“Stubbornest damn woman I’ve ever known,” he muttered darkly and, using his cane to take most of his weight, took the steps to the drive. The minute his feet hit the drive, both ranch dogs stopped their playing, leaped up, ears perked, then with yips of delight, charged at him.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Maggie jumped out in front of him to keep the too-exuberant dogs from crashing into Justice and bowling him right over, but it wasn’t necessary.
“Angel. Spike.” Justice’s voice was like thunder, and when he snapped his fingers, both dogs instantly obeyed. As one, they skidded to a stop and dropped to the ground, their chins on their front paws as they looked up at him.
Maggie laughed in spite of herself. Going down on one knee, she petted each of the dogs in turn, then looked up at the man watching her. “I’d forgotten just how good you were at that. The dogs always did listen to you.”
One corner of his mouth quirked briefly. “Too bad I could never get you to do the same.”
Straightening up, Maggie met his gaze. “I never was the kind of woman to jump at the snap of your fingers, Justice. Not for you, not for anyone.”
“Wouldn’t have had you jump,” he told her.
“Really. And what command would you have had me follow if you could?”
He shifted his gaze from hers, looked toward the barn and the pastures beyond and said softly, “Stay.”
Chapter Six
Aping of regret echoed inside Maggie at his statement, sending out ripples of reaction like the energy released when a tuning fork was struck. Her entire body seemed to ache as she watched him walk away, keeping his gaze averted.
“You would have told me to stay?” she repeated, hearing the break in her own voice and hating it. “How can you say that to me now?”
He didn’t answer her, just kept walking slowly, carefully. The only sign of his own emotions being engaged was how tightly he held on to his cane. Maggie’s back teeth ground together. The man was just infuriating. She could tell that he was regretting what he had said, but that was just too bad for him.
The first time she’d walked away from him and their marriage, it had nearly ripped her heart out of her chest. He hadn’t said a word to her. He’d watched her go, and she’d felt then that he hadn’t really cared. She’d told herself through her tears that clearly their marriage hadn’t been everything she’d thought it was. That the dream of family she was giving up on had been based in her own fantasies, not reality.
She’d thought that Justice couldn’t possibly have loved her as much as she loved him. Not if he could let her go without a word.
Then months later, they shared that last weekend together—and created Jonas—and still, he’d let her go. He’d stayed crouched behind his walls and locked away whatever he was thinking or feeling. He’d simply shot down her dreams again and dismissed her.
And even then she hadn’t been able to file the signed divorce papers when he’d returned them to her. Instead, she’d tucked them away, gone through her pregnancy, delivered their son and waited. Hoping that Justice would come to her.
Naturally, he hadn’t.
“How could you do it?” she whispered and thought she saw his shoulders flinch. “How could you let me leave when you wanted me to stay? Why, Justice? You didn’t say a word to me when I left. Either time.”
He stopped dead and even the cool wind sliding in off the ocean seemed to still. The dogs went quiet and it felt as if the world had taken a breath and held it.
“What was there to say?” His jaw tightened and he bit off each word as if it tasted bitter.
“You could have asked me to stay.”
“No,” he said, heading once more for the barn. “I couldn’t.”
Maggie sighed and walked after him, measuring her steps to match his more halting ones. Of course he couldn’t ask her to stay, she thought.
“Oh, no, not you. Not Justice King,” she grumbled and kicked at the dirt. “Don’t want anyone to know you’re actually capable of feeling something.”
He stopped again and this time he turned his head to look at her. “I feel plenty, Maggie,” he said. “You should know that better than anyone.”
“How can I know that, Justice?” She threw her hands high, then let them fall to her sides again. “You won’t tell me what you’re thinking. You never did. We laughed, we made love but you never let me inside, Justice. Not once.”
Something in his dark blue eyes flashed. “You got in. You just didn’t stay long enough to notice.”
Had she? She couldn’t be sure. In the beginning of their marriage, it was all heat and fire. They hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other. They took long rides, they spent lazy rainy days in bed and Maggie would have told anyone who had asked that she and Justice were truly happy.
But, God knew, it hadn’t taken much to shake the foundations of what they’d shared, so how real could any of it have been?
Her shoulders slumped as she watched him continue on to the barn. He held himself straighter, taller, as if knowing she’d be watching and not wanting to look anything but his usual, strong self. How typical was that, Maggie thought.
Justice King never admitted weakness. He’d always been a man unable to ask for anything—not even for help if he needed it—because he would never acknowledge needing assistance in the first place. He was always so self-reliant that it was nearly a religion to him. She’d known that from the beginning of their relationship, and still she wished things had been different.
But if wishes were horses, as the old saying went…
Maggie was shaken and not too proud to admit it, at least to herself. Pushing her turbulent thoughts to a back corner of her mind to be examined later, she took a deep breath, forced some lightheartedness into her voice and quickly changed the subject.
“So,” she asked, glancing back at the two dogs trotting behind them, “why are Angel and Spike here instead of out with the herd?”
There was a pause before he answered, as if he were grateful for the reprieve.
“We’re training two new dogs to help out,” he said. “Phil thought it best to give these two a couple days off while the new pups are put through their paces.”
She’d been a rancher’s wife long enough to know the value of herd dogs. When the dogs worked the cattle, they could get into tight places a cowboy and his horse couldn’t. The right dog could get a herd moving and keep it moving while never scaring the cattle into a stampede, which could cause injury both to cowboys and to herd. These dogs were well trained and were spoiled rotten by the cowboys, as she remembered. She’d teased Justice once that apparently sheepherders had been right about using dogs in their work and that finally ranchers had caught on.
She smiled, remembering how Justice had reacted—chasing her through the house and up the stairs, laughing, until he’d caught up to her in their bedroom. Then he’d spent the next several hours convincing her to take it back. No cattleman alive had ever taken advice from a sheepherder, he’d told her, least of all him.
Spike and Angel darted past Justice and Maggie, heading through the open doors of a barn that was two stories tall and built to match the main house’s log construction. The shadows were deep, and the only sound coming from the barn was that deep, insistent lowing Maggie had heard earlier.
“Hey, you two, come away from there!” A sudden shout came from inside the barn, and almost instantly both dogs scuttled back outside and took off in a fast lope across the dirt. If they’d been children, Maggie was sure they would have been laughing.
“What’s