Janna gaped at her. "What did you say?"
"Well...Clint said that Lida was coming back."
"The fool!" Janna got up and went to the window. A hard, angry sigh passed her lips. "He'll never learn, never! Why does he want her back here now, of all times? And when did he tell you she was coming?"
"Why...the Monday after I left here," she said.
"Well, she didn't show up. Thank God," Janna added angrily. "Hasn't he learned yet? My gosh, she went off and married that rich old man...is she leaving him already?"
"That's what Clint said."
"He'd be better off alone for the rest of his life. Oh, Maggie, why are men so stupid?" she moaned.
Maggie had to smile at the sincerity in her friend's soft voice. "I guess God made them that way so they'd be vulnerable to
women."
"The only women my brother's vulnerable to are glorified streetwalkers," Janna grumbled. She eyed the oval face on the pillow with the cloudy tangle of wavy hair framing it. "Why hasn't he ever noticed
you?"
Maggie reached for her coffee to try and keep Janna from seeing the color that surged in her cheeks. "I'm like his kid sister, you know that," she hedged.
"Well, it isn't due to a lack of effort on my part," Janna admitted. She sighed. "Well, can I get you anything?"
Maggie shook her head. "I'm spoiled enough, thanks. Don't let me keep you up.
It's late."
Janna leaned down to hug her. "I'm so
glad you're all right."
"So am I. I'm just sorry I missed the cruise. I would have enjoyed it so much...even if only because Duke wanted me to."
Janna smiled. “I liked that big man, too. Goodnight, my friend."
"Goodnight."
The door closed behind Janna, and the room seemed to shrink. She picked up a magazine and began to read, but the words blurred. With the silence and solitude, her mind began to work, weighing possibilities, worrying about her legs...
"So much for leaving you on your own," Clint said from the doorway, his eyes narrow as they studied her frowning face. "Wallowing again?"
She made a face at him. "I'm just reading this stupid magazine, is that all right?"
He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the door, just watching her. "Were you reading? Or were you worrying?"
She sighed. "Both."
He moved forward, taking the magazine away. "Lie down," he said, jerking a pil
low from behind her head so that she could lie flat.
“You awful bully...!" she fussed.
"That and more. Here." He pulled up the covers and tucked them in around her chin. "Now go to sleep and stop torturing yourself. All you have to remember is that you're going to walk again."
Her eyes, wide and a little frightened, looked up into his. "I will, won't I, Clint?" she asked softly, letting the barriers down just long enough to seek reassurance.
"Yes," he said quietly, and with certainty.
She relaxed against the pillows. "Is...is Lida coming soon?" she murmured, avoiding his eyes.
"Lida?"
“Yes. You know, you said..."
"God, I forgot," he said heavily. "She called just after I left for Miami and gave Emma some spiel about changing her mind and going to Majorca instead. It didn't even register at the time Emma told me." His jade eyes glared down at her. "You've given me a hell of a bad time, Irish."
"Sorry," she said softly.
"Show me," he murmured deeply, bending to her mouth.
She stared at him, shaken, not knowing how to take this gentle assault, not knowing if she dared to take him seriously.
His long finger traced the soft tremulous curve of her mouth. "You don't trust me, do you?" he asked quietly.
She shook her head. Without words, her eyes showed the hurt, the memory of why she'd left here.
He tilted her face just a little and his mouth brushed against hers softly, slowly, in a kiss so tender, so exquisitely caring that it brought tears misting into her eyes.
He drew back and searched her face with darkening, intense eyes. "I've got a hard head," he murmured absently, "and sometimes it takes a hell of a knock to get through to me. But I learn fast, little girl, and I don't make the same mistakes twice."
She lowered her eyes as the words got through to her. He meant that he wasn't playing any more, that he wasn't going to encourage her to lose her head. It should have made her happy. Instead, there was a king-sized lump in her throat.
"I'm...I'm so tired, Clint," she murmured.
"No doubt." He smoothed her hair with a gentle hand. "I'm safe, Maggie. I'm not going for your throat any more. We'll keep things at a friendly level from now on. Is that what you want?"
"Oh, yes," she breathed, and didn't look up in time to see the tiny flinch of his eyelids.
"Sleep well," he said in a strange tone, and tugging playfully at a strand of her hair, he turned and left her there.
She snuggled down into the pillows. At least, she thought miserably, they'd be friends for once in their lives. Maybe that would ease the hurt a little. And maybe all wolves would suddenly become vegetarians.
Nine
"Is that the best you can do, Irish?" Clint taunted as she pulled herself along the parallel bars in the makeshift gym he'd had equipped for her.
She glared at him, painstakingly dragging her weak legs along behind her as she let her arms take her weight. "You try it!" she panted. "Do you think you could do any better?"
"Sure," he chuckled.
She stopped to catch her breath. "You," she told him, "are a slave driver."
"I'll have you back on your feet in two more weeks," he said smugly. "If," he added darkly, "you stop cheating. Use your legs, Maggie, not your arms. Stand up, dammit!"
Her lower lip trembled. Tears formed in her eyes. "Don't you think I'm trying to?" she cried.
He came forward, lifting her up in his arms like a tearful child. He carried her to an armchair by the window and sank down in it, holding her on his lap until the cloudburst was past. He passed a handkerchief into her hand and sat back, watching her mop and sniff away the evidence.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled.
"You're human," he told her. "So am I, although I don't think you like to believe it. I don't want to browbeat you, but you'll never get on your feet again unless you try to walk. Dragging won't cut it, baby."
She thumped her small fist against his broad chest under the deep gray shirt. "I'm trying!"
“Try harder."
She glared at him with all the pent-up rage she felt. "I'd like to hit you!" she said hotly.
His eyes narrowed. "All that sweet, wild emotion," he whispered, "and no way to let it out, is that it? Let me help you..."
He caught her face in both hands and brought it up to his mouth, kissing her suddenly, violently, with a force that made her clutch at his shoulders to steady herself. She felt the wildness in her own blood reaching out to him, burning him back, in a release that was better than tears. With a hard moan, her arms went around his neck, her mouth opened hungrily under his, and she gave him back the kiss with every bit of strength in her body and all the longing she had felt for him since her teens. Suddenly he drew away, his eyes burning, his breath jerking as he managed to catch it. "My God," he breathed unsteadily, and his hands bit into her upper arms like steel clasps. "What are you trying to do to me?"
Dazed, vaguely embarrassed at her passionate response, she dragged her eyes down to the hard pulse at his brown throat. "You...started it," she accused shakily.
"It's all I can do to keep from finishing it, you little fool," he said deeply. He stood up abruptly, met her eyes as he placed her hands on the bars, probing them in a silence that simmered between them.
"The sooner I get you out of here, the better," he said in a goaded tone. "Now, stand up, dammit!"
Whipped by the anger in his voice, the admission that he wanted to be rid of her, she forced her body to go erect, fo
rced the screaming muscles in her legs to move.
"I'm going to walk if it kills me," she told him.
"Don't tell me," he replied. "Show me."
"Stand back and watch, then." And she moved her legs, for the first time.
From that first step, it was on to a second, a third, and finally as many as it took to go the length of the parallel bars. It was the greatest feeling of accomplishment Maggie had ever known, and better than any medicine. She could walk again. She could walk alone. She could walk away from Clint for good.
Not that it seemed to bother Clint. Once he had her moving alone, he seemed to vanish, leaving her with Emma and Janna for moral support while he went about his business. He kept his distance except at meals, and then he made sure the conversation was kept on general topics. To Maggie he was courteous and polite, nothing more. It was worse than the old days, when he fought with her. It hurt.
Janna was sitting with her one night, when Clint passed by the open door with little more than a glance and a nod. Maggie muttered something under her breath and Janna got up and closed the door.
She turned, eyeing Maggie curiously. "Do you hate him so much?" she asked gently.
Maggie pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. "I'm indifferent," she lied. "Numb, I guess. I don't think there's enough emotion left in me for hate."
"Serves him right, I guess." The smaller girl sighed. "All the hearts he's broken over the years, it was poetic justice."
Maggie's heart jumped and ran away, but the excitement never touched her composed expression. "What do you mean?"
"If you'd seen his face when he got that call about the accident you were in, you wouldn't have to ask." Janna sighed as she sank back down in the chair by Maggie's bed. "He went whiter than any sheet. I've never seen anything upset Clint like that, not in all my life. He went straight to the airstrip without even packing. And when he got to Miami, he never left you except to sleep, and not for long at that." Janna studied her fingernails. "The doctors told him you weren't going to make it, that you weren't trying to live. He wouldn't accept that. He sat and held your hand and talked to you...I stayed for two days, then he made me come home when he saw you were going to be all right." She smiled. "He said somebody had to run the ranch while he was gone."
Maggie stared at her for a long time before she spoke. "I don't remember anything...." She sighed. "Oh, Janna, I'm so sorry I worried everyone. It was such a stupid..."
"It could have happened to any of us. All I wanted to do was make you understand that Clint cares."
Maggie smiled wistfully. "It's guilt, Janna, not caring," she corrected gently. "He...he said some very cruel things to me the night before I left the ranch for Miami. I don't think either one of us will ever forget. God help me," she said, her eyes closing on the memories, "I don't think I can forget or forgive him, ever, for what he did to me that night."
There was such a deathly silence in the room that Maggie quickly opened her eyes—and found Clint standing just inside the door, his face frozen, his gaze dark and quiet and faintly violent. That he'd heard those words was evident.
"I wanted to remind you that Jones is bringing that bull tomorrow morning," Clint told Janna, without bothering to spare Maggie another glance. "I've got a meeting in Atlanta, so I won't be back until late. Have the boys put him in that new pen and get the vet out here."
"I will," Janna said uncomfortably. "Are you going in the morning?"
He nodded. "Goodnight."
He was gone, and Janna met Maggie's wounded eyes in the silence that followed.
"Maggie, what happened?" she asked
gently.
But Maggie shook her head with a tearful smile. It didn't bear telling. Not to anyone.
It was late, and the house was long asleep, but Maggie couldn't even close her eyes. With a quiet sigh, she finally gave up and got out of bed, painstakingly pulling on her long jade green robe and making her way into the dark hall and down
the stairs.
Her legs were still sluggish, but by taking her time, she made it to the kitchen without stumbling. A cup of hot chocolate, she thought, just might put her to sleep. Failing that, she was ready to try a sledgehammer.
While the milk was heating, she got down a heavy mug and filled it sparingly with a tablespoon of sugar and one of cocoa. And all the while, she hated her own tongue for the words Clint had heard. After everything he'd done for her, and she had to throw it out like that, and he had to hear it. Her eyes closed on the pain. And she hadn't really meant it at all.
She poured the hot milk into the mug on top of the sugar and cocoa. The sudden opening of the door startled her so that she almost dropped the pot. She whirled to find Clint standing just inside the doorway.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he asked quietly. His dark hair was rumpled, his shirt half undone, his dark face heavily lined as if he'd tried to sleep and couldn't.
"I...just wanted to have a cup of hot chocolate," she murmured, as she placed the pot in the sink and ran water in it.
"Who told you to get out of bed and start climbing up and down stairs in the dark?" he persisted.
She flashed a glance at him. "The President, both houses of Congress and my senator," she said with a hint of her old spirit.
"You left out your representative," he mused, and for just an instant a smile touched his hard mouth. "You ought to be in bed, honey."
Amazing what the soft endearment could do to her nerves, she thought, sitting quickly down at the table in front of her hot chocolate before her legs gave way. “I’ll go back up in just a minute."
"Stubborn little mule," he accused. "All right, I'll have a glass of tea and wait for you. How about some cheese and bread?"
Her eyebrows went up. "Hoop cheese?" she asked hopefully.
"If I can find where Emma hides it. Aha!" He pulled it out of the refrigerator, sliced some of it, and put it on a saucer. "Would you rather have crackers or bread?"
"Crackers!"
He laughed softly as he poured himself a glass of tea and plopped ice cubes into it. "Same here."
Seconds later, he put the cheese and crackers on the table between them and relaxed in the chair next to hers, drinking his tea thirstily.
"Couldn't you sleep?" she asked, suddenly shy of him.
"No," he replied quietly.
She shrugged. "Neither could I." She munched on a piece of cheese.
He finished off his part of the cheese and crackers and leaned back in his chair to study her. "Look at me," he said suddenly.
She met his level gaze, startled, and as quickly looked away from it.
"The robe matches your eyes," he remarked.
She smiled. "That's why Janna gave it to me, or so she said."
"Legs hurt?" he asked.
She shook her head. "I took my time coming down the steps. After all," she reminded him, "you were the one who said I needed more exercise."
He drained his glass. "I said too damned much," he replied. “Hurry up, honey, I'm not leaving you down here alone."
She finished her hot chocolate and got up to put the cup in the sink. As she turned away from the sink, she found herself being lifted into a pair of steely, warm arms and carried out of the kitchen.
"Oh, don't," she protested gently, pushing at his shoulder. "Clint, I'm too heavy...!"
He flicked off the light switch in the kitchen as he carried her out into the hall and up the staircase. His eyes, dark and strange, looked deep into hers. "You don't weigh anything, little girl. It's like carrying an armload of soft, warm velvet."
“If you're going to make fun of me, just put me down and I'll walk!" she said defensively, stirred by the sensations being this close to him was causing.
"Oh, hell no, you won't," he replied imperturbably, and tightened his hold on her.
"You awful bully!"
"You little shrew."
She drew a deep, hard breath and glared up at him with her green eyes blazing. "It's like argui
ng with a stone wall!" she growled.
He chuckled softly. "See how simple life is when you stop struggling, Irish?"
Her lips pursed in a sulking pout. "I won't even dignify that remark with an answer."
"You'd hate it if you could fight me and win, Irish," he said gently.
She lowered her eyes to his open collar, where the bronzed flesh with its covering of dark hair was tantalizingly visible. She could feel the hardness of that broad chest where she was pressed against it, and she wanted suddenly to reach out and touch that warm rough skin. A tremor went lightly through her body.
He looked down when he felt it and caught her eyes, held them, and searched them with an intensity that made her heart race.
He drew a deep, harsh breath and kept walking. He carried her into her room and laid her on the bed as quickly as if she'd been an armload of burning straw.
"This time, stay put," he growled, and his eyes were blazing as they looked down into hers.
She glared up at him. Her breath came in irregular gasps, from the proximity she'd endured, from the hunger of loving him. "Must you always growl at me?" she whispered.
"Do you have to be told what I'd rather do?'' he asked flatly, and his eyes slid over her like a warm caress, from her lovely flushed face in its wild tangle of dark, wavy long hair down to her slender body. "I want you to the point where it's like having an arm cut off, does that make you feel better, hellcat?" he asked harshly.
The admission stunned her. He'd said something like that before, but she always thought it was part of the humiliation he'd thrown at her. She lay there quietly, staring up at him like a curious young cat, her eyes asking questions as they met his.
"That's all you know anything about— wanting," she said quietly, her eyes accusing.
"What should I believe in?" he asked. "Love? It's a myth, little girl. An illusion that doesn't last past the marriage vows."
"How do you know?"
He studied her mouth with a mocking smile. "How do you?" He bent forward, leaning on the arms that pinioned her on either side. "I've always been able to read you like a book," he murmured, holding her eyes. "No, I'm not guilt-ridden, and don't you believe that I am. There are a thousand reasons why I came to Miami after you, but guilt wasn't one of them."
Books By Diana Palmer Page 53