A name he recalled recently mentioned for having a stake in Cooney Camp.
Maggie would never forget the last few hours. She was close to dragging herself the last feet to her cabin. The walk back from the canyon left her chilled to the bone, aching with scrapes and trembling. What remained of her wedding gown after she had slashed off the cumbersome material tangling around her boots would serve for rags.
If she wasn’t so furious, she would give way to the tears burning in her eyes.
But Maggie was angry. Whoever had been shooting at her had kept her pinned on the canyon rim long after dark. Someone either wanted to frighten or kill her. She knew it had something to do with the claims her uncle had left her.
Satin rose from the shadows near the corner of the cabin, whining as she nuzzled Maggie’s hand. Maggie thought of McCready pinned down by her dog, but the attempted grin failed. McCready had been as helpless as she. Helpless. She shuddered to understand what that meant.
Maggie held on to her anger, refusing to allow room for any other feelings. Someone had tried to kill her.
After opening the door and slipping inside, she set her rifle in the corner, then barred the door. As she lit the lamp on the table, she wished she had let everyone know that McCready had won those claims from Pete. Someone might have used him for target practice and gotten lucky.
And the attempt on her life would never have happened.
Maggie slid the glass chimney back on the lamp just as the deepest level of her mind rejected the thought that McCready tried to have her killed. It just wasn’t the man’s way. She couldn’t even question why she believed this.
At the moment she couldn’t do more than pull out the roughly made wooden bench and sit.
She stared at her trembling hands. Fear finally shoved aside anger to take hold, sticking in her throat like cotton. Her laugh was bitter. Now, she thought, now that I’m safe, I get scared.
Shivering gripped her body, and she wrapped her arms around her waist. Satin rested her head on Maggie’s lap, soulful eyes looking up. Maggie sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. The need to cry with Satin her only witness to her weakness nearly overwhelmed her.
Stroking Satin’s head, she closed her eyes. The past, along with the days ahead, stretched out in the wretched weariness of her mind. Quincy’s disappearance was forgotten, her uncle’s murder set aside, and the loneliness that Maggie thought she could live with swamped overburdened senses.
Maggie knew she was strong. Physically and in spirit. Everyone who knew her told her so. Everyone believed it. There were times she believed it herself.
From the first, when she had trekked the mountains far to the north, her small footprints barely covering half of those made by her father, she had heard those words over and over.
“
Keep up, Maggie. I warned you how it would be. You have to be strong, girl, or it’s back to the home for you
.”
So she learned how to be strong. Maggie vowed never to go back to living with the orphans. They had no families, no one to care about or to call their own. She had a father and an uncle.
Seven years old she was, forcing cramped legs to keep moving when another step seemed impossible. She had learned to swallow bile like the first time she had to gut and skin the still-warm body of a rabbit her father had shot for their supper. She had not cried when her father had cut her tangled hair because there was no time for her to be brushing and braiding it. And she had never let it grow long again.
A long-buried memory surfaced of a corn husk doll that was so briefly in her possession, traded along with a hunting knife for a new pair of moccasins to replace her worn-out boots.
But these were old hurts. Things she believed she had forgotten.
The fear inside expanded as Maggie realized what she was doing to herself. Now was the time to be strong, not weak.
She had to remember that with every difficult skill she learned, there came a freedom she was loath to relinquish. A freedom she had embraced eagerly. Boy’s clothing made movement a joy. Riding astride allowed her to feel the power of the horse beneath her. Using a knife and a gun with unerring skill had protected her and freed her from dependence on anyone.
She knew how to survive beneath a baking desert sun and in the cold of mountain nights. Maggie had learned to never need another person to do for her.
But she had broken her own rule. She had needed Quincy Kessnick and his money.
Behind her closed eyelids she saw herself flattened on the rocky ground again, sweat—not from heat but from fear—pouring from her body. She listened to the echo of the crack and whine of bullets that kept her pinned down. Maggie had admitted that she needed someone then. She needed to know that someone would care if she died. That one person might worry about her.
It was a secret weakness that she was ashamed of acknowledging, even to herself.
Satin raised up with her paws on Maggie’s leg and licked her cheek. Leaning her head against the thick, soft fur of the dog’s neck, Maggie took what comfort the animal offered.
A few moments later the dog growled. Maggie froze, gripping Satin’s fur coat with both hands. She darted a quick look at the empty rifle in the corner even as she released the dog and drew her gun. Someone was coming up the path to the cabin.
“Maggie? Maggie, open up.”
The sound of McCready’s voice and his fist pounding the door sent a flood of relief through her. She set the gun on the table and went to unbar the door, unwilling to question herself for trusting him.
“Where have you been?” he demanded, pushing the door open.
Maggie had already turned her back on him, her whispered command stopping Satin from attacking him. She urged the dog down, and Satin stretched out on the floor, her eyes pinned on McCready.
“I asked where you’ve been,” McCready repeated. The nagging fear that had twisted his gut and sent him up here to see if she was all right churned into anger.
“I was lookin’ for Quincy.” Maggie turned and took her seat on the bench. She looked up to find McCready still in the doorway, her eyes widening when he stepped inside. The lamp light revealed his face; right cheek marred with a purpling bruise, his left eye nearly shut, and his nose swollen. “What happened to you, McCready? Get caught between a rock and a hard place?”
“Dutch took me down,” he snapped.
“Were you wantin’ somethin’ to come here so late?” She watched him close the door and slide the bar in place. Her gaze darted to the gun within easy reach and slowly her hands unclenched.
“Yeah, you might say that. Ira found your mustang with a bullet crease on her rump.” McCready had avoided looking at her face, almost afraid of what he would find. But he couldn’t avoid it any longer. The torn clothes were bad enough. The scrapes and scratches hollowed out his stomach for long seconds. But it was the glimpse of fear in Maggie’s jade-green eyes that filled his mouth and throat with a cottony dryness he had trouble swallowing. “And you? What happened to you, Maggie?”
“Someone tried to kill me,” she answered truthfully, her voice raw with fear and exhaustion.
The words themselves took a few minutes to sink in. Not so the knowledge that Maggie trusted him enough to open the door to him. McCready didn’t eat up the short distance between them because of either reason. It was the way Maggie spoke. There was a disbelief that someone had tried to kill her underscored by the fear that it was true.
He braced one hand on the table, kept the other clenched at his side, and leaned over. He studied the black rings that captured the fractured shades of green in her eyes. McCready found himself beset with the sudden urge to throttle her for putting herself in danger and hold her close at the same time.
He did neither one. Maggie never needed anyone. She had told him so plenty of times. Proved it to him when he had dared to doubt her. Maggie made her feelings plain enough, but right now his need overpowered Maggie’s wants. He had to destroy the breathing space between them and touch her.
The fingers of his hand uncurled at his side, and he slowly raised it, half fearing that she would bolt away from him. He brushed the back of his hand over the scratches on her cheek. While his own face ached from the pounding he had taken, the sight of Maggie’s injured skin sent a new level of pain spreading inside him.
“McCready?” she whispered, unable to hide the tremor in her voice.
“Hush, Maggie mine.” Why hadn’t he ever noticed the innocent vulnerability in the purity of her features and the clarity of her eyes? Maggie, he was discovering, had the face of an angel, a body that was a benediction for the hungry, and eyes turning wary as a cornered puma.
A muscle clenched in his jaw as he made an obvious effort to control the fierce rush of fury inside him. How dare anyone try to hurt her? But with it came a rush of guilt that he had caused Maggie to run off and search for Quincy.
Maggie sat as still as a fawn being stalked by a winter-starved wolf. She couldn’t make him stop stroking her cheek. She couldn’t find her voice. She couldn’t even move away from him. Being honest, Maggie didn’t think she wanted to move. McCready’s touch was gentle. No one ever touched her like this. She found she had a strange intense longing for his touching to go on and on.
She stared up at his eyes. The one that wasn’t closed revealed a blue as dark and deep as mountain nights. She didn’t understand why she thought it appeared guilty. Maggie blinked, and it was gone. She locked her fingers together in her lap to resist the urge to reach up and soothe the bruises that marred his handsome face.
Faith and begorra! What was happening to her? A strong sense of being safe was easing the knots of fear and tension that had captured her. Why? She struggled to understand how McCready’s touch could make her feel this way.
McCready didn’t like her. He badgered her. He baited her into losing her temper every chance he had and a few he made himself. The man teased her unmercifully. McCready was a thief, she had to remind herself. And a liar. He cheated at cards. He drank. He had women chasing after him. He was as smooth and slick as a wet rock and twice as hard.
Then why by the saints, knowing all this, was she taken by a tremble that erupted when he leaned closer? Maggie shut her eyes. She was breathing McCready’s scent. Warm whiskey. Night-brushed sage. Blending together until the room began to close in on her.
Behind her eyelids she was tantalized by the sight of his lips. She didn’t want to think about what his cocky grin did to her stomach. What was he doing to her? She felt almost boneless. And hot. Oh, Maggie, she groaned to herself, wrong thought to be having. Heat and fire were already climbing as his hand slid around so that four fingers rested on the side of her neck, and his thumb began circling her chin.
“Maggie?”
It wasn’t his whisper that made her think about moving now. It was the fine tremor she felt from his hand. His thumb was no longer drawing circles on her chin but rubbing back and forth beneath her lower lip. Get a grip, Maggie, she demanded of herself. Don’t let him come any closer. You can’t be tempted by this man. For the sake of all you own, it’s McCready that’s touching you!
“Ah, Maggie mine,” he breathed over her slightly parted lips. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time.”
His slow, soft drawl ruffled her nerve ends. McCready’s thumb was coaxing her lower lip open with tiny strokes while his fingers rubbed the sensitive skin behind her ear. Maggie couldn’t help the little shiver he called forth. She opened her eyes, scowling. And nearly groaned aloud. McCready wore that cocky grin that made her stomach roll over. Anger was her only weapon.
“I should’ve figured you’d be one to take advantage when me guard was down.”
“Is your guard down, Maggie mine?” His eyes brightened as the thought and his grin became a satisfied smile.
“You’d be knowin’ it, McCready.”
“That and a bit more about you. But I’m not taking advantage, Maggie,” he said, his voice whisper soft, unwilling to give up his prize. “I’ve not taken a blessed thing from you. Yet.”
“An’ you won’t,” she promised, shaking her head to rid herself of his hold.
Gambler’s instinct came into play, and McCready wisely folded. He released her and stepped back.
“You never said why you came here.” Maggie dragged in a deep breath she hadn’t known she needed. Turning away from him, she stared at the flickering lamp flame.
“I was worried about you.”
“Why? You never were before. An’ you’d be knowin’ I can take care of meself.”
“It’s the truth, Maggie.”
“Ha! The truth? You wouldn’t know the truth it if was sittin’ in the bottom of a whiskey glass starin’ right up at you.”
“Is that what you think of me?”
Maggie sensed she had hurt him the moment he spoke. She looked up at him only to find herself puzzled by his expression. Watchful and waiting. What would he be waiting and watching for? She shook her head and rid herself of the question. McCready couldn’t be hurt by anything she said.
“Well, boyo, you’ve seen for yourself I’m fine, so be off with you.”
“Not so fast. You can’t stay here, Maggie. Not alone.”
Eyes narrowed, Maggie studied him from the tip of his boots up to his long, disordered hair. Her mouth thinned when he hooked his thumbs into his pants pockets and met her glare with his own.
“You’re gettin’ to be as pesky as a horse fly an’ ’bout as wanted, McCready.”
“An’ you’re a fine-looking filly for me to be pestering.”
“No.”
“No?” he repeated with a silky warning. “You’re forgetting you’re my wife, Maggie.”
She rubbed one finger over the gun grip, shaking her head. “I won’t be listenin’ to your passel of lies again. It’s best you go while you can still walk.”
“Don’t threaten me, Maggie.”
“I’m not. I’m warnin’ you. This is me cabin. A body can’t be blamed for protectin’ its own. Someone tried to kill me. For all I know—”
“Stop right there!” McCready made a visible effort to control the flush of anger rising to a dangerous degree. “If you thought I had anything to do with that, you’d never have opened the door to me, Maggie. I know it and you’ll admit it. You can’t stay here now. If anything happened—”