Daniel stopped the truck, rolled down the glass and squinted for a closer look. The rider was still in the saddle, but the way the horse was bucking he doubted a professional bronc rider could stay glued for much longer.
And then he spotted Aaron to one side of it all. He appeared to be screaming as he frantically waved his arms at the rider.
Dear God, the boy was going to be run over or hit by a flying hoof!
Daniel stomped on the gas and directed the truck straight for the horse lot. After bouncing wildly over a deep ditch and several boulders, he finally skidded the truck to stop, then jumped onto the fence.
Aaron spotted him and shouted desperately. “Daniel! Daniel! It’s Mom! She’s gonna fall off!”
At that moment Daniel looked over to see the figure on the back of the bucking horse sail through the air like a rag doll. The felt hat on the rider’s head flew off, and Daniel was stunned to see a flash of Maggie’s red curls just before she landed with a hard thump on the rocky ground.
Terrified now, he jumped over the corral fence and raced over to her motionless body. Behind him, he could hear some of the ranch hands racing up to see what was happening. Aaron was right behind him, too, and the boy stood white-faced at his mother’s feet while Daniel squatted down at her head.
“Maggie!” he cried. “Maggie!”
Her face was in the dirt and Daniel gently rolled her over and brushed the red curls off her cheeks. She sputtered and her eyelids began to flutter.
“Maggie, can you hear me?”
“She’s gonna wake up. She’s gotta wake up,” Aaron said in hushed fear.
“She’ll be all right, son. Don’t you worry, now.”
This was from the old ranch hand, Skinny, while the rest of the men also murmured assurances to the boy.
Daniel scarcely heard anything they were saying as he gently cradled Maggie’s head on his knee. Dear God, please let her be okay, he desperately prayed.
“Give me some water!” he shouted the order to no one in particular. “There’s a canteen in my truck!”
One of the cowboys quickly fetched the insulated container and handed it down to Daniel. He ripped a white handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans and soaked the soft fabric with the cool water before he wiped it across her forehead.
In a matter of moments her eyelids fluttered again, then opened completely. Her gaze focused immediately on Daniel’s face and she frowned, bewildered.
“Da-Daniel? Is that…you?”
The questions were mumbled around gasps for air, but they were enough to put a smile of relief on Daniel’s face and he leaned down and kissed her dusty cheek. “Yes, it’s me. Do you know what happened?”
Shifting, Maggie tried to push herself to a sitting position. Daniel quickly slipped his arm beneath her shoulder and propped her back against his knee. She breathed deeply as she tried to regain the air that had been knocked from her lungs.
“Yes, I remember. Rooster bucked me off!” She looked up and scanned the crowd of men until her gaze settled on a young man with wavy blond hair and a handlebar mustache. “It was your mare, Joel!” she said accusingly. “As I was riding into the lot, she kicked Rooster in the side with both hind feet and he was pretty unhappy about it!”
“Sorry, ma’am. She gets a bit temperamental at times.”
Maggie rolled her eyes, and a rumble of chuckles passed through the men. Aaron went down on his knees and hugged his mother close.
“Are you okay, Mom?”
She reached up to hug him and immediately groaned with pain. “Oh honey…yes. But my wrist! I think it might be broken!”
Aaron eased back, and Daniel lifted the injured limb for a closer inspection.
“It looks crooked,” he stated gravely. “Can you move your fingers?”
She attempted his request and cried out again. “No! Oh, it hurts, Daniel.”
He looked up at the cowboy with the guilty mare. “Get my truck and drive it in here. I’m going to take her to the hospital.”
“And get these damned horses tied up and out of the way, boys!” Skinny began to shout. “This ain’t no party we’re havin’ around here.”
On the way to the hospital, Maggie had Daniel use his cell phone to call Victoria. The doctor met them at the emergency room and managed to cut through some of the red tape so that they could get Maggie X-rayed more quickly.
While Daniel and Maggie waited in an examining room for the X-rays to be read, Victoria announced she was going to take Aaron to the cafeteria for a snack.
As the two of them started out the door, Victoria tried to assure Maggie. “The painkiller they gave you will start working soon. Just sit there and try to relax until the doctor gets here.”
“What if I need a cast?” Maggie asked worriedly. “Will you do that for me?”
Victoria shot her a good-natured frown. “No. We’ll let the bone doctor take care of you. And will you quit being such a worrywart? Aaron was a much better patient when he had his tonsils removed. Take care of her, Daniel,” Victoria said over her shoulder. “She can be a handful at times.”
Aunt and nephew left the room, and from a plastic chair in the corner Daniel looked at Maggie. She was sitting on the edge of the examining table with her injured wrist lying limply in her lap. Dirt was smeared on her jeans and shirt and her hair was covered with dust.
Maggie turned her gaze on him and raised her brows in anticipation of a scolding. Even though the cow-bred quarter horses used on the ranch were mainly well broken, they weren’t as predictable as her own personal mount. But she’d been so down all week and she’d wanted to give Aaron and herself a different treat.
“You know,” Daniel said. “There for a while you were giving Rooster one hell of a ride. I don’t think I’d have lasted that long.”
The compliment was the last thing she expected to hear from him and she began to laugh.
The free, easy sound brought Daniel to his feet and he moved around the table so that he was standing directly in front of her.
“It’s good to hear you laugh,” he said.
Her heart throbbed with uncertainty as she searched his eyes with hers. “It’s good that I have you here to make me laugh,” she said.
“Maggie, I—”
“I tried to—”
They both spoke at once and then fell silent. Maggie reached out for his hand. He took it as he leaned forward and pressed his cheek against hers.
“Oh, God, Maggie, I was so scared when I saw you go flying off that horse. You could have broken your neck! You could have been killed!”
She could feel his fear vibrating through his fingertips and in his voice. And in that instant she knew that she had been looking at everything so stupidly, so selfishly.
“I know, Daniel,” she said with a rueful groan. “Forgive me. Not just for giving you a fright. But for being so blind about you…about us. Now I can see—I realize—that losing a spouse can work both ways. You don’t have any guarantees that I’ll be around until we grow old. Just like I don’t have a guarantee that you will.”
Curling his arms around her, he held her against him and kissed her softly. “I spent the night with my mother and grandfather last night and I told them about you. About how I want to marry you.”
Joy spread through her and chased away every doubtful shadow lingering inside her. “What did they think? Are they disappointed that I’m not a Ute?”
Daniel shook his head. “My mother was surprised and happy. And you know what, Maggie? For the first time in my life, I believe I understand a little of why she married my father. She loved him. She couldn’t help herself. The heart has a way of leading us, even if it sometimes isn’t in the right direction.”
She tilted her head back to gaze upon his face. “But we’re in the right direction, Daniel. That morning I came up on the site where Quito was shot, all I could think about was facing the future without you. Now—I’m just thankful it wasn’t you. I can see that each day of our life is
meant to be cherished. Whether those days are many or few, I need you in them with me.”
“Maggie. My Maggie,” he whispered softly as his fingers stroked her cheek. “We’ll always be together. And each spring we’ll have our own bear dance, we’ll leave a plume on the cedar, and we’ll start afresh…with each other.”
Tears of blissful joy slipped from the corners of her eyes, and he kissed each one away as it trailed down her dusty cheeks.
“I love you, Daniel Redwing. So much. So much.”
“We’re getting married next week,” he said firmly. “It doesn’t matter to me where or how we get it done. I’ll leave that up to you. Just so we become man and wife.”
Rearing her head back, she looked at him with surprise. “Next week? But, Daniel, I might have to wear a cast on my wrist for several weeks! Am I going to walk down the aisle like that?”
He gave her a sexy, lopsided grin. “I won’t be looking at the cast. I’ll be looking at my beautiful wife.”
She was making a move to kiss him when an elderly doctor with white hair suddenly walked through the door with a young nurse close on his heels. The doctor introduced himself, and Daniel quickly stepped out of the way so the physician could attend to his patient.
After giving her crooked wrist a cursory glance, he patted her knee and said, “Well, Ms. Ketchum, I can safely say that you have two breaks in your wrist. But thankfully they’re clean breaks and no tendons were torn. You won’t need surgery but you will need to wear a cast for about six weeks.”
Maggie looked at Daniel and rolled her eyes. He merely smiled and winked at her.
“I’m glad it wasn’t worse,” she told the doctor. “I’ll wear the cast for as long as I need to.”
The doctor gave her another reassuring smile. “Good. Nurse Bradley will be putting that on for you in a few minutes and then I’ll sign a release so that you can go home.”
“What about the rest of her, Doctor?” Daniel asked. “She took a very hard fall. Could there be anything else wrong with her?”
The kindly doctor peered more closely at his patient. “It’s possible. That’s why I want to give her a full exam.” He made a motion for Daniel to leave the room. “There’s a waiting area just down the hall. Someone will let you know when we’re finished with her.”
Daniel was being dismissed, and there was nothing he could do about it, so he left Maggie with the capable doctor and found a seat in a waiting room that was empty. In one corner a television was tuned in to the Weather Channel. He stared at the geological maps marked with suns and rain clouds while he hoped and prayed that Maggie hadn’t sustained any other hidden injuries.
After a few minutes, Victoria and Aaron returned from the cafeteria, and the two of them sat beside him to wait. An hour and then some passed before a nurse finally appeared pushing Maggie in a wheelchair.
The first thing Daniel noticed was that her face was much whiter and she looked slightly dazed. Fear sliced through him but he did his best to keep it from his face as the three of them hurried to meet her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked without preamble.
“Are you going to live?” Victoria teased.
Maggie gave them a hesitant smile and then her gaze settled softly on Daniel’s face.
“Uh, Victoria would you take Aaron out to the truck? I…I’d like to talk to Daniel alone for a minute or two.”
“Sure. Take your time,” Victoria said, and curled her arm around her nephew’s shoulders. “Come on, buddy, let’s go count the stars while we wait for these two.”
Maggie expected Aaron to put up a fuss, but he surprised her by leaving eagerly with his aunt, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Daniel assured the nurse that he could push Maggie safely outside to the curb, and though she appeared reluctant to give him free rein over the wheelchair, she wasn’t about to argue with the chief deputy of San Juan County.
“I didn’t need this thing,” Maggie said moments later as he stopped the chair in a small foyer and helped her to her feet. “But it’s mandatory that a patient leave in one.”
“I’m not so sure that you should walk on your own,” Daniel said with concern. “You look worse now than when we first came in. Is your wrist hurting more?”
She smiled at him, and he could see her lips were quivering and there was a strange sort of light in her eyes that caused his heart to beat with uncertainty.
“No,” she answered. “It’s much better. I hardly feel anything at all.”
“Then something else is the matter. Why didn’t the doctor put you in a hospital room? What is it? Broken ribs? A concussion? I…”
Stepping close to him, she placed her palms on his chest and looked up at him. “The doctor says I’m going to have a baby.”
Stunned, he grabbed her shoulders and stared at her. “A baby! But we—it’s only been a short time since we—how could he know?” he finally managed to sputter the question.
“The doctor was about to write me a prescription for painkillers, and he asked if there was any chance I might be pregnant. I had to tell him yes, so he ran a quick blood test. They have those now that can detect if a woman is only a few days pregnant. I am.”
Incredible joy swept over Daniel’s face, and he grabbed her around the waist and lifted her off her feet. Giggling, she wrapped her arms around him and lifted her lips to his.
He kissed her for long, long moments, until someone entering the double-door entrance finally interrupted them, and Daniel carefully set her back on her feet.
“A baby,” he whispered incredibly. “Maggie, you’ve made me the happiest man alive!”
The joy on her face sobered for a moment. “Are you really, Daniel? Please be honest with me. Maybe you’re wishing this could have happened later.”
He frowned with amazement. “Later? Honey, I don’t want anything we do to be ‘later.’ We have a lot of living to do, starting now, this very moment.”
She let out a long sigh of relief and pressed her cheek against his chest. “You know, I think that night we camped out and made love without any protection…I think we were both trying to say I love you.”
And he’d been saying it in his mind and his heart ever since, Daniel thought. “Thank God Aaron likes to fish,” he mused aloud.
Maggie laughed softly and clasped her hand around his. “Come on. Let’s go tell Aaron he’s going to get what he wished for.”
Daniel glanced at her as the two of them left the building. “Oh? What’s that? A brother or sister?”
She laughed again, and Daniel realized he was going to enjoy that sound for the rest of his life.
“No. We’ll tell him about that later—after the wedding. His wish was to have you as his father. Think you’re going to like being called Daddy?”
He squeezed her hand as he looked up and saw Aaron running toward them.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-2492-6
REDWING’S LADY
Copyright © 2005 by Stella Bagwell
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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†† Men of the West
* Heartland Holidays
† Twins on the Doorstep
Redwing's Lady Page 18