Maggie changed the subject. “You know, you don’t have anything to eat at your place,” she reminded Jonah. “I cleaned out your cereal.”
“But we still have what’s left of the bread,” he teased her. Because he didn’t want her contemplating going to bed hungry, he quickly rectified the image that she might be contemplating. “Don’t worry, there’s food. I asked one of the guys on the team to swing by the General Store—one of the places that hadn’t been demolished by the hurricane—and pick up a few things. He brought them over to my place.”
He smiled at her, trying to keep the situation light. “It was either that or come home after a grueling long day and start gnawing on the wood. I hear splinters are really bad for your digestion.”
“You’re trying to make me feel better about eating all your cereal, aren’t you?” Maggie asked, smiling at him.
“Trying my damnedest. How’m I doing?”
Maggie deadpanned. “That depends on what that friend of yours managed to pick up at the General Store.”
“Well, we’re here,” Jonah declared, pulling his truck up right in front of the cabin. “Why don’t we go in and find out?”
After the chaos and destruction she had witnessed today, his cabin seemed even more like a haven to her than it had previously.
The Colton family’s ranch was comprised of a thousand acres. Jonah’s cabin was nestled in one corner of it, removed yet still very much a part of the whole general property.
This time, when Jonah walked in and threw the switch that was right by the front door, light permeated the interior of the cabin.
“What happened?” Maggie asked, looking around in surprise. “Was the power suddenly restored while we were driving over here?”
“Our power was,” Jonah explained. “My family keeps a generator on the property. It had to be started up, but once it is, we’re no longer at the mercy of the downed power lines throughout the surrounding area. This is no doubt thanks to the generator.”
She turned toward the kitchenette. “If you’ve got a working generator, does that mean that the stove works, too?”
“Absolutely,” he answered.
“And the refrigerator?” she asked, not wanting to take anything for granted.
“And the refrigerator,” he echoed with a grin.
“Oh good. So let’s see what your friend wound up getting for you.”
Pulling open the refrigerator door, Maggie quickly took inventory of what was on the shelves. There was a carton of eggs, another loaf of bread and a package of bacon.
Maggie felt as if she’d just crossed into paradise.
“I see your friend is a great believer in breakfast being the most important meal of the day,” she commented with a laugh.
She moved the newly purchased items around to see if they were blocking her view of anything else more substantial in the refrigerator.
They weren’t.
Jonah had a feeling she had been hoping for more than just breakfast food.
“That’s probably all that Jack could get for now,” he said, referring to his friend by name. “The General Store is probably rationing their supplies, allowing customers to only buy a certain amount of items to insure that nobody goes hungry. Things’ll get better once deliveries start being made again.”
“I’m not complaining,” Maggie assured him. “I like eggs better than I like cereal and I plowed through half a box of that today.” She grinned ruefully. “I guess you can tell people I ate you out of house and home.”
His eyes swept over her. “Not with that figure,” he told her. “Nobody would ever believe me.”
Maggie smiled at the compliment. It made her feel less grungy.
“Thanks. I needed that.” She stifled an involuntary yawn, then looked at him ruefully. “I’m sorry. I guess I really am exhausted.”
Jonah nodded understandingly. “Look, I’ll just use the facilities and then you can have the bedroom so you can get to bed.”
She had thought about that and had no intention of displacing him. “That’s all right, Jonah. You don’t have to be noble and give up your bedroom for me. I’m perfectly capable of taking the couch. Hey, I fell asleep in your car,” she reminded him. “I can certainly sleep on the couch.”
“This isn’t up for debate,” Jonah told her. “You’ll sleep on the bed. Just give me a second,” he said as he disappeared into the bedroom.
If he’d been alone, after the day he had put in, he would have taken a shower. But in the interest of letting Maggie get to bed, he skipped his shower and grabbed a change of clothes for tomorrow.
Coming back out, Jonah called, “It’s all yours, Maggie.”
When she made no response, he came into the main part of the cabin and looked at the couch. “Maggie?”
Coming closer, he saw the reason why she hadn’t answered him. Maggie was totally out.
Jonah shook his head. “You had to have your way, didn’t you? You are a damn stubborn woman, Maggie Reeves. But news flash, I can be stubborn, too,” he said to the woman who was curled up on his couch, her head cradled in the crook of her arm.
He almost hated to disturb her, but he knew that she’d feel better in the morning if she didn’t spend the night in such an awkward position.
Bending over, he slid his arm under her body and moving very slowly, he raised Maggie up from the sofa. Looking down at her face to see if he’d woken her up, he was satisfied that she was still asleep.
“Guess you were more tired than I thought,” Jonah murmured.
Shifting her slowly, he began to head for the back of his cabin and his bedroom.
Maggie had nestled her face against his chest, and she made a noise now that sounded a little like a contented cat snuggling up for a nap. Jonah stopped walking for a moment, thinking that perhaps the motion might wake her up. But when she went on sleeping, he resumed making his way to his bedroom.
“Here you are, ma’am,” he said quietly, reaching his bed. “Not exactly a palatial suite, but it’s comfortable and you’re welcome to use it for as long as you’re here.” Saying that, Jonah gently laid Maggie down on his bed.
He paused only long enough to remove Maggie’s shoes and then to lightly cover her body with the ends of the bedspread that his mother had given him and insisted that he put to use.
Maggie Reeves, in his bed. Who would have ever thought it, he wondered, quietly looking at her sleeping face for a long moment.
“Sleep tight, Maggie,” he whispered. “You’ve earned it.”
And with that, Jonah tiptoed out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him.
Chapter 6
The disorientation was immediate.
When Maggie opened her eyes the following morning, she had no idea where she was.
And then she remembered. The thought hit her like the sudden flash of a lightning bolt.
All her things were gone, destroyed because the building she had lived in had committed the sin of being in the path of a hurricane with the improbable gentle name of Brooke.
Throwing off the comforter that Maggie couldn’t remember covering herself with, she sat up, blinking and trying to focus on her surroundings.
Daylight was creeping into the bedroom, making its way along the wooden floor. That told her that it had to be morning.
But how did she get here?
The last thing she remembered was leaning back against the sofa’s cushion. She must have fallen asleep, Maggie thought. But that still didn’t explain how she had gotten into this bed.
Wanting answers, Maggie slid off the bed. The second her feet hit the floor, she realized that she was barefoot. But she’d had on boots when she fell asleep, she was sure of it.
A quick search around the perimeter of the bed reunited Maggie with her boots. Try as she might, she couldn’t remember taking them o
ff. And if Jonah had removed them without waking her, then she must have really been out of it.
Her eyes suddenly widened as another thought occurred to her. Had he removed anything else from her person?
A quick check of what she was wearing—and if it had been disturbed in any way—told her that if Jonah had undressed her, he’d put everything back just the way he’d found it. That seemed highly unlikely.
Jonah wouldn’t have tried to undress her, Maggie silently insisted. He’d taken the boots off—and left them off—purely for her comfort. But he’d obviously left everything else just the way he had found it. She had known Jonah Colton for most of her life—not intimately, but well enough to know that his character, as well as that of his brothers and parents, was exemplary.
Still, a tiny kernel of doubt nagged at her.
Well, there was only one way to find out, she told herself. She was just going to have to ask him.
Maggie headed toward the bedroom door and went to open it—just as Jonah presented himself on the other side of the door, about to knock. As a result, his raised hand came very close to making contact with her forehead.
It was hard to say which of them was more startled by the other’s sudden appearance. They both jumped back before they could bump into one another.
“Sorry,” Jonah apologized, dropping his hand to his side. “I was just coming to tell you that breakfast is ready.”
Maggie didn’t care about breakfast. She needed something cleared up first. “What was I doing in your bed?”
The question caught him off guard. “Sleeping would be my best guess.”
Was he being flippant? “No, I mean how did I get there?”
He didn’t understand why she looked so annoyed. “You fell asleep on the sofa, but you didn’t look all that comfortable, so I carried you into the bedroom and put you in my bed,” he concluded, thinking that would satisfy her.
“Anything else?” Maggie asked.
Jonah thought for a second, trying to recall if he had left anything out. “Well, I took your boots off because I thought your feet might start to hurt if you spent the night in them.”
Maggie blew out a breath. Was he stalling? “What else?”
He looked at her as if he didn’t understand what she was trying to get him to say. “I pulled the comforter over on you.”
Maggie waited. When he didn’t say anything further, she asked, “And that’s all?”
Was there some ritual she had expected him to follow? “Why? What else was I supposed to do?”
Maybe she’d spent too many years with James and it had made her suspicious of all men. “Nothing,” she answered, then hesitated. “But—”
He took that as her final answer. “Well then, I lived up to your expectations, didn’t I?” Jonah concluded. “C’mon,” he urged, “your breakfast is getting cold.” Turning on his heel, he led the way back into the kitchenette. “I made coffee,” he added, then warned her, “but there’s no cream or sugar.”
She usually liked to have both, but this wasn’t the time to be choosy. “That’s all right. I’ll adjust,” she said.
Biting her lower lip as she sat down at the small table and looked at the plate he’d prepared, she felt a little uncomfortable about the conversation that had transpired between them. The man had gone out of his way to be nice and she was interrogating him.
“I didn’t mean to sound as if I was accusing you of something just now—” she began.
Another man might have enjoyed having her squirm through an apology, but that sort of behavior had never been Jonah’s style. Thinking to spare her, he was quick to gloss over the incident.
“That’s okay—I understand. You woke up in a different place than where you remembered falling asleep. The truth of it is we don’t know each other all that well anymore.” As he picked up his fork, he shrugged away the need for her apology. “You’re a beautiful woman who’s probably dealt with more than your share of overbearing Neanderthals who felt they were entitled to share more than just your company. It’s only natural for you to have your imagination run away with you.” Pausing before he began to eat, he looked into her eyes. “But I’m not a Neanderthal,” he told her simply, “even though I was ready to climb into that tree to get you.”
That completely broke the tension that was building between them. Relieved, Maggie laughed.
“So we’re good?” he asked, taking a cue from her laughter.
“We’re good,” Maggie answered. “And so is breakfast,” she added, looking down at her plate. She had almost finished half of it without even realizing it. “I never pictured you as being able to cook.”
He didn’t think that was much of a mystery. “Hey, considering the kind of life I lead, it was either learn how to cook or get really, really skinny. I decided to learn how to cook.”
She nodded, trying not to be obvious about looking at him. “Good choice.” She paused as she put another forkful into her mouth. It wound its way through her system, then down into her stomach. Maggie thought of what he had just told her. “So this is what you do for a living? You go around on your white horse, rescuing people?”
“Cody’s a palomino,” he corrected her. “And don’t forget the search part,” he said, amusement curving his mouth. There was also another part of his job. “I’m also trained in emergency medicine, but to answer your question in a nutshell—”
“Too late,” she teased.
He didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, this is pretty much what I do for a living. The organization’s branch office is located in Austin. It’s where I live,” Jonah added.
That would explain why she hadn’t seen that much of him these last few years, she thought.
“Well, lucky for me, you decided to come down for the wedding,” Maggie told him.
He didn’t want to take any undue credit. “Once the hurricane hit, headquarters would have sent my team out here to look for survivors one way or another.”
Maggie shrugged away his attempt at modesty. “You look at it from your point of view, I’ll look at it from mine.”
Finished, she began to rise to bring both her plate and his to the sink.
“I’ll do that,” Jonah told her, quickly getting up from his chair.
She wasn’t about to relinquish the plates, pulling them out of his reach “You cooked, I’ll clean up. I like pulling my weight.”
Jonah raised his hands up to indicate that he was withdrawing his claim to the dishes. “I didn’t mean to imply that you didn’t,” he said. Smiling, he reminded her, “I saw you in action yesterday, remember?”
Maggie wasn’t following him. “What does that mean?” she asked him.
He didn’t want her getting all defensive on him again. They needed to progress past that point.
“It means that I know you can pull your own weight. Look, why don’t we just agree that we’re in this together?” he suggested. “That way you can stop circling around me, waiting for me to do or say something to challenge you. This isn’t a contest, or a competition,” he told her pointedly. “If you like, I can make you a temporary search and rescue team member. Will that make you feel better about this whole thing?”
People had a tendency, because of her looks, not to take her seriously. That Jonah just took her seriously without having her argue him into it felt as if she had just taken a huge step forward.
“I’d like that a lot,” she replied. “What do I have to do?”
“Just what you’ve been doing since yesterday,” he told her.
Maggie looked at him, waiting for more. When Jonah didn’t say anything further, she asked, “And that’s it?”
He smiled at her. “Trust me, that’s more than enough,” he assured her. “Okay, let’s hit the road.”
She was more than eager to go.
* * *
The rest of the
day was more or less a replay of the kind of work he and Maggie had undertaken the previous day.
Because Jonah was worried about how wandering around the rubble that had once been her apartment might affect Maggie, he made the decision that he and Maggie would concentrate their search and rescue efforts to another portion of Whisperwood.
For the most part, they helped coordinate the different rescue groups, deciding where each of the groups could be best utilized, depending on the nature of their skills.
However, Jonah knew that he couldn’t put off having Maggie deal with whatever destruction had befallen her apartment indefinitely. So sometime in the midafternoon, he and Maggie made their way back to Whisperwood Towers. Or at least what was left of it.
Jonah could almost feel Maggie stiffening as she sat next to him in the truck. They were drawing closer to the site of what had once been the Towers.
Maggie shivered. “It looks worse in daylight,” she said, the words coming out in a hushed whisper.
The building that she had lived in had been comprised of three floors. Her apartment had been located on the second floor. All three floors had come down, the first two floors crushed beneath the third.
“It looks like a deflated accordion,” Maggie added under her breath, walking through the rubble. “I don’t think there’s anything from my apartment that I can even find. At least not in one piece.” Blinking, she struggled to keep her tears from spilling. She refused to cry. Deep down inside she knew if she started to, she wasn’t going to be able to stop. Turning toward Jonah, she said, “It’s all gone.”
“Maybe not,” he told her, doing his best to bolster her spirit. “You’d be surprised what can turn up during the cleanup efforts.”
“Don’t,” she said, a warning note entering her voice. “Don’t pretend like you can hold out hope for me when there isn’t any.”
“I’m not pretending,” Jonah insisted. “I’ve been at this a lot longer than you have and I’ve seen miracles, large and small, happen all the time, especially when you least expect it.” He could see that Maggie refused to buy into his optimism. “I’ll be sure to tell the cleanup team to sift through this area carefully rather than just bulldoze through it.” But she remained impassive. “You might be surprised.”
Colton 911: Cowboy's Rescue Page 6