A Wedding for Maggie

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  Jaimie leaned forward and the top hat she wore on top of her sedately groomed auburn head tipped over her nose. She pushed it back impatiently. “You’ve been bit.”

  “By what?”

  “By the Clay magnetism,” Emily answered. “We recognize a fellow victim when we see one.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She snatched up the headband and pretended an interest in the design of sequins Emily and Jaimie were thoroughly loved by their Clay men. Maggie had no such illusions about her and Daniel.

  He’d brought her back here to Wyoming because she carried his child. That was all. If she was foolish enough to dream about more, then that would remain her secret.

  What she and Daniel shared was physical It wouldn’t last, no matter how weak-kneed he made her feel. Or how easily she wove silly dreams about him. He wanted her. For now.

  Jaimie leaned forward, rolling her eyes when the top hat slid over her nose again. She took it off and set it on the table. She was dressed as a chorus dancer, complete with top hat and tails. “What ridiculous? Mags, we all saw him kiss you. Half the adults in this place were getting hot under the collar watching the two of you dance together.”

  Maggie flushed. “It was a slow dance,” she defended.

  Jaimie and Emily looked at each other again. They just shook their heads and smiled.

  “Why didn’t Squire come to the party?” Maggie was getting desperate to get Jaimie and Emily onto another topic.

  “He claimed he was tired,” Jaimie said. “But I think he and Gloria are on the outs again.”

  “Again?” Emily shook her head. “I really do not understand why he doesn’t marry her. She’s wonderful.”

  Jaimie propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her palm. She openly watched the men by the beer keg. “Those men of ours come by their stubbornness honestly,” she said. “Straight from Squire himself.”

  Emily shifted in her chair so she could look at the brothers, too. “Jefferson figures that Squire thinks he’s had his great love. He can’t get past the habit of that.”

  “You know Squire better than the rest of us,” Jaimie said. “He raised you.”

  “Until he sent me off to boarding school when I was a teenager,” Emily said absently. “I wonder if there will ever come a day when they all come home again. Sawyer and Tris, too.”

  Jaimie snorted softly. “Matthew told me once that Sawyer would rather chew nails than be a rancher. He eats, breathes and sleeps the navy.”

  “Mmm. I can’t really see Tristan giving up the high life of California, either,” Emily said. “Still, it’s a nice thought having them all here. Isn’t it?”

  Jaimie nodded. “I just wish Squire and Gloria would get their act together. She’s an attractive woman. If he doesn’t watch it, she’s liable to tell him to take a hike. There must be other men interested in her. For heaven’s sake, you’d think Squire believes that you can’t love more than one person in a lifetime.”

  “You can,” Maggie said thoughtlessly.

  Jaimie’s eyebrows arched knowingly. “Oh?”

  Maggie hopped up, tugging the narrow strap of her dress back up onto her shoulder. “I’d better corral the girls,” she said. “They’re starting to eye the apple bobbing barrel like its bath time.” She hurried off, the sound of Jaimie’s and Emily’s good-natured laughter ringing in her ears.

  She caught up with the trio of little girls and shepherded them back toward booths more appropriate for their ages. But her mind was more on what her wayward tongue had let slip.

  You can’t be in love with Daniel Clay, Maggie Mae Not unless you want your heart broken. For good.

  She crouched down and absently helped Sarah toss a beanbag square through the cutouts in a cardboard jack-o’ lantern facade.

  Maybe it was the noise and chatter and music that started to get to her. Maybe it was the fact that she’d had to be careful all evening not to breathe too deeply for fear that she’d split a seam in the flapper dress she’d made. Maybe it was the spiraling fear that she was losing control of the situation with Daniel. Or more accurately, the realization that she’d never had control of it.

  Whatever it was, the heat in the room suddenly clawed at her. Her stomach lurched warningly. Murmuring to the girls that she’d be right back, she rose shakily, her eyes searching for the rest room. She drew in a long breath, heading instinctively toward the nearest Exit sign.

  She slipped through the heavy, metal gymnasium doors and plunged into the night. Sucked in cold, refreshing air. Slowly the nausea abated and she leaned back against the brick wall behind her. The freezing surface raised goose bumps along her arms and legs, but she didn’t care. She rubbed her palms over her arms and looked out into the dark night. Realized that the first gentle fat flakes of snow were slowly drifting from the sky.

  Matthew’s nose for snow hadn’t been wrong, after all.

  She pushed away from the wall, adjusting the narrow strap of her dress that didn’t want to stay up on her shoulder, and turned for the door. The cold night air was good for shocking her nausea away, but a few minutes of it was more than enough. She pulled open the heavy door and went back inside.

  The music was slow and romantic again.

  She walked around the perimeter of the room, heading toward their table. Smiling faintly when she saw Jaimie had gotten Matthew out on the dance floor. But her smile died when she saw Daniel out on the dance floor, too.

  Dancing with Rebecca Morehouse. Weaver’s one and only physician. Who also happened to be a stunningly beautiful woman.

  Maggie hastily turned away, blindly reaching for a cup of hot cider from the table behind her. She drank it, heedless of its temperature that singed her tongue on its way down.

  Well, what did she expect? That he would keep his attention strictly reserved for Maggie? He was Daniel Clay. A man who scribbled the name “Angeline” across half a dozen papers every week. And she was just Maggie. The woman he was marrying because of a baby.

  She dropped the empty cup in the trash and strode to their table, where Emily sat with Jefferson and the girls. Maggie joined them and nearly cried with relief when she realized they were preparing to leave. “Mind if I hitch a ride with you?”

  Emily’s eyes flicked from Maggie to the dance floor, but she didn’t say anything. Jefferson picked up Leandra, who snuggled her head against her daddy’s shoulder, her little fingers latching on to his thick ponytail like a security blanket. “The girls want to sleep at our place,” Emily said. “We need to stop by the big house, though, to get some clothes for Sarah. And J.D., too, if it’s all right with you.”

  Maggie nodded. She just wanted to get out of there. Away from the sight of Daniel holding another woman in his arms.

  Apparently while Maggie had been outside, Emily and Jef ferson had already made their arrangements with Jaimie and Matthew, because they didn’t do anything but lift their arms in a wave as they herded the kids out the door, gathering coats and plastic pumpkins and caramel apples on the way.

  Telling herself she wouldn’t look back, Maggie did it, anyway. And saw Daniel slowly circling the room, a grin on his face as he escorted the doctor away from the dance floor. Jefferson was waiting at the door, holding it open, and she scooted through, swinging her coat around her shoulders and telling J.D. to pull up her hood.

  She sat in the back of their Jeep Cherokee, huddled between safety seats and little girls. When they arrived at the big house, she and Emily climbed out, the girls and Jefferson staying in the warm vehicle as they dashed inside to get Sarah’s and J.D.’s clothes for the night and the next day.

  Maggie passed J.D.’s backpack to Emily when she paused in the mudroom. Emily added it to what she’d picked out for Sarah. “I don’t know why we bother with nighties,” she said cheerfully. “They’ll probably want to sleep in their costumes.”

  “Are you sure you want them all? They get so lively—”

  Emily waved that off. “Jefferson figures we’re gonna have
a football team of kids. The more practice we get, the better. Besides, they’re getting to be inseparable. Lively or not, they’re good. Trust me,” she patted her belly, her eyes sparkling. “When this one comes, we’ll collect on the favor.” She reached for the storm door that had replaced the squeaky wooden screen door. “We’re all glad you’ve come back, you know.”

  Maggie played with the buttons on her wool coat. She couldn’t even summon a faint smile. Though there was no doubting Emily’s quiet sincerity. “I know.”

  Emily sighed faintly. “Daniel is—”

  Jefferson tooted the horn, and Maggie could have run out and kissed his lean cheek. “It’s starting to snow harder,” she said, and Emily nodded, pushing through the door without finishing whatever it was she’d planned to say.

  Maggie stepped out on the porch, watching Emily climb into the vehicle, moving lithely despite her blossoming pregnancy. She lifted her hand, returning J.D.’s wave, blew a kiss and then went back inside, closing the storm door and leaning back against it.

  Except for the soft tick of the kitchen clock, the house was silent. Maggie slid off her coat and hung it on one of the pegs beside the assortment of sweaters, jackets, vests, slickers. Coats that had been collecting there for longer than Maggie knew.

  She leaned over and removed her high-heeled red pumps and, carrying them with her, she went into the kitchen. The red light from the coffeemaker was on, and she set her shoes on a chair and rinsed the dregs and prepared a new batch ready for the flip of the switch come dawn.

  The door to Squire’s room beyond the staircase was closed. Rather than going downstairs to her bedroom, she wandered into the little-used living room. Hanging above the fireplace was the portrait of Sarah Clay, the woman who had held the heart of Squire Clay since before her death, and in the thirty-odd years since.

  Maggie turned on one of the small side lamps and studied Sarah’s portrait. She’d been a petite woman with extraordinarily beautiful blond hair, waving luxuriously down her back, even though it had probably gone against more typical fashion standards of the day. Her eyes, darkly blue, appeared shadowed in the light. As if she discerned Maggie’s troubled thoughts.

  Lovely. Now she really could add insanity to her list of accomplishments.

  She turned away from the portrait, moving across the room to the wide picture windows at the front of the big house. Delicate lace panels hung in the window and Maggie nudged a fold aside to look out into the darkness.

  But her attention kept being drawn back to the portrait, and she let the lace fall into place once again. She walked over to the portrait and stared up at it. “What did you have, Sarah Clay,” she asked softly, “to hold a man’s heart for all these years?”

  Those eyes, so blue and gentle, just looked back at her. Maggie swallowed the knot in her throat. She turned off the light and retrieved her pumps. And went downstairs through the rec room and into the guest suite.

  Whatever it was that Sarah Clay possessed, that Jaimie and Emily apparently had, as well, was something that simply eluded Maggie.

  A sensible person would have accepted that fact long ago. But when it came to one Darnel Jordan Clay, Maggie’s sense was nonexistent. It always had been.

  She went into the bedroom where the shopping bag from the department store still sat on the dresser. She brushed back her hair and moved the bag to the bed, removing the items she’d selected. Two pairs of leggings. A new bra. A whisper-soft teal nightgown that she’d been unable to resist. Blue jeans for J.D.

  She started to fold up the bag, then noticed the slip of paper still in the bottom of the bag. The receipt.

  She pulled it out, setting aside the bag. Daniel had paid cash.

  She’d selected her items and had dutifully trotted back to the maternity department, only to wait nearly a half hour before Daniel returned. He hadn’t even looked at the clothing, for which she’d been grateful at the time. He’d just pulled out his money clip and peeled off several twenties. That had been that.

  Her fingers crumpled the receipt and she found her purse, pulling out her checkbook. The one thing she hadn’t done yet was to close out her bank accounts in Chicago

  She rooted through her purse for a pen but couldn’t find anything but three crayons and a pencil.

  Receipt and checkbook m hand, she went into the kitchen, snatching up the slender gold pen she remembered Daniel leaving on the counter. She wrote fast, then tore out the check and left it, the receipt and his pen sitting smack-dab in the center of the breakfast bar.

  Then she went into the bathroom for a shower. She didn’t fool herself that Daniel would notice her absence and come racing back to the ranch.

  As soon as Matthew’s Blazer came to a halt, Daniel hopped out and headed straight for the big house. If he hadn’t been talking with the doc, he would have noticed that Maggie wanted to leave.

  Probably that morning-evening-sickness thing, he figured. She should’ve just come and got him on the dance floor. But that wasn’t his Maggie. She was so used to doing for herself. Taking care of herself and her blond-headed imp of a daughter.

  One of these days, she’d realize she wasn’t alone anymore.

  He thumped down the outside set of stairs, shrugging out of his down vest and tossing his hat onto the coffee table. Her bedroom door was opened, the room beyond in darkness. But he could hear the shower running.

  He thought about going in there and joining her. But he’d probably shock her right out of her proper little mind.

  At least one good thing had come from his conversation with the doc. Rebecca had looked probingly at him when he’d asked about sex and pregnancy, but had answered easily enough. Theoretically enough.

  He went into his room, then paced back out into the living area. The shower was still running. He yanked the tails of his shirt free and absently unbuttoned it. He needed to get his mind off Maggie standing under the running water with only steam clothing her. Or he really was going to go on in and join her under the water. He’d run his hands over—

  Then he saw it. The check.

  He reached for the plain blue check blank, filled with Maggie’s neat, sloping writing.

  The single beer he’d consumed that evening wasn’t enough to make his gut tighten the way it did. He held the check between two fingers, glaring at it. As if by doing so, he could make the writing disappear. That it wouldn’t say, down there in the corner of the check, “clothes, etc.”

  Jaw locked, he crumpled the check in his fist.

  “You’re here.”

  For a second, he stopped breathing. Then he slowly turned to see Maggie standing in the doorway to the bathroom. She was bundled from neck to toe in her comfortably worn robe, but strands of hair had escaped the knot she’d caught it up in and clung damply to her neck. His ire multiplied. As much at himself for wanting her so badly that his back teeth ached with it despite the frustration he felt upon seeing the check, as with her for writing the damned thing in the first place.

  He closed his fist tighter, feeling the paper crinkle. “You left the party.”

  The only light on in the place came from the kitchen. But he could still see the way her cheeks colored. Could still see the glisten on her lips when she moistened them. “Yes.”

  “Why? Were you feeling sick?”

  She hesitated, then nodded.

  The paper crumpled a little more in his hand. “Are you feeling better now?”

  This time there was no hesitation. She nodded and walked into the kitchen, finding a glass and filling it with water.

  He followed, and dropped the crumpled check on the counter beside the sink. Her forehead wrinkled, then smoothed as she recognized it. “I’ll just write another.”

  “Waste of paper.”

  Her lips firmed. Her rounded little chin lifted in a “we’ll see” way. If he hadn’t been so damned annoyed, so damned hungry for her, he might have appreciated it.

  He didn’t appreciate it. It only made him more annoyed. And h
is jeans grew tighter.

  She poured the water down the drain after only a few sips. Her robe parted at the neck, revealing a narrow wedge of skin. His eyes latched on to that sliver of skin that gleamed like an ivory pearl under the kitchen light.

  He wondered, not for the first time, what she wore beneath that all-encompassing robe.

  He realized that a narrow stream of water was still running into the sink. Maggie was standing there, staring at the glass in her hand as if she wondered how it had gotten there. He reached out and shut off the water and still she didn’t move.

  “Mag—” His words died when she suddenly looked up at him. No amount of pretending could wipe out the hurt in her eyes. His heart chugged hard in his chest. He had to curl his hands into fists and shove them in the front pockets of his jeans to keep from yanking her to him.

  Her lips moved, as if to speak, but no words emerged She blindly set aside the empty glass.

  He couldn’t tear his eyes from that wedge of skin her robe revealed at her throat. His hands, no matter what he told them to do, came out of the safety of his pockets and reached for the cloth belt on her robe.

  Her lips, soft and tempting, parted a breath. She put her hands on his, and yanked the tie out of them, tightening it as she turned away.

  His jaw tightened. He glanced at the paper ball that had once been a check to her stiff shoulders. “So you want to tell me what happened between the party and here?”

  “Nothing.”

  He snorted softly “Right. While we were dancing we couldn’t have stood any closer together without climbing inside each other’s skin. Now you’re writing damn-fool checks and are about as welcoming as a hard freeze. Why?” Her shoulders, so stiff and proud, trembled. If he hadn’t been watching her so bloody close, he’d have missed it.

  “Oh, Daniel, stop pretending,” she scoffed. “We both know that women are interchangeable for you.”

  He went stock-still. “Is that so?”

  She angled her chin, giving him a view of her tense profile. “I’m going to bed.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said softly.