Man of Her Dreams

by Tami Hoag

  “I love you, Ry,” she whispered, watching him struggle with feelings he didn’t seem to understand.

  His dark brows pulled together in concern over stormy eyes the color of Spanish moss. “Maggie—”

  She lifted a hand and pressed her fingers to his lips. “Let me say it. I love you. I’m going to keep on saying it, because it’s what I feel.”

  And because, maybe, if she kept on saying it, someday soon he would be able to believe in that love and say those same words to her.

  Maggie didn’t consider it a plan really. Everything she did was open and aboveboard. She wanted to give Ry a taste of the kind of life they could have together. There was certainly nothing devious in that. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t told him that was what she was going to do. So if she told him at unexpected times that she loved him, if she showed up in his office with lunch and wearing nothing but a sexy negligee under her coat, he couldn’t say he hadn’t been forewarned.

  What she spent most of her time doing, however, was working. There were a million tiny details to putting on an open house. Ry had been too busy to see to any of them. While he and his crew worked on the buildings and fences, she took care of ordering the food, calling a sign maker, lining up workers, contacting the greenhouse for bouquets. While Ry and Christian instructed grooms to clean every piece of tack and brush every horse on the place until the shine on their coats was blinding, Maggie was overseer to the small army of help rented to scrub and polish Ry’s office as well as the lounge that looked out on the indoor riding arena.

  Both those rooms underwent a whirlwind redecoration. Braided rugs were spread across the floors, tasteful, comfortable chairs replaced the mismatched wobbly-legged ones. Patchwork pillows and a quilt done in the royal blue and gray that were the Quaid Farm colors added a homeyness to the lounge. Ry’s office was decorated with hunting prints. As a special present, Maggie bought him an oversize leather-covered desk chair with brass nail-head trim. His desk was cleaned and oiled, the cheap old blotter replaced with one that matched his chair. His paperwork was neatly tucked into the new set of stack trays on the corner of his desk.

  When she could spare five or ten minutes, Maggie spent them with the orphaned foal, grooming him or just petting him and talking to him. She managed to get in one riding lesson with Christian. He patiently assured her she wasn’t hopeless, but it was plain no one on the U.S. equestrian team was in any danger of losing his spot.

  On top of this mountain of work, she also saw to Ry’s meals, his house, his needs. When he was thirsty from working out under the sun, she was there with a glass of lemonade. When he came in at the end of a long day feeling as if he’d “been rode hard and put away wet,” she saw to it he had a hot shower, a hot meal, and a long, loving massage.

  Was she making any headway? she wondered at the end of day six. It was hard to say. Ry seemed to genuinely appreciate her help with the arrangements. He ate the food she cooked and didn’t hesitate to reach for her when they went to bed at night. But he didn’t seem any closer to telling her he loved her.

  He told her he wanted her. He told her he needed her. He told her she was a godsend. But he never said the words she’d vowed she had to hear before she would marry him.

  Maybe she was being too stubborn. It could take Ry years to express those feelings. Why did she have to hear them? If she knew he felt them, wasn’t that enough?

  No, that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t so much that she had to hear him say he could love. What she really wanted was for him to know he had that wealth of love inside him. It was a wonderful feeling to love someone, to revel in that love, to nurture it and feel it grow. If she gave in now, he might never take that chance with his heart, and he would go on cheating himself, cheating them both.

  She sighed as she bent to pull on her riding boots. Patience, Maggie, patience. He would come around. Sooner or later. Maybe something would happen to open the door to his heart. Maybe one of these times when she told him she loved him, it would sink into that hunk of titanium he called a skull.

  Straightening, she looked at herself in the front hall mirror and made a face. Sure, she looked okay in her rust breeches and oatmeal-colored sweater, with tortoiseshell barrettes in her hair. By the time her lesson was over, her bob would have bounced itself up into a Bozo-the-Clown look. With any luck she would run into Ry before she rode and not after.

  Ry sank down to the welcoming softness of his new desk chair. The day had been unbelievably long. Only half the equipment he’d ordered for the new veterinarian facilities in the breeding shed had been delivered. The rest, the delivery man had informed him, was on back-order. Dammit, when a man shelled out top money for top equipment he expected it to be delivered on time. Then one of his many mongrel dogs had spooked a young horse he’d just picked up at an auction. The filly had crashed through a section of new board fence and toppled three five-gallon buckets of paint.

  There had been a dozen other small irritations, mostly in the form of bills. He had never been very fond of parting with his money. This open house was costing more than he had expected. So were the renovations to the farm. He had to keep reminding himself that while all the cash was flowing out this week, it would be flowing in next. Next week the syndication would be finalized, the investors would pay him. Then, next spring, when they were booked up with visiting mares and hauling money to the bank by the wheelbarrow, he would look back on these two weeks and laugh.

  Tonight he wasn’t laughing. He had a headache the size of Rhode Island. He needed a shower, a meal, a glass of good white wine, and quiet. What he didn’t need was Maggie coming to him with another piddling problem to solve or a color swatch to approve or a receipt to sign. And if she told him one more time that she was in love with him…

  What, jerk? a little voice inside his throbbing head asked. What will you do, yell at her? Throw her off the place? Go ahead, show her just how unlovable you really are.

  “Oh, hell,” he muttered, rubbing a hand across his forehead.

  Maggie was only trying to help. She’d done a hell of a job shaping up the areas where the guests would be received and entertained. Arrangements for food and drink had been taken care of. If those details had been left up to him, the way his schedule was running, he would have ended up serving the guests stale crackers and peanut butter out of his kitchen. He hadn’t even had time to check on Rough Cut since they’d brought him home, even though he’d been aching to take the stallion out for a little exercise. Maggie had been a big help.

  So what was his problem? Why was he so ready to bite the poor woman’s head off?

  Because he was tired. Because he was feeling edgy. She wanted something from him he couldn’t give her. She wanted to give him something he would sooner not accept. And the whole business was forcing him to look into a part of himself he would rather have left alone—old feelings, old hurts, old fears.

  “Let sleeping dogs lie, Maggie,” he said under his breath.

  He swung his chair around to face his desk, but when he went to put his feet in the cubby hole they were met with an outraged bark. Ry slid out of the chair and ducked under the desk, groaning at the sight that greeted him.

  “Shasta, you can’t keep your puppies under here.”

  The golden retriever gave him a pleading look. Her brood lay curled up next to her belly, sound asleep. She had obviously carried them one by one out of the new kennel Ry had moved her to and stowed them under his desk. Carefully, he scooped up two puppies in each hand and carried them around to the new braided rug in front of his desk. Shasta followed him, whining a protest. He crawled half under the desk again to scoop out more puppies.

  “This is an interesting view.” Maggie’s voice floated in from the doorway.

  Ry jerked his head up, smacking it into the underside of the desk. Swear words rolled out from under the sturdy piece of furniture like a cloud of acrid smoke.

  “Sugar, such language.” Maggie tsk-tsked, coming to the desk to help him. She ben
t over and accepted the pair of taffy-colored pups he handed out. “And in front of the babies.”

  “Dammit, Mary Margaret, you hadn’t ought to sneak up on a man like that.”

  “I’m sorry.” She raised on tiptoe to kiss his scowling mouth when he stood up with a puppy in each hand. “What are these little darlin’s doing in here?”

  Ry turned his dour look on Shasta. The dog whined and looked woebegone, but thumped her shaggy tail hopefully. “The little mother decided she didn’t like the new accommodations. Between her and that flea-bitten pack of rat hounds outside, I swear, I’m gonna lose my mind. I oughta ship the lot of them to the pound.”

  “But you won’t,” Maggie said softly, snuggling the puppies to her chest, her heart aching with love for Ry.

  Ry frowned at the puppies in his hands. He walked around the desk and set them on the rug beside Shasta. “No, I won’t. Lord only knows why not.”

  “I’m in on the secret, too, sugar.” Maggie reunited mother and munchkins, then stood and sent Ry a knowing smile. “It’s because you’re sweet and good and have a soft spot for helpless creatures that need love.”

  He actually felt it snap. The hair-thin thread that had been holding his temper in check frayed and broke. He wheeled on Maggie. “Jeepers cripes, Mary Margaret, do you have to make a federal case out of it? I show a little common decency to a few stray animals, and you make me out to be Saint Francis of Assisi.”

  Maggie jammed her hands on her hips. “I don’t see why you have such a problem acknowledging the fact that you give love to these animals.”

  “I don’t give…that. I feed them and house them, that’s all.”

  “Lord have mercy, you can’t even say it!” Her laugh was one born of frustration, not humor. “Love. Love, Rylan. It’s the only four-letter word not in regular use in your vocabulary! Why can’t you admit you have it and you give it?”

  “And why do you have to be so bloody stubborn, insisting that I give something that I don’t have in me?”

  “Stubborn!” she shouted. “You’re calling me stubborn? Sugar, you wrote the book on it! You are the original immovable object. I could just as well go beat my head against a stone wall as try to talk sense into you.”

  “Then why don’t you!” he shouted back, swinging an arm toward the open door. “I sure as hell don’t need you hanging around here, sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes as quickly as if he had slapped her, but Maggie spun on her heel and stormed out of the room before Ry could see them. It was bad enough she’d let him have the last word, she wasn’t about to let him see how badly those words had hurt.

  Her step faltered as she continued down the aisle of the barn, and she realized with no small amount of shame that she had been hoping he would come after her. She had been hoping he would spin her around and scoop her up into his arms and kiss her and apologize.

  “Dream on, darlin’,” she muttered bitterly, blinking back scalding tears, “it’s what you do best.”

  Her booted feet pounded down the cement alleyway. She kept her head up and choked back the lump in her throat as she passed two grooms.

  “Killer’s all ready for your lesson, Miz McSwain,” called one.

  Maggie hiccupped and thanked him without breaking stride. Without really thinking about what she was doing, she went to the end stall. The brown gelding stood dozing, flipping his lips. He was indeed tacked up, saddled and bridled. With little half sobs escaping her throat, she led the horse out the end of the barn, stood on a wooden block to mount, then turned him toward the hills and kicked him into a trot.

  The tears flowed freely as soon as she was away from the stables. They blurred her vision and streamed down her cheeks. She paid no attention at all to where she was going, letting Killer choose his own path. She merely hung on and cried her heart out.

  “Damn you, Rylan Quaid,” she said, sobbing. “Damn me for loving you.”

  It wasn’t fair. She’d worked so hard. Not just helping with the preparations, but with trying to help Ry break down the walls he’d built around his heart.

  “Did it ever occur to you that maybe he didn’t build them up with the intention of letting you tear them down, Maggie?” she asked herself in a strangled voice.

  Maybe what she had to realize was that Ry was right. Maybe he wasn’t capable of loving her. Maybe she had to face up to the possibility that she couldn’t make him love her. Love came naturally or not at all. And just because he was the man of her dreams, just because she’d fallen in love with him all those years ago, didn’t mean he had to feel the same depth of emotion.

  As long as she was facing facts, she had to admit that the man she’d fallen in love with originally had been nothing more than a figment of her imagination. She’d discovered that when she had finally started spending time with Ry. He wasn’t the man who swept her around ballrooms and wrote poetry. He was a man who was tough but tender, who could have won a world championship for scowling but who took in any helpless creature that needed him. She’d seen he was a man who didn’t trust emotions, who held a part of himself back from others. And she’d fallen in love with him anyway.

  “So, it’s your own darn fault, McSwain,” she said, reaching up to swipe away some of the tears that clung to her lashes. “You deserve whatever happens to you.”

  At that instant a deer bounded out from behind some brush and shot across the path directly in front of a very startled Killer. Wild-eyed, the gelding executed a hasty half pirouette and dashed out from under his rider.

  Maggie didn’t even have time to realize what had happened before she hit the ground and everything went black.

  “Aw, hell, why did I have to be such a bastard?” Ry asked himself aloud. He sat behind his desk, his elbows on the blotter, his head cradled in his hands.

  He hadn’t meant to tear into her like that. He had intended to thank her for the work she’d done on his office. Well, he’d blown that royally. Instead of thanking her, he’d practically thrown all her hard work back in her face.

  She’d been crying when she’d stormed out. He hadn’t seen the tears, but he’d heard the jerky intake of breath, he’d seen the way she set her shoulders, he’d heard her hiccup. Damn. It tore him up inside to know he’d made her cry.

  It had been a long, hard day. He was tired. He was feeling edgy and crowded by Maggie’s continual declarations of love. That still didn’t excuse what he’d done. He’d have to go find her and apologize. Hopefully she would forgive him. Maybe when he went into town tomorrow he could stop by Leebright’s Jewelry Store and pick her up a little something just to make her feel better.

  And to soothe your own miserable conscience, he told himself.

  Why did life have to be so doggone complicated?

  Two brisk knocks sounded on the office door before it swung open. Christian stepped inside, his usual smile in place. “I came to fetch Maggie for her lesson.”

  “She’s not here,” Ry mumbled.

  “She’s not here?” Atherton glanced around the newly refurbished room. His smile faded to a frown. “She’s not here.”

  “Brilliant deduction, Sherlock,” Ry said sarcastically.

  Christian was unperturbed. “Ah, a lover’s quarrel. Well, perhaps she can channel her anger into something productive. She needs to be more aggressive as a rider anyway. Where did she go?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she went up to the house. Maybe she left. Maybe she went to get a gun so she can blow my stupid head off.”

  “Oh, quit feeling sorry for yourself. Feel sorry for me. I’ve been cooling my heels for the last ten minutes waiting for her to show up in the arena.”

  “Hey, Marlin,” Ry called to the groom passing the open office door.

  The young man stuck his dark head in. “Yes, sir?”

  “Have you seen Miss McSwain in the last half hour or so?”

  “Yes, sir. She took Killer out about that long ago.”

  Ry’s b
rows knitted in concern. “Took him out where?”

  “I couldn’t say for sure. I was grooming Specialty when she stomp—er—walked past. She went down to Killer’s stall and took him out the end of the barn. I reckon she rode up into the woods.”

  Ry let loose a stream of words that could have turned the air blue as he launched himself out of his chair. Maggie wasn’t a good enough rider to head into the woods on her own. She didn’t know her way around. She could barely stay on the blasted horse just trotting around the arena.

  Young Marlin turned gray at his boss’s outburst. His Adam’s apple bobbed nervously in his throat.

  “Fool woman! She’s gonna get herself lost up there—or worse—and it’s damn near dark.” Ry poked a rigid index finger at the groom. “I want a horse saddled, and if it’s not ready in five minutes, I’ll have your rear on a platter.”

  “Yessir!”

  Exactly five minutes later Ry was on horseback, galloping away from the farm and toward the wooded hills. As his horse ate up the distance with long, smooth strides, he tried to reassure himself with the knowledge that Maggie was on the gentlest horse he owned. But fear still churned in his belly. Even gentle horses could be startled into irrational behavior. If Maggie hadn’t checked her equipment—of course she wouldn’t have, given the state of mind she’d been in—her girth might have been loose. She had no natural sense of balance. If the saddle slipped, she’d be under her horse’s belly in the blink of an eye. There were any number of ways she could get hurt.

  And it was all his fault. That terrible knowledge pressed down on him like a black iron weight. He had lashed out at her, hurt her, driven her to run away. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if anything had happened to her. And he knew with a sudden chilling clarity that his life would be a desolate place if he had to live without her. Living without Maggie would be like living without half of himself. He needed her. He loved her.