J.D. bounced excitedly, pointing to the horses who lazily lifted graceful heads on the other side of the fencing that separated rolling fields from the dusty, gravel road. “Horses,” she squealed.
Maggie couldn’t help but smile. J.D. loved horses. In books. On television. In the stuffed version.
Then the gravel road curved into the circular drive that fronted the meandering ranch house. The “big house” as it was generally referred. Maggie couldn’t drag her hungry eyes from the stone-and-wood two-story home.
Oh, so long. So very, very long.
The porch that ran the entire width of the front of the big house was just the same as always, with geraniums blooming from the window boxes. Lilac bushes still clustered along one side of the house. The grass, recently mowed, cast its sharp sweet fragrance into the hot afternoon air.
She stopped the car and breathed in that summer scent.
“Are we there?”
Taking a quick breath, Maggie nodded. “Sure are.” She reached over to unlatch J.D.’s seat belt.
“Is Sarah here? And Auntie Jaimie and Unca Matt?”
Maggie opened her car door. “I expect so.” She certainly hoped so. Now that she’d arrived, she realized she could have made one colossal mistake. What if Jaimie and Matt were gone?
She should have called ahead.
But then, what would she have said? I want to tell you in person what I learned yesterday. That your brother—my estranged husband—died two months ago?
Even now, after a solid day to absorb the fact, she felt a sharp burst of shock when she thought of it. Joe Greene was dead. And he’d left as big a mess in his death as he had in his life.
She felt callous thinking it. But couldn’t pretend it wasn’t true.
She shook back her hair and brushed down the legs of her well-worn blue jeans before rounding the car to open J.D.’s door. She’d have time to adjust to the news, Maggie reminded herself...later. For now, she had to break it to her best friend that her only brother was dead. And had been for over two months.
Blissfully unaware of her mother’s tension, J.D. bounced out of the car, immediately scampering toward the wide steps leading to the front door. “J.D., munchkin, wait—”
But it was too late. J.D. had already pounded her small fist on the heavy door, and stood on her tiptoes to press her finger against the buzzer. So Maggie slowly joined her daughter on the front step.
Three years ago, she’d been the housekeeper here. She’d always used the back door. The one with the wooden screen that had had the same squeak since probably forever that opened into a well-used mudroom, and through there to the kitchen where she’d cooked meals for this family of men. She’d used that back door, the same as everyone else had, because she’d been a part of the Double-C.
But that part of her life was over and done.
There wasn’t time to worry over yet another detail, for the door opened with a heavy creak, and Jaimie stood there, astonishment filling her emerald eyes. Her mouth parted, but no words came.
Maggie couldn’t blame her. In the three years she’d been gone, Maggie had never once visited the Double-C, though Jaimie and Matthew had come to Chicago several times.
Thank heaven for little girls. J.D. launched herself at her favored aunt, latching her arms around Jaimie’s legs and hugging tightly. “Auntie Jaimie, we comes to visit you!”
Maggie smiled faintly and nudged her sunglasses to the top of her head. “Hope it’s not a bad time.”
Jaimie hugged her niece, then reached out and hugged Maggie. “I cannot believe this,” she cried. “Why didn’t you call? Did you drive? Fly? Oh my stars. Wait’ll the others see you.”
She straightened, looking down at Maggie from the advantage of several more inches of height. Her auburn hair flowed riotously over her slender shoulders. She was just the same.
Maggie finally felt tears burn behind her eyes. The first since she’d gotten the news about Joe. Then Jaimie hugged her again before dragging Maggie and J.D. into the house.
“The guys are out,” she said. “But they’ll be in for supper. Holy smokes, will they be surprised! Are you on vacation? Squire is down visiting Gloria,” Jamie said, referring to her father-in-law and his lady friend. “You’ve got to stay until he gets back. Or, better yet, tell me that you’ve quit that job at the interior decorating place and have moved back home where you belong!”
“I took some leave,” Maggie said. Her stomach tightened. Emergency leave. Bereavement leave. She felt guilty at that, because she knew in her heart she was anything but bereaved. She was upset for Jaimie and for what J.D. did not yet understand. But upset for herself?
She realized Jaimie was heading deeper into the house, J.D.’s hand tucked in hers, and she hastily followed. Through the dining room with the still-familiar gleaming table and china hutch, to the kitchen. “Well, one of these days you’ll come to your senses,” Jaimie was saying cheerfully. “I haven’t lost hope. Sit down. J.D., sweetie, I just made some peanut butter cookies. Want one? Then I’ll go up and see if Sarah’s awake from her nap.”
J.D.’s eyes lit up. She struggled with a chair, inching it out from the oblong table that took center stage in the spacious kitchen, before climbing up. “Wif milk?”
“No better way to eat peanut butter cookies,” Jaimie assured. A whirlwind in motion, she set a plastic tumbler of milk and a napkin with a few cookies on it in front of J.D “How about you, Mags? Iced tea or something?”
Maggie agreed to the iced tea. When Jaimie sat at the table with her own glass also in place, she knew the time had come.
She circled the icy glass with one hand, running her finger over the slick surface. “I have some news,” she began.
“So do I,” Jaimie grinned. “And you’re going to love it. But you first.”
Maggie drew in a fortifying breath. Only it didn’t fortify her. “I, um, hired an investigator a while back,” she said, not sure she could explain the impulse that had been growing steadily over the last several months. She’d waited to hire someone only long enough to save the money for his fee.
Jaimie’s eyes sobered. She didn’t need Maggie to explain why. “Joe.”
Maggie nodded. “He, uh—”
“My daddy’s wif the angels,” J.D. announced matter-of-factly. “Can I have anover cookie?”
Maggie’s shoulders slumped. She met Jaimie’s shocked eyes. What else could she say? “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Jaimie moistened her lips and rose, automatically providing J.D. with the asked-for cookie, before sitting down again. “Joe is...dead.” She frowned, her expression strained. “When? How?”
So Maggie explained about the report she’d received the day before from the investigator she’d recently hired. About the car accident, two months past. About the memorial service that had already been held. The rest of the details she left out. She was still grappling with them herself. She wasn’t sure she’d ever tell Jaimie the entire truth. For to do so would tarnish even more whatever good memories Jaimie had of her brother.
What good would it do to tell Jaimie that Joe had been a bigamist on top of everything else? That he’d married another woman without attending to the tiny detail of divorcing his first wife? Of divorcing Maggie. Or that she and Jaimie would have never known of Joe’s death if Maggie hadn’t hired the investigator. Joe had so carefully covered his tracks, erasing his past as if it didn’t exist. As if Maggie and J.D. and Jaimie didn’t exist. Maggie had given birth to J.D. and within days he’d abandoned them. She’d had to learn from Matthew—who was in love with Jaimie—that Joe had been embezzling funds from the ranch.
She knew Jaimie was struggling with her tears. And there was nothing that Maggie could do to ease it for her friend.
“Why didn’t we hear something sooner? I mean...two months? He died two months ago?”
Maggie moistened her lips, grateful that J.D. was occupied blowing bubbles in her milk “Joe severed his ties with the Double-C,”
she said carefully. “I imagine he worked hard at not being found, otherwise I would have caught up to him in the first place. I wouldn’t have lost track of him after Chicago. I mean, after what he did...” There was no point in rehashing how Joe had run off with a good portion of Double-C money in his pocket, abandoning his younger sister just as much as he’d abandoned his infant daughter and his wife. “Are you going to be okay?”
Jaimie brushed the tears from her cheeks. “I won’t pretend that it doesn’t hurt. Despite...everything,” she said huskily. “But I think I should be asking if you are okay.” She leaned across the table, folding her hands over Maggie’s. “Thank you for coming here to tell me. I know it’s hard for you to come back. This place must be filled with memories of Joe.”
There were lots of memories that haunted Maggie, not all of which concerned Joe. But she couldn’t very well tell Jaimie that. So she changed the subject. “Why don’t you tell me what your news is?”
Jaimie’s eyes softened, and she seemed equally relieved that they weren’t going to dwell on Joe. Maybe later. Maybe a long while later. “Well,” she said, clearing her throat. “There’s two things actually. The first is that I’m pregnant. A few months along.”
Maggie’s eyebrows shot up, and true delight gave a hard shove against graver thoughts. “You’re kidding! Oh, this is wonderful. I’m so happy for you. Matthew must be thrilled.”
Jaimie smiled even while her eyes still glistened. “He already pampers me unmercifully, and we only found out a few days ago. For certain. And the other good news is—”
Maggie automatically glanced over her shoulder when she heard that achingly familiar squeak and slap of the wooden screen door from the mudroom behind her. Her smile froze in place, however, when it wasn’t Jaimie’s husband, Matthew, who stepped inside.
It was the one person she’d felt certain wouldn’t be at the Double-C. The one person she wasn’t prepared to see.
“Well, you can see for yourself,” Jaimie continued. “Daniel is here. As of yesterday in fact.”
Maggie barely heard her. She was too shocked.
The man removed his dusty black cowboy hat and tossed it unerringly over one of the pegs that hung on the wall inside the kitchen. His quicksilver eyes settled on her, as unreadable as a foggy morning. “Hullo, Maggie Mae.”
She trembled. Ordered her vocal cords to function. Time seemed to stand still, even though she distinctly heard the soft tick of the wall clock. “How are you?” she managed. What are you doing here? Have you finally come home?
His lips quirked, but the quick smile didn’t reach his eyes. Not like it once had. Three years before. “Fine.”
“J.D.,” Jaimie said. “Let’s go get Sarah, shall we? She’s going to be so surprised to see you.”
Maggie threw a look Jaimie’s way, but her friend was already heading out of the kitchen, J.D.’s hand tucked in hers.
He hadn’t moved. He still stood there, so quiet and so...male. With the dust of a day’s work clinging to his boots and the legs of his blue jeans and his wide chest draped with a clinging T-shirt streaked with dirt and sweat. Her breath eked out. “So.” Her cheeks heated at the inane comment.
“So.”
Feeling at a distinct disadvantage, she rose from the table. But that wasn’t any better, because it just reminded her how big he was. Towering over her average five foot six. Never threateningly, though. Never that. She ran her fingers over the edge of the table. “Jaimie told me her news. Being pregnant I mean. It’s wonderful.”
There was a time when Daniel’s mobile lips would have twitched into a grin at her babbling. But now he didn’t so much as blink to indicate what he thought. “Why are you here, Maggie Mae?”
At the name—twice now—she swallowed. “I came to tell Jaimie that—”
His eyebrow peaked when she faltered.
“That Joe died,” she finished baldly.
His silvery gaze didn’t waver. “What a shame.”
Maggie twisted her hands together. “I doubt you mean that.”
“You’re right,” he admitted after a moment. “I don’t. Not for me, anyway. Jaimie’s probably upset. And you, of course.”
“Of course,” Maggie murmured. He stepped forward, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. He had to have noticed that, but he made no comment. Then Jaimie returned, Sarah and J D. in tow, and Maggie realized that he once more was all the way across the kitchen from her
Had he always moved so quietly? So quickly?
“So,” Jaimie said. “We’re all home where we belong now. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“Yes,” Maggie managed faintly, dragging her eyes from Daniel’s cool expression. “Wonderful.”
So wonderful, apparently, that Daniel’s homecoming was the main topic of conversation for the rest of the afternoon, through supper and little girls’ bedtimes, until Maggie finally pleaded weariness herself, and took herself upstairs to the room that had once been hers for the very brief few weeks. When she’d moved from the foreman’s brick cottage that she’d shared with her husband. Because she couldn’t bear remaining in the cozy cottage after he’d run off.
She closed her eyes, shutting off the bitter memories.
She knew she should be grateful that the main topic that afternoon and evening hadn’t been her news about Joe. Yet discussing Daniel’s homecoming wasn’t any more comfortable. Particularly with the man himself sitting right across from her,
Sighing, Maggie stared at the bedroom around her. Before those weeks when she’d used it as hers, she had cleaned this room and all the others in the big house, because it had been her job.
Now, she was a guest.
The thick quilt on the wide bed was a different one than used to be there, but it smelled familiar and fresh as a spring day. The faded woven rag rugs on either side of the bed covered a wood floor that gleamed soft and smooth from years of bare and booted feet crossing its wide planks.
She wished, for a moment, that J.D. was sharing this room with her. But J.D. was sound asleep, blissfully happy to be sharing a room with little Sarah. She would have been brokenhearted if Maggie had insisted otherwise.
Now that she was in the privacy of her bedroom, however, Maggie’s tiredness seemed to be a thing of the past, and she prowled around the room. She unpacked her suitcase, taking as long as she could while she was about it. She turned down the quilt. Plumped the pillows. Nibbled at her lip and tried not to remember that Daniel’s room was right next to this one.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when there was a soft tap on her door. Thrusting her hair away from her forehead, she yanked open the door, not sure what she was prepared for.
It was Jaimie, holding out a stack of fluffy, white towels. “I forgot to tell you that the plumbing in the bathroom that’s attached to your room is out of commission. Terrible timing, I know, but we didn’t fix it since we’re planning to remodel up here. You’ll have to share the bathroom in the hall with Daniel. Hope you don’t mind.”
Maggie took the towels, burying her fingers in them. “Of course not.” It was just a bathroom, after all. She and J.D. were just visiting. Here for a few days to deliver the news. Then home again to the life they’d made for themselves.
She could handle sharing a bathroom with someone.
Not someone. Daniel.
Daniel of the quicksilver eyes and heart-stopping grin. Daniel who unwittingly had made her want more out of life than she’d had m the past—a failing marriage and a philandering husband.
Aware that Jaimie’s green eyes were more than a little perceptive, she set the towels on the gleaming wood dresser next to the door. “I didn’t get a chance earlier to ask you how you’re feeling. You know, with the pregnancy and all.”
Jaimie touched her still-flat abdomen. “Aside from the news about Joe?” Her smile was strained around the edges, but Maggie knew that strain didn’t stern from her pregnancy. Or her marriage. “Terrific, actually,” Jaimie said. “Like I said before. Matthew pamp
ers me unmercifully. I’m going to be totally spoiled by the time the baby arrives.”
The scrape of a boot alerted them to Matthew’s sudden, silent presence. “All settled in?”
Maggie smiled faintly at the possessive arm that he wrapped around his wife’s waist. “Yes.”
He nodded, satisfied, then looked at his wife. “Thought you were going to bed.”
“I am.”
A slow smile curled his lips. “You need your sleep.”
Jaimie’s eyes caught Maggie’s with a See? expression. She gave Maggie a quick hug, then turned with Matthew and headed toward the suite at the far end of the hall. Maggie leaned her shoulder against the door frame, watching them even after the door had closed on the couple.
When Maggie had finally become pregnant with J.D., Joe had lost all interest in whether or not she got enough sleep. She sighed faintly and straightened, absently looking toward the stairs. The sight of Daniel standing there made her go still.
She fought the impulse to step hastily into the bedroom and shut the door. Not only would it appear unbearably rude, but something in his expression nagged at her. As if he expected her to do just that.
Her chin tilted and she wished for some witty or pithy comment. But she’d never been particularly witty. Pithy was out of the question. And all that came out again was that embarrassingly awkward, “So.”
He slowly climbed the last stair, his hand resting on the wide newel post. “So.”
Maggie drew in a steadying breath, letting her eyes study him as they’d been aching to do during supper.
The thick, wavy hair that J.D. had commented on, looking at his photo, was streaked with golden light. Testament to hours spent in the sun, as was the deep bronze cast of tan he sported. His hair was also shorter than it used to be, cut above his collar now when before it had brushed his shoulders.
But his face hadn’t changed. It was still as uncompromisingly masculine as it always had been, though perhaps the creases beside his distinctive gray eyes were a little more apparent. A little deeper.
“You’re looking good,” he said after a moment.
A Wedding for Maggie Page 2
