Hell’s Bluff. It figured, she thought.
She tried very hard all morning to convince herself to leave. She really tried. She kept her people and her horses busy, cleaned tack that didn’t need cleaning, and rode two Arabians as a favor to Marion. She drove her Jeep out to the cottage being readied for her, faintly surprised to find the work still in the early stages but instantly in love with the little house. She worked both of her personal horses and gave half a dozen of the surprised ranch horses baths. Then she seized a pitchfork and began mucking out a stable until one of the maintenance men took it away from her with a laughing comment about union rules.
By the end of the day Maggie was still at the ranch. Exhausted and inclined to talk to herself, but still there. She’d been conscious of the sound of a helicopter very early in the day, but had stubbornly refused to go have a look…or greet Rafe…if it was Rafe. But she discovered she was walking more quickly than usual as she neared the house.
She didn’t see Rafe, and slipped quietly into the house, heading for her rooms and a shower. After dressing, she glanced out the sliding glass doors leading to the veranda, and saw a figure beyond the pool. After gazing for a moment, undecided, she finally slid the door open and made her way out there.
He was leaning against the fence watching the sunset. He must have had pretty good radar, too, she thought, because he turned before she made a sound.
Rafe had deliberately not gone in search of Maggie when he’d returned from Hell’s Bluff. He had wanted her to seek him out, something in him needing that evidence that she’d missed him—at least a little. He felt his heart leap when he turned and saw her, and he forgot, for the moment, what he looked like.
Maggie stopped and stared at him. Her gaze meandered from his head to his boots. Along the way, she found a truly glorious black eye, a wide Band-Aid over his nose, and knuckles that were considerably scraped and bruised. He also looked as if he’d had little or no sleep. When her eyes lifted again to meet his, she saw that there was a sheepish expression showing on the part of his face that wasn’t multicolored or bandaged.
And she just couldn’t resist.
“Had a fight with the devil and lost?”
Rafe narrowed his good eye at her. “I came back, didn’t I? A Delaney never loses!”
“What does the devil look like?” she asked.
“Worse. A lot worse.” He lifted a hand to tenderly finger his nose. “But I broke my nose again, dammit.”
Maggie bit the inside of her cheek. “Did you go to hell just to get into a fight?”
“No,” he answered patiently. “I went because York called. The fight came later.”
“Ah.” Maggie nodded wisely. “Well, I’d say you got your just deserts.”
“You don’t even know what it was about.”
“I don’t have to. If ever a man deserved thrashing…”
He winced. “Don’t yell at me, please, lass.”
“Devil get you drunk too?” she asked, unfeeling.
“No, that came later.” Rather hastily, he added, “I’m feeling bruised and battered and vulnerable.”
Maggie reminded herself that Rafe was a born actor. She had told herself that repeatedly over the last week. But he did look vulnerable, rather wistful and pathetic and—damn the man!—it got to her.
“You should put a steak on that eye,” she said, her voice as brisk as she could make it.
“I was going to,” he said vaguely.
She took his arm and turned him toward the house. “Well, come on then.”
Very meek, Rafe allowed himself to be led into the house and shooed into his den. A large part of Maggie was more than suspicious of this sudden docility, but she chalked it up to pain and weariness. She located a raw steak without benefit of Kathleen’s help, since the housekeeper was busy burning dinner, and carried it into the den. Rafe was sprawled bonelessly in his chair, his head back and eyes closed, and he did look both weary and as if he were in pain.
After a moment Maggie approached the chair from the back and very gently laid the steak over the injured eye. Rafe made no attempt to hold the steak in place himself, but sighed softly.
“Thank you, lass. That feels wonderful.”
He did reach up then, but only to grasp her free hand where it rested on the back of the chair and hold it against his cheek.
“Did you really break your nose?”
Eyes still closed, he smiled crookedly. “Well, not thoroughly. A slight fracture. The first two times hurt a hell of a lot more.”
“You’ve broken your nose three times?”
“Strictly speaking, someone else broke my nose three times. Three someones. Four, actually, since two ganged up on me the first time.”
“Has it occurred to you,” she asked affably, “that fighting is not exactly a rational way to decide an argument?”
“It works,” he pointed out.
She sighed. “Must be your Irish blood.”
“Or just my combination of blood. The Apaches were no slouches as fighters, and neither were the Spaniards or the Mexicans. The Irish blood just makes me a little quicker off the mark.”
It occurred to her then that this was the first time he hadn’t stood when she came into a room, and that little lapse from his usual good manners made her soften even more toward him. She followed the line of thought, trying to ignore the feel of his cheek beneath her hand. “You have…old-fashioned manners. What part of your heritage is responsible for that?”
“A very recent heritage.” He chuckled softly. “Mother. Dad brought her home after the war, a true Irish bride. She was small, with black hair and laughing dark eyes, and she made sure her boys were well-mannered. Drummed it into us, and I don’t suppose any of us have forgotten even though it’s been fifteen years….”
Unconsciously she moved her hand against his face, sliding it down to stroke his jaw. She found it tense beneath her touch, and her throat ached because his voice had grown husky, grieving even after fifteen years. It was still husky when he spoke again.
“She always insisted we dress for dinner. We still do at Killara. At our mother’s table.”
Maggie’s hand slipped downward to lie on his chest, and she bent without thought to rest her cheek against his. How old had he been when he’d lost his parents? Seventeen? She had been sixteen when she had, virtually if not in actuality, lost her father.
At least he’d had his brothers.
After a long moment Rafe said softly, “We never escape our pasts, do we, Maggie love? A distant past or a recent past…it’s always with us.”
“I don’t know my…distant past,” she said, equally soft, her cheek still pressed to his. “Only the recent one. I know I’m Irish, but I don’t know if one of my ancestors married an Indian maiden or was buried at Boot Hill. I have no symbol claimed by an ancestor with a puckish sense of humor. I can’t look at any land and know my family held it for generations, or dress for a meal at my mother’s table….”
As her wistful voice trailed away Rafe peeled the steak from his eye and tossed it aside. He grasped her wrist gently and drew her, unresisting, around the chair until he could pull her down across his lap. He held her lightly, his fingers toying with her ponytails until the elastic bands were gone and her hair spread across her back in a honey-colored curtain.
With incredible tenderness he said, “Poor lass, to be so alone. No wonder you want a ranch of your own so badly.”
“My ranch,” she whispered, the words coming without her volition. “Where I’ll be in charge. Master of my fate. That’s…so hard. But to be in control…to match the bloodlines of horses and—and know what traits you’ll produce. Nothing left to chance.” She released a sighing breath, dimly aware that the tables had turned. She had wanted to soothe his pain and grief, and now he was soothing what she had only just recognized as a wound of her own.
“You,” she murmured, “you’re like your horses. Pedigreed. Bloodlines you can trace back to your beginnings. W
hat was it like, growing up a Delaney?” she asked, boneless beneath the stroking touch of his hand on her hair. “I’ve heard that you Delaneys are called the Shamrock Trinity. What was it like being the youngest of a trinity?”
Rafe was quiet for a minute. “It was…always having a sense of family, of roots. It was playing games in the old keep the family had brought over from Ireland and reassembled at Killara. It was reading the journals of ancestors and wondering if the present could ever live up to the past. It was…responsibility.”
His voice lightened. “And it was a childhood. It was being punished—along with my brothers—because a clock was broken.”
“A clock?”
“A very, very old clock. Made of bog wood dug up from the marshes of Ireland and hand carved with the Delaney shield. Old Shamus brought it over, and it ran perfectly. Until my brothers and I came along. It was broken, and never worked right again.”
“Who did it?” she asked, curious.
He chuckled. “I didn’t.”
“None of you admitted it?”
“And so we were all three punished. A normal family story.”
Maggie was silent for a moment, then she stirred slightly. “You’re the youngest. Did that make a difference?”
“In growing up? No more than in any other family. There was a certain amount of competitiveness among us, but nothing unusual. We’ve always been close as brothers go—maybe because we’re fairly close in age. Or maybe because there was never resentment over our places in the family business. Burke was always the brilliant one, the businessman. York was the renegade; mining and oil concerns suit him. And with me it was always horses.”
She sat motionless, her head on his shoulder, listening to his deep, soft voice. She was tired and knew she was vulnerable, but the tales of Rafe’s past behavior, and even the behavior she’d seen herself that seemed to confirm his reputation, was all fading from her thoughts. Could a heartbreaker be this gentle, this quiet and undemanding? Could a scalp-hunting charmer be perceptive enough to see and soothe her newly discovered pain at having no roots?
Funhouse mirrors: a man who was a dozen men….It didn’t make sense! Which was the true image?
Maggie was too tired to think about it. Sleepily she breathed in the musky scent of him, accepting what he was in this moment. She was only half aware of murmuring, “You’re a very confusing man, boss,” and felt more than heard him chuckle.
She never would have believed that she could fall sleep in his arms, but the last thing Maggie heard was a brief conversation that just barely reached her mind.
“Will you be wanting dinner, Mr. Rafe?”
“I don’t think so, Kath. Thanks anyway.”
“She was restless last night. Missing you, I’ll be thinking.”
“You would.”
I didn’t miss him, Maggie thought in drowsy mutiny.
“Mr. Rafe, the jeweler called today about the ring you dropped off to be cleaned. Would that be the one your dear mother meant for your bride?”
“Hush, Kath. Is it ready?”
“A few days, the man said.”
“Good. That’s good.”
—
It was much later when Rafe carried a sleeping Maggie to her bed, and it took every shred of willpower he could command to lay her gently down and remove nothing but her shoes. He stood gazing at her for a moment, his heart lurching because her lovely face was so vulnerable in sleep, all her defenses down.
Lovely Maggie, he thought, as wary as a skittish colt when she was awake. But he could remember the touch of her hand earlier, a touch that had been seemingly instinctive and wholly willing. They had been closer in that moment—a shared interlude of remembered pain—than ever before.
A part of Rafe was willing to put his fate to the test right now, this minute. Wake her up with kisses, gambling on the response he’d felt from her more than once. But for all his recklessness Rafe had discovered a new emotion within himself these last days, born of his growing love for her: Caution. An almost desperate caution. If she had mattered less, he would have taken the chance of rushing her, giving in to the urges of his heart and his body.
She mattered too much.
Gazing at her sleeping face, he knew quite honestly and without conceit that she was the only thing he’d ever wanted that could be beyond his reach. Pride, wealth, power—none of it would win him Maggie’s love.
He dared not move too quickly. In teasing her, he could—just—control his own desires. And it was worth the price of his restless nights to hear her laugh and to see the sparkle of baffled wrath in her eyes. To hear the little choked-off gurgle of laughter when she quite obviously wanted to yell furiously at him instead.
But Rafe didn’t know how much longer he could continue as he had these last couple of weeks. That he had to continue was a certainty, because once he lost control, he would never again be able to pretend what he felt for her was a light or teasing emotion. And if Maggie realized that too soon, her own insecurities could drive her away before she could learn to feel anything for him.
All his life Rafe had been conscious of his own place in the history of his family. Bloodlines, she’d said. Maggie had no knowledge of hers, and that lack was something he knew she felt very deeply. She wanted a ranch of her own, a home to be master of. And he wasn’t at all sure that she would be content with sharing his place. She’d worked so long and so hard, making a name for herself with nothing but her own skills and determination.
How he respected her for that! He himself had been born with a name made powerful by others, and though that had never seriously bothered him, he wondered now if he could have done as well as she if he’d started with nothing.
It was a sobering thought.
He had carved a niche for himself in the Delaney empire based on his own abilities and skills. But it had been his stock he’d handled, his land he’d walked upon. He had never been forced to work for others, to bow to another’s wishes.
For the first time Rafe began to understand what had driven York to prove himself years before. York had felt an added incentive, of course. He had felt the need to prove himself a strong man, and not just a strong Delaney. But Rafe made a mental note not to try quite so hard to keep his restless brother close to home.
Home….
Rafe turned and quietly left Maggie’s room after a last glance. He had noticed her growing love for this land, and hoped he could convince her this was her home, the place where she belonged.
In the meantime he had no choice but to continue his teasing “seduction.” Maggie mistrusted the rake, but rage at him though she inevitably did, laughter was never far from her voice or her eyes. And there was more than consolation, Rafe thought, in his patience.
He loved the sound of her laughter.
He hesitated outside the kitchen for a moment, listening to the clashes and rattles of Kathleen’s “cleaning.” His next step was risky, he knew. But Maggie’s mood seemed definitely softened, and she just might accept his reasoning. Maybe. He fingered his nose gingerly and reflected with some satisfaction that his multicolored visage would rouse pity in the heart of a stone statue.
Maggie was hardly made of stone, and if he timed his explanation just right, he might get away with it. He stepped through the doorway of the kitchen, conjuring a disturbed expression.
“Kath? York needs you—”
—
Maggie opened her eyes in her own bedroom, fully awake in a jarring instant and conscious of several things. Sunlight filtering through her windows told her it was late morning; memory told her it was Sunday; and one glance told her that she’d slept in her clothes.
She could only vaguely recall a conversation between Rafe and Kathleen—something about a ring?—and had absolutely no memory of anything after that. He must have carried her to bed. Unnerved, Maggie climbed out of bed and stripped off her clothes.
Rafe had insisted some days before that she plan to take at least one full day off each w
eek, and she had chosen Sunday since the ranch was usually quiet on that day. This day. Knowing she probably wouldn’t ride today, she obeyed an impulse and dressed in a casual denim skirt with a red-checked blouse tied loosely at her waist.
Another impulse drove her to leave her hair loose, and she brushed it until it hung in a shining gold curtain to her waist.
Further unnerved by her own impulses, she left her bedroom and made her way through the quiet house. In the empty kitchen she fixed orange juice for herself and ate a slice of toast. Afterward she began wandering restlessly through the house. Where was Rafe? And Kathleen?
She walked down a narrow hallway that ran behind the kitchen along one wing. Her restlessness turned to interest when she realized she was in what was obviously the oldest part of the building. It was constructed of adobe, with small rooms and narrow windows. She hadn’t stopped to think about it before, but this house had probably been rebuilt or at the very least added to, over the years as she’d been told had happened to Killara. Most of the rooms were for storage, filled with old furniture and various other antique items.
But one room captured her attention to the point of drawing her inside. It had obviously been a library or study at one time or another. Bookshelves lined two walls and contained dusty, old books, some clearly journals and notebooks. There were several very old maps framed and behind glass on the two remaining walls, and near the door was a row of shelves holding an amazing collection of steins ranging from a beaten—and somewhat battered—silver mug to a beautifully ornate porcelain stein that had probably never been sullied by beer.
“There you are,” Rafe said, stepping into the room. “Thought I heard you in here.”
For a moment Maggie was too busy staring at him to speak. Though the swelling had gone down in both his eye and nose, he still wore the hallmarks of a two-fisted free-for-all. If he’d been multi-colored the day before, today he boasted glorious Technicolor.
“You look terrible!” she exclaimed without thinking, then corrected herself. To her, Rafe could never look terrible.
“Thank you,” he said gravely.