A Wedding for Maggie

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  “Quiet night under Jefferson’s roof tonight.”

  Maggie smiled faintly at that. “Actually, I think those three will fall asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillows. The swimming, you know. It takes the starch out of them.”

  He watched as she slipped her narrow feet into her strappy little flat sandals. “How about you?”

  “I didn’t swim so much as get splashed to kingdom come,” she murmured. She flicked her hands down her dress and started to walk across the lush clover. “J.D. had fun today.”

  For such a large man, he moved very silently. One minute he was three feet away, the next, he stood right next to her. Invading her space. Making her throat knot. “Did you?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She sidestepped.

  He followed. Blocked.

  “Are you running, Maggie Mae?”

  “Don’t, Daniel,” she whispered.

  “Don’t what?” His low voice was intense. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

  His big hand cupped the back of her neck. Strong and so incredibly warm. Alive. “What?” he asked again.

  She swallowed the gargantuan knot in her throat, unable to answer, and tried not to tremble. Then his hand moved, slipping along her jaw, stealing her breath and her sensibilities in one smooth glide. His eyes, shadowy in the deepening dusk, focused on her lips. “You remember the first time I called you that,” he murmured. “When you were hanging out those sheets after J.D. was born.”

  “Daniel. Please.”

  She knew what was coming. God help her, she wanted what was coming. Just as she’d wanted it then. His thumb brushed over her lips and her breath stalled, then returned, choppy and uneven.

  “Stop,” she whispered.

  He paused, his jaw tight. “Really?”

  She knew he would. That it would only take one word. A nod. And he’d abide by what she’d said. Despite Daniel Clay’s hell-raising reputation, he’d been an honorable man. If he’d truly been the wild Clay boy they’d talked about in Weaver—the one who was never without a woman, a pool cue or a whisky—he would never have stopped at one kiss three years ago. He would have taken what she’d been so close to giving to him. But he hadn’t.

  He’d left his home and his family instead.

  “No,” she breathed on a half sob, half sigh. She was weak. What else could explain the insanity that made her go on her sandaled toes and press her lips to his?

  An explosion of heat engulfed her. His arm went from her neck to her waist as he turned the tables, his lips covering hers. He tasted of springfed water and male and dark, hot want.

  And it had been so long, so very, very long since Maggie had felt a strong male body pressed against hers. And never, not even that never-forgotten afternoon while wet sheets blew and snapped around them, had she felt this male body pressed so intimately against hers.

  Her eyes burned behind her tightly closed lids, and she slipped so easily, so thoroughly into the hot web he spun of her senses.

  “Say my name,” he murmured against her lips. His hands slid wickedly along her back. Skimmed her hips. Dragged up great handfuls of gauzy, misty green fabric.

  She wanted to weep for the sensations buffeting her. “Dan...iel. Oh, what are we domg?”

  His hands closed over the backs of her thighs, pulling her up hard and tight against him. His lips engulfed hers. “Finishing what we couldn’t before,” he finally gritted, when he lifted his head, allowing her to haul in a shaky breath

  “No, I can’t...can’t—”

  He tossed aside the clip from her hair and whisked her dress over her head, silencing her with another mind-melting kiss. His tongue licked flames of wickedness along her earlobe. Trailed over her shoulder and drifted along the damp fabric of her strapless swimsuit. “Tell me to stop, then,” he murmured as he rolled the clinging fabric down. Down, down, until the evening dusk breathed upon her bare breasts. “Tell me you’re not trembling for me. Aching for me. I’ve been thinking about this every night, sleeping on the other side of that wall from you. And you have, too.”

  Her knees went to water, but it didn’t matter, for his arms lifted her right off the ground, his hot lips finding with unerring accuracy one turgid nipple, then the other. She cried out, her dismay disappearing in a puff. She wound her arms around his shoulders, marveling indistinctly over the incredible strength of them. Of the supple, satiny feel of skin stretched taut over rock-hard muscle. Her blood sang in her veins.

  “Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me to stop,” he repeated, and her skin shivered beneath his gruff, gritty demand.

  She bent her head over his, holding him to her breast. “I can’t,” she cried softly. Her eyes burned. “Oh, Daniel. I can’t.”

  His breath hissed audibly, and she felt herself being lowered to the ground. But his hands didn’t let her loose. His hands slid to hers, where she knew he noticed the absence of her wedding band as his touched paused. Lingered over her bare finger “Here, then. Now. One time. We’ll finish it. Then we’ll put this behind us. Once and for all.”

  She trembled wildly, feeling vulnerable and exposed with her bathing suit baring her flesh to his eyes Never—not before, during or after thirteen years of marriage—had a man looked at her with such thorough determination. Such naked want.

  Maybe he was right. Once and they could move on. Maggie back to her life in Chicago. Daniel to...whatever it was that met his needs.

  Unable to get a word out of her tight throat, she managed a nod and laid her palm against his chest, so defined in the plain white T-shirt. He felt so warm that his heat leaped through the cotton knit, igniting her palm and working right up her shoulder. To her heart

  She didn’t know what to expect then. She reached for her swimming suit, but his hands stopped her and drew her palms back to him, pushing them under the hem of his T-shirt, flattening them against his ridged abdomen.

  Maggie choked back a gasp, her fingers greedily pressing against the rock-hard muscles. Feeling them leap beneath her touch. Madness careening through her blood, she yanked his T-shirt upward, struggling to get it over his shoulders. Off his head. Throwing it thoughtlessly, carelessly to the ground when she succeeded, and crying out when he yanked her against him, pressing her bare breasts to his bare chest.

  An oath whispered through his clenched teeth, his hands cradling her hips, moving her against him. Then her swimsuit was gone. Somewhere on the ground alongside his shirt and the jeans he shrugged out of and the scuffed athletic shoes he kicked off.

  He moved into the water, pulling her with him. His lips closed over her nipples as they beaded, near to pain in the water that, somehow, strangely, didn’t seem as cold as it had earlier. His limbs tangled silkily with hers, his hands guiding her legs around his hips, cradling her against him, driving her mad as she felt his heat, his strength brushing so intimately against her.

  His lips burned over her temples. Her jaw. Her mouth. “I can’t wait,” he growled.

  “Don’t.” He went absolutely, painfully still, and she writhed against him, needing him when he denied her the ultimate satisfaction. “Don’t wait,” she gasped, her mouth open against his shoulder.

  He exhaled roughly and sank into her with a low, feral sound.

  She arched back, a soft cry on her lips, and shuddered, her body straining against his. Reaching. Reaching.

  He was tall enough to stand on the bottom of the swimming hole, and she realized with some remote portion of her mind that he walked right out of the water, laying her back against the clover-soft ground, his hard, hot body keeping the night air at bay. She sank her teeth into her balled up fist, holding back a whimper as he thrust into her.

  He lifted her hand and tugged it away from her mouth, catching it, and the other, above her head. “Say my name,” he said again.

  Mindless. She was simply mindless. “Daniel,” she gasped, biting back a low moan.

  “No,” he said tautly. “Don’t you hold back on me, Maggie Mane.”

  She
didn’t think it possible, but surely she felt him clear to her heart and beyond. Her heart raced and her breathing stalled.

  “Let it out,” he breathed against her breast. “I want to hear you.”

  She couldn’t hold it in. The moan started low and soft. And when he turned, pulling her atop him and anchored her hips with his strong, guiding hands, it grew in her throat, until it was a desperate, keening cry. He was no more quiet than she, she realized dimly. And somehow, the fact that she could make this big, strong, somehow angry man, groan with pleasure, undid her. She rocked wildly against him, instinctively seeking that which she’d never experienced. Not in her entire life.

  And when the pleasure came upon her, twisting her, flinging her into the wind, it was Daniel’s arms that kept her safe. Daniel’s heat that anchored.

  Daniel’s flesh that pulsed deep inside her, filling her.

  Making her whole.

  “Okay, you’ve got everything?”

  Maggie nodded, her fingers crumpling their airline tickets in her tight grasp. She blinked and told herself she wasn’t going to cry. But Jaimie was wiping her own eyes, and it was so very hard to blink back the hot, burning tears. Despite the fact that Maggie had rented the car when she and J.D. had arrived, Jaimie and Matthew had insisted on accompanying her to the airport. Matthew had sent the rental car back, instead, with one of the hands.

  “I’m so glad you came here,” Jaimie said. “Even if it was because of...well, you know.” She hugged Maggie tightly. “We’ll always visit you in Chicago. But please don’t wait so long again to come back here. I wish you’d just come back to stay. Then we wouldn’t ever have to do this. This was your home once, Maggie. Couldn’t it be again? No, don’t answer. I know you felt you had to go and make your own way after Joe left.” She pulled back, dashing her fingers over her cheeks. “I’m just rambling. Don’t mind me.”

  Maggie wiped her own cheeks. She knew that she could never return to the Double-C. Not after what she’d done with Daniel under the stars. Not after he’d walked her back to the big house last night and left her standing alone in the doorway to her bedroom, her lips tingling from the light kiss he’d dropped on them before he went into his own room.

  Leaving her. Alone.

  Matthew slipped his long arm around his wife and lifted his chin toward the gate where the flight attendant was waiting. “You’re the last ones,” he said.

  Maggie swallowed and nodded. She held out her hand for J.D.’s and took a step toward the plane that would take them back to Chicago. Though she’d told herself not to, she couldn’t help one last sweeping glance. But Daniel was nowhere in sight.

  Obviously he’d decided they’d closed the book the night before. There was no point in lingering over any of the chapters. Put behind them, once and for all, just as he’d said. Finished.

  Finished so finally that he hadn’t been in the house this morning. Hadn’t been on the ranch even.

  He’d left. With no explanation. No note. Nothing.

  Joe had done the same thing three years earlier. Yet this time it seemed so much worse. Joe’s behavior wasn’t unexpected.

  Yet Daniel’s departure hit her blindside.

  It hurt. It hurt so badly Maggie wasn’t sure she could stand it. But she’d have to. She had a daughter who was watching her with a puzzled, increasingly upset expression. The flight attendant was glancing with no amount of subtlety at her watch.

  So Maggie smiled shakily at Jaimie and Matthew and, with J.D. by the hand, stepped through the gate, handing over their crumpled, wrinkled tickets. They boarded the plane that would take them back to their tidy, small apartment in the middle of the building in the middle of a block in the middle of a big, bustling, busy city. A city where she’d never be able to look up into a velvety black sky and wonder at how far the stars could possibly be when it seemed as if she could just reach up and brush them with her fingertips.

  A city where she’d have to let her bruised heart toughen up all over again.

  Thankfully, J.D. fell asleep partway through the flight.

  Maggie turned her face toward the window and let the tears come.

  Finished. Just like he’d said.

  Chapter Four

  Pregnant.

  The word rolled around inside her head, setting off explosions of panic and disbelief and fear. Maggie still couldn’t believe what Dr. Rodriguez had told her.

  Pregnant.

  Maggie knew she’d have to tell Daniel. But she put off notifying him for one night. Then two, as she tried to figure out what words to use.

  It wasn’t as if Daniel cared for her. If he had, he wouldn’t have walked away from her in August without a word of explanation. He wouldn’t have returned to the ranch without a word of explanation. He wouldn’t have let all the weeks since pass without contacting her.

  The third night passed. And the fourth. And finally, a full week after she’d received the news, after J.D. was finally asleep, Maggie picked up the phone and dialed.

  Jaimie answered. Delighted to visit. But no, Daniel wasn’t around. He was in town. And what was up?

  As much as Maggie loved Jaimie, she couldn’t bring herself to say the words. She’d tell Daniel first. And then...well, then, they’d see.

  So Maggie rambled about J.D. About her job and about the order she’d gotten to provide samples of her handmade wooden Christmas ornaments to a mail-order company. About Gertrude Nielsen, the cantankerous tenant in Maggie’s building who made it her life’s goal to complain about one thing or another at least once a day to Maggie.

  Never knowing that on the other end of the line, sitting on a long couch in the basement with her feet being rubbed by her husband, Jaimie and Matthew eyed each other, wondering what Maggie wasn’t saying. And how Daniel could be involved. Daniel, who hadn’t cracked but two smiles since August.

  It was late when Daniel let himself into the kitchen. Everyone had gone to bed hours ago. Tossing his hat on its peg, he quietly went downstairs to the new guest suite he’d finished building a few weeks ago in one end of what had previously been the overly huge recreation room. He left his keys on the breakfast counter of the small kitchen and shrugged out of his shirt, tossing it carelessly aside, then picked up the notepad he’d left there earlier, along with a narrow, rolled tube of architectural drawings. Snapping on the light near his chair, he sat down, running his eyes over the notes that had nothing to do with the blueprints. As he stared at them, trying to see something, anything, he might have missed, he absently picked up the heavy wooden paperweight to run his thumb over its satiny surface.

  Coleman Black, his onetime boss, figured Daniel’s concentration on building the house was a good thing. That it would be therapeutic.

  If it was so therapeutic, then why was he still staring at his scratchings on the notepad? Why wasn’t he accepting the truth that pretty much everyone else seemed to have accepted?

  Therapeutic. What a joke.

  Although Daniel no longer compared every nail he pounded in this house with the poor conditions of that other home he’d shared for a short time, he still couldn’t banish the destruction he’d been unable to prevent from his dreams at night.

  If he wasn’t dreaming about that, he was dreaming about Maggie.

  His hand tightened around the paperweight. Sleepless nights were pretty much what he deserved, he figured grimly.

  As well as Daniel got along with his family, he needed a place of his own. Away from their concerned eyes and the questions they had—so far—been too polite or wary to ask.

  His jaw cocked, and he deliberately loosened his fist from the paperweight. At least Jefferson was keeping his mouth shut. Dan figured it was only because Jefferson himself had more than his own share of secrets.

  Well, Daniel had gotten over the reasons he’d left the Double-C in the first place. Damn fool emotions had ruled him back then. Look where it had gotten him. Where it had gotten them all.

  Too bad he hadn’t learned his lesson then.
If he had, he wouldn’t be needing activities that were therapeutic now. He wouldn’t be making pointless phone calls and dozens of inquiries—all which led exactly nowhere.

  He tossed aside the paperweight and the notepad.

  His head was ruling his actions now, he reminded himself. He was back at the Double-C. He was home. To run his land. To finish building his own house. A house to live in. To grow old in. Maybe to even find peace in.

  His eyes strayed to the paperweight which Jaimie had casually informed him Maggie had made. Realizing it, he swallowed an oath. That night at the swimming hole had been insanity. Another episode of letting things other than his brain rule his actions. Getting away the next morning was the best thing he could have done. There’d been no awkward morning-afters No tearful farewells.

  They’d finished what they’d needed to finish that night by the swimming hole.

  He yanked off his boots before going into the bathroom where he stepped under the stinging, cold shower spray, and tried, as he did every night, to forget the night he’d spent with her under the stars.

  After, he hitched the towel around his hips and, with his jeans in a ball under his arm, he headed toward his room. Matthew was coming down the stairs just outside the open door of the guest suite and Daniel stopped short. He’d been certain everyone was long asleep. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Matthew held up the bowl of green mint ice cream he carried. “Except middle-of-the-night cravings. Jaimie talked to Maggie tonight,” he said. “She asked about you.”

  He slicked back his dripping hair. “Why?”

  Matt shrugged and started back up the stairs toward the kitchen. “Didn’t say. I thought you’d want to know.” He lifted the bowl, grinning. “Duty calls.”

  Daniel dumped his jeans in the hamper in his room after his brother had gone. Maggie asked about him. So what? She called and talked to Jaimie faithfully every week.

  He dropped his towel and tossed back the quilt and sheets on his bed, throwing himself down. He folded his arms behind his head and stared into the dark room. The problem was, she’d never asked after him. At least, that was his impression whenever Jaimie shared the “Chicago News” over the supper table.