Chapter 25

 

Garret was burning up under the merciless sun. The weather was impossibly hot for so late in the season. He took his hat off and wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve, giving a look of disdain to the unrelenting offender. About two o’clock, he reckoned. He put his hat back on and set to work, shaking off the remembrance of his missed lunch as a minor annoyance. He forgot a lot of meals these days.

Lenny had come to him this morning and let him know the potatoes were ready to harvest. When Lenny said something was ready to harvest, he’d learned never to question and to do as she instructed. He hadn’t a natural affinity for growing things, but Lenny could make anything flourish. He discovered at a young age, she had an uncanny ability to sense when the crops and the garden vegetables for their winter rations were ready to be cut down, dug up, and stored. She had impressive timing with harvests and her determination to keep them fed on a variety of greens with their meats in the long winter months encouraged the boys to dig when she told them to.

Garret tossed a couple of the dirty brown vegetables into the cotton sack slung over his shoulder. As he squatted by the next yellowing plant to dig up the spuds under it, he glanced at the rest of the group, working in proximity to each other a ways off. With a little luck, they would have the field cleaned by the end of the day.

The list of things to do around the ranch had grown to an overwhelming amount after he’d skipped out on them to chase down Maggie. Guilt over leaving his people short-handed in his absence still pulled at him, even if they had encouraged him to go and get her. Maggie’s loss was deeply burrowed into the hearts of every last one of them.

Something had gone quiet in the Lazy S since she’d left, and putting his finger on it meant admitting how much she meant to the place, and to him. He dug harder, gouging a potato in the process of trying to avoid thoughts of her. Thinking of her didn’t help him. It sent him reeling.

He glanced up, caught Lenny glaring at him, shrugged in apology and stuck the cut potato into his pocket. It would have to go into their dinner before it ruined.

Damn, it was hot. The work was strenuous and he debated taking his shirt off. He didn’t often do it in front of Lenny. She might not act like it but she was still a lady, and he tried to treat her as such. Most of the time.

He decided against removing the thick cotton shirt he wore, though Lenny likely wouldn’t even give it a second thought. These days, her glance didn’t stray too far from Burke. A new, unsettling fact. Lenny was like his little tomboyish sister, and he still didn’t know how he felt about her interest in Burke, or his in her. Maggie, with her insight and intuition, had managed to pick up on Lenny’s feelings immediately.

There it was again. Maggie.

“You all right, boss?” Burke asked, startling him.

He hadn’t eaten much the whole day and had been doing intense labor since the early morning hours. The sway in his stance when he stood must have tipped Burke off that all was not well.

Straightening, he stretched the tight muscles in his back. “Just need to eat something, is all.”

“I don’t mean about that, boss. I mean about Maggie.”

When he could breathe again, he exhaled loudly. The mention of her name still hit him in the gut sometimes. “I’ll do. Get back to work, and Burke?”

Burke turned around to shuffle to another row of the dying plants. “Yeah, boss?”

“Don’t mention her again to me, you hear? You ain’t doin’ me any favors.”

Burke nodded, wearing the saddest look he had ever seen on his carefree friend’s face.

Weeks had passed since he’d returned from Boston without Maggie, but her absence still had everyone reeling.

“Sorry,” Garret grumbled, flinging his digging knife into the dirt to tell him where he left off. He needed a break. Whether from his worker’s pitying stares or his dreary thoughts, he didn’t know. He was going to break down again, and the last thing his mourning friends needed was to watch him do it. They’d seen enough in the last few weeks and his actions had them scared for him. It was in their concerned glances, but he could no better control his sorrow than the beating of his heart. It was part of him now, maybe even the biggest part.

He cleared the potato field and headed for the woods, lengthening his stride as anger at his loss welled to uncontrollable proportions. She’d affected him so wholly. Somehow she’d managed to take up every thought he had throughout the day. How could she have imprinted herself so completely on every square foot of the entire property? Everything had a memory attached to her, and she’d been here only a short time. He was infuriated, grateful, full of regret and hurt and then elated every time he came across something changed by her abbreviated stay.

Garret took off his hat and threw it at an old tree, and when that didn’t do the trick, took to whaling on the rough bark with his fists, desperate to feel anything besides this pain drowning him. He tired quickly and slid to the ground against the tree, panting. Fool.

A movement through the trees caught his wavering attention. Maybe, Injuns come to put him out of his misery. He couldn’t find it in himself to care overly, and tried to figure out where he was on the property. Surely, he was close to the road. He’d traveled in that direction from the potato field.

The movement seemed a little closer this time. A horse picked its way slowly through the well-worn dirt road’s tracks. He strained to hear. Someone sang quietly. A ghost had come upon him in the woods. The shade sang a song of coming home.

He stood, and tried to stay quiet so as not to lose the beautiful melody coming slowly closer. Step by quiet step, he moved forward until he followed the song through the thick brush.

Crouched, he remained hidden from view. It was Maggie. Or his imagination’s interpretation of her as she sat a dainty white filly, dressed in full skirts of the blackest silk. She held the reins with black gloved hands. A small fashionable hat with delicate black netting covering part of her face perched on her head. Her alabaster skin seemed to shimmer and glow against the dark color of her dress, and her full lips moved to the words of the haunting song coming from her chest. Frozen in his tracks, he was unable to do more than watch her as she passed.

Strange. Usually when he imagined her, she wore the red dress.

The shade passed, the song and the sound of hooves on sand faded, and he relaxed. “Goodbye, Maggie.” He’d been lucky to have had a moment with her memory.

The horse and the song halted, and the memory turned ungracefully in the saddle. “Garret?” she asked, with a wide-eyed look.

With a vacant smile, he turned away to search for his hat.

“Where in the bloody hell are you going?” imaginary Maggie demanded.

He stopped and spun around. His imaginings had never been so irritable with him before.

She dismounted and bore down on him. Maggie threw her arms around his neck and held on as his hands shot out to the sides for balance and they nearly tumbled backward.

“Maggie?” he whispered, as he slowly put his arms around her waist. He pressed his large hands into the small of her back and indulged in the weight of real flesh under them. Not imagined, then. “Maggie?” he repeated louder.

“Yes, yes, of course it’s me, ridiculous husband.” She refused to let go of his neck and her words tickled his ear, enticing him to lean even closer into her. “You don’t see me for a month and you forget what I look like, is that it, then?”

Chuckling, he hefted her off the ground in a firm embrace. “I thought I was imagining you again— Never mind all that. What’re you doing here?” he asked, pushing her back at arms’ length and gripping her shoulders to get a good look at her.

“What do you mean, what am I doing here? I live here, remember? What, did you think you could scare me away? Not likely.” She snorted. “I’m sorry, Mr. Shaw, but you made an oath and are stuck with me for the next several decades.”

Garret couldn’t keep the grin off his face.

The white horse snickered from much further away, and Maggie glared back at the creature. “Bollocks,” she cursed. “Damned horse has terrible manners,” she called to him over her shoulder as she scurried off to retrieve the filly.

He jogged after her to lend a hand. “Where did you get the horse?”

“It’s a very long story, and I’m afraid it’ll have to wait until later. Preferably after I hand her over to Lenny to break her thoroughly.” She’d yelled the last part at the retreating filly’s back as a threat, likely because the horse had picked up the pace when she’d heard her pursuers come after her.

A few minutes more, and Maggie snorted out a giggle. She looked to him and dared him not to laugh. Every time they stopped, the horse slowed and watched them. It was a game to the young filly, and the frustration at their interruption after so long apart dissipated into reluctant humor.

Garret’s boots stirred up dust as he trotted beside Maggie. “Let’s just let her go. She’ll probably make her way to the house eventually.”

“If you knew what that blasted little horse cost us, you wouldn’t leave it up to chance.”

“She cost a lot?” Where would Maggie have come across the money to buy an expensive horse?

“Yes, and she’s traveled all the way from Boston with me.”

With a sigh, he slowed to a walk. “We’ll herd her in the direction of the barn and then hope Cookie catches wind of her. Nobody can catch a spooked horse like he can.”

Maggie agreed and eased to a walk beside him. The horse slowed too. Irritating little creature.

* * * *

Walking beside him, Maggie was at a loss for words. She had so much to say to him but didn’t know where to start. He seemed to be struggling with the same problem. He couldn’t quite keep his gaze from her face and she lost herself happily in the brilliant color of his eyes. The wondrously happy look on his face, she was sure she’d only seen the night he’d decided to take her into his bed. The thought of it made her stomach clench and her temperature rise to near inferno.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked.

Maggie turned to tell him but looking into those bright, blue and expectant eyes, shied away. She’d almost forgotten how handsome and intimidating he was. He probably didn’t even know the effect he had on her. She loved him. Cared for him so deeply and abundantly, the potency of the feeling threatened to consume her until she might burst into a million tiny rays of light.

“Tell me,” he chided, pulling her to a stop to face him.

She sighed and dropped her gaze to the ground. Her cheeks heated so, her ears felt hot. “I was thinking about the night before I left for Boston,” she said in a quiet voice. “Our first time together.”

“Look at me, Maggie.”

Maggie pulled her face away from the ground and peered through the black mesh clipped onto her hat. Reaching up, she unpinned the hat, put it neatly into a large pocket in the side of her full skirts. She took her time, stalling, and finally looked up into Garret’s face. Color heated her cheeks, but her insecurities were his to see. If her husband couldn’t see all of her, then who could?

“You are so beautiful,” he said, stroking the pad of his thumb over her cheek, leaving a trail of cool relief in its wake. “I think about that night all the time.”

He pulled her close with sturdy and confident hands, and tilted her chin until she was lost in his eyes, the color of a Texas summer sky.

“If you ever leave again, I’m going with you,” Garret said, holding her gaze.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she replied, letting the emotion in her eyes show the truth of her words.

“Good.” He gave her that crooked smile she loved so much. “Welcome home, Mrs. Shaw.”

A shiver went through her as he leaned down, stroked his lips against hers. Dragging her even closer, he deepened the kiss, found the back of her neck with his hands then wrapped his fingers in her hair. He tilted her head even further, left her mouth and drifted down her neck with his lips. She clutched the fabric of his shirt in her growing need and desperation for his body to be near hers.

“I missed you,” he murmured, his voice rasping in her ear as he nibbled gently on it.

“Garret, I need you,” she begged.

“Come on.” He pulled her by the hand, leading her deeper into the woods.

“What about the horse?” she asked, still distracted by the feel of his warm hand around hers.

“Damn the horse. I don’t care what she cost.”

In the privacy of the forest, he spun and tugged her toward him. He kissed her with an edge of desperation, and she invited it. They had come far too close to losing each other to be gentle.

He trailed kisses down her neck and then to her collar bone. Maggie wasn’t quiet about her pleasure, which only spurred him into greater urgency. He grunted and put her back against the nearest tree, pressed his hips against hers as she begged him with quiet longing to take her. An act which he did with great pleasure as they closed their eyes to the rest of the world, to everything they’d been through and were, forging into one beautiful and blinding soul. Connection, commitment, acceptance and complete clarity came in the moment of release. From the sun-kissed summers of their childhoods to the wintery loneliness of adulthood, they had been unaware of the collision course that had guided them to such an essential moment.

Fate had led them to each other.