His fingers tightened on her slender neck. "How old was he?" he asked gently.
She swallowed down another sob. "Twenty-seven."
"Experienced?"
"Very."
"Was he patient, Maggie?" he asked.
She drew a soft breath, her eyes closing tightly. "He...took it for granted that I knew...well, that I..."
His chest rose deeply against her, and fell with a sound like impatience. "It's just as well, Irish," he said at her ear. "Better to find him out now than after the wedding."
"Clint, I'm sorry I jumped..." she began.
His cheek moved against hers, rough and warm. "Dry up, little watering pot. I've got cattle to tend, and Emma's going to be standing on her head wondering what happened to us. Okay now?"
"Yes." She managed a wan smile for him. "Clint, I'm sorry about Lida..."
His face was shuttered, but not angry. He flicked a careless forefinger against her nose. "Let's go home."
He turned back to the saddle horn and coaxed the stallion into a canter. He didn't say another word until they got to the sprawling white frame ranch house in its nest of oaks and pecan trees. He let her down at the white fence beside the front porch.
Sitting astride the black stallion, he was an impressive figure, tall in the saddle and ramrod straight. He lit a cigarette, his eyes studying her quietly for a long moment.
"Must you stare at me like that?" she asked uneasily, shifting under the bold thoroughness of his scrutiny. "I feel like a heifer on market day."
Something cruel flashed in his pale eyes. "I'm not putting in any bids," he replied innocently. "I'll have one of the boys fetch your luggage. Emma'll get you something to eat. I'll explain what I need done when I get in tonight."
The coldness in him, so sudden and unexpected, made chills run down her spine. For years they'd been make-believe enemies. But this felt like the real thing. He looked at her as if...as if he hated her!
"I still think it might be better if I went home," she said.
"You'll stick it out," he countered sharply. "I can't get a replacement at this short notice, and I've got correspondence backed up to the eaves, with a sale day coming up."
"Orders, Mr. Raygen?" she fumed.
A wisp of a smile touched that hard, stern face that was so much a stranger's, emphasizing the nose that had been broken at least twice and showed it. "Orders, Irish."
"Will you stop calling me that? You know I hate it!"
"By all means, hate it. Hate me, too, if it helps. I don't give a damn, and you know that, too, don't you, little girl?" he asked with a hellish grin.
She whirled on her heels and stalked through the gate onto the long white porch, with its rocking chairs and wide porch swing and pots filled with blooming flowers.
Two
Emma was rolling out dough in the spacious, homey kitchen when Maggie walked in and, unmindful of the flour up to her elbows, she grabbed the younger woman in a bearish hug.
Maggie laughed, smothered in the ample girth of Emma's huge embrace, feeling really at home for the first time.
"It's so good to have another woman here, I could jump for joy," Emma grinned, running one floury hand through her short, silver hair. "Clint Raygen's been like a wild man for the past month. I'll swear, I never thought a hussy like that Lida Palmes could affect him in such a way. If you ask me, it's just hurt pride that's eating him, but it doesn't make any difference to his temper."
"So I've noticed," Maggie sighed, and sat down at the long kitchen table where Emma was making bread. "What did she do to him?"
"Walked out on him without a word. Not even a day's notice." She shrugged. "Found herself a rich Florida millionaire, they said."
"He couldn't have been that much richer than Clint," Maggie remarked.
"He wasn't," Emma smiled. "And he had twenty years on him, to boot. Nobody understood what got into her. One day she was queening it over me and the ranch hands, the next she was gone."
"Was it very long ago?" she asked idly.
"Let's see—hard to remember things at my age, you know. But...oh, yes, it was the day Janna called to tell us we were invited to your wedding." She laughed. "We didn't even know you were engaged, you secretive little thing."
Maggie's eyes fell. "I guess you knew we called off the wedding."
Emma's floured hand touched hers gently. "It's for the best. We both know that, don't we?"
She nodded with a misty smile. "I wasn't desperately in love with him, but I did like him a lot. I guess my pride's hurt, too."
"You'll get over it. When one door closes, another opens, Maggie, my dear."
"You're right, of course," she managed cheerfully. "Janna sends her love. She said she'll try to get her vacation early and come on down in a few weeks."
"That would be nice, to have both of you home for a while. Well," she said,
kneading dough rhythmically, "tell me all the latest news."
It was well after dark, and Emma and Maggie were just getting everything on the dining room table when Clint came striding in the front door. His jeans were red with mud, his shirt wet with sweat, his jaw showing a shadow of a beard. He barely spared them a glance before he went down the long hall that led to his room.
"Whiskey," Emma remarked with a nod, and poured a glass two inches deep of the amber liquid before adding a touch of water and two ice cubes to it. "I can tell by his walk."
"Tell what?" Maggie asked.
"What kind of day it's been. The cattle must have given him fits."
"Not the cattle," Maggie replied wearily. "Me. We got into it on the way home. I should never have come, Emma. It's just like old times."
"Is it, now?" the older woman asked curiously. "Maybe. And maybe not. We'll see."
Clint came back looking cooler, his dark hair damp from a shower, his face shaven, the work khakis exchanged for a pair of sand-colored slacks and a beige patterned shirt that clung to his muscular arms and chest like a second skin.
His green eyes slid down Maggie's slender figure in pale yellow slacks and a tank top, moving back up to rest narrowly on the familiar bun.
"Welcome back, tomboy," he said with thinly veiled sarcasm.
"Thanks," she replied sweetly. "Emma poured you a drink."
He turned away, found it on the table and threw down a large swallow of it. "Well, sit down," he growled at her, "or do you plan to eat standing up?"
She dragged out a chair and plopped down in it, pointedly avoiding his gaze as Emma brought the rest of the food and finally sat down herself across from Maggie.
"Do I get combat pay?" Emma asked Clint when she caught the icy glares that were being exchanged.
"Put on your armour and shut up," Clint replied, but there was a glint of humor in his tone, and in his pale eyes.
Emma glanced at Maggie with a grin. "Welcome home, honey."
Dinner was pleasant enough after that, but when the last of the coffee was gone, Clint motioned Maggie to follow him, and led her into the darkly masculine den with its gun cabinet and oak desk and deer head mounted over the mantel.
"Get a pencil," he told Maggie. "You'll find one on the desk."
She picked one up out of a pen holder, and borrowed one of the empty legal pads as well before she sat down in the chair beside his big desk.
He turned, his eyes studying her quietly, angrily, for a long moment before he spoke. "How old are you now?" he asked unexpectedly.
"Twenty,” she replied quietly.
'Twenty." He lit a cigarette, but his eyes never left her. 'Twenty, and still un-awakened."
She felt the color rush into her face, and hated it, hated him.
"You're sure about that?" she asked hotly.
He held her eyes for a long time. "I'm very sure, honey," he said softly.
Unable to hold the penetrating gaze for another instant, she dragged her eyes down to the blank sheet of yellow paper and concentrated on the bluish lines that ruled it.
"I thought you wan
ted to dictate some letters," she said in a tight voice.
"You don't know what I want, little girl," he replied. "And if you did, it would probably scare the hell out of you. Got your pencil ready? Here goes..."
He was dictating before she had time to puzzle out that cryptic remark.
The first few days went by in a rush, and Maggie fell into an easy routine. Clint left the correspondence on her desk every morning, all outlined, so that she could work at her own pace. At night, he signed the letters and checked the records she typed for him, and they both worked at holding their tempers.
She finished early the fifth day and couldn't resist the temptation to go for a ride. Clint had given her a gentle little bay mare for her seventeenth birthday and it was still her favorite mount. Melody was the name she gave it, because of the horse's easy rocking motion as she walked; like a blues melody.
It stirred her emotions to revisit the haunts of her childhood on the large, sprawling farm. Near the tall line of pine trees was the aging, majestic pecan tree that she and Janna climbed long ago— their dreaming tree. Then a little farther along was the thicket where dogwoods grew virgin white in the spring and little girls could gather armloads of them to dream over.
Then, too, there was the river. Maggie reined in the mare and leaned over the saddle horn to watch it flowing lazily like a silver and white ribbon through the trees. The river, where they waded and swam, and where Clint had hurled her—fully clothed—the day she kicked him.
She couldn't resist that cool, inviting water in the heat that was thick and smothering even in the shade of the hardwoods on the bank. She tied Melody to a sapling and tugged off her boots and thick socks.
The water was icy to her bare feet, the river rocks smooth and slippery. She wobbled cautiously near the bank, grabbing onto a low-hanging limb of the bulky oak tree to keep her balance.
With a sigh, she closed her eyes and listened to the watery whisper of the river, the sound of birds calling and moving the leaves over her head as they jumped from bough to bough. The peace she felt was indescribable. It was as if she'd come home. Home.
She remembered Clint's mother baking biscuits in the oven, laughing as she teased Maggie about her pigtails. And Clint, maddening even that long ago, swinging her off the floor in his hard arms to welcome her when she got off the bus at the station. Twelve years ago. A lifetime ago.
She opened her eyes and followed the path of the river downstream with an unseeing blankness in her stare. It was hard to say just when she and Clint had lost that rapport. When she was fourteen—fifteen? There had always been pretend arguments, but as she reached the middle of her teens they had suddenly become real. Clint seemed to provoke them deliberately, as if sparking her hot temper were important, to keep her at a distance. It had been even worse in her seventeenth summer...
She blotted out the thought. As long as she lived, she'd never get over that humiliation. To an already withdrawn teenager, the effect had been devastating. Not until Philip came along had she even tried to open her heart again. Only to have him shatter her pride to tiny bits.
A strand of her hair tumbled into her eyes and rather than try to put it up again, she removed all the pins from her hair and stuck them in her pocket, letting the rich black waves fall gently around her shoulders. It had been a long time since she'd worn her hair down like this outside the privacy of her bedroom. That, too, dated back to Clint's cruelty.
He made no secret of his fondness for long hair, and Maggie had let hers grow to her waist in the months before that summer vacation. She'd even shed her favorite slacks outfits for some frilly sundresses and dainty sandals, all in the hopes of catching Clint's eye. But all she'd caught was Gerry Broome's, and Clint had come to the rescue just in time. Gerry couldn't get away from her fast enough, and Clint always thought that was the reason for her one-woman campaign to reel in his heart. But none of it had worked.
“Save your schemes for a boy your own age, little girl," he'd warned her venomously after a lecture that her cheeks still reddened from three years later. "I want more than long hair and doe eyes when I take a woman in my arms. The only thing about me that you arouse is my temper. I don't want you, Maggie."
The words echoed in her mind for days afterwards, even when she got back home and was caught up in her father's lingering illness and her mother's grief. She'd cut her hair then, and even when it grew again, she kept it tightly capped in the bun. It hadn't come down even for Philip, who loved long hair himself, but wasn't persuasive enough.
With a sigh she sank down on a big boulder at the river's edge, trailing her bare toes through the cold, rippling water, her hair hiding her face from view as she relived the memories.
"Sunning yourself, mermaid?" a taunting voice asked from close behind her.
She whirled with a gasp, almost unseating herself into the stream as she faced Clint. He was leaning carelessly against the trunk of the tree, one dusty boot propped on a chunky root, his forearms crossed over his knee—just watching her. His stallion nibbled at leaves on the oak tree nearby.
"You move...like wind," she accused breathlessly, smoothing the hair away from her face.
"An old hunter's trick. Your mind was far away, little one," he said gently, his eyes sketching her face in its frame of waving black hair.
"I guess it was." She turned back, automatically winding her hair into a braid so that she could pin it up.
"Leave it!" he said, in a tone like a whiplash.
She stiffened with her hands up against her nape. "It...gets in my way," she said tightly.
"We both know that isn't why."
“You flatter yourself if you think you're the cause of it," she said with practiced calm, reaching into her pocket for some bobby pins. "I'm not seventeen any more, Clint. I'm not vulnerable anymore."
He was behind her before she realized it, arrogantly sweeping the pins from her hand. He jerked her up by the elbows and held her on her tiptoes in the cool, rushing water.
His green eyes narrowed, darkened, as he looked down into her frightened face. It wasn't Clint's familiar, taunting eyes that looked down into hers. He was a stranger—unsmiling, somber, studying her with an intensity that rippled along her nerves.
"Was that a dig, Maggie?" he asked gruffly. "Or did you think I'd forgotten what happened?"
She averted her face and tried not to feel the steely excitement his fingers were causing. "It was a long time ago," she said as calmly as she could with her heart beating wildly.
"And you're all grown up now, is that it?" He pulled her close against his tall, lean body. "How grown up are you, little girl?" he whispered, and she felt his breath, smoky and warm, whipping across her face.
She pulled furiously against his merciless grip, fighting him for all she was worth. "Let go of me!" she flashed, her loosened hair flying as she twisted against his hands.
"Irish," he taunted softly, holding her easily in spite of her flailing efforts to resist him. "As Irish as a shamrock. Calm down, little tigress, I'm not going to force anything on you."
She did calm down, but more because of her own fatigue than the soothing words. "You beast," she muttered, glaring up at him out of eyes like an angry cat's.
His hands slid up her arms to her throat, holding her flushed young face up to his, and all expression seemed to go out of his own face, leaving his eyes narrow and dark as they looked deep into hers.
"Fire in you," he said gently. "Soft flames, Irish, that could burn a man alive. Did Philip ever see that white-hot temper?"
The intensity of his gaze confused her, shook her. "He didn't know I had a temper," she said unsteadily. Her eyes narrowed, temper coming to her rescue. "You wouldn't know I had one, either, if you'd stop picking on me!"
"I like it when you fight me," he said softly.
She looked up in time to see the light in his leaf-green eyes flare up with the words, and a ghost of a smile touched his hard, chiseled mouth. It was like no look he'd ever given her befor
e—appraising, calculating—almost sensuous. It made her heart tremble, because the way he said it conjured up a picture of a woman fighting the crush of a man's hard arms, the sting of his mouth...
She dropped her eyes to his chest, and suddenly he released her, moving away to light a cigarette with long, steady fingers.
She rubbed her chafed arms. "If...if you want those records typed today, I'd better get back to the house," she said, turning toward the bank. "And," she threw over her shoulder as she bent to wipe her wet feet with a handkerchief, "you owe me a package of bobby pins."
She felt his eyes running over her as she pulled on her boots.
"Leave it down, Irish," he said carelessly, his eyes never leaving her as she got up and untied Melody's reins. "I won't make any more remarks about it, but leave it loose."
She gaped at him, puzzled at the anger in his deep voice—anger that was meant more for himself than for her. With a shrug, she mounted and rode away without a backward glance.
He stood and watched her until she was out of sight, his eyes narrowed against the sun, his face thoughtful and solemn.
Three
Emma only set two places at the supper table, noting Maggie's puzzled glance with a smile.
"Clint's got a date," she explained, leaving Maggie to put the silverware at the places while she went out to the kitchen to bring the food in.
A pain like being shot went through Maggie's slender body, and she wondered at it. For all that her pride had been crushed by Philip, her heart had never been touched by any man—except one. She hated the rush of feeling, the green surge of jealousy that thinking about Clint and a woman, any woman, could cause. It had always been that way, always. And she managed to keep it hidden because of what he'd already done to her stubborn spirit. But it was still there, inside, glowing and sweetly burning like a candle no amount of wind could blow out. And she hated Clint for causing it.
He came in from the feedlot just as Emma and Maggie were finishing up the dishes, and to avoid him, Maggie retreated to the front porch and glued her lean body onto the porch swing. It was warm and sweet-fragranced, that long porch in the darkness. In her childhood, she had sat in it while the thunder shuddered around her, feeling the misty whip of rain in her face while she closed her eyes and heard the soothing squeak of the swing in motion.
Books By Diana Palmer Page 45
