A Wedding for Maggie

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  J.D.’s little fingers were clutched in Spike’s lustrous mane, her face glowing. It was quite a while before J.D. noticed Maggie watching, and when she did, she waved so enthusiastically that Maggie felt sure her daughter would have tumbled right off the horse if it weren’t for Daniel’s steady hands around her waist.

  Her fingers curled as Spike plodded to a halt on the other side of the rail from Maggie. Daniel looked down at her from beneath the brim of his hat, his expression challenging. As if he expected her to rebuke him for taking J.D. riding.

  Only then did Maggie realize that it was only because Daniel held her daughter on the horse with him that she wasn’t coming unglued. If it had been anyone but Daniel, she might well have expressed her unhappiness at not being consulted first.

  Maggie knew how to ride a horse. She’d grown up with them, after all.

  Yet it was Daniel who was treating her precious girl to her first horse ride. “You look like you’re having fun,” she said, aware of the surprised look Daniel couldn’t quite contain.

  She supposed she deserved that look, after her words that night about Daniel not getting too close to J.D. But how could she be upset at this?

  “We are,” Daniel stated, aware that the words were true. J.D.’s childish ecstasy was hard to resist. Even for a man who was determined to remain detached. “But I think we’ve been at it long enough for one day.”

  J.D. started to protest, but Daniel stopped it by wrapping her palms around the reins. “Maybe your mama will get the gate for us.”

  J.D. held the reins as if she was born to them. “Mama, will you get the gate for us?”

  Maggie nodded and trotted over to the gate, swinging it wide. They rode through, and Maggie pushed the gate shut, her expression soft. As soft as the hand she laid for a brief moment on his thigh. As soft as the “Thank you” she whispered, before stepping back from Spike.

  Daniel tore his attention away from Maggie and softly clicked to Spike. J.D. laughed with delight as they trotted toward the horse barn. She was even more delighted when Maggie followed them into the barn and spent the next ten minutes chattering away to her mother about her first horse ride in between asking Daniel a million questions about everything from why the horse barn smelled that way to why the horse needed a blanket under the saddle. Was it cold?

  Daniel was starting to cast desperate looks Maggie’s way by the time J.D. was moving on to questions about the horse’s anatomy. Maggie hid her amusement at his obvious relief when Sarah and Squire passed by and J.D. immediately skedaddled off with her new buddies.

  “Does she ever stop asking questions?”

  “Sure. It’s called sleeping.” She caught a wisp of a grin on his face when he gave Spike a last pat and stepped out of the stall. He swept up his saddle as if it weighed nothing and carried it and the saddle blanket into the tack room. Maggie climbed off the bale and followed him.

  He glanced back at her when she stopped in the doorway. “You’re not gonna ask me why horses have four legs and people have two and snakes don’t have any are you?”

  She shook her head. “No.” Sawdust clung to the sleeve of her sweater, and she brushed at it. “I did have a question for you, though.”

  “Great,” he muttered. He turned to face her, his hands propped on his lean hips. “Well, lay it on me. I’m tough.”

  “Real tough,” Maggie agreed. “That’s why a tiny little female person puts a glint of panic in tough man’s eyes.”

  Daniel managed not to flinch. Maggie couldn’t know how her dry jab stung.

  “Actually, I was just wondering what happened to Diablo.”

  He relaxed a fraction. “I gave him away.”

  Her eyes went wide. “But why? You loved that horse.”

  Daniel’s lips twisted. “He was a horse. That’s all.” Her expression told him she didn’t believe his words for a minute. Hell. He’d thought J.D.’s questions were torture. But Maggie just stood there, leaning against the door to freedom, absently picking pieces of sawdust from her sweater as she studied him with her perceptive blue-green gaze. “Somebody needed him more.”

  Her eyebrows lifted a fraction.

  He looked over her head, thinking he should just brush on past her, whether she was blocking the way or not. But if he did try to brush past her, and if she didn’t move out of the way, then he would brush against her, and...ah, hell. Answering her question seemed easier.

  “I was in Minnesota for a, uh, job at a children’s hospital.”

  Her eyes contained only curiosity. So he continued. Completely skirting the reason he’d been in Minnesota, namely Coleman Black and Daniel’s first gig with Hollins-Winword, and focused instead on the work in which the hospital specialized. Which was dealing with children who’d experienced severe physical or emotional trauma. He sure in hell didn’t expect to see the soft glow in Maggie’s eyes when he finished.

  “So the boy started speaking again when you took Diablo there to show the kids?”

  “He started speaking to Diablo,” Daniel corrected.

  “But the boy spoke. For the first time in several years.”

  He nodded.

  “No wonder you left Diablo there You’re so generous.”

  No, he wasn’t. Maybe he’d been generous back then. When he’d seen a young boy’s need. But time and life had a way of sucking that generosity out of a man. Which was just as well. “He was just a horse.”

  Maggie just smiled gently. “Whatever you say, Daniel.”

  He shot her a look. But she merely continued smiling that little smile of hers and stepped from the doorway, opening the path to freedom. Which he took with indecent haste.

  Despite Maggie’s certainty that the days would drag until Daniel relented on their agreement, she was wrong. There were just too many things going on. Maggie woke one morning and realized with a thorough thump of panic that nearly two weeks had passed since she’d first arrived.

  J.D. and her never-ending enthusiasm for everything on the ranch that was new and exciting to her. Even digging up worms with Squire for their regular fishing treks

  Jaimie and Matthew’s remodeling project.

  Daniel’s house.

  She and Daniel had fallen into a routine of sorts. He was up and gone by the time she rose around seven. He’d return mid-morning and take her, and occasionally J.D. too, over to the house, or into Weaver or even into Gillette to pick up one thing or another. She’d also, against her better judgment, selected a bedroom suite for J.D.’s room in the house. But the pickled oak set had caught her eye and before she’d known it, she’d shown it to Daniel, who hadn’t wasted a breath before he’d ordered it.

  The luxury of wealth, she’d supposed.

  Then later in the afternoon, he would drop her off again at the big house. She knew that he then spent several hours helping Matthew with the hundred and ten chores that never seemed to be quite finished on the busy ranch while she worked on the wood ornaments she’d promised the mail-order company.

  Half the time he came in for supper, when he would jump in the shower to wash off the accumulation of sweat and dust before sitting down at the table with the rest of them. The other half of the time he didn’t come in at all until much later. So Maggie fell into the habit of wrapping a plate of food for him and leaving it in the refrigerator in “their” kitchen downstairs.

  Not once had she awakened again in the middle of the night to find him watching her from the couch while she’d slept in his comfortably worn chair. Nor had she come across him giving a horse ride to J.D. again, though she knew he’d done so several times since that first.

  J.D. was sleeping upstairs with Sarah again. Only Maggie and Daniel were in the downstairs suite. If he’d wanted to take steps toward that “real” marriage bed he’d threatened, he was certainly having no difficulty in waiting until their marriage was a reality.

  She was relieved. Of course she was.

  Still, Daniel hadn’t given any indication of changing his mind. And
that didn’t relieve her. Of course it didn’t.

  She flopped back on her pillows, thinking that she was, in all probability, going insane. Since when had she ever been so ridiculously indecisive?

  She either wanted out of their agreement. Or she didn’t.

  She either wanted to be with Daniel. In all the ways he’d said.

  Or she didn’t.

  Insane. That was her.

  Shaking her head, she got out of bed, making it all the way into the bathroom before her morning sickness struck. But she was falling into the groove of it again. Get up. Get sick. Take a shower and clean up and start the day.

  Like falling off a log.

  She stared at herself in the mirror. “Maggie Mae,” she whispered to herself. “You really need your head examined.”

  Her reflection didn’t disagree. Smiling wryly at her own foolishness, she stepped into the shower.

  She and Daniel were driving down to Casper that morning for an estate sale. It had actually been Maggie’s suggestion, when Daniel didn’t seem able to settle on what kind of furnishings he wanted for his den.

  She should have known that he’d turn her suggestion around and expect her to accompany him. He was the only man she’d ever been involved with who seemed to take it for granted that they’d do things together.

  She turned her head into the steamy water, rinsing away her shampoo.

  Involved with. She was involved with Daniel. And the knowledge was beginning to become second nature.

  It was a frightening realization.

  She climbed out of the shower and toweled off, then realized she’d forgotten her robe in the bedroom. She wrapped the huge terry cloth bath sheet around herself, tucking in the ends, and dashed a comb through her hair before heading for the bedroom.

  It was getting distinctly colder outside, and her clothing choices were becoming more and more limited. It seemed impossible to her, considering how early it still was, but she could hardly stand to wear her jeans anymore. Her working wardrobe from Chicago—suits and dresses—were of little use these days.

  Perhaps her lilac leggings and the matching sweat—

  “Oh!” She stopped short at the sight of Daniel crossing the living area.

  Her imagination had his eyes lingering just a moment over her damp shoulders. He continued striding toward his bedroom, yanking off his denim shirt and rolling it into a ball. “I’m gonna grab a shower before we go,” he said, finally slowing as he passed by her. He plucked the white T-shirt molding his chest. “Get rid of cow stink.”

  Maggie hid her hands in the folds of the big towel surrounding her, thinking that he smelled just fine to her. Male and appeal—She frowned. “What?”

  His lips twitched. “I asked if you left any hot water, or if I’m gonna be stuck with a cold dunking.”

  She felt heat rise in her cheeks and cursed her fair skin. She probably looked like a ninny, standing there with her hands clamped in her towel, for all the world like a virgin who’d never seen a man in his T-shirt.

  Particularly when she’d touched so much more skin than he displayed now on that August night weeks ago.

  “I wasn’t in there very long,” she managed..

  He was silent for a moment. “You okay?”

  Except her mouth seemed unaccountably dry? “Fine.”

  “Not sick this morning?”

  “Not that fine.”

  She nearly lost her grip on her towel when he lifted his hand and brushed his thumb across her cheek. An incredibly warm, utterly gentle thumb. “You’ve got circles under your eyes.”

  She’d thought she’d looked pretty good these days. Despite her morning sickness, her color was better. And she was, well, to use his words, rounder. “No makeup yet this morning,” she said dismissively.

  His thumb glided down her jaw, then away, and she squelched the yearning that he place his palm against her cheek. “You don’t need any paint,” he murmured. “You never did. Aren’t you sleeping well?”

  It was too close to the truth. “Aren’t you?” She deliberately turned the tables. “You’re the one who rips apart his bed night after night.”

  She decided she imagined his stiffening. Because he only smiled wickedly and ran his thumb over her bare shoulder in a deliberate caress. “Maybe I’m dreaming about having you there with me.”

  Daniel watched the flush climb into her cheeks. Sure enough, she backed away from him, giving enough space between them that he thought there was some possibility that he’d live to draw another breath. He hadn’t thought about the way his bed looked each morning. Or that she’d probably been making it, rather than leaving it for Curly. Stupid of him. He’d have to start making his own bed again.

  Each morning, with dawn still hours away, he was all too glad to escape sleep, where his dreams beat at him with unforgiving precision. And too eager to get up to think about what state he’d left his bedding in. “Where is J.D.?”

  Now Maggie looked even more wary. “Jaimie’s probably already taken her and Sarah over to Emily’s. They’re finishing their Halloween costumes. We talked about it at supper last night.”

  “Right. You’d already made J.D.’s costume before you moved home.”

  “You were listening.”

  He shrugged. “J.D. is going to be a bumblebee. Sarah wants to be...oh, that Disney character—”

  “Jasmine.” Her shoulders shifted restlessly and she started for her own room.

  He slid his hand around her arm, halting her. “What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head, not facing him. “I need to get dressed.”

  Looking at her, knowing she didn’t have anything but silky skin under the folds of that big towel, raised the predictable results in him. It would have been smart to let her go on her way and get dressed. But he’d left smart behind the night he’d seen her sitting beside the swimming hole, drawing her name upon the water. He stepped in front of her, planting his hands at his sides, though the effort not to touch her again was nearly more than he could stand. “Maggie?”

  He saw her throat work. Watched indecision flit across her lovely face. Her chin, just pointed enough to make the oval face distinctive, wrinkled. Then she looked up at him, her eyes more blue than green. “I was wrong,” she said, and her husky voice curled around his nerve endings. “That night I told you to keep your distance from J.D. That I—” she pressed her lips together for a moment “—I didn’t want her to get hurt. Joe never—I’m sorry. I know you don’t want me to compare you but he ..he never would have taken time out of his busy days to give a horse ride to his daughter. He certainly would’ve never sat at our supper table and listened to two little girls chatter over their Halloween costumes.”

  “It was just supp—”

  “No. It’s so much more than that, Daniel. And I—” She broke off, then went onto her toes, brushing her lips quickly and oh, so briefly against his. “Thank you,” she whispered, and brushed by him.

  He should have let it go at that. Should have. But couldn’t. And he looped his arm around her waist, halting her movements. Then she was against him, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, and her mouth was beneath his, her breath cool and minty from her toothpaste. Her skin, oh, sweet heaven, that skin that was like liquid silk flowing over her bones—

  He jerked his head up, staring into her face. What the hell was he doing? Not using his brain, that was for damn sure. He’d read that baby book he’d found of Jaimie’s. Though it hadn’t said sex should be avoided, he’d figured it out for himself. Maggie’s history was too shaky. Until they had the go-ahead from a doctor, he couldn’t let things get out of hand.

  He forced his fingers to retuck the towel he’d been busily untucking. “You’d better get dressed,” he said evenly

  The color that had ridden into her cheeks slowly ebbed. She brushed her wet hair back with a hand that wasn’t any steadier than the ones he shoved into his pockets. She nodded. “Yes. Of course.” And turned, closing her bedroom door quietly be
tween them.

  He let out his breath on a hiss. Then turned for the bathroom. It didn’t matter whether she’d used all the hot water. ’Cause what he needed now was only the cold.

  “What about that settee?”

  Maggie turned from her perusal of an ancient roll-top desk to see the item Daniel was pointing at in the antique shop. They’d already attended the estate sale and were slowly working their way through other shops in Casper. She cocked her head, studying it for a moment. Then she stepped forward and ran her hand over the scrolled arms. “The wood needs refinishing,” she said, stating the obvious. “And the upholstery, of course.” She stepped back, looking at him. Hoping that her face didn’t show the jitters that had been fluttering around in her tummy since that morning. Since he’d held her. Kissed her.

  She focused desperately on the settee. “I, um, think it’s a tad delicate for your den.”

  “In the hallway,” he said. “Between the dining room and the great room. Along the wall.”

  She knew exactly where he meant. He was right. The settee would be perfect for the spot. “I thought we were here to look for stuff for your den.”

  He settled his hat and smiled a little. “Go with the flow, Maggie.”

  She pushed up the sleeves of her lilac sweater. “Daniel, refinishing that thing alone will take—” She broke off with a huff when he turned and lifted his hand, bringing the proprietor of the antique shop running. Antique? Maybe a tenth of what was in this place was actually antique. The rest was junk, as had been most of the items at the estate sale.

  This settee, though, really was charming. She could just see it with its cherry wood refinished and perhaps a nice tapestry on the—

  She turned off the thought. Falling into Daniel’s plans for the house was becoming far too easy. She needed to remember that she wanted him to reconsider their agreement.

  He had pulled out his old-fashioned money clip and was peeling off bills, easy as you please, and she wandered through the dusty store toward the front where she looked out the glass door to the street outside. The snow that Matthew’s famous “nose” had predicted by Halloween had yet to arrive. But then again, there was still another day.