A Willing Wife

by Jackie Merritt

  She started to get up. “You’ve been very nice about my trespassing, but I really must apologize again. I’m sorry and it won’t happen again.”

  “Maggie, I told you that you can visit my gazebo anytime you’d like.” He found her hand and, with a gentle tug on it, urged her to sit down again. “Please, don’t go,” he said softly.

  His hand around hers—the most innocent of all possible caresses between a man and a woman—caused a catch in Maggie’s throat. She knew she should break free and run for home as fast as her legs could carry her. And yet she stood there and let him hold her hand, and when he tugged on it a second time, she let herself be guided back to the bench.

  “Oh, Maggie, if you only knew,” Dallas whispered, and cautiously put his arms around her.

  Her face was against his shirt, and she could hear his rapid heartbeat. She closed her eyes. It had been so long since a man had held her like this, and it was such a wonderful sensation to feel strong arms around her… Both her will and common sense began deserting her.

  She felt his lips on her hair—another glorious sensation—and then he took her chin and tipped up her face. Though she couldn’t clearly see his eyes, she felt their impact with startling clarity. Her breathing became choppy.

  “Dallas,” she whispered in a feeble attempt to stop what she knew in her soul was going to happen next. “W-we can’t…”

  He said nothing, for a debate about whether they could or couldn’t was the last thing he wanted right now. It seemed like a small miracle that she hadn’t immediately resisted his embrace, and there was only one way he could look at it: she wanted exactly what he did.

  He began feathering kisses on her face and felt an emotional dam break within himself. “Maggie, oh, Maggie,” he whispered hoarsely, and pressed his lips to hers in a kiss that gave her his heart and soul. When her mouth opened for his tongue, the desire he’d been feeling for Maggie from the moment they’d met again went off the scale.

  Maggie’s head was spinning from the most passionate, caring kiss of her life. Dear God, she thought in the back of her dazed mind. I could fall in love with this man! But falling in love with a man she could never have—except for a brief love affair—was a terrifying thought, and she quickly turned her head and tore her mouth from his.

  “Maggie,” Dallas pleaded while trying to kiss her again.

  Breathing hard, she pushed against his chest and gasped, “We can’t do this! Let go of me, Dallas.” Her common sense was returning quickly, and she could hardly believe what she’d just allowed to happen. “I have to go home,” she said rather frantically. “I never should have come here in the first place.”

  Dallas knew it was over. For tonight, anyway. Slowly he released his hold on her. “You’re still judging me by how stupidly I behaved that first day,” he said sadly.

  Maggie jumped up from the bench. “No—no, I’m really not. Good night.”

  She was almost home by the time she realized that her parting words were true. She was no longer judging Dallas for any reason; she was worried about herself now!

  Five

  The next day Maggie was a wreck. Exhausted from a sleepless night and hours of soul-searching, she had to force herself to do the smallest chore. Fixing Travis’s breakfast seemed like a monumental task. Helping him get dressed, then making his bed and hers further drained her pathetically small bank of energy. Preparing and mailing her résumé would have to wait, she decided. She simply didn’t have the strength to do it today.

  By the time noon rolled around and she made lunch for her son, she was yawning and just barely able to keep her eyes open.

  “Son,” she said after Travis had finished his bowl of soup and sandwich, “I’m very sleepy. If I take a short nap, will you promise to stay in the yard while I’m resting?”

  “Yes, Mama,” the small boy replied. “How come you’re sleepy?”

  “Because I didn’t sleep very well last night.”

  “Okay,” Travis said, completely accepting the simple explanation. “And I’ll be very, very quiet so I don’t wake you up.”

  Maggie kissed his cheek and hugged him. “You’re my little sweetheart, aren’t you?”

  “I’m a big boy, Mama.” Travis squirmed out of Maggie’s arms and ran for the front door.

  “Remember your promise to stay in the yard!” she called after him, then headed straight for the sofa, where she collapsed and shut her eyes. She was asleep in seconds.

  Maggie’s eyes opened slowly. It took a minute to get her bearings and to figure out why she was sleeping on the sofa instead of her bed. Then she glanced at the mantel clock and let out a yelp. She’d slept more than two hours! What had Travis been doing for so long? Where was he now?

  Jumping up, she ran to the door, stepped out on the porch and shouted, “Travis?”

  “What, Mama?” The boy appeared from behind the house.

  Maggie felt limp with relief. He’d stayed in the yard, as he’d promised, but she still shuddered to think of the things he could have done with no one keeping an eye on him. Then she noticed the rope in his hands, and, frowning, she left the porch and walked to the back of the house.

  “Where did you get the rope, sweetheart?”

  “It’s a lasso, Mama. Dallas gave it to me. Watch me throw it.” Travis swung the rope over his head several times, then tossed the looped end at a fence post. It fell short and he said, “Aw, heck.”

  Maggie had gone stiff at hearing Dallas’s name, but she managed to speak normally to her eager little son. “That was a good try, Travis. When did Dallas give you the rope?”

  “Mama,” Travis said patiently. “I told you, it’s a lasso.” He began winding the rope into a coil for another try at the post.

  “Yes, of course it’s a lasso, but when did Dallas give it to you? Travis, was he here while I was napping?”

  Travis nodded. “I told him you were sleeping.”

  “He—he wanted to talk to me?”

  The boy shrugged. “Guess so. Watch me, Mama.”

  Maggie watched as her son threw the lasso again and again, and when he finally looped the post, she applauded his success by clapping her hands.

  “That’s wonderful, son,” she exclaimed.

  Travis was strutting around, proud as a little peacock. “Dallas said if I practiced a lot, I could get as good as him. Mama, he never misses the post!”

  “He showed you how to use the ro— I mean, the lasso?” Maggie asked weakly. “Was he here for very long?” Travis was wearing the big hat Dallas had given him. He looked adorable—five years old and no bigger than a peanut, and acting so tough because he had a genuine cowboy hat and could rope a fence post. Maggie loved him so much at that moment that she was flooded with emotion.

  Travis looked perplexed, then said, “I think he was here for five or eight hours.”

  Maggie had to swallow hard to keep from laughing. Like many children his age, Travis did not yet possess an accurate sense of time passing. She had taught him how to tell time from a clock, but that had been an easy accomplishment because he was smart as a whip about learning anything that had to do with numbers. Maggie was positive that her son was mathematically inclined, and hoped to expand his talent with good schools. Would she find a good school in Houston? The kind of school that encouraged its students’ special aptitudes and rapidly advanced them in whatever field they shone in?

  Well, that was another issue, she told herself. Meanwhile, why had Dallas come by again today? Because of last night, you nitwit! Remember that you kissed him back. He’s bound to have all sorts of crazy ideas because of that. How could you have been so stupid as to even go near his house? And then to actually walk into his gazebo! Why wouldn’t he have taken advantage of the situation?

  Maggie heaved a distressed sigh. “I’m going in now, son.”

  “Okay.” Travis was intent on swinging the lasso again, and Maggie could tell how determined he was to do it the way Dallas did.

  Walking away w
ith her head down, Maggie suffered a feeling of defeat. As things stood now, it was not in her power to halt Dallas and Travis’s friendship. Plus, her opinion about Dallas using Travis to get to her was not nearly as forceful as it had been. She suspected that if she left her son with her parents and went to Houston by herself, Dallas would still come by to see him. Not that she would even consider leaving without Travis. He was the one unquestionable joy in her life; she would be miserably unhappy without him.

  Maggie sat on the porch swing and stared dully at the miles of open fields beyond the Perez home. Her life had no direction. She was living off her folks, and they were unanimous in their belief that she should be living under their roof. To their way of thinking, she and Travis should have come home to the ranch immediately after her divorce. Truth was, Maggie realized unhappily, if Dallas hadn’t insinuated himself into the picture, she wouldn’t be so upset about her drifting existence and the fact that she was eating food that her parents had worked hard to buy.

  And then there was that kiss last night. She hated the fact that she got warm all over every time she thought about it, but how could she ignore such blatant proof of the chemistry between her and Dallas? That was what scared her most—that blasted chemistry. It sure hadn’t done anything but cause her trouble in the past.

  Maggie thought about her failed marriage, which, in all honesty, had been a failure from the start, even though she had tried very hard to make it work because of Travis. The whole thing was a darn good argument against premarital sex. Craig, too, had made her warm all over, Maggie recalled cynically. That had lasted for about a month after their shotgun wedding. Then he’d gone on to greener pastures, and the truly sad thing was that she hadn’t cared what he’d done. She’d probably still be married to the jerk if he hadn’t wanted to marry another woman.

  Well, that was in the past and best left there. Her worry now was the present, and she felt so helpless, about herself, about her son and about Dallas. It was a lot to deal with and there really seemed to be only one solution: get herself off this ranch. Those résumés were going out in tomorrow’s mail, come hell or high water!

  Rosita came home that evening all atwitter over events at the Fortune mansion. “Lily’s birthday is coming up, and Ryan talked to me about throwing a big surprise party for her and inviting everyone they each know. Since he asked for my opinion, I told him that I didn’t think Lily would appreciate being surprised like that when there are so many other things going on in the family. Terribly disturbing things, Maggie, like baby Bryan still being missing, and Ryan’s divorce battle getting worse by the day. No, indeed, I couldn’t then and still can’t imagine Lily being thrilled over a houseful of guests with so much else going on, and I told Ryan exactly that.”

  “Did he agree with you?” Maggie asked, only because her mother wanted to talk about it. Maggie herself couldn’t drum up any real interest in what the Fortunes were doing. The kidnapping was awful, of course, and Maggie felt genuine sympathy for the parents, Matthew and Claudia. Ryan, too, must be suffering over that. Probably the whole family was. But if they were all suffering over the loss of baby Bryan, how could any one of them plan a party?

  “Oh, yes, he agreed,” Rosita said emphatically. “He decided to take Lily and her children out to dinner for her birthday celebration.”

  “Much more sensible,” Maggie murmured. “Have you met Lily’s children?”

  “Indeed I have. Cole and Hannah are wonderful, but Maria, Lily’s youngest, is a very strange young woman. I get very peculiar feelings when she’s around.”

  “Peculiar? In what way, Mama?”

  Rosita thought a moment, then shrugged. “I haven’t been able to tie these feelings to something specific, but they are strong and persistent, so I don’t believe they’re going to go away. Sooner or later we’ll all know what Maria is up to or involved in. That’s the one thing I’m very certain of.”

  Travis was the star of the dinner table, full of excited chatter about the lasso Dallas had given him.

  Maggie felt her mother’s eyes on her, and finally she looked back. One of Rosita’s eyebrows went up as she said, “So, Dallas was here again today?”

  “I didn’t see him,” Maggie said quickly.

  “Mama was taking a nap,” Travis volunteered.

  Rosita’s expression transformed into motherly concern. “Weren’t you feeling well today?”

  Maggie sighed. “I was just tired, Mama. Please don’t start thinking that I’m wasting away from some awful disease just because I took a nap.”

  “Don’t be sassy to your mama,” Ruben said. “Travis, tell us some more about your new lasso. Have you roped anything yet?”

  “The fence post,” Travis said proudly.

  “Maybe you’ll show me what you can do after supper?” Ruben said.

  Travis glowed. “Yes, Grandpa! Right after supper!”

  As had become their nightly routine, Maggie and Rosita stayed up and talked after Travis and Ruben went to bed. Again Maggie brushed her mother’s hair.

  “Mama, tell me how you and Papa met,” Maggie said.

  “You’ve heard that story a dozen times.”

  “Not for years. Please tell it again.”

  “Well, I started working for the Fortunes at fourteen years of age. Goodness, that was a long time ago.” Rosita became nostalgic and murmured, “I’ve spent most of my life on this ranch.”

  “Which is the reason you know the Fortunes so well.”

  “Yes, I’ve gone through the best and the worst with them.” Rosita sighed. “Anyhow, I was a good girl and paid little attention to the young men working as ranch hands. Until the day I saw your father. He was so handsome, Maggie, so strong and full of life. My heart nearly stopped at first sight of him, and I knew at once that he was the man I would marry.”

  Maggie stopped brushing and became very still. “Exactly how did you know it, Mama? Did you suddenly, mysteriously see your own future? Did you actually say to yourself ‘Ruben Perez is going to be my husband’? And how did he react to seeing you that first time? Was it love at first sight for both of you? Did Papa immediately declare his feelings?”

  Rosita laughed. “Oh, my, no. Your father was shy around girls, and he could barely look me in the eye. But I could tell he liked me, and since I knew in my soul we were meant for each other, I did everything I could to draw his attention. You know that I’ve never been shy, and I have to admit that I deliberately devised situations where we would run into each other.”

  Maggie smiled. “You chased him until he caught you. Mama, you never told me that before.”

  “Well, you were probably too young to hear such things. Anyway, when we finally got better acquainted, Ruben was much less shy—and we fell in love. We were married a year after we met.”

  “But you were in love all along. Did you ever worry that Papa might not fall in love with you?”

  “Not for a moment,” Rosita said serenely.

  “How wonderful to be so positive,” Maggie said softly.

  “Well, you must have been positive about Craig.”

  “Never, Mama,” Maggie murmured. “I’ve never been in love the way you were with Papa.”

  Rosita turned on her chair to see her daughter’s face. “Maggie,” she said sadly. “You’ve been so cheated.”

  Maggie took a breath. “I did it to myself. You know I was pregnant when Craig and I got married. I tried very hard to convince myself that I was in love with Craig, but I wasn’t, no more than he was in love with me. When we stopped kidding ourselves, the end came very quickly.”

  “Such a sad story,” Rosita said with a big sigh. The next moment her countenance brightened. “But you are still very young, Maggie, and I’m sure you will experience the same kind of love that I have with your papa. One day a fine man will come along and—” Rosita smiled “—maybe he already has.”

  Maggie’s heart fluttered. “You’re thinking of Dallas.”

  “And why wouldn’t I, when
he can’t seem to stay away from this house? Maggie, do you think he dropped in all the time before you came home?”

  “He’s a Fortune, Mama,” Maggie said quietly.

  “For goodness’ sake, what difference does that make? If you love someone—” Rosita suddenly stopped talking and frowned. “I did something very bad one time.”

  Maggie stared. “I doubt that you’ve ever done anything bad.”

  “What I did was very wrong. It happened a long time ago. I was about twenty-four, or so, and I had recently added Lily to the household staff.”

  “The same Lily that Ryan Fortune intends to marry after his divorce from Sophia?” This was a story Maggie had not heard before, and she couldn’t help being curious about it.

  “One and the same. Ryan and his brother Cameron were about eighteen and nineteen, and Lily was breathtakingly beautiful. I think both of the boys wanted Lily, and one day I walked into the kitchen— Lily had been scrubbing the floor—and I saw the boys shoving each other around, working themselves up to a fist fight.

  “Believe me, I wasn’t kind about tossing them out of the kitchen. Then I turned to Lily and told her to stay away from the Fortune boys. I recall saying something like, ‘They’ll gobble you up like a sweet peach, then spit out the pit. Especially that Cameron, who’s no better than a heartless coyote.’ You see, Lily was such an innocent young girl, and I felt she needed looking after. Later I realized that she’d taken my warning in a much different way than I’d intended. She started believing that she wasn’t good enough for a Fortune, and it was my fault that she felt so inadequate.”

  Rosita looked her daughter in the eye. “Regardless of what caused it, Lily felt the same way you do, Maggie. And look how things turned out. Ryan and she have always loved each other, and now they’re finally going to be married.”

  “Mama, you didn’t say anything so terrible. You were concerned about Lily and all you were doing was trying to protect her.”

  “Protect her from what? Love? If I had kept my mouth shut that day, Lily and Ryan might have been married to each other these many years.” Rosita paused. “And now you are faced with a similar situation. You think you’re not good enough for a Fortune, and you are, Maggie—you are good enough for anyone. You’re beautiful and smart, and in my heart I know that Dallas feels something for you. Don’t throw it away, Maggie. Give him a chance.”