Then it would be November. Even closer to Thanksgiving.
She jumped a little when Daniel appeared behind her, settling his palm at the small of her back.
“Ready?”
She nodded. “What about the settee?”
“We’ll swing by and get it on our way back.”
They’d driven Daniel’s black truck to Casper. There would be plenty of room in the truck bed for the delicately carved settee.
“You ready for lunch?”
Surprisingly, she was. She nodded, and stepped through the door when he held it open for her. Daniel had parked on the street just a few yards away from the shop, and she’d left her coat inside the truck. Yet the cold air barely penetrated her thick sweater, and the arm he dropped easily over her shoulder heated her even more. The flutters in her stomach jittered around even more frantically.
They started across the sidewalk toward the truck.
“Daniel? Is that you?”
They both turned toward the female voice that called to him. And every bit of pleasure that Maggie had begun feeling from their shopping stopped up inside her.
The woman dashed across the sidewalk, clutching her purse to her side. “I thought it was,” she smiled. “I’d heard you were back, but—”
Maggie managed not to grimace when the woman’s heavily mascaraed eyes widened with recognition.
“Maggie,” she said with surprise.
“Hello, Marlene.”
The other woman continued staring at Maggie for a moment, and Maggie felt an unexpected spurt of sympathy. What did they have to say to each other, after all? Talking about Joe seemed out of place, even if he had spent time in both their beds. She supposed she could have told Marlene that her one-time lover had died. But with Daniel standing beside her, she just couldn’t see herself doing it. “How is Jolene?” Maggie finally asked.
Marlene seemed to nod with relief. “Fine. Just fine. She’s in high school now, you know. Graduates in two years. She plans to go to college in California.” Marlene shook her head. “Her grades are good, though, so maybe she’ll get a scholarship.”
Maggie murmured something. Then felt Daniel’s hand, warm and strong, close around hers.
“Well,” Marlene smiled awkwardly, her eyes taking in the two of them standing there so nice and cozy. “It’s...nice to see you both,” she said politely.
This time Daniel answered. “Thanks. Say hello to Boyd.”
Marlene flushed, glancing Maggie’s way again. “We’re divorced now,” she said. “He moved to Rock Springs when Jolene and I left, um, Weaver.” Then made a production of looking at her watch. “Oops. I’m late. ’Bye now.” She scurned back across the street, her coat flapping around her legs.
Maggie felt Daniel’s gaze but didn’t return it. She didn’t even have to wonder whether the Switts’ divorce had had anything to do with Joe. It had been written all over Marlene’s face. Encountering one of Joe’s women hadn’t been something she’d expected. Though when she thought about it, she didn’t really know why not. It had been rather naive of her, considering the trail of women through which Joe had cut a wide swath.
Knowing Daniel’s feelings about Joe, she half expected him to make some cutting remark. But he didn’t. Merely steered them around to the truck, where he waited until she’d climbed safely up onto the seat. “So what kind of meal you want,” he asked when he joined her in the cab.
She pulled her coat across her lap. “Aren’t you going to say something?”
He shifted toward her in his seat, his sinewy wrist resting over the top of the steering wheel. “Well, to be honest, I’m thinking Hobo Joe’s. I can get Double-C steak there and you can order a salad or soup or chocolate cake. Whatever it is your heart desires.”
“About Marlene.”
He seemed to sigh faintly. “What about her?”
“Joe—” She didn’t know what to say.
He tilted his head and she couldn’t see his expression beyond the black brim of his hat. “Was a jerk,” he finished flatly. “He drank and he had women and he gambled money he couldn’t afford to lose, and he tried to make it up by sticking his fingers deeper into Double-C’s pockets.”
There wasn’t a single thing he said that wasn’t true. And it was mortifying.
“But what Joe did that was really, really stupid,” he lifted his head, until his quicksilver gaze met hers, “was to walk away from you.”
Maggie’s eyes burned. She felt caught in the steady strength of his gaze. She couldn’t have said a word to save her soul.
Then his wide shoulders shifted again, as if restless and the spell was broken. She blinked and looked out the window, aware of him settling his hat and starting up the engine. “Now what do you say,” he asked as if the last taut minute had never occurred. “Hobo Joe’s?”
Maggie nodded. Hobo Joe’s sounded just fine with her.
It was fine. Despite the fact that it was midday, Daniel had the steak he wanted. Maggie’s hunger kicked in so voraciously that she not only ate the garden salad and vegetable soup she’d ordered, but half of Daniel’s baked potato and a corner of his steak, as well.
Feeling utterly replete, Maggie mentally crossed her fingers that the meal would stay put. Daniel finished his coffee, and aware that the afternoon was getting mighty close to evening, they went out to the truck. She expected that they’d pick up the settee and head home. But Daniel drove into the parking lot of a shopping center first.
Not until he walked them into the department store did she get her first inkling. He caught her hand in his and led her past cosmetic counters, lingerie displays and dressy gowns already out for the coming holidays and came to a stop in front of a salesclerk in the maternity clothes area.
“We’re having a baby,” he announced, tapping his hat against his leg.
Maggie felt her face fire. They hadn’t even told their family, and Daniel was announcing it to strangers. And not the “she’s pregnant” that Maggie would have expected. But “we’re having a baby.”
The salesclerk afforded Daniel a smile, and waved her hand at the display of clothing surrounding her. “I’m sure your wife can find something to her taste,” she said. “There’s a chair there by the mirrors, if you’d like to sit and wait while she browses.”
“I’m not—”
“Thanks,” Daniel said, interrupting Maggie’s automatic denial of being his wife. He tugged Maggie toward a mannequin, basketball-size tummy bulging out the front of a bright red maternity dress. “That’s pretty,” he said.
Maggie spared the dress half a glance. “What are you doing?”
“Getting you some gear that doesn’t strangle the kid before she’s even born.” He pulled a hanger off a rack and held up an orange-and-lime striped shirt. “How about this?”
“I’d look like a circus tent.” She snatched the plastic hanger from him and shoved it back on the rack. “I can pick out my own clothes.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So pick.”
Aware of the salesclerk standing just feet away as she arranged a stack of sweaters on a table, Maggie leaned closer to him. “You know very well what I mean. I’m not going to let you buy me a bunch of maternity clothes.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not right, that’s why not!” She cast an exasperated look over her shoulder, half expecting the clerk to be gaping at them. But the woman was still folding.
She didn’t realize that the expression in his eyes had been easy and warm until they cooled. And contrarily missed it. But she wasn’t going to relent on this issue. She was already living in his family’s home. Picking out furniture for a house she had no real expectation of ever living in. For him to pay for her clothing was just too much.
He dropped his hand over her shoulder, drawing her stiff shoulders against him. Then he lifted her chin toward him, for all appearances a husband displaying affection toward his pregnant wife. “Either you pick out some clothes that fit or I will. And I will damn well dre
ss you every morning in ’em if I have to,” he murmured for her ears alone.
“I will pick them out and you can go—go wait in the truck or go to the men’s department or something. Because there is no way I am going to pick out my things with you hovering about,” she said with not one tremble in her voice.
If he hadn’t wanted her in that moment so bloody fiercely, he would have applauded. There she stood telling him where to get off, and he wanted her more than his next breath.
He drew in a slow breath- He tilted his head. “Why don’t I just wait here,” he suggested mildly, and bit back another wave of gut singeing lust when she dashed her hair away from her cheek, eyeing him like she’d expected him to put up more of a fight.
She nodded and went into the dressing room.
He leaned his head against the mirrored wall behind him and thumped his head deliberately against the hard surface. Anything to drown out the soft rustle of clothing being removed behind the door not three feet from him.
She came out, dressed once more in her purplish outfit. Seemed ready to say something, but didn’t. She took a few steps past him, and he discreetly adjusted the position of his black hat. “Maggie,” he called after her softly. “You bring ’em back here.”
By her flush, he knew his suspicions were correct, and that she’d planned on paying for whatever she selected herself. “Or I can come with you,” he suggested blandly.
“No!” She swallowed. “No. If I find anything, I’ll bring it back here.”
When she walked out of sight, he blew out a long breath and glanced up to see the saleswoman watching him.
“Your wife is very lovely,” she said. “Your baby is bound to be beautiful.”
Wife. He suddenly stood. “If she comes back, tell her to wait here for me?”
“Sure. I’m on until nine tonight.”
He strode through the racks of clothing, heading in the opposite direction of the underwear department. Maggie was going to be his wife. He’d been telling her to get used to the notion.
He rounded the large Christmas tree that a trio of giggling salesgirls were decorating and looked around him. There.
The jewelry department.
Perhaps it was time he took some of his own advice.
Chapter Ten
Trick-or-treating on Halloween was a near impossibility in the rural area of Weaver, Wyoming. Ranch houses were spread too far apart to make the door-to-door variety feasible. So every year the town got together and had a big Halloween party in the gymnasium of the Weaver High School. People who so chose dressed in costume. The few folk around who considered Halloween to be little better than the devil’s day went around calling the event the Harvest Festival.
Most folks knew it for what it was. An opportunity for the kids in the area to dress up and be silly and fill their plastic pumpkins with candy and treats, and for the adults to congregate over a keg of beer or a big steaming pot of cider while they nibbled on the potluck dishes everyone brought for supper.
Some would never move away from the long tables of food.
Some would dance. Some would sit around and gossip.
Some would take their sweetheart out into the hallway by
the rows of lockers or out into the parking lot, and neck.
Over the years Daniel had been known to do his share of all.
This year, however, he found himself being led around by the pinkie by a pint-size bumblebee named J.D. She dragged him from booth to booth as she tried her hand at the games that were set up. When the game was too advanced for her, she seemed to take it for granted that Daniel would win her whatever prize it was she’d set her little heart on.
Though looking down into her bright green eyes made him ache inside, because they reminded him so much of another pair of youthful eyes, he didn’t have the heart to deny her.
It was either accompany J.D. around the gym’s perimeter or sit at the table the Clay mob had staked out and try not to stare too hard at Maggie. Ever since the day before in the department store, he’d been one unending mass of want. Until he could get that under control and his brain back into control, accompanying J.D. was the less painful choice.
“Dannl.” J.D. tugged at his hand as they neared the line of a half dozen school kids waiting for their chance to bob for apples. “I gots to do that.” She waved her little starfish hand toward the water barrel where glistening red apples floated.
Daniel shook his head, and went down on his haunches next to the little blond imp. “You think so?”
She nodded fiercely, making the black antennae attached to her head bounce madly. “I gots to.”
“Why?”
She looked at him, her delicately arched eyebrows drawing together. “’Cause.”
“’Cause why?”
“’Cause I wants to.”
“But why do you want to?” He nodded toward the boy who was currently trying his luck. And having little success. “You’ll get your hair wet. Probably your costume, too.”
Clearly, she hadn’t thought of that She looked down at her bright yellow and black costume. She smoothed her hand down the front of it. Then she looked right into Daniel’s eyes and smiled brightly. “You gots to do it for me,” she announced, thoroughly satisfied with her brilliance.
Daniel shook his head. “No way, shooks. I don’t want to get. wet, either.”
“But Dannl, I gots to have an apple.”
So Daniel Clay found himself on his knees, sticking his fool face into a big barrel of water, trying to snag one of the impossibly slippery, bouncing apples. He heard the catcalls from his brothers, and the peals of laughter from Emily and Jaimie. But damned if he didn’t sink his teeth into one of those apples, and when he lifted his head, water dripping from his face and hair, J.D. beamed at him and took the apple from him, sinking her own little teeth into the juicy fruit,
He looked above J.D. to see J.D.’s mother, dressed in a slinky red glittery dress with fringe hanging to her knees and felt the world stop spinning.
With her prized apple in her hands, J.D. and Leandra darted off to the next booth, Sarah struggling to keep up. Darnel sat back on his heels, slicking his hair off his face. Maggie stepped closer, handing him a bunch of paper towels. He dragged them over his face and crumpled them in his fist.
“You’re soaked,” she said. Even beyond the chatter and the music and the laughter, he could hear her soft voice.
He dashed the soggy towels over his jaw once more and stood. “Hazard of the job.” She smiled and he realized her eyes were wet. “What is it?”
She moistened her lips, looking impossibly slender in her flapper outfit. “Would you dance with me, Daniel?” She seemed to be holding her breath.
He tossed the wad of towels into the trash bin beside the apple barrel. He’d do a whole lot more than waltz her around a gymnasium floor, just as soon as the next few weeks had passed. He closed his hand around hers, feeling as much as hearing the soft exhalation she gave. He led her to the middle of the floor. At that moment the teenager who was currently acting as DJ, switched from rousing rock to slow and moody.
Darnel took Maggie in his arms, and they moved slowly together. Easily together. As perfectly fitted and attuned as the night he’d finally made her his. The night they’d made a child together.
Maggie didn’t care if she was being foolish. She only knew that the sight of Daniel, bobbing his head into that cold water again and again in search of the apple that J.D. desired, had moved her deeply.
Had made her believe that things might work out. Might be okay.
Had made her hope.
Hope. Such a fragile thing. Yet so willing to spring back to life, like the crocuses did every spring, sticking their green shoots up toward the sun, even if there still remained a veneer of snow over their heads.
Beneath her cheek she felt his heart beat, steady and sure. His hand, wide palm and long callused fingers, spread over her back, holding her against him. Holding back all the rest of the wo
rld, if only for the moments of a beautiful song.
Her fingertips glided through the ends of his hair, thick wavy strands of silk. She felt his warm breath stir the tendrils of hair at her temple and melted against him. One song glided into the next. Still they slowly circled the room, oblivious to the other couples who came and went. Oblivious to the childish shrieks and laughter as games were played and treats collected.
His other hand joined the first on her back, and she linked her hands behind his neck. She sighed deeply when his lips touched her forehead. The corner of her eye.
His low voice rasped along her nerve endings. “I want you.”
She pressed her forehead against his chest. He hadn’t worn a costume. Just his usual white shirt and jeans. He could have dressed in nothing but his bare skin and she couldn’t have been more unbearably aroused by the sight, “Yes,” she breathed.
He shook his head, muttering a rueful oath. “Our timing needs some work.”
She realized the music had stopped. Couples were leaving the dance area. She drew in a needed breath and felt her mouth run bone dry when he leaned over her, kissing her right there in plain view of God and the entire community of Weaver, Wyoming. “Later,” he said against her lips, before striding over to the far side of the gymnasium where Jefferson and Matthew stood near the makeshift bar. He glanced back at her once, and her knees went weak.
Later.
Maggie headed back to the round table where Jaimie and Emily sat, their feet propped on chairs opposite them. She slid off her sequined headband and ran her fingers through her hair. Her eyes strayed toward the far side of the cavernous room.
“I told you.”
Maggie glanced at Jaimie who’d spoken and was nodding at Emily. Emily, whose dark, rainwater straight hair was pulled into two high pigtails on either side of her head, à la Raggedy Ann, nodded right back. Her pansy brown eyes were wise and knowing against the smattering of freckles she’d penciled onto her cheeks.
Maggie tried to interpret the look the two women passed between them. And failed. “What?”
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