrow. We’re married; we have a son; and I want you, Maggie.” His voice was rough with longing. “Others have started a life together with less.”
“There’s so much against us,” she reminded him huskily, even while her lips moved in invitation against his.
“Be my wife, Maggie. Let me touch you, hold you, sleep with you,” he urged and let his mouth close slowly and surely on her lips.
H
e kissed her with experience, but he didn’t rely on technique to arouse her. There was an element in the kiss that moved to a much more basic instinct—that primitive core that exists in all humans, the need to have a mate, a need that is both physical and emotional, a need Maggie had never had fulfilled. Her hands slid around the muscled column of his neck as she strained against him, trying to absorb and, in turn, be absorbed.
Chase dragged his mouth from hers, reluctantly, a disturbed heaviness to his breathing and a thick-lidded passion in his dark brown eyes. “That had better mean ‘yes,’ Maggie,” he warned. “I can’t keep breaking down locked doors. You’ve got to open one for me.”
“Yes.” She couldn’t fight her instinctive feelings for him any longer. Right or wrong, a part of her had always belonged to him, so why hold back the rest now?
He kissed her hard and long, claiming what she was giving him and crushing her within his hold. When he finally moved to roughly nuzzle her throat, she was dazed and breathless, and trembling with the powerful force of her feelings. A distant part of her mind registered the sound of the front door opening, but its significance didn’t click until she heard Buck Haskell’s voice.
“Chase … uh … excuse me,” he interrupted with a mocking insistence. “Are you ready to go yet?”
Chase almost turned to look at him, but once his head had lifted, he seemed unable to drag his gaze from her face. Maggie felt a similar fascination with his face, its expression so incredibly warm, melting features that were usually all hard bone and flesh, and the light in his dark eyes glittered so.
“I’m not going today, Buck,” he said. “Tell George I won’t be needing him.” A half-smile lifted the corners of his mouth as her fingertip lightly traced the strong line of his jaw. “And pass the word that Mr. and Mrs. Calder are indisposed today—and aren’t to be disturbed.”
There was a slight pause before Buck replied with a slightly stiff and formal, “Yes, sir.”
