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Cain narrowed his eyes. “I never said that.”
“Well, that puts you miles ahead of the competition.”
“Competition?”
“Never mind.”
She turned and he knew he’d said something wrong. Dammit.
“No, wait. Mrs. Cortland. I may be a little outta practice, but I think I just stepped on your toes. I’m…sorry.”
Maggie turned around, her expression thawing as she hugged herself with her arms. She exhaled slowly. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to— It’s been a bad day. You have nothing to do with that.”
“Look—” He stared down at a callus on his hand. “Maybe I should just go.”
“No, don’t. I mean…” She pressed her hands together and he had the oddest feeling that what he’d heard in her voice was desperation. “What I mean is, I still have to feed you. You did say you’d stay for lunch? Right?”
Her eyes had gone dark. Not desperation. Fear. Not of him, but of something. Like a child scared of being alone in the dark, afraid the boogyman would come out of her closet.
He shouldn’t care, he told himself.
No, make that, he didn’t care.
He couldn’t afford to get involved with this woman’s troubles. He had enough of his own. But something about her—maybe it was her stubborn pride—made him want to tell her that everything would be all right. Hold her against him until the worry melted from her eyes.
Hell.
As if he could. As if he had it in him to try. She was a means to an end. That’s all. She’d offered him food and he’d take it and go. Simple. Clean.
No fuss, no muss. That was his motto. And he’d damned well better stick with it if he was ever going to—
“Why don’t you come in and wash up,” she said, before he could finish his thought. Turning abruptly, she headed toward the house. “I hope you don’t mind chicken. I thought I’d fry it.”
Chicken? His mouth watered instantly at the very sound of the word and his empty belly growled.
No fuss, no muss, he thought, falling in behind her with all the self-restraint of a back-door dog.
Yeah, right.
Chapter 3
Four hours and a dozen chores later, Maggie stood in her doorway holding the glass of lemonade she’d poured for Cain, watching him wield an axe over the ancient limb of the oak that had fallen across her yard in the last storm. She hadn’t asked him to do it. He’d insisted. Something about paying her back for the chicken and biscuits she’d fixed him.
She allowed herself a smile, remembering how he’d devoured the meal she’d made him. She suspected that it had been more than a couple of days since his last full meal. It made her wonder about him. A drifter, but not like any drifter she’d ever known. What had brought him to this? Where had he been and what had happened to him?
It was none of her business, of course, and she settled for the fact that she had, in a small way, repaid the debt she owed him for saving her life. How odd, she thought, that it could give her such pleasure, such a simple, old-fashioned thing as watching a man sate his hunger with her cooking. It made her feel useful. Necessary.
But now, as the rhythmic sound of the axe echoed across the shadow-drawn yard, she realized that “necessary” didn’t adequately describe what she was feeling as she watched him. She felt her pulse skitter and told herself she shouldn’t stare. But with his back to her, she indulged herself.
Where Ben had been compact, Cain’s build was lean and powerful. The muscles in his back and arms bunched and flexed as he hefted the axe over his head and brought it down hard against the ancient wood. There was a controlled violence to the way he dismantled that limb. Piece by piece. Stroke by stroke. The only break in his rhythm had come when he’d paused to add the chopped wood into a neat and growing pile that stood now to his left.
He was thinner than he’d been once. She could see that in the way his jeans fit—loose and low on his hips—and in the definition of his ribs. But whatever muscle mass he’d lost to hunger was more than compensated for by the sleek, animal-like grace with which he moved.
It wasn’t so much an economy of motion, she decided, studying him, as it was a deliberateness. She wondered absently where a man like him learned that kind of self-containment. And what in his past that had taught him to always watch his back.
Almost as if he’d heard her thought, he stopped chopping, catching sight of her watching him. Jigger, who’d been lying in the shade watching Cain, too, lifted his big, dark head and thumped his tail happily against the damp soil in greeting.
“You’ve got quite a rapt audience,” she told Cain.
“He’s just keepin’ an eye on me.” Cain wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his wrist and reached for his black T-shirt. “That for me?” he asked, indicating the lemonade.
She pushed away from the door and started toward him. “I thought you might be thirsty.”
He tugged his T-shirt on, then took the glass from her and guzzled down the contents in four serious gulps. Maggie stared, unable to take her eyes off him, or off the stray rivulet of moisture trickling down his chin.
He gave a sigh of satisfaction and dragged a forearm slowly across his mouth, all the while watching her. “Thanks.”
She swallowed hard. Lord, what was wrong with her?
Taking the empty glass, she fixed her gaze on the stack of wood. “You must have been a Boy Scout once.”
“Nope. My old man never believed in team player mentality,” he said, stroking the old oak handle of the axe as though he was prepared to tolerate her interruption politely. “Whacked apart my share of tree limbs, though.”
“I’ll bet. Grow up on a farm?”
He tossed a look in her direction. “Ranch.”
Ah. “That must account for the laconic cowboy conversationalist you’ve become.”
He grinned, staring off at the sun as it settled between the peaks of the Bitterroots. “You wanna talk? Or you want me to chop up this limb?”
She hugged herself against the chill beginning to settle in the air. Maggie glanced at the sinking sun, too, remembering how many sunsets she’d watched alone lately. “It’ll be dark soon.”
His gaze slid to her. If another man had ever made her feel utterly naked with one look before, she couldn’t remember it. “You know,” she began, “I really…appreciate what you’ve done here, but you don’t have to finish.”
“I said I would.”
“I mean, it’s a big limb and when you volunteered you didn’t even know my chain saw was broken and now I really owe you so much more than a chicken dinner for all that you’ve done for—”
“Do you want me to go?”
She blinked up at him. “No, it’s just—”
“If you want me to leave, I’ll leave.” He leaned the axe handle against the wood pile and stepped back.
She did want him to go. Wanted him to stop making her brood about things she couldn’t have anymore. But she found herself shaking her head. “I—I don’t—”
“—know me.” He ran a hand across his stubbled chin as if realizing his appearance might have something to do with the look on her face right now. “I’m afraid I don’t have any references in my back pocket. It’s been a while since I held down a job.”
“I…told you I couldn’t afford to—”
“—hire me. I know.” He smiled ironically. “But you already paid me for this. See, it’s been a while since I’ve had more than truck-stop food either. Food, in any case. I figure that’s worth this whole damned tree limb. And I mean to finish it.”
“But it’s…getting dark.”
He glanced around, as if noticing for the first time that daylight had nearly disappeared. He slid his fingers along the smooth wood of the axe handle with a self-deprecating laugh. “Sorry. I’m a little slow on the uptake these days, too. I’ll just get my things together and be outta your hair.” He leaned the axe handle against the woodpile and reached for the jacket he’d left draped there.
It took Maggie a moment to react. “Cain. That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Cortland,” he said, as if he were used to being dismissed.
“But where will you go?”
“That’s not your worry,” he said, shoving his arms into his jacket. “I’ll manage.”
“Do you have somewhere to stay?”
He started toward his bike parked across the yard. “I’ll manage,” he repeated.
“Wait. Cain.” Maggie crossed the distance between them stopping a few feet from him.
He stopped, but didn’t look at her.
“There’s a cot in the tack room. It’s not much, but it’s clean and dry and—”
He pivoted toward her, surprise clearly etched on his face. “You…want me to stay the night?”
Maggie bit the inside of her lip. “I’m…yes. If you want to. For the night. In the barn.”
His shoulders relaxed a fraction and he looked at the barn. “Whatever you’re afraid of, you should know I’d never hurt you. You don’t know me, but you should know that.”
A shiver ran through her. A dark inkling that this stranger had the potential to break her heart.
Ridiculous, she thought. Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, he’ll be gone. After everything she’d been through in the last year, her heart was every bit as bullet proof as Cain’s appeared to be.
She brightened and forced herself to smile. “Then it’s settled. I have a stew on the stove. Come in when you’re hungry.”
She could feel his eyes on her back as she turned and headed back to the house. Jigger trotted along beside her.
“Yes, ma’am,” he called to her back.
She turned, walking backward and tossed him another smile. “It’s Maggie. Just Maggie.”
The last of the sun had sunk behind the mountains limning Maggie’s valley by the time Cain finished with the fallen limb. He stacked the last split of wood on the pile beside him, then wiped the sweat off his face with the bandana he kept in his back pocket. The muscles in his arms and his back burned like hot embers and he could feel the blisters rising on his palms, but he walked toward the water spigot near the paddock feeling a sense of satisfaction. The physical labor made him feel alive—useful—something that had become almost foreign to him over the past four years.
He’d missed being able to walk outside when he wanted and feel the sun against his skin. He’d missed seeing the sunset and the sunrise. Four months since his release and he hadn’t missed a single one. He didn’t want to remember the man that place had made him. But neither could he leave him behind. He was the sum of his life and it had made him hard.
He gave the faucet handle a twist. The water spilled out in an icy cold rush, but he splashed it against his face and across the back of his neck, energized by the shock.
He glanced out over the pastures to the west, where the land rose to meet the mountains and Maggie’s herd of mares and foals grazed in the dusky light. The small herd of black Angus she used for training were finishing off the hay she’d laid out for them.
Once he’d dreamed of having a place like this of his own. With a string of horses and cattle and land as far as the eye could see. Not the Concho. That had never belonged to him. That had been Judd’s domain. And always would be. But somewhere, Cain’s dreams had fallen away to make room for plain old survival. For now, it was enough that he’d sleep tonight with a full belly and a roof over his head.
He glanced at the light spilling from the kitchen window and saw Maggie’s silhouette moving around near the stove. It was simple gratitude he should feel toward her for offering him the chance to get back on his feet. But some other, less well-defined feeling complicated the simplicity of that. It wasn’t as easy as sex. Sex was simple. Lust, even simpler. He couldn’t honestly deny feeling either one. But what man could? She was a natural beauty with vulnerability and loneliness written all over her. And he’d been too damned long without a woman to overlook what she had to offer.
He wasn’t, by choice, a curious man. He had no interest in getting to know anyone better than what he could learn from a handshake. But he was curious about her. Who was she? And what the hell was she doing out here all by herself in a country that devoured the strongest of men? What was that jackass of a husband of hers thinking, leaving a woman like her alone?
And, Cain wondered darkly, if he hadn’t ridden out here today in that storm, would she be in her kitchen now, puttering over the hot stove? Or would that damned horse have precluded any speculation on his part at all?
Which, he reminded himself, he shouldn’t be doing anyway. Tomorrow, he’d be moving on and Maggie Cortland and whatever problems she was facing would be miles behind him.
She was setting the table with dishes when he knocked quietly on the door. Jigger announced him and Maggie called for him to come on in. The door was open.
The aroma hit him first: savory beef and vegetables simmering on top of the stove. The warmth of the kitchen hit him next, followed immediately by the gut-punching view of Maggie’s backside as she leaned over the table with a handful of silverware. She’d changed out of her work clothes and into a slender pair of black slacks and a sweater the color of the sky in April.
“Hi,” she said brightly, turning toward him. “All finished?”
He cleared his throat. “Just about.” She smiled at him and he felt something stutter inside him. “Smells good.”
“It’s almost ready. I thought…maybe…you might like a hot shower before dinner.”
A hot shower? Cain blinked. He hadn’t even dreamed of that small luxury.
“Down the hall, second door on your right. Towels are in the cupboard. And a fresh razor if you want one.”
Cain swallowed hard and nodded. “That’s…that’s kind of you. I’ll just,” he said, backing out of the kitchen, “get something clean out of my gear.”
Maggie smiled and turned back to the cupboard, fishing out a pair of water goblets for the table.
Cain headed for his bike, praying that he had something clean to replace the clothes he had on his back.
When they’d finished eating the stew and biscuits Maggie had made for supper, she poured Cain a cup of coffee and they walked out onto the porch together. Evening had brought out the blanket of stars overhead and the chill in the air required Maggie to throw on a soft jacket over her sweater. She’d gotten used to being alone. It felt strange to have company, Maggie thought. Their meal had been awkward and full of long silences, and now he stood, staring out over the mountains, his look, a thousand miles away.
“Penny for your thoughts,” she said.
He looked up, then took a sip from his coffee. “They might be worth almost that.”
“The mountains are beautiful, aren’t they?” she said, taking a sip of her mug.
His gaze scanned the silvery trace of the mountaintops. “Yes.”
“Even in moonlight,” she said. “They never cease to steal my breath.”
“How long you been here?” he asked.
“Six years. Not long enough,” she replied. “Never long enough.”
“It’s an easy thing to fall in love with the land.”
