A Willing Wife. Jackie Merritt
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he’s only five years old,” Maggie wailed.
“But he’s a Perez, Maggie.”
“Which makes him immortal? I don’t think so, Cruz. Come on, you go one way and I’ll go another. I’ve got to find him before he pulls another naughty-little-boy trick and gets himself really hurt this time. He thinks he’s tough, you know, and he doesn’t have the strength of a flea.”
Cruz laughed again as he walked off, conveying a boys-will-be-boys attitude. Ignoring it for the time being, Maggie headed for the corrals and barns, because that was where she’d found Travis yesterday. Cruz could laugh off her motherly concern, but her son’s disobedience was no laughing matter for Maggie. This time he was definitely going to be punished, she promised herself.
Unless he’s hurt! she thought with a burst of panic that caused her to start running. Travis wasn’t anywhere near the corrals, and she started peering into outbuildings. Spotting the huge horse barn where the Fortunes had always stabled their best horses, Maggie’s heart skipped a beat. With the hat that Dallas had given him, Travis might be playing cowboy, and she knew that often horses could be high-strung and skittish!
Maggie hurried to the barn and went in. It was well-lit and very clean. A wide aisle ran through the center of the building, with stalls on each side. She could hear horses snorting and moving around, and she wondered if her five-year-old son would actually have the nerve to go into a stall with a strange horse. Sometimes Travis’s boasts about being tough were funny, but Maggie knew that he really did believe that telling people how tough he was made it true.
Scared to death, she began walking the aisle and looking into stalls. “Travis?” she called at each one.
About halfway through the barn, she heard her own name. “Maggie?” Dallas said as he stepped out of a stall. “What’s wrong?”
Talking to Dallas again was the last thing Maggie wanted, but right now she had no choice. Still, her voice was cold as ice when she said, “Travis is missing again. I thought he might be in here.”
Dallas set down the brush he’d been using on Jubilee, a valuable stallion, and began walking toward Maggie. Though concerned about young Travis, Dallas couldn’t help looking at this incident as a heaven-sent opportunity to talk to Maggie again. “I haven’t seen him, Maggie. Unless he’s hiding somewhere, he’s not in here. I’ll help you look for him.”
A frisson of alarm rippled through Maggie. Dallas might be offering to help her find Travis, but he was looking at her again with ill-concealed hunger in his eyes!
“Thanks,” she said coldly, “but I don’t need your help. Cruz is helping.” Spinning, she walked away, forcing herself to leave at a normal speed so Dallas wouldn’t get any silly ideas about her being afraid of him. Not that he didn’t affect her, dammit. Even though she was angrier with him than she’d ever been with anyone, she felt her tingling reaction to his good looks and maleness.
Dallas ignored her frostily stated declaration of independence and stayed right behind her. Just outside the barn he asked, “Have you checked the equipment sheds?”
Maggie turned with blazing eyes, fully intending to give him yet another piece of her mind, when she heard Cruz shouting, “Maggie, I’ve got him! He was playing in a haystack behind one of the barns. He’s fine, and we’re going back to the house.”
She heaved a relieved sigh. Forgetting how much she despised Dallas, she said, “It looks as though keeping Travis on the ranch is a mistake. I have no idea why he started leaving the yard, but he keeps doing it, no matter how often I threaten, beg or cajole him.”
“Have you tried explaining the dangers he could run into on a ranch?” Dallas asked quietly, then quickly switched gears. “Maggie, you have to let me explain what happened earlier today.”
She was instantly angry again. “Have you forgotten I was there? What possible explanation could there be for your treating me like a tramp?”
Dallas groaned. “My God, I don’t think of you as a tramp.”
“Well, you certainly fooled me,” she snapped, and turned to leave.
Dallas rushed to keep stride with her. “Maggie, don’t go off like this. Talk to me, please. Everyone deserves a second chance, even a man who made a horse’s ass of himself.”
“We’re single-minded on that, at least,” she said with heavy sarcasm. She kept walking, and it irritated her that Dallas kept pace beside her. “Will you please stop following me? I’m not the least bit interested in anything you might have to say, and if I said what I’ve been thinking, your ears would get scorched black!”
“A red face and black ears,” Dallas said. “Paints a pretty picture, don’t you think?”
“Stop trying to be funny,” she snapped.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Maggie, just stop and talk to me for a minute. Please.”
“I will stop, just long enough to ask you why you even want to talk to me.”
He wiped his hands on the legs of his jeans. “I’m not sure I can explain it. What is it that happens when a man meets a woman and immediately knows that she’s special? It’s not something that a person chooses to happen—it just does.”
Maggie’s lip curled. “Yeah, I’m so special that it’s a wonder you didn’t offer me money for sex!”
“Oh, my God! Maggie, how can I make you understand that it wasn’t like that? For some stupid reason I thought you would, uh, appreciate honesty. I wanted you to like me so much that I…I…” Dallas wished the earth would just open up and swallow him whole. He had never in his life talked to a woman as he had to Maggie, but in defense of his apparently unforgivable faux pas, he had said nothing that wasn’t in his heart.
He looked so miserable that Maggie suddenly felt sorry for him. Wearily she said, “Just forget it happened, okay?”
“Can you forget it happened?” Dallas asked hopefully.
She walked away from him with one final comment. “The only answer I have for that question is, I’ll think about it.”
Three
Maggie greeted her mother when Rosita got home from work that evening, then watched Rosita suppress laughter over the huge hat on her small grandson’s head.
“Come here, you rascal, and talk to me,” Rosita said, sitting on a kitchen chair and pulling the boy onto her lap. “Now, tell your grandmother where you got that, uh, wonderful hat.”
“Dallas gave it to me, Grandma. Didn’t he, Mama?” Travis looked to his mother for confirmation. Rosita also looked at Maggie, only her eyes contained a suspect twinkle that made Maggie feel like squirming. She hastened to relate the only explanation that wouldn’t cause trouble between the Perezes and the Fortunes.
“He came by to see Travis,” she told her mother.
“And maybe to see you, too?” Rosita said with unabashed relish.
Travis slid from his grandmother’s lap. “I’m goin’ outside, Mama.”
Maggie instantly became all mother. “No, you are not going outside. I told you before that you will play inside the house until I can trust you not to leave the yard. Go and wash up for supper.”
“Aw, heck,” Travis groused as he left the kitchen dragging his feet.
“What was that all about?” Rosita asked.
“He left the yard again today. Cruz came by, and we both went looking for Travis. Cruz found him playing in a haystack behind one of the barns. Mama, I just don’t know what to do with my son. He will not obey me.”
“He obeys you most of the time, Maggie. He’s just so fascinated with the ranch. Try to