by Diana Palmer
“Not on your life, honey,” he said, and she recognized the willful, stubborn note in his voice. “Not if I have to tie you. Janna’s home on vacation for the next three weeks, and I’ll be damned if I’ll leave you in an apartment alone and helpless.”
“I’m not helpless!”
“No?” he taunted, his eyes sliding down her body.
She hit the covers with an impotent little fist. “I hate you!”
“As long as you’re not indifferent,” he chuckled. “Hatred can be exciting, little girl.”
Her narrow, flashing pale eyes burned into his. “Just you wait until I get back on my feet!”
He only smiled, leaning back in the chair, the tautness, the age draining out of him with the action. “I’ll try, baby.”
Something in the way he said it made her blush.
Time passed quickly after that. The pain lingered on for a few days, especially when they cut down on the painkillers, but Clint was always there, daring her to whimper about it. They gave her over to the physical therapists, and he was there too, watching, waiting, taunting. She worked twice as hard, focusing her weak muscles to do what she wanted them to, using the violent emotion she felt like a whip. She’d walk again. She would, if for no other reason than to prove to that jade-eyed devil she could!
Finally the day came when she was released from the hospital, when medical science had done all it could. She gazed over the back of the cab seat toward the fading skyline of Miami as they reached the airport. And she’d never even gotten to see the cruise ship.
The flight home seemed to take no time at all. Clint relaxed as he flew the small single-engine plane, his eyes intent on the controls and landmarks of small towns and parks and farms and forests and herds of cattle as they flew above the misty landscape.
She glanced at Clint. Did he really want her to hate him, she wondered, or had he only said it to irritate her? She remembered her own forwardness in her teens, when she’d put him on a pedestal and done everything but worship him. That must have been unbearable for a man like Clint, being followed around like a pet dog, as he’d put it before she left the ranch.
Her eyes went back to the window, glancing out at the wispy clouds. If only she could live down that idiotic behavior, if only she could wipe the slate clean between them and start over and be…friends. The word almost choked her, but she realized belatedly that it was the only thing possible now. All the bridges were burned behind them. She’d done that all by herself.
Anyway, she thought with a chill, Lida would be back at the ranch waiting for him this time. She’d only seen the woman once, but that had been more than enough. It was going to make living at the ranch unbearable. It was why she’d fought so hard to go back to the apartment. But Clint, as usual, was going to have his way in spite of all her efforts to thwart him. Just like old times.
She stared down at her useless legs in the slacks she’d worn from Columbus on the bus. It seemed so long ago that Clint had swung her up behind him on the stallion.
It was the shock, the doctors had told her, that caused this temporary paralysis—the shock to her body, to her system, to her mind, and a good deal of bruising as well. At least she had the feeling back in them. But walking was going to be another matter altogether, and she shuddered mentally at what lay ahead. It was going to take a kind of determination she wasn’t sure she possessed to make those muscles move again. What if she didn’t have it? What if the doctors were wrong, and her spine had been damaged? What if…
“We’re home!” Clint said above the engine noise, and nosed the small plane down toward the landing strip.
Janna met them with tears in her eyes, leaping from the big town car just as the propeller stopped spinning.
“Oh, Maggie, I’m so glad to see you,” she wept, hugging her friend as though she’d come back from the dead instead of Miami.
Maggie forced herself to laugh as she patted Janna’s shoulder. “I’m all right. I’m going to be fine. Ask Clint if you don’t believe me. He insists!” she mumbled, glaring at him over Janna’s shoulder.
He only grinned. “Move over, Janna, and let me get this load of potatoes in the car.”
“I’m not a load of potatoes,” Maggie protested as he slid his arms under and around her and carried her like a feather to the front seat of the car.
“You do have eyes,” Janna remarked, tongue-in-cheek, as she opened the car door for Clint.
“And you do look fried,” Clint seconded as he put her down gently on the seat. “Careful, Maggie, you’ll singe yourself.”
“You devil,” she grumbled at him.
His eyes dropped deliberately to the soft curve of her mouth. “Daring me, honey?” he asked in a low voice as Janna went around the front of the car to get in.
“No!” she whispered back.
He smiled and closed the door. He went around the car, too, and opened the door on Janna. “Out,” he said.
“But I can drive…!” she protested.
“Not my car, not with me in it. Out.”
She gave a disgusted sigh and slid over next to Maggie. “I hate brothers,” she muttered.
“That isn’t what you always used to tell me,” Maggie observed.
“Oh, do shut up,” the younger girl moaned.
By night, Maggie was comfortably installed in the same guest bedroom she’d left, propped up with pillows, surrounded by books and magazines, pumped full of soup and sandwiches and hot coffee.
“But, Emma,” she’d protested, “you’ll spoil me.”
“I’m just glad you’re still around to be spoiled,” came the reply as the housekeeper went out the door.
Janna sat down in the chair by the bed, laughing. “You might as well give up. You know that, don’t you?”
Maggie smiled in surrender. “I ought to, I guess. Janna…”
“What?”
She looked down at her hands. “Is Lida here yet?”
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 ow
n,” 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 pillow 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, forced 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.