A Willing Wife

by Jackie Merritt

  Maggie gave up on any more hair-brushing tonight and made her way over to a chair, where she sat down heavily.

  After a few moments she spoke. “I made a terrible mistake with Craig, Mama,” she said quietly, “and I no longer trust my judgment where men are concerned. I could not bear another bad marriage, and this time I also have Travis to consider.”

  “Dallas has great affection for Travis.”

  “He appears to, yes, but…” Maggie slowly inhaled. “I don’t know what to think about that. It worries me, because Travis needs a father, just like every other child does, and what if he gives too much of himself to Dallas and then nothing comes of it? I don’t want my son hurt, Mama, and it could happen.” After a moment Maggie repeated quietly, almost to herself, “It could happen.”

  Rosita studied the forlorn expression on her daughter’s face. “Maggie, you’re going to have the same concern with any man you meet,” she said softly.

  “I know, Mama,” Maggie said with a heavy sigh.

  “Dallas is kind to Travis,” Rosita reminded.

  “So far, yes.”

  “I don’t think he’s pretending or putting on a big show for your benefit. I believe he really likes Travis.”

  “Maybe you’re right, Mama. But even if that’s true, how do I get past my own lack of confidence around men? And regardless of your success story about Lily and Ryan, I can’t forget that Dallas is a Fortune and I— I’m just a very ordinary person.”

  “Maggie, you have to stop thinking that way!”

  “I wish I could, Mama.”

  Dallas knew it was a million-to-one shot that Maggie would come to the gazebo again tonight, but still he hoped. With a scotch and water that he barely sipped—his usual routine with hard liquor—he watched the moon and let his brooding thoughts wander.

  He had always loved the Texas hill country. From the time he’d been a little shaver, people had said that he was more like his father than his other siblings were, and Dallas couldn’t doubt it. His heart and soul were truly intertwined with the ranch. He’d never had cravings to be anything but the rancher he was, and he felt very fortunate to have been born into his career.

  He’d experienced the same passion he possessed for the ranch only one other time—when he’d met and fallen in love with Sara Anderson. He’d still been in his teens, and at his father’s insistence, he and Sara had waited to marry until Dallas had finished college. He was twenty-two when they married, and they had been single-minded on immediately starting their family.

  When Sara had finally gotten pregnant after years of trying to conceive, they had been overjoyed. But things hadn’t been right with her pregnancy from the start. Her doctors had strongly advised Sara to stay in bed, which her nature had not permitted her to do. She’d always been an extremely active person, and nine months of inactivity was too much to ask of her.

  Dallas remembered discussions between them about it. He’d tried to convince Sara that she should listen to her physicians, but Sara had laughed and called the doctors old-maid worrywarts. “Goodness, Dallas, women have babies every day. I doubt very much that every mother-to-be doesn’t have some sort of problem. I’ll be fine. Stop worrying about me.”

  And after a while he’d given up trying to keep Sara in bed. After her death while giving birth to their stillborn son, he’d nearly gone crazy blaming himself. He should have forced Sara to take better care of herself. Dammit, he should have tied her to their bed!

  Two years later Dallas still felt a great deal of responsibility for the senseless loss of his wife and child, but at least he could think about Sara now without the horrific pain he’d suffered immediately following her death. He’d obviously gone into shock, because he honestly could not recall the details of her funeral. He remembered hordes of people milling around him, but not who they were, nor what they had said to him.

  Dallas pushed what he could remember of that sad and morbid event from his mind, and thought of the Sara with whom he’d fallen so deeply in love, the Sara who had laughed so easily and had loved to tease him into laughing, as well. She’d been a beautiful person, both inside and out, and she’d been sweet and kind and generous with everyone.

  Sighing heavily, Dallas took a sip of his drink. The moon wasn’t full tonight. It looked as though someone had pared a small sliver from its right side.

  His next thought startled him: Sara would not have wanted him to live alone for the rest of his life. He had mourned long enough. It was time that he got on with life—

  Maggie’s image was suddenly in his mind. He wanted her physically; denying that would be a lie. But Maggie was so very different from Sara. Maggie had a volatile personality and a short temper; he’d never seen Sara as anything but calm and collected, very sure of herself, very confident of her place in the world. Maggie seemed to be living on the edge—and maybe she always would.

  Dallas suddenly realized that he was comparing Maggie and Sara, which wasn’t fair to either woman. It seemed especially unfair when he admitted that Maggie excited him in a way that Sara never had. Their love life had been good, very good, but there was something about Maggie that made him want to rip off her clothes and make love to her until they were both exhausted. In short, he hadn’t been as consumed by sex with Sara, and it was practically all he’d thought about since meeting Maggie again. If she hadn’t stopped him last night, he would have taken them both to heaven.

  That fantasy was too real for Dallas’s comfort. In the first place, given Maggie’s attitude toward him, it was probably never going to happen. And why wouldn’t she give him attitude, considering the way he’d talked to her that first day?

  Disgusted with himself, Dallas got to his feet. He’d wrangled with past and present enough for tonight. As he left the gazebo he poured the remaining liquid in his glass on the grass, and then walked to his house.

  Maggie wasn’t coming back to the gazebo. Why in hell couldn’t he just face facts and forget Maggie Perez? Forget that she was even living on the ranch, forget how strongly she affected him, forget everything about her, from her full, ripe lips to her full, ripe body.

  Cursing under his breath, Dallas went into his dark, empty house and slammed the door behind him.

  Six

  Rosita came home around noon, surprising Maggie. “I have the afternoon off,” Rosita declared with a big smile.

  “That’s wonderful, Mama! Why don’t you put on your house slippers and get comfortable in the living room?”

  “What do you think I am, an old lady?” Rosita said with a derisive snort. “I’m going visiting. I haven’t seen my friend Emma Field in a while, and I phoned her from the big house. She was thrilled with the idea of a get-together. Maggie, Emma also has one of her grandsons staying with her—he’s six, Emma said—so I told her I would bring Travis with me. The boys can play, and Emma and I can catch up. You can come along, too, if you’d like. I know Emma would be delighted to see you.”

  Maggie remembered Emma Field very well. Rosita and Emma had been close friends even when Maggie had been a child, and one of Maggie’s memories of the woman was of her pinching Maggie’s cheeks until they hurt, and gushing over Rosita’s darling little daughter. Emma was also as nosy as a person could be. Rosita might like her, and that was just fine, but Maggie had no desire to answer a bunch of questions that were none of Emma Field’s business.

  “Would you mind if I didn’t go with you?” Maggie asked her mother. “I’m in the middle of baking a cake, and it would hold you up for at least an hour.”

  “Oh, dear, Emma’s expecting me before then.”

  “Then you go along and have a good visit,” Maggie said, immensely thankful that she’d started mixing the cake.

  “Is it all right if I take Travis with me?” Rosita asked.

  “Of course it is. He probably needs his face and hands washed. I’ll go get him. He’s in the backyard with his lasso.” Maggie dashed outside for her son.

  “Grandma wants to take you visiti
ng with her. You’ll get to play with a boy around your age. Won’t that be fun?”

  Travis looked doubtful, though Maggie could see in his eyes that the prospect of playing with a boy his age had his wheels turning. “Can I take my hat and lasso?”

  “I don’t see why not. Come inside, son. We need to wash your face and—” Maggie eyed her son’s T-shirt, which wasn’t nearly as clean as when he’d put it on that morning “—change your shirt.”

  Ten minutes later Maggie waved goodbye to her mother and son, then returned to the kitchen to finish the cake. Being entirely alone—a rare occurrence for Maggie—was a pleasant feeling. She didn’t have to check on Travis every five or ten minutes, and, in all honesty, she felt an unusual and quite lovely sense of freedom. Humming to herself, she slid the cake in the oven. While it was baking she stirred up a bowl of icing.

  When the cake was done, Maggie placed it on a trivet to cool, then tidied the kitchen. An idea kept running through her mind while she worked: with Travis under his grandmother’s wing, she could take a horseback ride. Her father owned a small remuda, and Maggie knew he wouldn’t mind if she took one of the horses out for a ride.

  She changed into jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and boots, stuck one of her dad’s old hats on her head, then hurriedly frosted the cake. Becoming more excited by the minute, she left the house, took a saddle and the other things she would need from her father’s storage shed, and then headed for the small fenced pasture where Ruben kept his horses separated from the Fortune’s fine stock.

  It took about ten minutes for Maggie to sweet-talk one of the horses into permitting her to get close enough to lead her out of the enclosure. Then she swung the heavy saddle up and onto the mare’s back. Once Maggie was mounted, the mare pranced around nervously for a minute or so, then calmed down and accepted her unfamiliar rider.

  Maggie leaned forward and stroked and patted the mare’s neck. “You’re a fine horse, yes, you are,” she crooned until the mare became even more docile. Finally feeling in control, Maggie headed the horse into the rolling hills of open country.

  This is fantastic, she thought with a song in her heart. Out there by herself and on a horse she felt young and carefree. It was a wonderful sensation that had eluded her for a very long time, and she savored it to the fullest.

  That marvelous feeling lasted until she started thinking again of her current situation. Marrying the wrong man could really mess up a woman’s life. The only good thing that had come out of her ill-fated marriage was her son. Now, here she was, living off her parents and hoarding her very small cache of money for the day when she could finally make the move to Houston. She had mailed her résumé to a dozen banks this morning, and now it was a waiting game. She could only hope that someone in authority at one of the banks would recognize her potential.

  Disturbed by circumstances she could do nothing about, Maggie forced her thoughts back to the pleasure of being on horseback. She really should see to it that Travis learned to ride on his own. There was no reason why she couldn’t teach him herself.

  She was miles from the main ranch, determined to recapture the sensation of freedom and youth she’d felt before, when a cloud passed over the sun. Glancing up, Maggie frowned. It wasn’t just a lazily moving, fluffy white cloud blocking the sun; it was a huge black cloud that seemed to be speeding across the sky. And the wind—it had been a lovely little breeze only moments ago—was suddenly tearing at her clothes.

  The very first show of lightning was an ear-splitting, jagged streak from cloud to earth, followed almost instantly by a deafening roll of thunder. “Oh, no,” Maggie whispered. Electrical storms could be killers in this part of Texas. Everyone knew it, and anyone with a lick of sense got themselves under cover at the onset of such a storm.

  But for her there was no cover; she was out in the open and miles from the house. Lightning was suddenly striking all around her— Maggie could even smell it. And her horse was getting spooked! Maggie tried to maintain control of the mare, but she feared she was fighting a losing battle. The horse kept pulling against the bit in its mouth and wildly rolling its eyes. Lightning struck too close for comfort—and the frightened animal reared violently.

  Maggie felt herself falling, and she kicked her right foot free of the stirrup so she wouldn’t be hung up when the mare bolted. In the next fearful beat of her own heart, Maggie found herself on the ground with the wind knocked out of her. Trying to catch her breath, Maggie sat up and watched the mare gallop around and around in a wide circle. Obviously the animal was too disoriented by fear to even know which direction to run.

  Maggie’s own fear had her heart pounding like a jackhammer. But there was no one to help her, and if she was going to live to see tonight, she had to catch that mare and make tracks for home.

  She really didn’t want to stand up. There were no trees in the immediate vicinity, and she would be the tallest object on the landscape—a sure target for lightning that just kept getting more fierce.

  On her hands and knees, Maggie started crawling toward the mare’s circular path, praying the animal would maintain its same panicked pattern. The wind howled around her, throwing dirt and dry grass into her face. She had seen storms as bad as this one before, but she’d never been caught outside when one struck, and she was sick-to-her-stomach afraid. Her only hope was to catch the mare and try to calm her enough to let Maggie get on her back again.

  Maggie knew that the second phase of the storm would be a drenching rainfall. She’d seen rainfalls so dense one couldn’t see through them, and if she didn’t catch the mare before it started raining, she never would.

  Driven by utter terror, Maggie reached the path the mare had been running and prepared herself to stand up and grab some portion of the horse when it came galloping by again. If she could get hold of the bridle or the flying reins, she would at least have a chance of stopping the mare.

  The mare’s frantic hoof beats grew louder, and Maggie launched herself to her feet just as the animal flew by. All sense of reason suddenly fled Maggie’s mind, and she ran after the mare, yelling, “Wait! Stop!”

  Dallas and his horse, Vic, were heading for one of the line shacks that dotted the huge ranch. They were on a ridge, and Dallas suddenly caught sight of the strangest thing going on in the valley below. It looked as though someone was chasing a horse! In a circle, no less.

  He was too far away to recognize the horse or the person, but whoever it was running insanely after that horse stood a damn good chance of getting himself struck by lightning. If he’d been thrown, he should be lying flat on the ground. Which one of his men didn’t know that?

  “They all know it,” Dallas muttered under his breath, and turned Vic’s head toward the valley. “But whoever is down there isn’t thinking clearly. Probably got spooked when his horse did.”

  Dallas knew that he was risking getting struck by the almost constant bolts of lightning, but he couldn’t just ride off to the line shack and ignore the man running in circles in the valley, trying to catch a horse that was obviously scared out of its wits. Dallas recognized blind panic when he saw it.

  Once down the ridge, Dallas urged Vic into a full gallop. The big horse ate up the ground, and it was only minutes before Dallas saw the man’s hat go flying in the fierce wind. It was then that he realized who was chasing that horse: Maggie! Freed of the hat, her long dark hair was being tossed around like a paper boat on white-water rap-ids. What in hell was she doing out here alone in this kind of storm? And where was Travis? God, please don’t let that boy be on another horse somewhere in this melee!

  Dallas shouted as loudly as he could, “Maggie! Maggie, get down on the ground!”

  But the storm’s violence was all that she heard, and she kept running after the mare. Suddenly, as though born of the storm itself, there was another horse, and its rider leaned over and plucked her off the ground.

  She shrieked as though the devil himself had grabbed her, and Dallas shouted, “Calm down and get your
self settled behind me! We’ve got to get the hell out of here!”

  An improbable rescue coming out of nowhere destroyed the last of Maggie’s strength. Tears ran unchecked down her dirty cheeks, and she weakly laid her head against Dallas’s back and held on to his shirt. Vic ran like the wind, and Maggie paid no attention to direction.

  “Where’s Travis?” Dallas shouted.

  “He’s with Mama.”

  “Thank God,” Dallas muttered.

  Within minutes the deluge started, and it was as though someone or something had punched a hole in the massive cloud and spilled its contents. The dirt on Maggie’s face and in her hair ran into the dirt on her clothes, and the whole muddy mess kept running until it hit the ground. She was saturated in seconds, and so was Dallas. Along with the rain came a drastic drop in temperature, and she shivered and nestled closer to the natural warmth of Dallas’s body.

  When Vic stopped abruptly, Maggie became more alert. Dallas was off his horse in one fluid movement and reaching up for her. She let him take her down to the ground, and then tried to make sense of surroundings she could just barely make out through the blinding rain.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “At a line shack. Come on, I’ll lead you in, then come back and see to Vic.” Dallas took her hand, and she stumbled over unfamiliar ground to the door of a small cabin. Dallas merely opened the door for her to go in and then left again.

  An enormous bolt of lightning and an explosive roll of thunder shook the earth. Shivering, Maggie sank onto a chair and wrapped her arms around herself. She was still sitting there when Dallas came in.

  “You’re white as a sheet. You’ve got to get out of those wet clothes,” he said gruffly, and walked over to the bed and pulled off its top blanket. “Use this as a cover-up. That door over there opens onto a wood shed. You can change in there. As soon as I do the same in here, I’ll build a fire in that stove and make us some coffee.”