One Hot Cowboy

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  “No.”

  “What are the options, then?” Maggie continued bravely, dropping her hands and stepping back. She searched his eyes, allowing him no quarter. “Would she have wanted you to have a series of meaningless affairs, no matter how passionate?”

  Jake released a sigh before admitting with reluctant honesty, “Probably not.”

  Maggie spread her hands wide as she surveyed him and shook her head. “And yet you still feel guilty as hell, don’t you, for having the audacity to continue to enjoy life, even after Louellen is gone,” she said, upset. “For actually enjoying going to bed with another woman.”

  “I’ve never thought of it in that way,” Jake responded, turning away. Knowing even as he spoke that wasn’t exactly true. Since Louellen had died and he— who had expected to spend the rest of his life with his wife—had found himself on his own again, he had felt guilty every time he as much as kissed another woman. And heaven help him, even guiltier when it came to Maggie, because she made him forget all about Louellen when he was with her, because she had enticed him into making love with her, heart and soul, and no one else had even come close to doing that. Since Louellen’s death, it hadn’t mattered whether he was kissing or dancing with someone else, it was Louellen he was thinking about, Louellen he still loved. When he was with Maggie, it was just Maggie on his mind; there was no one else in the room with him. No ghosts of the past. Nothing but the present and the passion he felt. And that scared the hell out of him. Because it meant he was forgetting Louellen, and he had promised her before she died that that was the one thing he would never do.

  “I told you I was still married in my heart and always would be,” Jake turned back to Maggie and reminded her gruffly. Yet even as he spoke the angry words, he wasn’t sure it was quite true anymore. The past twenty-four hours had changed things. The whole week with Maggie had changed things, to the point he knew they would never return to the way they had been.

  “And yet you made love to me anyway, repeatedly,” Maggie reminded angrily, looking as if she felt even more betrayed. “Not just once, but again and again and again.” Her hands were balled into fists at her sides. She looked as if she wanted to deck him.

  “Yes,” Jake said. Knowing he could hardly blame her if she did deck him.

  “Why, Jake?” Maggie asked hoarsely, the emotion in her low voice making him feel all the guiltier. “Why did you make love to me as if we were the only two people left on earth, if you were just planning to push me away in the end?”

  Because I need you in a way I can’t begin to explain. In a way I’m not sure that I’m ready to understand, Jake thought, on a troubled sigh. Knowing Maggie expected—deserved—some explanation, he said finally, “Because, God help me, I wanted you. Because I don’t want to lose you.”

  And he knew, even before he had finished, what a lame, untrue excuse that really was. The way he’d made love to her had been anything but a calculated ploy. But it was too late.

  Maggie glared at him in a way that let him know it would be a cold day in hell before she ever forgave him for this.

  “Too bad, Jake,” she snapped. “You already have.”

  “ISN’T THERE ANYTHING I can say to you to get you to change your mind?” Jake asked in exasperation, knowing this weekend was not going to have the end he had hoped.

  “Short of getting down on your knees and begging, you mean?” Maggie asked sarcastically as she carried her clothes from the bureau to her suitcase. Having decided that staying for dinner was as pointless as pretending she and Jake had any kind of future at all, she had decided to cut her losses, and curtail her heartache, and leave right away.

  “I’ll even do that,” he said, following her around. After doing everything he could to push her out the door and out of his life, Jake was practically begging her to stay.

  Maggie peeled off her swimsuit and stepped into a pair of matching peach silk panties and bra. “But what you won’t do is stop wallowing in self-pity and fear.”

  Jake glared at her. “If you think I’m going to apologize for being so in love with my wife and child that their death damn near killed me, you’re wrong.”

  “I’ve never once belittled your loss and you know it,” Maggie snapped, her cheeks hot with anger. “It’s your unwillingness to look to the future that is killing me—killing us!”

  Having no argument for that, Jake watched as she tugged on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

  Maggie sat on the edge of the bed to put on her socks and tennis shoes. “Look, if you enjoy being the broken-hearted martyr, then so be it. As for myself,” Maggie told him with a tranquility that appeared even more disturbing to him than her anger, “the way I look at it, is either you want to love me or you don’t, either you want to get married and have children or you don’t”

  And he, she thought, hurt beyond measure, obviously didn’t. Worse, was the galling sense of déjà vu the whole sordid episode had for her.

  Maggie marched over to her suitcase and slammed it shut. While he watched, she struggled ineffectively with the clasps. “I’ve already been with a man who felt he was being hog-tied and dragged to the altar,” she said, ignoring his low exasperated curse, “and I’m not doing it again.” Furthermore, she didn’t care what he thought; as far as she was concerned, this love affair was over. “I’m tired of giving you the benefit of the doubt,” she raged on in the stony silence of the room, fighting not to cry. “I’m tired of hoping against reality that things will change,” she said as the hurt inside her built and built. “’Cause there’s just no point to that,” she stormed, giving him no chance to get a word in edgewise as she picked up her suitcase and staggered under the weight of it. “It’s all or nothing for me. And you, cowboy, have made your choice.”

  BUT HAD HE? Jake wondered, just as emotionally. Or was she backing him into a corner with her demands, her insistence he do things her way or watch her hit the highway? “Why do you have to leave now, this instant?” he demanded, taking the ridiculously heavy suitcase out of her hand and putting it back on the bed.

  “Because now that the boys are gone I have no reason to stay.”

  “Except one.” Jake regarded her stormily. “The fact I want you to stay.” Surely that had to count for something.

  “As what, Jake?” Hands planted on her hips, Maggie stared up at him in exasperation. “Mistress? Girlfriend? Live-in? Certainly not bride-to-be?”

  As always, the thought of marrying again, of opening himself up to that kind of hurt, had Jake’s gut clenching. Though if he’d want to marry anyone, if he wanted to have another child with anyone, it would be Maggie. Knowing he wasn’t ready for that…knowing he might never be…knowing he also did not want her to leave…not now…maybe not ever, when it came right down to it, and it had…Jake said quietly, “How about staying here as my friend? How about we start slowly?” Very slowly. Instead of trying to wrap things up in a week’s time. Surely now he was meeting her halfway.

  But Maggie only shook her head. One look at her face told him she was tired of being strung along. “Not good enough, Jake,” she replied flatly. “We’d still be going nowhere.”

  Jake couldn’t argue the future, so he concentrated on the present, a present he wasn’t anywhere near ready to give up, and damn it, before Peter What’s-His-Name had shown up, neither had she.

  Sensing from her recalcitrant expression that she was about to run out on him, with or without her suitcase, he clasped her shoulders and held her in front of him. “Friendship…and the start of a damn fine love affair…was good enough to keep you here last night and this morning,” he reminded her.

  Maggie’s slender shoulders stiffened beneath his staying grip. “That was different,” she stated, stepping back and away. Arms folded in front of her, she paced back and forth. “I didn’t realize then how irretrievably stubborn and foolish you are. I do now.”

  The thought of a life without her was more than Jake could bear. He knew, too, that unless he offered more there
was no chance on this earth she would stay. “What if we lived together for a while then?” he asked, desperate to keep her with him. “You know, have a trial run, and then if it works out, we could get married, at some point down the road?” Continuing to have her on the ranch with him was an idea that pleased him.

  Maggie looked at him as if she had an idea what the halfhearted proposal was costing Jake. But she also seemed to think it wasn’t good enough, for either of them, and never would be.

  “Thanks, but no thanks, Jake,” she said wearily.

  His frustration erupted. “Why not?” Jake demanded, wishing she would make some attempt to meet him halfway, too.

  “Because there’s just no point in it.” Maggie sighed and ran her hands through her mane of silky golden blond hair, before she continued in a low voice that was bleak and utterly defeated, “Besides, we’ve already shared space and simultaneously assumed care of and responsibility for Rusty and Wyatt and we know we get on fine, in that sense. We’d make great housemates, great parents, great lovers, even great husband and wife, assuming you were ready to take the leap,” she told him, “and you’re not.”

  Jake regarded her in frustration. He had never wanted not to lose something more in his life. He had also never wanted more not to let someone down. And that put him in one hell of a quandary. “And that’s it?” He swore heatedly, aware that what he and Maggie had was very special, even if it wasn’t anywhere near as permanent as she wanted it to be. “I don’t meet each and every one of your demands, so you’re leaving?” He regarded her incredulously. What had ever happened to accepting love as it came? To finding pleasure in the moment? To enjoying the beauty of a season before it ended?

  Maggie shrugged and regarded him with a sorrow every bit as deep and all-encompassing as his own. “Despite what you would like to think, Jake, this is not going to get any easier, no matter how long we put it off,” she said in a low voice that let him know she couldn’t tolerate being in his presence one second longer. “So I’m going to do us both a favor and go now. Before this hurts either of us any more.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “This is one situation where numbers will definitely not win the game for you,” Maggie warned her brother, Billy, several days later.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Billy vowed as he strolled into the breakfast nook, where Maggie sat poring over the latest pages from her portable fax machine. Her friend at the Houston Chronicle had taken pity on her and was pulling out all the stops to help Maggie find a suitable mate. It wasn’t going to be easy, replacing Jake in Maggie’s heart; but she was determined to succeed. And since sheer determination had paid off many, many times in her life in the past, she was sure it would eventually help her now. That was, if she could get her three protective brothers off her case. Which at the moment did not appear very likely.

  “Come off it, Billy.” Maggie regarded him with a frown. “I know why you called Deke and Frank to come and talk to me this morning.”

  “And what reason might that be?” Deke asked, ignoring the testy set of her shoulders, and pulling up a chair.

  Maggie sighed her exasperation loudly and paraphrased his objections adroitly, “You do not think I should be devoting all my energies to a husband hunt.” Maggie scanned the list of Texas millionaires in front of her and, ignoring the fact that she couldn’t conjure the slightest enthusiasm for meeting him, marked one as possible.

  “You always were able to read my mind,” Frank said, strolling in and sitting down, too.

  “Particularly when you are still so clearly on the rebound,” Billy added, pulling up the last chair.

  Aware they were about to head into very dangerous territory—territory that could easily make her cry— Maggie tensed. “What are you talking about?” she demanded cooly.

  Her three brothers exchanged troubled glances. Finally, Deke spoke. “It’s pretty clear you’re carrying a torch for Jake MacIntyre.”

  “I was,” Maggie corrected loftily, circling another possibility for a mate, even though she considered his statistics hopelessly flawed, too. “I’m not anymore. What Jake and I had is well over.”

  “Technically, maybe,” Deke said.

  “In every way,” Maggie corrected firmly. One by one, she gave each of her brothers a quelling look.

  In response, her three brothers all shook their heads at her disparagingly. “Maggie, you may be able to fool everyone else, but you can’t fool us,” Frank told her gently. He curved a compassionate hand over her forearm. “We know you. We know how hard you fell for that guy. And to tell you the truth, the three of us have half a mind to hunt that rapscallion down and break both his legs.”

  Maggie grinned. It was the first time she had smiled all day. “Guys, come on,” she reasoned with them bluntly, knowing—as hot as their feelings were toward Jake for hurting her so—that they were talking metaphorically. At least she hoped they were talking metaphorically. “Just cool it, okay?”

  Silence rebounded in the breakfast nook. “Only if you tell us you’re going to be okay,” Frank countered quietly.

  Maggie took a deep breath and through sheer force of will, pushed back the tears she could feel gathering behind her eyes. Part of her knew she was never going to be okay again, not after loving Jake and losing him. Was this how Jake had felt after losing Louellen and the baby? Dear heaven, no wonder he didn’t want to risk having his heart broken into a million pieces again. She couldn’t imagine trying to love again, either.

  Aware her brothers were watching her cautiously, Maggie put on a stiff upper lip. “I’m going to be fine, guys, really,” she said as she picked up her marker pen again.

  “You promise?” Billy asked.

  Maggie nodded solemnly. “I promise,” she said, as Deke, Frank and Billy all put their hands on top of hers in the family symbol of unity. “I’m going to have that husband and family of my own that I want, one day soon, no matter what.”

  As for Jake, Maggie sighed, if he chose to live the rest of his life alone, that was just going to have to be his problem.

  “HOW LONG ARE YOU going to sit around not speaking or shaving?” Harry demanded of Jake Thursday morning. Jake glared at Harry over the top of his morning newspaper. “You bring that up one more time and how long before you find yourself looking for a new employer?” he countered archly.

  Harry only grinned. Happy, no doubt, that he had at last provoked a verbal response, albeit a somewhat testy one, out of Jake, who hadn’t been speaking much at all to anyone since Maggie had left the Rollicking M. “You weren’t this bad after Louellen died,” Harry stated.

  Jake hadn’t felt this bad, either. Which was odd, ‘cause he’d never imagined anything could feel anywhere close to the gut-wrenching pain he had felt at Louellen’s death. Yet here he was, miserable all over again, in a very different way. Maybe because Louellen had been so very sick, especially there at the end, and he’d known he was going to lose her. Maggie he hadn’t expected to lose.

  “’Course you were younger then, and more naive,” Harry continued, removing Jake’s untouched plate.

  “Naive?” Jake echoed incredulously. What the hell was Harry talking about now?

  “Yeah.” Harry nodded solemnly as he rewarmed Jake’s untouched eggs and bacon in the microwave. “Back then, you didn’t know how hard it was going to be to go on year after year, completely alone, without a wife or kids of your own.”

  That was true, Jake thought, grimacing as he took a sip of the coffee he’d let cool to lukewarm. He looked at Harry pointedly. “You’re one to talk. You never married or had kids.”

  “Because I didn’t want either,” Harry reminded, as he went about rewarming Jake’s toast. “You did, Jake. Very badly, as I recall.”

  Deciding this conversation had gone far enough, Jake put his paper down and gave Harry a warning glance.

  “’Course you had forgotten all about that, until Maggie Porter came along,” Harry continued with smug satisfaction as h
e set Jake’s breakfast in front of him again. “Having her here kind of reminded you of all you’d been missing, didn’t it? And you liked it…liked the excitement of having a wife and kids, even if the kids were temporarily on loan from your sister, and the wife…well, that was just playacting, wasn’t it, Jake?”

  “I didn’t pretend anything,” Jake retorted gruffly, forking up a mouthful of eggs. That was the problem. He’d been too damn honest with Maggie. He’d known it was a mistake to tell Maggie—to tell any woman— anything. No one in their right mind would want to be a living, breathing replacement for his late wife. And Maggie Porter was a woman very much in her right mind. No wonder she had left him. Under the circumstances, he could hardly blame her.

  “Then you did care about Maggie,” Harry ascertained.

  Jake released an exasperated breath. “Of course I cared!” That had never been in question!

  “Just not enough.” Harry poured Jake some more juice, and handed it over.

  “Enough for what?” Beginning to feel a little claustrophobic in the spacious ranch house kitchen, Jake downed his juice in two long, thirsty gulps.

  “Good question.” Harry applauded Jake with an approving look. “Enough to make her want to stay?”

  Jake swallowed, his heart aching as he admitted reluctantly, “She did—”

  “Really?” Harry looked downright amazed.

  “Yes,” Jake affirmed, irritated beyond belief that Harry could think Maggie’s love for Jake was so far out of the realm of possibility. “She did.”

  Harry narrowed his eyes at Jake contemplatively, his disapproval growing by leaps and bounds with every second that passed. “And yet you forced her out, the same way you’ve been forcing everyone out of your life, since you lost Louellen and the baby.”

  No one had to remind Jake what a jerk he had been, in ever allowing Maggie to get tangled up with him in the first place. Nor did anyone have to remind him how lonely he had been since she had left. “What do you want from me?” he asked Harry impatiently. He followed that with an irritated glare.