Maggie couldn’t explain it, but somehow, as one day passed into the next, being around him bolstered her confidence. Before meeting him, she’d felt inadequate. Maggie the nobody, an inconsequential little creature, squirming and ducking to avoid being squashed.
By contrast, Rafe made her feel smart, talented, and important. When she insisted that he familiarize her with the bookkeeping system and turn over the accounts to her, he marveled at how quickly she mastered the computer and became adept with the different software. When she compiled data from the last three fiscal years and developed flowcharts depicting profits and losses, he didn’t simply pat her on the head and say. Good job. He spent an entire afternoon and evening in the office with Ryan, poring over the information and frequently calling upon her to explain some of the variances, concluding in the end that operational changes were indicated that might substantially increase their annual profits. Maggie could scarcely believe her ears. These intelligent, highly successful men were about to change the way they’d been doing things for years, simply because she had suggested they should?
“You’re amazing, Maggie,” both men said more than once, and the respect she saw in their eyes told her that they meant it. “You’ve literally saved us thousands of dollars, just in crop rotation alone.”
Having come from a male-dominated household where she was slapped for speaking her mind and told she was stupid more times than not, Maggie loved all the praise, but more importantly, she felt her efforts were a worthwhile contribution which, by extension, made her feel worthwhile herself. One evening Rafe asked her if they should consider making cash outlays to begin replacing some of the ranch equipment. After looking into the matter and charting the cost of seasonal equipment repairs versus the possible purchase costs, Maggie recommended that they buy a new tractor and Cat, whereupon Rafe immediately got on the phone to do some price comparisons. As she became more familiar with the ranch’s accounts, she also determined there might be some large tax breaks if they incorporated, and Rafe called a tax lawyer to discuss the possibility.
For the first time in her adult life, Maggie felt important, and the timidity that had been beaten into her began to fall away, to be replaced by self-assurance. She wasn’t stupid. Rafe believed in her and because he did, she began to believe in herself. He called her “our computer guru,” and while on the phone with the tax attorney, she heard him say, “The ranch manager says we could save substantial amounts by incorporating.” The ranch manager. She suddenly had a title, and by bestowing it upon her, Rafe was giving her credit she’d never expected to receive. One evening he laughingly said, “Rye and I are the muscle in this operation, and Maggie’s the brains.” The brains. She walked a little taller after hearing him say that.
He went out of his way to make her feel incredibly special in other ways as well. If she yearned aloud for chocolate, the next thing she knew, a box of chocolates appeared on the nightstand. When she mentioned how much she loved lemonade, a pitcherful magically appeared in the refrigerator. He spoiled her shamelessly, and though unaccustomed to the attention, she enjoyed every single thoughtful gesture.
Each night when he joined her in bed and took her into his arms, Maggie could feel the throbbing hardness of his manhood pressed against her and she’d think, This is it. My reprieve is over. He’ll force the issue this time. Only he never did, and because he didn’t, she slowly came to realize that he placed more importance on her feelings and needs than he did on his own.
As Maggie came to that realization, what she had previously believed was impossible began to happen. She found herself falling in love with him. No longer did she lie awake in his arms, sick with dread. Instead she found herself wondering what it might be like to make love with him. She enjoyed the way his hands felt when he touched her, so big and hard and warm, yet always so gentle. And she longed to touch him in return—to trail her fingertips over the play of muscle in his back, to mold her palms to the firm contours of his chest, to test the resilient bulges of strength in his shoulders.
Sometimes, after she felt certain he was asleep, she satisfied her curiosity, tracing his features with her fingertips and running her hands lightly over his arms. Touching him made her pulse quicken and filled her with a yearning to move closer. As a young girl, she’d dreamed of one day meeting Mr. Right, someone tall, dark, and handsome who was gentle, sweet, and wonderfully romantic. Rafe Kendrick met or exceeded all her requirements. He was definitely tall, and except for his smoke-blue eyes, he was about as dark as a man could get with his bronze skin and jet-black hair. As for being handsome? He was no pretty boy, certainly, but there was something about the chiseled planes of his dusky face that made her insides flutter. He was also, hands down, the kindest and most thoughtful man she’d ever known.
Love. She would catch herself watching him, terrified by the feelings she was developing for him but unable to stop herself. Those feelings gave rise to a paralyzing new fear, that of losing him.
And there were things about her that Rafe didn’t know—things so shameful she had never admitted them to anyone. She felt certain that when he learned of them, he’d turn away from her.
It was awful of her, she knew, but she entertained the idea of simply never telling him the truth. She could invent a fictitious father for Jaimie easily enough.
Such was her desperation that she might have chosen that route had it not been for her fear that Rafe might discover her duplicity later. Someday he might glance at Jaimie and note some small resemblance he bore to his real father. Or Lonnie might barge back into her life and spill the beans. Either way, Rafe could discover her secret and hate her for deceiving him.
Honesty. All Maggie’s life she’d been told it was always best never to lie. But how could the truth be best in this instance? As things stood, Rafe held her in high regard. Dear God, you are so sweet, he often whispered to her at night. Well, he would no longer suffer from that illusion if she blurted out the truth.
Around and around Maggie went, ceaselessly circling the dilemma, her instinct for self-preservation tempting her to keep her secret, her sense of fairness filling her with guilt for even considering it.
Having reached that decision, Maggie found herself haggling over when she would tell him. That night after dinner, she would promise herself. Only when the time came, Ryan was there or Jaimie cried and needed attention, or Heidi needed help with her math, providing Maggie with a convenient excuse to put off the inevitable.
On the Tuesday right before Thanksgiving, she was finished taking the last of the antibiotics, and Rafe once again took her to see Dr. Kirsch, who gave her a clean bill of health. After leaving the clinic, Rafe insisted they mark the occasion this time by shopping for Jaimie.
They visited several infant stores where Maggie agonized over the prices of cribs, hesitating to make a choice because they were all so expensive. As they wandered through the last shop, she leaned closer to Rafe so as not to be overheard and whispered, “Don’t they have any less expensive baby shops in town? All of these prices are absurd.”
His gaze sharpened on hers. “Less expensive? Don’t tell me that’s why you’ve dragged me to five different stores, because you’re looking for a bargain.”
“All right. I won’t tell you that.”
He glanced around them. “That cuts it.” He checked his watch. “You have five minutes to make a choice between natural or dark oak, two-toned or single-tone. When the five minutes are up, I’m buying a shitload of baby furniture. I strongly advise you tell me what your preferences are before then because you’re going to be stuck with what I choose if you don’t.”
Maggie already knew which of the cribs she loved. But it cost over a thousand dollars. If she wound up having to pay him back for everything, she had to keep an eye on the total debt, and a thousand bucks seemed an outlandish price to pay for a baby bed. There were surely nice ones for far less.
Rafe followed her gaze to the crib she preferred and asked, “Is that the one you l
ike?”
“It’s beautiful,” she admitted. “The dark oak looks so rich.”
“Dark oak it is, then.”
With that proclamation, he began selecting things for the baby as if he were killing snakes, his raven-black eyebrows drawn into an angry scowl and his voice so clipped and harsh that the clerk was all over herself, trying to pacify him. In the space of five minutes, he chose a cradle, a stroller, a crib, a bureau, and a bathing table, never once looking at Maggie to see if she approved of his choices. Then, as if he hadn’t spent enough money, he proceeded to buy a glider rocker with matching ottoman, a Noah’s Arc bumper pad and bedding set, several matching contour sheets and blankets, and oodles of toys. He arranged for all the purchases to be delivered to the ranch the next day, except for the cradle, which, he insisted, would fit in the back of the Expedition.
When he left the store, carrying said cradle, Maggie tagged along behind him, so upset she was about to wring her hands. She’d never seen him this angry. When they reached the back of the Expedition, she stood to one side, watching as he shoved the bed in the back storage compartment, gouging one of the side slats in the process. She stared at the scar on the dark oak. It was deep and permanent, representative to her of the wound she had just inflicted on him.
“It’s a beautiful cradle, Rafe.” She ran a hand over the gleaming oak. “Something this nice used to be so far beyond my reach, I never even let myself wish!”
“I’m glad you like it,” he bit out.
He slammed the rear cargo door closed and turned the full blast of his gaze on her, his square chin jutting, a muscle ticking in his lean cheek. His blue-gray eyes glinted so brightly with anger, they reminded her of sparking flint.
Never more than in that moment had Maggie been aware of the dangerous edge to this man. He’d put weight back on. He stood with his booted feet apart, his long, powerful legs braced against the buffeting wind that molded his Western-cut leather jacket to his well-muscled torso. The fading afternoon sunlight slanted across him, its soft, muted gold striking a sharp contrast to his darkness. Beneath the brim of his Stetson, his ebony hair lay in breeze-tousled strands over his forehead. He looked elemental, like the brutal peaks that rose in the distance behind him, tall, forceful, and honed to a lethal sharpness.
A month before, Maggie would have quaked in terror. He looked furious, and in her past experience, a furious man was an unpredictable one. Not Rafe, though. He might get so mad he could chew through nails, but he’d never lay a hand on her. She believed that with all her heart.
The knowledge filled Maggie with gladness. It was an inappropriate moment for her to yearn to hug him. But, oh, how she wanted to. He was such a sweetheart, this man—even when he was glaring at her as if he were inches away from strangling her.
The depth of her trust in him rocked Maggie and made her emotions teeter on a perilous edge between regret and happiness. Oh, God. She didn’t just love him. She adored him. Over the last few weeks, he had slowly and systematically sneaked past her guard, laying claim to her heart as surely as if he’d grabbed hold of it with one of those brutal fists. And right now, she felt as if he were squeezing it. The pain in her chest knifed like a blade.
“You’re very angry at me,” she ventured.
“Yes.” He said the word with such sibilance, he fairly hissed it at her.
“Would you mind telling me why?”
Even as she asked that question, Maggie felt ashamed. Recalling their quarrel at Monique’s Boutique, she knew exactly why he was upset with her. Knew and regretted having hurt his feelings again with all her heart.
He was dead wrong about her reasons for not wanting him to buy the expensive crib. But to set him straight, she would have to tell him the truth about Lonnie. A public parking lot didn’t strike her as an ideal place to have that conversation, especially not when Rafe was already furious with her. Waiting to broach that subject until the timing was right was the only hope she had.
“It’s a little hard to say I’m sorry if I don’t know what I did,” she settled for saying. “I’m not able to read your mind.”
If it was possible for his already sparking eyes to glint even more dangerously, his did. In a tone completely at odds with the distended, pulsating veins along each side of his throat, he calmly said, “As if you don’t damned well know? Let’s not play games, Maggie.”
She shoved her freezing hands into the pockets of the warm down parka he’d bought for her. She owed him for so very much. Knowing that she had hurt him made her feel awful. “Good plan. No games. That includes guessing games. Can’t you just tell me what I did?”
From the edge of her vision, she saw his right hand close into a knotted fist that could have easily flattened a full-grown steer. When he swung that fist toward her face, Maggie stood her ground and kept her hands in her pockets. Her faith in him wasn’t misplaced. Instead of hitting her, as she might have expected weeks ago, he thrust a rigid finger at her nose.
“If you don’t know, damn it, what good will it do to spell it out for you? I do my best talking with my actions. That doesn’t count for shit with you, does it? Nobody does something for someone else without expecting a payback. Right, Maggie? Remember telling me that?”
She remembered, and with a clarity that made her feel sick. A denial welled at the back of her throat, but before she could voice it, he continued railing at her.
“Right now is not a good time to discuss this,” he informed her in a throbbing voice. “Trust me on that. If I once get started, I’ll let you have it with both barrels and say things I shouldn’t. So just leave it alone until I calm down.”
With that, he stormed around to the driver’s door, jabbing the button on the remote key device with such force that Maggie feared it would never work again. Icy wind gusted around her where she stood at the rear of the vehicle.
After climbing into the Ford, he glanced back at her through the rear window. “Why are you standing there?” he yelled. “Get in the rig!”
Feeling oddly separated from her feet, Maggie moved to obey him, half-afraid he might leave her in the parking lot. The door opened just before she reached it, compliments of her enraged husband. As she started to crawl inside, his deeply tanned hand snaked out to grasp her left arm and lend her unneeded assistance. Even in a snit, he unconsciously made caring gestures.
He turned the key in the ignition and gunned the engine. For seven years, her instinctive response to masculine rage had been to cover her head and duck. Now, here she was with a man who not only didn’t start swinging when he got mad, but refused to discuss the problem with her until he calmed down. As if his saying cruel and mean things to her would be the worst thing on earth? Not even close.
As Maggie adjusted her seat and fastened her safety belt, her eyes stung with tears. She blinked them away, not entirely sure why she felt like crying. She only knew there was a lump at the base of her throat that felt the size of a baseball and that her face tingled with scalding heat.
He jerked the gearshift into first and peeled rubber leaving the parking lot, making Maggie worry that he might be one of those men who drove like a maniac when he got angry. But no. Once on the street, he stayed within the speed limit and handled the vehicle with calm precision, coming slowly to a stop and then accelerating with exaggerated smoothness.
The tension inside the vehicle was so thick it was almost palpable. He didn’t speak, didn’t look at her. Maggie’s stomach clenched. It seemed to her that it took hours to maneuver through the busy city streets to reach the highway. After they merged with the eastbound traffic, she could bear the silence no longer.
“Are you going to give me the silent treatment all the way home?”
He ignored the question, sweeping off his hat to lay it on the console between them. Ducking his head slightly to see the rearview mirror, he flashed the turning signal to change lanes.
“Rafe?”
“God damn it, Maggie, leave it alone!” he said, baring his teeth
in a snarl. “I can’t talk to you right now. All right? Be smart and back off.”
She huddled against her door, staring fixedly at the white line ahead of them that divided the two traffic lanes. Coward, a small voice at the back of her mind chastised. She knew why he was so hurt. Why couldn’t she just explain that he had misinterpreted her motives?
She clenched her hand over the shoulder harness that angled across her body, hating herself for remaining silent. But, oh, God, if she opened that can of worms, then what? She would have to tell him the whole ugly truth. Sooner or later, she planned to do that, anyway. But not now. Not when he was so mad he wouldn’t even look at her.
Engaging in a stint of self-recrimination, she went back over everything that had been said at the infant store. He’d been so sweet all afternoon, escorting her from shop to shop, never once complaining or insisting she make up her mind about a crib. His mood had been mellow. There had been an indulgent smile on his mouth and a twinkle in his eyes every time he looked at her. Then, whammo. She had asked him if there were any less expensive baby shops in town, and he had detonated.
Outwardly, it might appear that he’d gotten angry over nothing, but Maggie knew better. From the very start, he had been touchy about the money issue. And he’d been completely up front with her about it, admitting that he took it as an insult and that it hurt his feelings. How many men were willing to swallow their pride and admit to a woman when their feelings got hurt?
He did his best talking with his actions? Not entirely. He’d reassured her with words as well, countless times. No paybacks, Maggie. And bless his heart, he’d meant it. Night after night, he’d lain in bed beside her, his arms a gentle circle around her, his big frame pressed against her. She wasn’t so naïve as to believe his restraint hadn’t cost him dearly.