A Wedding for Maggie

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  “I don’t care where she comes from. I’ll choose my own doctor. Dr. Foster knows my history.”

  He thrust his hands through his hair, keeping his fingers there because if he didn’t, he really was going to do something stupid. “Rebecca could get your files or whatever from him. Does it occur to you that being so bloody far from your doctor might have been part of the problem before?”

  “That is ridiculous!”

  He was going to do something stupid. He reached out and peeled her fingers from the doorknob, turning her inexorably to face him. “Is it? Dammit, Maggie Mae, don’t be stubborn about this.”

  She glared right back at him. “You’re the one throwing orders around. It’s my pregnancy, and I’ll go to the doctor that I choose!” What would be the point of seeing the doctor in Weaver? When Daniel changed his mind about his marriage demand—and he would—she and J.D. would go to Gillette. Where her old doctor practiced.

  “It’s my baby, too. Your days of making unilateral decisions are over.”

  “Unilateral...” Maggie yanked her shoulders away. Disbelief coursed through her. “This is too much,” she muttered. “Joe couldn’t stand to hear one detail about J.D., and you’re busting into bathrooms and telling me which doctor I can see. What’s next?” She tossed her head back, raking her damp hair away from her face. “I suppose you’ll want to sit in the exam room while I have my checkups? Are you going to make sure I take my daily prenatal vitamins?” She blinked rapidly. “Rub my back when it starts to ache, massage lotion over me so I don’t get stretch marks and tie my shoelaces when I’m so big I can’t reach my feet?”

  Damel’s eyes were flat disks of silver. “Maybe. I warned you, Maggie Mae. Don’t compare me with Joe.”

  “I wasn’t—” Yes, you were. Tiredness swept through her with a wildfire’s speed and deadliness. “That wasn’t my intention. I’m just...I—”

  “What?”

  “I’m used to handling things on my own,” she admitted stiffly. Wasn’t that the only way to keep her sanity? Stay in control.

  “Those days are over. That’s my daughter...”

  “Or son—”

  “...you’re carrying. You might have wrangled this stupid month outta me. But you won’t shut me out of one minute of this pregnancy, Maggie So save yourself the trouble, and don’t bother trying.”

  “It wasn’t stupid! And I’m not trying to shut you out of anything.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No!” Yes. Yes, yes, yes. She wanted to go back to the safety of Chicago. Where she didn’t have to worry about anything beyond spending time with her daughter, collecting her next paycheck and filling that order for handmade Christmas ornaments. Where she didn’t have to worry with every breath she drew that she’d lose this baby the way she’d lost the others. Where she didn’t have to look at this man...so strong and warm and male.

  And want things that would never be.

  “Liar,” he said softly.

  She wanted to deny it. To hotly refute his accusation. But she couldn’t. Her shoulders curved inward. She folded her arms around herself. Around the baby who grew within her. Daniel’s baby.

  Tears burned behind her eyes. “I don’t want to fight with you.” She swallowed and looked up into his wintry gray eyes. Why on earth had she given her word that she’d marry him? What kind of insanity had preyed upon her that she’d done something so foolish?

  “You’re giving a good mutation of it.”

  “I just want to pick my own doctor. Is that so awful?”

  His jaw ticked. “Gillette is too far away.”

  Knowing he could well be right didn’t help her jumbled emotions any at all. “This is my pregnancy,” she said flatly. “I’ll pick my own doctor.”

  His eyes narrowed, and Maggie drew in a breath, dreadfully aware that she’d crossed some invisible line of his.

  His legs moved, and Maggie stood there, snared without the good sense to move away. She jumped when he closed his hand behind her neck, tilting her face inexorably to his. “Understand this, Maggie. This is our pregnancy.” His gravelly voice dropped with each word, more fierce for its very softness. “You will be my wife. Get used to it.”

  She trembled. His anger was palpable. Yet she wasn’t afraid. Her nerves felt excruciatingly sensitive. Far too aware of the strength in the palm he cupped against her neck, the long fingers warm against her scalp where they threaded through her damp hair.

  She felt his gaze on her lips. And found herself moistening them. “But—” His mouth covered hers, blotting out her words. Her thoughts. Her good sense.

  His kiss didn’t allow for anything but absorbing him. His taste. His heat. She twisted her hands in his shirt, grabbing for purchase when her knees dissolved.

  And then it was over. He straightened, leaving her mindless and swaying.

  “Don’t try pushing me out of one minute of this pregnancy,” he said, his tone flat. “You’ll regret it if you do.”

  Maggie stumbled to the bed, sinking onto the corner of it after he walked out of the bedroom. She was a noodle. Overcooked and jiggling. He, on the other hand, had seemed as cool as a cucumber. Walking away as easy as you please.

  She sat there, listening to the faint sounds of him moving around out there. Then the soft hiss of the shower.

  Making a face, she donned a nightgown and crawled under the covers. She pulled the spare pillow over her head, childishly hoping that he ran out of hot water.

  She’d be late for work. If she didn’t get up and right now, she’d be late. But she was so warm. So comfortable. For once the springs in her pullout bed weren’t poking her in the backside. She buried her nose in the downy pillow under her head and sank more deeply into the tendrils of sleep that clung to her.

  Warm. So very warm. She stretched her legs luxuriously.

  And sat bolt upright, staring stupidly about her. She rubbed her eyes and blinked as a yawn split her face. Of course she could luxuriously stretch. This bed wasn’t her aged pullout sofa in the living room of her small Chicago apartment.

  She had no job waiting for her at Ryker Interiors. No rents she had to collect.

  She only had a few weeks in which to wait for Daniel to change his mind about marrying her.

  She sat up, pressing her forehead to her drawn-up knees for a moment, wishing that it was as simple as that. She nibbled the inside corner of her lip, then thrust back the covers and stood. The abrupt motion made her sway, and she closed her eyes, waiting for the room to stop tilting. When it did, she smoothed her hand over her abdomen. “Stop that,” she murmured.

  The room stayed reassuringly steady as she dressed in comfortable jeans and a cheery yellow T-shirt, which she had to leave untucked to hide the button she left unfastened at her waist. She strode into the second bedroom where she yanked the tumbled sheets on Daniel’s bed straight. Dragged the blanket up off the floor and settled it across the wide mattress, then reached for the tangled quilt.

  And stopped cold. She eyed the bed. The covers had been churned up as if a storm had occurred in the bed.

  When she’d been housekeeper here, she’d made all the beds. All of them. Including Daniel’s. He’d been so neat that the only evidence he’d slept in his bed had been the dent in his goosedown pillow.

  She slowly finished making Daniel’s bed until it was as perfectly smooth as the one she’d just made in her bedroom. She gathered up the slips of notepapers he’d tossed on the nightstand and set them neatly on the dresser where they’d be less likely to land once again on the floor. There were phone numbers scrawled in Daniel’s handwriting across the half dozen slips. One had a name along with several numbers. Angeline.

  She dropped a paperweight that she’d given to Jaimie a few years ago onto the slips. Angeline.

  Well, Maggie wasn’t fool enough to think that Daniel hadn’t had women friends. Was she?

  Then she didn’t have time anymore to wonder about the women in Daniel’s life, or why he slept so restl
essly now, because her morning sickness had apparently lain waiting long enough.

  Maggie finally felt better and went upstairs. She pulled a thick woolen sweater off the pegs by the screen and pushed through the door The sun was bright and the air brisk with the bite of coming winter. Maggie stood on the back step, pulling the sweater around her shoulders, and let her eyes drift in the direction of the cottage where she and Joe had lived. The foreman’s cottage. Before she knew it, her feet were carrying her across the soft grass and along the gravel road that led to the bunkhouse and the cottage.

  She finally stopped about a hundred yards from the neat, brick dwelling. The garden that she’d planted when she and Joe first came to the Double-C was grown over with grass as if it had never been.

  She drew in a long, deep breath. It felt so odd being back here. But odd or not, as Maggie absorbed the scent of grass and horse and wide-open space, she knew that she’d finally come home to the only place she’d ever really loved.

  Turning on her heel, she headed back toward the big house.

  She didn’t notice the black pickup truck until she’d nearly reached the back porch. When she did, the portion of calm she’d attained promptly vanished. She hovered in the middle of the gravel road feeling idiotic. She needed to get a grip before she had a heart attack or a nervous collapse.

  Taking what must have been her fiftieth calming breath already that morning, she continued toward the big house and up the porch steps. But before she could reach out to pull open the screen door, it moved, pushed open from the inside.

  She knew who’d be standing there in the mudroom before she saw him.

  “I thought you’d gone,” she said, thinking not of his nasty comment about wasting the morning, but of the way he’d torn apart his bedding in his sleep. Of a person named Angeline. She shoved the sweater on a hook.

  “I came back.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Obviously,” Maggie said. She stepped past him into the kitchen, then wondered why. There weren’t any chores to busy her hands. Then she noticed the half-eaten homemade cinnamon roll in Daniel’s hand. “Didn’t you eat earlier?”

  His lips twisted. “Worried I’m gonna get fat?”

  Maggie blinked. “Hardly.” The answer came out involuntarily. The way her eyes immediately went to his lean torso was out of her control, too. The plain white T-shirt he wore clung to every line of him from shoulder to leather belt. She remembered, intimately, the powerful build he possessed. “It’s none of my business anyway,” she added, knowing she sounded prim and uptight but unable to do anything about it.

  “On the contrary,” he murmured. “Don’t you think a wife should be concerned with her husband’s health?” He finished off the roll in one bite.

  “I’m not your wife,” she hissed.

  He swallowed. Licked his thumb. “Yet”

  She stared stonily at him, wishing for a smart comeback that never came.

  “You about ready to go?”

  He stood only a few inches away now, and she imagined she could actually feel the heat of his body. “Go?”

  “Yeah. Go. As in drive to my place. Our new home,” he drew out the words. “I need to pick out exterior paint, and word has it that you’re helping me decide on that kind of thing. Unless you’re going back on your promise.”

  “No,” she said stiffly.

  His eyes drifted over her face. “I didn’t think so,” he agreed blandly. “I’ll be in Matt’s office,” he said, without looking at her as he walked from the kitchen. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

  Thirty minutes later, she could put off thinking about the house no longer. Sitting beside Daniel in the cab of his truck, she stared out at where the dilapidated, two-story, Blanchard house had once stood. The original house had been completely razed, just as Jaimie had said.

  In its place stood a dwelling that took her breath.

  Daniel continued driving around to the rear of the house, then stopped the truck, throwing it into park.

  She felt his eyes on her, knew he was waiting for some comment. “It’s...remarkable.”

  While the big house was a comfortable, rambling, old stone-and-wood barn of a house, this house was pure grace. She pushed open the truck door and slipped to the ground, wrapping her arms around herself for warmth in the cool air. She should have thought to have brought a sweater. Somehow, with Daniel around, thinking sensibly became a near impossibility.

  She stepped around the truck, her head tilting back as she tried to take in all of the house at once.

  She knew that, when finished, the clapboard would be misty gray and that the windowpanes would gleam. It was the house of young girls’ dreams...elegant and stately. With a wraparound porch and gabled eaves.

  She could Just picture it with rose bushes alongside it, heavy with blooms. In winter, with the snow, pristine white as it drifted around the foundation. It was a house that sang longingly for family. For the smell of bread baking in the oven. For the crackle of a fireplace and for the squeals and chatter of children.

  It wasn’t at all what she would have expected Daniel Clay to build. With his own powerful shoulders and callused hands. And he’d done it in such a short time. “How did you—” she waved her hand, slowly encompassing the graceful house. “You hadn’t started it when I was here in August.” He’d only just arrived before she did.

  He pulled one of two cardboard boxes of catalogs out of the truck and tucked it under his arm. “I had crews come in for some of it,” he said shortly. “Go on in.”

  The reality of what she was doing came crashing down about her shoulders. She reached for the second box, but he stopped her.

  “I’ll get it.”

  “But—”

  “I said I’ll get it. You’re not to carry stuff around.”

  Maggie blinked. “Excuse me? Is taking orders from you part of our agreement?”

  He notched his hat back with a thumb. “It is for this. No lifting. Period. You need something lifted, you find me. That includes carrying J.D. around. Because that’s my baby you’re carrying inside you Understand?”

  She gaped. “That’s ridic—” But he’d already turned away, leaving her to follow as he strode toward the house. Maggie huffed, then eyed the second box. It probably weighed all of twenty pounds, she guessed, reaching for it. She actually curled her hands around the cardboard sides. Then paused.

  Not because she was afraid of Daniel’s order.

  But because her common sense knew that he had a point.

  She straightened, leaving the box sitting on the seat, and followed Daniel into the house. Like the big house, this one was built with a mudroom at the rear. Through that was the kitchen and she stopped just inside.

  There was a portable light fixture fitted with a bare bulb clamped onto the edge of the unfinished counter and she wondered how many times he’d worked past dark. Now, however, sunlight streamed into the spacious kitchen. Highlighting the high ceiling and making the windows glisten.

  Unlike the exterior of the house, which only needed a coat of paint and shingles as far as she could tell, the kitchen was woefully unfinished.

  And very chilly, she realized, with a shiver.

  She left her purse next to his black hat on a bare wood counter that would, presumably, soon be tiled. She crossed the plywood floor following the sounds of his movements. The dining room. A soaring great room. A sweeping staircase that, when finished, would be a visual feast

  Daniel appeared at the top of the stairs. “Up here.”

  Butterflies the size of elephants crashed around inside her stomach. She slowly started up the steps. She imagined the bedrooms were upstairs. And the bedroom he would expect her to share.

  By the time she reached the top, she was shaking.

  “Something wrong?”

  She folded her hands together. “Of course not.” Considering it came out in a near squeak, she wasn’t surprised when he snorted, disbelieving He turned away, striding along the w
ide hall. “I thought J.D. might like the room on the end here. There’s a bay window. If you think she’d like a window seat, I’ll add one.”

  “Oh. How...lovely.” Maggie had always wanted a bedroom with a window seat To sit in and read and dream. But her room in the aging house of their Wisconsin dairy farm had been tucked upstairs with only two tiny dormer windows.

  He stepped toward her, and her thoughts scattered. He was so big and so tall, and in the cool, utter silence of the empty house around them, she felt the very heat of him reach out and enfold her.

  Her breath stilled. Inexplicable tears burned behind her eyes.

  She suddenly wanted him to tell her that everything would be okay.

  But she’d stopped depending on other people the day her mother walked out the door when she’d been thirteen.

  She wanted him to hold her and make her feel beautiful and wanted.

  But the only reason she was here at all was that she carried his child.

  She’d gotten “caught,” as the fine upstanding ladies of her hometown church, Augusta Baptist, would have said. Caught just like her mama before her.

  Still, she wanted Daniel to touch her. To cup his broad, callused hands around her face. And kiss her.

  His head lowered toward hers.

  “Yo, Dan!”

  Maggie jumped. She brushed her hair behind her ear, turning to look down the stairs. A man she’d never seen before stomped into view.

  She felt as shaky as a new calf, but Daniel just headed down the stairs, calm as you please. “Shingles in?”

  The man nodded, tipping back his hat to reveal a balding head beneath. “Boys ‘n’ I’ll get to it, if you’re ready.”

  “Sooner the better,” Daniel said. “Matt says we’ll have snow by Halloween. You know his nose for snow.”

  Maggie watched him disappear with the other man. The coolness of the house nudged chills down her arms and she closed her arms around herself. She went into the bedroom at the end of the hall, and sure enough—there was a beautiful window just made for a little girl’s dream spot.