“Wouldn’t I? Darlin’, I’m a rogue, a rake, a scoundrel. Women litter the road behind me like so much confetti. My bedroom has a revolving door. I’m trying desperately to break Don Juan’s record, and—”
“I get the point!” she said crossly, still not entirely sure how she was supposed to react to the combination of his unnerving words and bland tone of voice. “Rafe, you can’t be serious!”
His eyes widened innocently. “But, love, you cringe whenever I come near—filled with visions of ravishment, I’m sure—so I just thought I’d earn the reaction.”
“I do not cringe!” Maggie wanted to command him to stop using the endearments, except that she didn’t want him to know she’d noticed. She’d never felt so confused or off-balance in her life. “You said your reputation was all a lot of hot air—vicious gossip!”
“But you believe it,” he reminded her smoothly.
Baffled, she stared at him. “You said you never got involved with the women here on the ranch.”
“Blarney. I decided to make an exception in your case. I changed my mind….I lied.” He lifted one flying brow mockingly. “Take your pick.”
For a moment Maggie wondered a bit wildly just how many men boasted the name of Rafe Delaney. She seemed to have encountered at least four just during today’s ride: a thoughtful man proudly aware of his land and his blood, a gentle man who had held her like a cherished thing, a fiercely passionate man, and now this devil.
It was like gazing into myriad mirrors, each reflecting a Rafe. One was the real man—but which?
“That’s—that’s harassment,” she managed.
Clearly wounded, he explained patiently, “No, darlin’, not harassment. Your job’s secure no matter what happens between us. A rake I may be, but I’m not an idiot. You’re too damn good a trainer to lose.”
Suddenly conscious of his hands holding hers, Maggie jerked away from his grasp. “I’ll quit!” she threatened.
“No, you won’t. You’re no coward.”
She glared at him for a full minute, then turned on her heel and stalked over to where Diablo was waiting patiently. Angry as she was, she nonetheless automatically accepted a leg up into the saddle from Rafe, and muttered almost inaudible curses as she watched him mount his own horse. Damn the man! she thought. What did he want from her? A playmate? Another scalp to dangle arrogantly from his Delaney belt?
Was her position at Shamrock worth the battle she could envision building up between her and Rafe?
—
Rafe observed Maggie’s confusion much more closely than he allowed her to see. He was gambling, gambling on her response to him, and on her own ambition. She wouldn’t leave, he thought. At least not while he could keep her off-balance and uncertain. And in the meantime he meant to take full advantage of her confusion.
Chapter 4
Riding beside Rafe as they started back to the ranch, Maggie carefully kept her gaze fixed straight ahead. She was worried and uneasy and wanted, oddly, either to laugh or to cry or to knock Rafe from his horse with a well-aimed blow…or something.
She didn’t want to leave Shamrock, both because of her professional plans and because she was growing to love the place, yet her every instinct urged her to fold her tent and steal away—now, before it was too late. Rafe possessed the uncanny knack of drawing all her emotions closer to the surface, leaving her feeling unsettled and vulnerable, and that was a feeling she’d never known before. It was dangerous, she knew.
Obviously Rafe wanted nothing more than another conquest. And she wanted…What did she want? A secure future, her own ranch. Success. Control. She’d worked for ten years, and more years of hard work stretched ahead of her before that driving wish could come true.
It would take even longer if she left Shamrock and was forced to accept a position at a less prestigious ranch….
She couldn’t leave. Not just because her boss’s fickle fancy had settled on her. He was a chameleon, and chameleons were creatures of change. He’d lose interest in her soon enough. Surely he’d lose interest. He could have any woman he wanted, and she was nothing special. She could keep him at arm’s length until he lost interest.
Unwillingly Maggie remembered an embrace that had sapped her willpower and a kiss that had left her weak and defenseless. She swallowed hard and clenched her teeth. That, she decided, wouldn’t happen again.
“You won’t leave,” Rafe said calmly.
The assurance in his voice very nearly provoked her, but Maggie checked her temper. “I like my job,” she said as evenly as she could.
“Good. I hope you like your boss as well.”
“Don’t fish with me,” she warned. “You wouldn’t like the catch!”
He burst out laughing, a deep, lilting sound.
They had reached the pasture gate, and as soon as he opened it Maggie urged Diablo to canter down the lane to the barns. She didn’t look back to see if Rafe was following, but heard his good-humored shouts to various stablehands as he passed them. She also heard him halt Saladin near barn number two, where the horse’s stable was, while she rode on to number four.
Reaching her barn, Maggie swung off Diablo and removed his tack. The stallion had proved fairly tractable where women other than Maggie were concerned, even to the point of allowing the apprentice Lisa to ride him, but six years of men trying to break him had left scars. Diablo despised men and allowed none to touch him.
After carrying the saddle and bridle into the tackroom, Maggie returned to groom the stallion thoroughly. The long walk back had cooled him, so that there was no need to walk him further, but she carefully made certain he had not injured himself during that mad race across the pasture. She had just turned Diablo into his stall when Rafe strolled into the barn.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll take you out to see the brood mares and foals. They’re pastured farther up the valley.”
“I have to work,” she said. Without waiting for his response, she went back into the tackroom to get her bridle and the saddle soap, then sat in the doorway to clean the gear.
Rafe leaned against the wall and watched her, still wearing that crooked, oddly dangerous smile. “I’m not about to let you work seven days a week, Maggie, and tomorrow’s Saturday. You can take a few hours off. Besides, I noticed you’ve scheduled your people so that at least two of them are here everyday.”
She wanted to snap at him, but he was her boss. She tried to tune out his presence, listening to the sounds of Lisa and Mike working two of the Saddlebreds in the training ring and staring down at the bridle in her lap as she automatically cleaned it.
“Nearly dinnertime,” Rafe said, just as the interior barn lights came on automatically with the dusk.
“Tell Kathleen not to bother with my dinner, would you, please? I have some work to finish up, so I’ll fix a snack or something later.” She still refused to look up at him.
After a moment he said quietly, “You don’t have to keep working your two horses on your own time, Maggie.”
She was surprised that he’d noticed that; she tended to ride her own horses just after breakfast or around lunchtime. “I’d rather, if you don’t mind,” she said evenly. “When I work for you, I’ll work for you. I work for myself on my own time.”
“You’re a lot like this land, Maggie,” he said softly. “You give no quarter.”
She looked up slowly, but he was gone. She sat there for a long time, thinking. No quarter? No mercy. Was she that unyielding? So rigid there was no way for her to bend? Had the long, lonely years of hard work made her so inflexible that her every movement, every thought or action, had to bring her a step nearer her distant goals?
Automatically she finished cleaning the tack. Lisa and Mike brought their mounts into the hall to be unsaddled and groomed, and she spoke to them casually. She saddled and worked her two horses, calling out a cheerful good night to her two apprentices as they left the barn, but not halting her own work.
It was late when she finally left the barn afte
r giving all the horses a final check and turning out all but the dim night-lights. She locked up the barn by closing the huge, electrically powered doors that closed off the hall and training ring, then activated the security system for the building. As she walked up the lane between the barns toward the house, all was dark and quiet, only the occasional stamp of hooves or soft nicker disturbing the silence. She turned between barns seven and eight, following the lane where it curved toward the house, familiar enough with the way by now to be unperturbed by the pitch darkness between and beyond the buildings.
She was so lost in thought that she heard nothing, and was so completely taken by surprise that only a squeak escaped her when hard arms caught her in a crushing embrace. Lips ruthlessly captured her own, kissing her with a driving passion that stole her breath. For an instant shock held her still, then she fought fiercely. But before she could do more than begin to struggle, she was free—and alone.
Breathless, Maggie peered through the darkness all around her, ears straining for the slightest sound. Nothing. Confused, she remembered the sensation of some kind of buckskinlike fringe beneath her fingers, and remembered a fleeting glimpse of what must have been a very tall man. No, she thought, bewildered, not just tall. There had been something on his head.
She straightened, then grabbed quickly at her neck. Something was tickling her, something protruding from the V neckline of her knit shirt. Visions of spiders and other unpleasant things faded as her fingers grasped the object and pulled it from her shirt. She stepped out of the inky blackness of shadows, she heard her own voice say incredulously, “A feather?”
Glancing warily around as she continued toward the house, Maggie toyed with the feather bemusedly and attempted to collect her thoughts. She tried to decide if there had been anything familiar about her attacker, her suspicions instantly focused on Rafe. She didn’t know why he would do such a ridiculous thing, but the devil-light in his eyes made it at least plausible.
But something was nagging at her, something she had sensed more than seen. She was somehow convinced it hadn’t been Rafe. Who then? And why?
Her stride quickened as she neared the house. If it had been Rafe, he couldn’t possibly have returned to the house and changed from that buckskin outfit—or whatever it had been—so quickly. She entered the house through the kitchen, relieved to find it empty, and hurried on toward the den.
Rafe was there, hanging up the phone as she paused in the doorway. He was dressed casually in jeans and a black shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, and showed absolutely no signs of having just run several hundred yards or changed in a hurry.
Black suited him, she thought fleetingly. He looked more devillike than usual tonight, even without the dancing light of mockery in his eyes.
He rose to his feet as he looked up and saw her. “You worked late tonight. Maggie, you really shouldn’t—”
“How long have you been here?” she interrupted, not caring whether he’d consider the question impertinent.
His brows rose quizzically. “If you mean here in the den—a couple of hours. If you mean here in the house—since I left the barns. Why do you ask?”
She frowned at him, playing absently with the feather. “Oh…no reason. I just wondered.”
He nodded toward her hands. “Where’d you get the feather?”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I found it.”
He continued to look quizzical, but shrugged and allowed the subject to drop. “Are you hungry, or would you rather unwind a bit first?”
“I was going to my room—”
“Why don’t you sit down and relax for a while? I promise not to pounce,” he added dryly. “Tonight anyway.”
Flushing, she moved past him to the couch. She sat down with a bit less grace than usual, suddenly rattled—and not because he’d asked her to remain in the room. Passing by him, she had caught the scent of his after-shave, and she realized then why she had felt so certain that rough kiss had not come from him. Rafe’s after-shave—more familiar to her than she’d realized—was a very pleasant musky scent. What she had sensed fleetingly during the dark embrace had been the sharp scent of cinnamon.
Not Rafe. Who?
They talked casually for a while, Maggie responding absently. Then she pleaded weariness and escaped to her room. She wasn’t hungry, only bewildered, and her dreams were filled with faceless Indians.
—
Rafe sat in the den for a long time after Maggie left, thinking. The frustration over having made no headway in persuading her to trust him had translated itself into recklessness, and Rafe knew from long experience that while that daring mood held him, he was very apt to act without thinking.
It had not been a conscious decision to play the part Maggie expected of him. He had intended only to tease, cajole, or trick her into relaxing a bit and thinking of something other than her work. But her heedless dash across terrain dangerous to anyone who didn’t know it had scared the hell out of him, and his embrace had gotten out of hand.
After that his own particular devil had prodded him to play the part of a rake. He didn’t know if it would work. Her reaction to his sudden turnabout had delighted him. She’d been rattled and off-balance, uncertain. And her threat to leave had been more automatic, he thought, than decisive.
But what heartened him more than anything else had been her response to his kiss. The fire he’d suspected Maggie possessed was there, lurking just beneath her cool exterior, and he now knew that passion as well as temper could set it alight.
It was more than a beginning.
Rafe was groping in the dark, but he had a strong feeling that a declaration of love from him would frighten her just as much as the rakish attentions of a so-called heartbreaker. Maggie had stood alone too long to be at ease with the thought of allowing someone else into her life.
So what he had to do, in essence, was to slide into her life without appearing to be a serious threat.
He could act with the best of them. And no one could pull out the stops or chew the scenery like a Delaney.
Maggie didn’t have a chance.
He leaned forward to pick up the feather she’d left on the coffee table. As he passed it through his fingers he began to chuckle.
—
Throughout the following morning Maggie brooded over her mysterious assailant, saying nothing to anyone about the episode until lunchtime. Most of the workers on Shamrock tended to pack their lunches and eat within the coolness of the barn halls, and Maggie and her staff were no exception. Rafe had been kept busy all morning at the far end of the compound overseeing the shipment of several groups of horses going out to new owners.
Only Russell and the two girls, Pat and Lisa, were here today, and Russell had wolfed down his lunch and gone to help load some Arabians into the vans. Maggie was alone with the young women as they ate. She was trying to think of some casual way to broach the subject of strangely dressed men with strange habits when a giggling comment from Lisa made it unnecessary.
“Marion said the bandit came back last night.”
Maggie looked up from her sandwich, thinking of Marion, the brisk, cheerful Arabian trainer she had met. “Bandit? What bandit?”
Lisa’s green eyes widened with amusement. “The Shamrock kissing bandit. Isn’t that great?”
“What?”
Both Lisa and Pat laughed at Maggie’s incredulous wail, and Lisa explained.
“Yeah, that’s what she told me. Nobody’s ever gotten a good look, but it seems he’s an Apache—or wants to be one—and he shows up here every spring. He steals kisses. I love it!” Lisa was from Chicago, and was still newly delighted at being in the Southwest. The history of the area fascinated her.
“Are you trying to tell me,” Maggie said slowly, “that there’s some madman running around at night dressed up like an Indian and kissing women?”
Lisa giggled again. “According to Marion—and she’s been here for years.”
Maggie
tuned out the remainder of the conversation as her apprentices argued over possible identities, but she noticed that Rafe’s name had not even been mentioned. She finished her lunch and left barn four to wander along the lane. She was thinking about the Shamrock “kissing bandit” and felt torn between incredulity and amusement. Of all the ridiculous—
Rafe approached her just then, riding a big, muscled Quarter horse and leading another one. “Come on, Maggie love. We’re going to see the mares and foals!”
She looked around hastily, flushing at his somewhat loud and cheerful hail and worried at what others might think. There were plenty of people within earshot, but all seemed to have gone suddenly deaf, and Maggie’s anxious gaze revealed only stony faces holding vast indifference.
It didn’t reassure her.
“Stop calling me that!” she hissed, swinging aboard the horse he’d brought for her.
Rafe only grinned and tossed her a Western hat that was a smaller version of the one he wore. “Wear this, darlin’,” he ordered, ignoring her command. “It’s the middle of the day and you aren’t used to this dry heat yet.”
She clapped the hat on her head and glared at him, but had to grit her teeth to hold back a begrudging laugh. Damn the man, she thought. He was incorrigible!
He was, she rapidly found, worse than incorrigible. He kept them at a steady walk down the lane and talked to her blithely, sprinkling endearments throughout the conversation and occasionally tossing a laughing comment to people they passed. He made it quite clear he didn’t give a damn who heard him addressing his new trainer as if she were his lover. In fact, he seemed to be taking pains to instill that belief in everyone within earshot.
When they left the barns far behind and reached an enormous pasture where the mares and foals were kept, Rafe dismounted and ground-tied his horse before coming to her side.
“We can walk from here,” he said.
Gazing down at him, Maggie strongly mistrusted the gleam in his black eyes. “We can ride,” she said firmly, abruptly conscious that they were virtually in the middle of nowhere with only horses for company.