It wasn’t that he felt uncomfortable discussing the functions of the female body. Raised from infancy on an operating cattle and horse ranch, there wasn’t much that embarrassed him. She was just so painfully shy.
As that thought settled, Rafe hesitated where he was bent over the generator making choke and carburetor adjustments. Damned if he wasn’t doing it again, tiptoeing around her and holding back for fear of embarrassing her. Even worse, he’d just sworn to her that he’d never do it again. If this was any indication, he wasn’t getting off to a great start.
He grabbed a rag to wipe the smudges of grease from his hands. Enough of this. Starting right now, he wasn’t going to hold back about anything. She was his wife, and in all the ways that mattered, that baby was his. It was time he began acting like a husband instead of some over-polite stranger.
It wasn’t as if a woman’s body came with an instruction manual. He distinctly remembered how often Susan had sought advice as a new mother—calling her doctor every few days to ask questions or going to Rafe’s mom, who’d once been a registered nurse. Was this normal? Was that normal?
Maggie had no one to turn to—except him.
He tossed down the rag, turned off the flashlight, exited the lean-to, and strode around to the front of the line shack to pound on the door. He winced at the way the planks vibrated under his fist. His aim wasn’t to scare her to death.
“Come in,” she called faintly.
He turned the bar and opened the door. She sat on a stool at the table with a blanket draped around her shoulders, the lengthy legs of a pair of overlarge red long johns bunched at her ankles over the tops of some equally overlarge boot socks. Eyeing the can on the table in front of her, Rafe closed and bolted the door.
Now that he was in here, he wasn’t exactly sure what to say. He settled for jumping right in. “You don’t know how to do that, do you?”
She flashed an appalled glance at the can. Her cheeks turned a startling shade of red. He told himself the color went well with her long johns.
“Well…I’m getting there—I think.”
As he peeled off his jacket, he stepped over to peer into the can. There wasn’t much inside.
He tossed down his jacket, grabbed the container, and stepped to the foot of the table. “Come here, honey,” he urged as he centered the can at the edge.
She shot him a look filled with suspicion. “Why?”
Rafe felt his reasons were patently obvious. “Don’t be shy. I won’t even touch you. I’m just going to give you some pointers.”
She made tight fists over the edges of the wool. “Oh, no, that isn’t necessary. I can manage fine. Really.”
He crooked a finger at her. “Maggie, it’s no big deal. Trust me. I won’t lay a hand on you, I promise, and you can keep the blanket on.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
“I was married before, remember? Susan misplaced her pump once.”
“You watched?” she asked, her tone scandalized.
Rafe bit back a smile and scratched beside his nose. He’d walked right into that one. “Well, no, it’s not exactly a spectator sport. I just, um—my mom used to be a nurse. Susan was all upset because we were planning to be gone overnight. It was too late to drive clear into town to buy another pump, so Mom told her how to express her milk without one.”
“They discussed it in front of you?”
“Would you look so horrified if they had been talking about elbows?”
“No, of course not.”
“Well, then?”
“Elbows are slightly different.”
“Different from…” He inclined his head, urging her to say the word.
“Other body parts.”
He laughed in spite of himself. “You can’t even bring yourself to say it.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ve said it lots of times.”
“When?”
She shrugged, doing her damnedest to avoid looking him in the eye. “I don’t know. Lots of times, is all.”
“Good. Then it’s no big deal, and you can say it now.” He leaned sideways to meet her gaze, which immediately skittered away in the opposite direction. He followed, giving her no choice but to look at him. “Come on. Real quick. Just blurt it out. I promise not to clap my hand to my forehead and drop over in a dead faint.”
She rolled her eyes. “This is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Isn’t it, though? I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s a workable plan for us to go the next fifty years pretending you don’t have any—” He broke off and sighed. “Sweetheart, I’m gonna be the guy who holds your head when you get sick, and vice versa. What if you get a female infection and need to see the doctor? You need to be able to tell me things like that. What’re you gonna say, that you’ve got a problem down yonder? Unless you can talk openly with me, I’m liable to think you’ve got an ingrown toenail and put off taking you to town.”
“I can drive and make my own doctor appointments. I’m not a child.”
He conceded the point with a nod. “I don’t mean to imply you need a keeper. It’s just—” God, he hated this. If they were already being intimate, it wouldn’t be so difficult. But they weren’t, and he felt like a slug. He braced the heels of his hands on the edge of the table and stared thoughtfully at the can. The nearly empty can. Shit. “A vaginal infection can make having sexual intercourse excruciatingly painful,” he forged on. “That’s not to mention that some infections are contracted by the man without his having symptoms, and he has to take antibiotics so he won’t infect his wife again every time he touches her. What are you going to do? Hand me pills and not tell me why?”
“I can’t see how that pertains to—”
“Trust me, it pertains. Your body and anything that goes wrong with it is my business from now on. You’re my wife. I love you. Your health and well-being are extremely important to me. Can you understand that?”
“Of course,” she agreed, her tone defeated.
“We’re stuck up here. It’ll be another twelve hours, at least, before we get home. You should express your milk every four. You haven’t done that since yesterday before noon when we went to town.”
“No,” she admitted forlornly.
“If you don’t do it now, it could create some big-time problems. Chances are, probably not. But why push your luck? Engorgement, inflammation. You name it. You’ve drawn your milk all this time, hoping to nurse Jaimie again. You’ve finished taking your medication. You wanna risk blowing it now, just because you’re embarrassed?”
“No.”
She pushed to her feet and moved reluctantly to stand beside him. Rafe knew he’d won only the battle, not the war. Strategy was called for, his aim being to make this as easy for her as possible while he conveyed to her the necessary information. He decided a little kidding around tossed into the mix wouldn’t hurt. A laugh here and there, some teasing. If he kept the tone casual, she’d be better able to relax.
“Mom said this is actually easier than using a pump,” he told her. “And once Susan tried it, she never messed with a device again. This is quicker.”
“Trust you to know.”
Rafe let that one pass. He positioned her facing the table, and then he stood beside her, leaned slightly forward at the waist, and cupped his hands in front of his chest. “You hold your”—she flashed him a warning look—“thingamajig like this.” He saw her roll her eyes again. “Well? What shall I call it, then? A doohickey?”
Her mouth twitched at the corners. “You’re incorrigible.”
“But you love me anyway.” He glanced at her hands. “Are you going to do this? Or are you just going to stand there, turning interesting shades of red?”
She leaned forward and positioned her hands well away from her chest. “Now what?”
“You entering a taffy pull?”
She made an odd sound at the back of her throat that he hoped was a stifled giggle. He watched as she positioned her ha
nds closer to her body.
He nodded. “That’s it. Now you massage at the base with a forward motion. Mom said about ten times. Gently, Maggie. We’re not kneading bread dough, for God’s sake.”
A startled laugh escaped her. He grinned and winked at her. “Good. Now you move forward, closer to the—” He hesitated. “What are we gonna call the tip?”
“The tip,” she replied, her voice taut with suppressed laughter. “Are you like this with everyone, or did I just get lucky?”
“You just got lucky. Do you think I’d make a fool of myself like this for just anybody?”
“I sincerely hope not.”
“It’s a damned good thing. Tell Ryan I did this, and I’ll wring your neck. A guy’s got an image to uphold, and he’d never let me live this down.”
“I assure you that I’ll never have occasion to discuss this with Ryan.”
She had relaxed, at least. He gave himself a pat on the back for sheer genius. “Now you squeeze about ten more times.”
“Will nine times do?”
He narrowed an eye at her. “You gonna be serious about this, or do I have to do it for you?”
“Touch me, and you’re dead.”
He laughed under his breath. “For a woman who hasn’t got any, you’re damned territorial.”
“I never said I didn’t have any. I simply prefer not to advertise it.”
He glanced at her blanketed front. “If that’s what you call low profile, darlin’, you’re in trouble.”
She ignored the observation. “What next?”
He gave her explicit instructions, ending with: “And make sure you aim at the can. I’m checking it when I come back inside.”
“For what?”
“Yield.” He bent to kiss her cheek, which was so hot with embarrassment, he was half-afraid she’d go up in flames. “Any questions?”
She kept her face slightly averted. “No. I think I can handle it easily enough. Thank you.” She graced him with eye-to-eye contact for a brief moment. “When will your mom come back?”
He laughed again, appropriate reaction or not. “Trust me. I’m the better confidant. Ask her for advice, and she’ll bring it up at the dinner table, with Dad and Rye throwing in their two cents’ worth. You can count on me to keep my mouth shut.”
“Your dad and Ryan?” she repeated, her expression appalled again.
“In my family, nothing’s sacred. Guard your secrets well, or they’ll be the best-kept secrets this side of Texas. It’s kind of nice, actually.” She averted her gaze again. “Maggie, it’s silly to be embarrassed about this. Like I’ve never noticed you’ve got breasts? You’re definitely packing. That was one of the first things I noticed about you.”
She gave him another of those appalled looks. “It was?”
“Absolutely.”
“What else?”
“What else what?”
“What else did you notice about me?”
He winked at her. “Those beautiful eyes. They were the first thing. One look, and I was a goner. I just didn’t have the good sense to stop kicking.”
“And? What else about me did you—like?”
“You really don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do.”
“That world-class ass of yours,” he whispered. “And those gorgeous legs.” He grabbed his jacket from the bench. He paused at the door, gave her a slow, sweeping glance, and grinned. “If you have problems, call me. I’ll be right outside.”
“I won’t need you,” she assured him again.
Rafe could hope. If she did, he wasn’t sure who’d suffer the most, him or her.
Chapter Nineteen
Thirty minutes later when Rafe reentered the cabin, Maggie was sitting on the cot with a blanket still around her shoulders. Now, however, he glimpsed the red sleeve of an undershirt and guessed she was covered again, top to bottom. Hallelujah. “Everything go all right?”
She nodded, and when he glanced at the can, she said, “Don’t bother looking. I dumped it down the sink.” She waited a beat, and then, in an obvious attempt to change the subject, said, “What’d you do outside?”
He’d spent the last fifteen minutes of exile sitting on the generator freezing his buns off. “Just this and that. Mostly, I worked on the generator.” He stepped to the sink, pumped some water into the washbasin, and scrubbed his hands. “It needed oil and some minor adjustments. I figured I’d better tend to it in case we need to use the phone again. The DC outlet is the only way to power it up.”
He grabbed a towel off the shelf above the sink, turning as he dried his hands. Studying his wife, he decided she looked miserably nervous, either in anticipation of their talk or because she feared he’d want to take advantage of the isolation here to make love. He drew off his jacket and hung it in front of the stove beside hers to let it finish drying. Then he added some wood to the firebox.
“Maggie, I’m not going to jump you just because you mentioned you no longer dread the thought of having sex with me.”
She blinked. “Did I say that?”
He dusted his hands on his jeans and moved slowly toward her. “Yes, you did say that. When we were in the Expedition talking. Remember?”
She fiddled with the folds of the blanket. “I guess I did, didn’t I?”
“You regretting the statement?”
“No. I am, mostly.”
“You are mostly what? Regretting it?”
“No, mostly ready.”
Rafe sat on the edge of the cot and braced his forearms on his knees. Mostly? What the hell did that mean?
“Before we worry about making love and when we’re going to, I think we need to have that talk,” he told her.
She nodded.
“Main topic, Lonnie, as unpleasant as that may be. I want you to tell me everything, Maggie. No more secrets, please? I’d specifically like to know why on earth you feel he didn’t rape you. I know damned well he did.”
Her eyes darkened and the color drained from her face. “Is that why you don’t care about what I told you, because you don’t believe it’s true?”
Rafe released a weary breath. “No, I meant exactly what I said earlier. Insofar as our marriage goes, your past sexual relationships really don’t matter to me. If you screwed the entire Seattle Seahawks football team, including the coach and water boy, I honestly don’t care. That has no bearing on my feelings for you, or on yours for me. The reason I’m asking about Lonnie, specifically, isn’t because it makes a difference to me if you slept with him—willingly or not. But because it’s bothering you.”
Silver-tongued, he definitely wasn’t. Being up front about everything was proving to be a real bitch. He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Did that make any sense?”
She pressed her lips together, saying nothing for a long moment. Then her eyes filled and her chin started to quiver. “You really, really don’t care? I mean—he wasn’t just anybody. He was my stepfather. Just like you’re Jaimie’s. It’s so ugly—almost incestuous, even if we aren’t actually related.”
“I don’t think there’s any comparison between my feelings for Jaimie and Lonnie’s for you. I love Jaimie, and I can’t believe Lonnie Boyle has feelings for anyone but himself. Incestuous, yes. In my books, it was. He broke every code of decency when he touched you. But that was his sin, never yours.” He cupped her chin in his hand. “Sweetheart, you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, barring none. I love you, not your past history. I’m not exactly uncharted territory. You gonna throw me back because I’ve been with other women?”
A tear rolled onto her cheek and shimmered in the lantern light like a diamond on ivory satin. “Of course not.” She gulped. “Have you been with lots?”
He chuckled. “Promise not to hold it against me?” At her nod, he said, “Then the truth is, I don’t have many notches on my belt. I met Susan when I was pretty young, and even before we got married, I was never unfaithful to her. After she died, I never
looked at another woman until I met you.” He winked at her. “I’m damned near a virgin, so be gentle.”
She gave a startled laugh that ended with a wet sob, and then, before he guessed what she meant to do, she launched herself at him. Rafe caught her to his chest, his heart breaking a little at the desperate way she clung to his neck.
“Tell me again,” she whispered. “That it doesn’t matter about Lonnie.”
He tightened his arms around her. “It doesn’t matter. Never has, never will. I love you, Maggie. There’s nothing, nothing, you can tell me that will ever make me stop loving you. I mean that.”
She shuddered and pressed closer. “I was never with the Seahawks.”
He laughed and curled a hand over the back of her head. Dear God, how he loved her. His feelings for her ran so deep, even his bones seemed to ache when he held her. “Seriously? I never would have guessed.”
“Only Lonnie,” she whispered, “and I hated it.”
That came as no surprise, either.
“He always hurt me, and I—” She broke off and turned her face against his neck. “I never wanted to. Never.”
“But you let him?” Rafe asked cautiously.
Her body went rigid, and for a moment, she stopped breathing. “Yes,” she finally admitted brokenly. “I was afraid. I was so afraid. He went crazy when I refused him. He said I was his. His.” Her breath snagged and she shrank closer to him. “He was so obsessively jealous he wouldn’t even let me take the Pill so I wouldn’t get pregnant. He thought if I was safe, I might mess around with men I met at work, and the thought made him crazy. I went behind his back once and got a prescription. When he found out, I thought he’d kill me. He took me down by the river—to this isolated place he knew—and—” She made a strangled sound. “He was so furious, he choked me. I couldn’t get away. Finally I blacked out. When I came to, he was leaning against the car, smoking a cigarette. He said it was a good thing I woke up because he was about to chunk me in the water. He didn’t act as if it even bothered him, thinking I might die. He would’ve preferred that, I think, to letting anyone else touch me. After that, I never dared take anything to protect myself again.”