Baby Love

  As he zigzagged through the trees, he plunged through the crust of a drift and dropped to mid-thigh. “Son of a bitch! Damn it, Maggie, I know you can hear me!” He just prayed she really could. Straining with his unencumbered leg to escape the hole, his other foot broke through. He fell sideways, only managing to stay standing by grabbing hold of a tree limb. He was going to kill himself trying to catch up with her. He crawled from the icy wallow.

  “I outweigh you by over a hundred pounds! I’m falling through the ice. You want me to break a goddamned leg?”

  Only silence. Rafe knelt there, grabbing for breath. Peering through the darkening twilight, he searched the stands of pine for movement. She couldn’t have gone that far. Even someone as slightly built as Maggie would fall through occasionally, which made for slow going.

  He stared ahead at her tracks. Her sneakers had left a quarter-inch depression on the icy white surface. A glance over his shoulder at his own footprints revealed that his boots sank in at least an inch with every step.

  Wonderful. She was racing ahead of him with the speed of a gazelle while he floundered back here like an overweight buffalo.

  “Maaaagheee!” he yelled as loudly as he could. “Maaaa—ghee!”

  When he caught up with her, he’d be tempted to wring her neck. Of all the damned fool stunts to pull. There were cougars in these woods, and recently there had allegedly been sightings of wolves that had migrated down from the Washington Cascades. Odds were against her encountering a dangerous animal, but what if she did?

  Regaining his feet, Rafe began following her tracks again. He moved cautiously. No worries. Every step she took left an imprint on the snow. It wasn’t as if he might lose her trail. Right?

  Rafe no sooner assured himself of that than he broke into a small clearing where cows had bedded down. The snow had been so badly churned that he couldn’t detect Maggie’s footprints in the maze. Not in such dim light.

  He paused to listen. All he heard were the lodgepole pines creaking in the wind. Cold. His wet clothes were freezing to his body. The sopping side of his leather jacket lay over his shoulder like a chunk of ice. God. Shortly after dark, the temperature would plummet twenty degrees, taking the mercury well below ten. With the wind-chill factor, it could dive below zero. If he failed to find Maggie and she spent the night out here—

  He cut the thought short. No point in borrowing trouble. He would catch up with her. Why scare himself spitless by thinking of the awful fates that might befall her? It just tied his gut in knots and kept him from thinking straight.

  But he couldn’t stop the pictures from forming in his mind. What if she had fallen through the drifts? Her clothing might be as wet as his. She was wearing the new down parka, but the damned thing was designed more for fashion than practicality.

  “Maggie!” he yelled, growing frightened in spite of himself. He cupped his hands around his mouth and turned, yelling her name in all directions. Only the whisper of pine boughs offered a response.

  Bent low over the ground in an attempt to pick up her tracks, he moved in an ever-widening circle. She had to have left some sign of her passing. Deep snow lay in all directions. He would come across her trail. He had to.

  Minutes later, his patience was rewarded. He found a faint imprint of her sneaker. Heading in that direction, he soon picked up a plain trail. Holding himself under rigid control, he stepped slowly and lightly. He couldn’t afford to hurry and fall through. Maggie really would be in a pickle if he broke a leg.

  When they didn’t show up back at the ranch, Ryan would get worried. His first move would be to try contacting Rafe on the Expedition’s built-in cellular phone. He might piss away as much as two hours before he decided to look for them. When he found the Expedition parked on the side of the road, he’d realize something was wrong. But how long would it take him to organize a search party?

  By that time, where would Maggie be? If she were woods-smart, Rafe wouldn’t have been so worried. But she was a town girl, and due to her illness, he hadn’t had time yet to teach her how to take care of herself out here. Did she even know how to tell her directions? Had anyone ever explained to her how she could wander in circles, getting more and more lost with every step she took? Or that the smartest thing to do if she did get lost was to stay put? Was she aware that digging deep into a snowbank might keep her from freezing?

  He kept seeing her face. That sweet, vulnerable mouth. Those big, expressive eyes. The pain that had twisted her features. You were willing, you mean? Why in God’s name had he asked her something so stupid? Of course she hadn’t been willing. No matter what she said or how she had come to believe such a thing of herself, he knew better. Not his Maggie.

  I whored to protect Heidi for three years. Whenever he wanted, however he wanted. You name it. I did it. When she’d told him that, why hadn’t he grabbed her into his arms? Told her he loved her. But, oh, no. He’d sat there like a mindless imbecile. Just gaped at her with his mouth hanging open.

  “Maggie! I’m sorry!” he shouted. “It’s not like you think! I love you!”

  Nothing.

  “I love you! Do you hear me? I love you. I’ll always love you! I don’t care if you slept with Lonnie!”

  Silence.

  “I don’t care!” he yelled, his vocal chords aching with the strain. “If you slept with every trucker on the interstate from Idaho to California, I don’t care!” When she didn’t answer, he screamed, “Maaa—ghee!”

  He was getting panicky. He couldn’t let himself do this. He had to keep a level head. Think. Systematically follow her tracks.

  Her life might depend on it.

  Oh, God. She was lost. There was no question. She’d walked every which way, finding the same exact thing each time, nothing but more trees. She’d only gone a short distance from the road. How on earth had she gotten turned around?

  Maggie swung about in the small clearing. Above her, all she could see were treetops and tiny patches of velvet-black, star-specked sky. She couldn’t get her bearings without being able to study the constellations.

  She’d first tried to return to the road at least two hours ago. Instead of following her own tracks like any sane person would have done, she had wanted to avoid facing Rafe again, so she’d walked north/northeast, hoping to hit the road at a different place from where he had parked. After walking for what she’d guessed then to be about thirty minutes, she knew she’d gone the wrong way. Definitely not north/northeast. She had then tried to correct her course, walked at least another thirty minutes, and eventually concluded that wasn’t the right way, either.

  At that point, she had done what she should have in the first place and tried to follow her own tracks. Simple, right? She’d thought so. But she’d left three sets of prints by then, and the ones she chose to follow weren’t the ones that led to the road. Worse, the next set didn’t either, and by then, her tracks were so confusingly crisscrossed, she had no idea which were which.

  She had spent the last hour going first one way, then another, her terror mounting. Her clothes were soaked, the down parka soggy and heavy, making it hard to swing her arms for balance. Her legs had long since moved past being merely cold to an awful, frozen numbness.

  “Rafe!” she screamed. “Rafe! Can you hear me?”

  He was out here searching for her. She knew he was. She just had to keep moving until he found her, that was all. And he would. She knew he would. No matter how angry he might be. No matter how disgusted. He would set aside his personal feelings and search for her.

  Stupid, Maggie. So stupid. Why on earth had she run off like that? At the time, she’d intended to go only so far into the woods—just deeply enough that he wouldn’t be able to see her—and then walk parallel with the road until she reached the house. It had seemed like a good plan then, her only way of getting home without suffering his company and seeing that awful, sick look on his face the entire way. By her estimation, it had been only about five miles to the house. She had walked tha
t far to work in a little over an hour more times than she could count. Nothing to it, she’d told herself. Only the first thing she knew, she hadn’t been able to find the road, let alone walk parallel to it.

  Her chest burned. The air was so cold, it seared her lungs. A gust of wind came whistling through the trees, slicing at her wet coat like a razor. Tall pines snapped and creaked all around her, the sound eerie and frightening. She thanked God for the moonlight, which at least helped her see.

  Keep moving. If she gave in to the exhaustion, she would freeze to death. Heidi and Jaimie needed her. For them, she had to stay on her feet and keep walking. If she stopped to rest, even for a minute, she might not get back up.

  Was this how it felt to freeze to death, your lungs on fire, your heart slogging as if your blood had thickened to molasses? Her thoughts were jumbled and disjointed, the icy coldness making the top of her head feel as if it might blow off. Her cheekbones and eyebrows ached. Even her hair hurt.

  Her leg buckled. The next instant, she lay facedown in the snow. She struggled to get up. Couldn’t. The ice burned her palms and her grasping fingers quivered. Tears squeezed hotly from her eyes, only to freeze the instant they trailed onto her cheeks.

  After a while, she didn’t feel as cold. That was good. Vaguely, she wondered if perhaps a warm front was moving in. She could still feel the wind buffeting her, but it no longer seemed to slice through her clothing.

  A faint sense of alarm slipped into her foggy thoughts. Warm? People started to feel warm when they were freezing to death. Next, she’d feel sleepy. Oh, God, she already felt sort of sleepy.

  She blinked, her alarm increasing when her upper and lower eyelashes clung together. Heaven help her, her eyes were freezing shut. She had to get up. Only how? Just moving a leg took a Herculean effort.

  An awful sound drifted to her through the woods. Muh-rrhaww! Maggie raised her head. Muh-rrhaww! An animal of some kind. A really big animal. A bear, maybe? No, they were in hibernation right now. The sound came again, and she listened, trying to determine what it was. After a moment, she nearly laughed. A cow. Only a cow. Even if there was a small herd of them, they weren’t likely to hurt her. Rafe said most cows on the ranch were accustomed to humans.

  Maggie was wandering aimlessly now. Rafe could determine that much by the meandering trail he’d been following. Why didn’t she stop so he could catch up with her? No such luck. Her irregular tracks told him she was exhausted. Common sense told him she was probably also freezing cold. He sure as hell was.

  Rafe staggered to a stop. This was getting him nowhere. He had to head back to the road and call Ryan. Get a search party out here. Several men on snowmobiles could cover a lot more ground than a lone man on foot. Damn. With every step, he’d expected to come upon her, sitting forlornly under a tree, hugging her knees to stay warm. To turn around and leave with that picture of her in his mind had been damned near impossible.

  “Maggie!” he yelled for what seemed like the thousandth time. “Maggie?”

  Rafe’s heart skipped a beat when he heard an answering sound. He cocked his head. There it was again. He turned to listen, pinpointing the direction. A cow. Defeated, Rafe stared down at her footprints on the snow, noting the zigzagging pattern of her steps. She was about to go down, judging by the lurching pattern of those tracks. His eyes burned from the cold blast of the wind. Should he go for help or follow her trail for a few more minutes? If she collapsed, a search party might not find her in time. It would take at least an hour to get men rounded up and all the snowmobiles filled with gas. Another thirty minutes would be wasted while they drove from the ranch to where the Ford was parked. Tack on the additional time that it could take to penetrate the woods and find her, and she could be dead before they reached her.

  Rafe prayed he wasn’t making the worst decision of his life as he started to follow her tracks again. But, mistake or not, he couldn’t make himself give up. Just a few more minutes, he promised himself. If he hadn’t found her by then, he’d head for the road.

  Her trail became more and more erratic as it went along. His heart caught again when he came upon a place where it looked as if she’d fallen full-length in the snow. He knelt to examine the disturbed surface, touching his fingertips to depressions he felt certain had been made by hers. He imagined her lying there, digging her fingers into the ice, sobbing and terrified. Jesus. He’d never forgive himself for this. He’d known all along that Lonnie was the father of her baby. Why in the hell hadn’t he forced her to talk to him about it?

  Pushing back to his feet, Rafe began to bird-dog her tracks again, certain now that she couldn’t press on much longer. Please, God. He remembered how resolutely she had endured whatever came her way when he first met her, suffering the cold without a coat, nursing Jaimie even when it brought tears to her eyes. Maggie was delicate-looking, but that fragile spine of hers was laced with steel. His luck, she’d keep walking until she froze to death standing up.

  A few minutes later, Rafe came to a clearing where a half dozen cows and heifers had bedded down for the night. They lay bunched together to keep warm, their breath sending up ribbons of steam that looked like smoke in the moonlight. Maggie’s tracks circled to the left. He followed her footprints. About halfway around the opening, she hung a sharp right. Straight toward the cows.

  Rafe turned to peer at the dark bovine lumps that lay in a cluster. The cows’ white faces shone eerily in the moonlight. Two of the creatures had their heads up, their eyes dark pits as they stared stupidly at him, chewing their cuds.

  Almost afraid to hope, Rafe moved slowly toward them. “Easy, ladies,” he said soothingly. “I just wanna check to see if you’ve got company.”

  Maggie lay huddled between two heifers. Tears of relief turning to ice trails on his cheeks, Rafe made his way carefully toward her. He placed a boot on each side of her torso, the sides of his legs pressing against the hot bovine bodies that he felt certain had kept her from freezing to death.

  “Hee-yah!” he yelled, slapping the back of the cow to his right.

  The huge beasts scrambled to their feet, bawling in protest at the disturbance. Rafe shoved away the two heifers that flanked his wife, protecting her from being stepped on with the brace of his legs. As the animals trotted away, he sank to one knee.

  “Maggie?” He grasped her shoulder, fear lancing through him when he felt the frozen nylon of her parka. Oh, God. Just as he had feared, she was wet to the skin. “Maggie? Wake up,” he ordered, shaking her.

  She didn’t respond. His fear became terror. “Maggie, damn it! Wake up!” He grabbed her hands and began chafing them. Then he lightly tapped her cheeks. Please, God…He couldn’t bear it if he lost her. “Maggie?”

  “Rafe?” Her lashes fluttered and she opened her eyes. His relief was so great, he felt boneless. She rolled onto her back. “I knew you’d come.”

  It terrified him to think how close he’d been to turning back. “Of course I came, sweetheart.”

  How in hell could she have so much faith in him on that score and so little in other ways? He yearned to ask, but now wasn’t the time or place to hash out their problems. Maggie seemed to have put their troubles on a back burner as well. No big surprise. Their first order of business had to be getting out of here. All else took a second seat.

  “I’ve been bird-dogging your tracks the whole time,” he told her. “Why the hell didn’t you stop and stay put so I could catch up?”

  Stiffly she rose to her knees. Her voice still gruff with sleep, she replied, “It was so cold. Until I found the cows, I was afraid to stop for fear I’d freeze to death.”

  It was a miracle that the cows hadn’t spooked, leaving her to lie there and die. Just the thought made his guts tighten like a fist. He loved her so much.

  He laughed shakily and cupped his hands over her hair. The unruly curls had become wet, probably from snow falling from tree boughs. Now the strands were stiff with ice.

  Rafe wanted to hug the very breath out
of her and make long avowals of love. But that would have to wait. He had to get her out of here. Strip those damned wet clothes off her. Get her warm.

  “I owe those cows,” he settled for saying. “Tomorrow I’ll bring out a sack of grain to show my appreciation.” He bent to press a quick kiss to her forehead, his heart squeezing when her skin felt warm against his cold lips. “Two sacks of grain,” he amended. “Thank God you had the good sense to cuddle up.”

  “With me, necessity is the mother of courage. It was my only option.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m so sorry about this, Rafe. It was stupid of me to take off like that. I meant to follow the road, only then I couldn’t find it.”

  “That happens out here. The trees are so thick, even experienced woodsmen have gotten lost. If you don’t know some of the landmarks to give you your bearings, you’re shit out of luck.”

  She laughed weakly. “That pretty much describes how it went. No matter which way I walked, it wasn’t the right way. Take away sidewalks and I’m inept.”

  Rafe did hug her then. Weak though it was, that spunky little laugh melted his heart, and he couldn’t resist. His arms trembled with the intensity of his feelings as he squeezed her close. “Inept? You used your head.” He pressed his lips to her hair. “I’ll make a great rancher’s wife out of you yet. All you need is some mountain know-how, and you’ll do fine.”

  She stiffened slightly. “A rancher’s wife?”

  “Damned straight, a rancher’s wife. My wife. I’ll chain you to the bedpost before I’ll let you leave me, Maggie. Understand that and get used to it.”

  Tears filled her eyes, and her mouth trembled as she gazed up at him. “You mean it?” she asked faintly.

  Rafe realized he was kneeling there in the snow like a damned fool, wasting precious minutes. Beginning tomorrow, he was going to make it his mission in life to teach her some survival skills. He’d also drive it into her brain with chisel and hammer that he loved her and nothing was going to change that. But, for now, he had far more pressing concerns.