Cowboys Don't Cry Page 15

  Ahead of him there wasn't a town for miles. He couldn't see a ranch, nor a windmill, nor a cow. As far as he could see ahead of him, he was alone.

  He'd been alone before. After Clare he'd thought it was what he wanted—to be free, not to care.

  But, damn it, he did care. He cared so much it was tearing him apart. He'd never been able to tell Clare how he felt about anything—their marriage, their child, their divorce. He'd always hoped she'd tell him.

  And this time when he'd come back, when he'd seen Maggie there with Merritt, all the things he'd wanted to say to her had fled. He hadn't been able to tell her anything, either. He didn't have enough confidence in himself.

  And so he'd worked, and bided his time and suffered in silence. And then, because he'd gotten no encouragement, no warmth, no declaration from her, he'd given up, left without talking.

  Just the way he had with Clare.

  Was he really going to make the same mistake again?

  It was dawn when he pulled into the yard of the Three Bar C. There was a light on in the kitchen. Ev, probably. Maybe Andy.

  At least Tanner hoped so, because all of a sudden his mouth was dry and his stomach roiled. Having great resolutions for spilling his guts had been fine in the middle of nowhere, but the thought of actually having to go through with them was scary as hell.

  He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles showed white, took a couple of deep breaths that he hoped would steady his frazzled nerves, then got out of the track.

  The kitchen curtains twitched, but he couldn't see who was behind them. He shut his eyes, gathered his courage, opened them again and knocked on the door.

  It jerked open almost at once and Maggie, in her robe, her hair now short and shaggy, stared out at him. Her lips tightened. A muscle in her jaw twitched. "Now what?"

  "I want a job."

  She blinked. "Roundup's over," she said shortly and started to shut the door.

  Tanner stuck his boot in to hold it open. She glared at him. He went on, "I know that. I want more than that."

  Her eyes widened, then her chin tilted stubbornly. "Andy's my foreman. I told you that."

  "Fair enough." He was getting his bearings now, settling in.

  "I can't afford to hire any other cowboys except seasonally."

  "I don't want seasonal work. I want full-time."

  "I have Bates. He's dependable."

  "No more dependable than I am."

  "I can't—"

  "I want you. I love you. Marry me." This last came out in a rush. He didn't mean to simply blurt it out that way. He would have liked a little more finesse, a little more of a percentage that she wouldn't throw him out on his ear. He should have known he'd blow it. He'd never be a talker, not even to save his life.

  Maggie stared at him. "What did you say?" Her voice was hollow. Her face was white.

  Tanner's was red, and he knew it. And Maggie could see it this time. There was no darkness to hide behind.

  There was nothing left at all anymore. He'd laid it all on the line. His body. His soul. His heart.

  Over the hill he could hear the faint sounds of cattle. Down by the barn birds were singing. The coffeepot perked and the old mantel clock gave its quarter-hour chime.

  Tanner couldn't look at her, could only wait. He shifted his weight, stared at the toes of his boots, at the worn boards of the porch. Then, finally, he lifted his eyes to meet hers-, terrified of what he would see.

  Her own eyes were downcast. She gave her head a little shake. Then, slowly, she reached out a hand and drew him inside. Her fingers were as cold as the room was warm. He could feel them shaking. Or, he wondered, was the tremor in his own?

  He pushed the door shut behind him and stood facing her, their hands still joined. Then she loosed her grip on him and he felt immediately bereft, abandoned. But then her hands came up and skimmed over his sides, brushed across his shoulders and down his arms. She seemed to need to touch him, to be sure he was solid and real.

  Then, "You love me?" she whispered. She sounded dazed when at last she looked at him.

  He nodded wordlessly, swallowing hard, holding himself still under the brush of her hands.

  Her gaze became more intense. "You want to come back to stay. Permanently?"

  God, yes. Forever. He nodded again. "If you'll have me," he said, his voice little more than a croak.

  "And you want to marry me? Th-that's the job you wanted?" Her voice broke on a half sob, half laugh.

  "I want to marry you." He said it again, slowly this lime, looking straight at her, offering her his heart with his eyes, offering her all he had been and, with her help, all he hoped ever to become.

  And then he saw it. There! In her eyes he saw glowing once more the love she'd given him time and again. The love he'd spurned and scorned and rejected, the love that had scared him and freed him and, finally, brought him home. The love that until now he had always pushed away.

  This time he didn't. This time he reached for it, reached for Maggie and pulled her close, bowing his head, feeling the tears sting against his lids as he crushed her hard and fast in his arms. And her arms came equally hard and fierce around him, locking him in so tight that he wondered if he would ever break loose and hoped he wouldn't.

  "I never knew..." he whispered raggedly. "I never understood—"

  "I know. I know."

  "I was too much of a fool!"

  "You're not."

  "Not now, maybe. I was. And I will be again if I don't have you. Please, Maggie. There's so much I want to say, but it's so hard. I want to try. I want to succeed this time. I can't do it without your help. Please, say yes."

  And Maggie said, "Yes."

  Cowboys don't stay in bed till noon. They don't scandalize old men and young children and their future brothers-in-law. Unless, of course, they're too far gone in love to think straight and redheaded women have enticed them beyond all their power to resist.

  But Tanner had driven all night, he'd laid his heart on the line, and when Maggie had taken his hand and drawn him with her up the stairs, he didn't know about all the other cowboys in the world, but he was damned if he was going to say no.

  He did manage to protest a little. "What's Ev gonna think?" he whispered worriedly as they crept up the stairs and passed the old man's closed door.

  "That you've finally come to your senses," Maggie said and pulled him into her room.

  "And Billy?"

  "He's too young to care."

  "And Andy?"

  "Andy's already out with the herd. He'll never know." She halted just outside her door and turned to look at him. "But we'll stop right here if you want to."

  Tanner could hardly wait to wipe that impish grin off her face. He pushed her gently through the door and shut it behind them.

  Maggie stepped back and lifted her face. She raised her hands and laid them on his chest, then looked into his eyes, her own green ones wide and expectant.

  Tanner smiled and bent his head. He was much better at nonverbal communication.

  Their loving was by turns gentle and desperate, eager and tentative. They kissed and stroked, gazed and worshipped, touched and teased. And Tanner began to appreciate once more the joy of Maggie's body. But while an appreciation of the physical Maggie MacLeod was where he'd started all those months ago, he found that what he really valued was Maggie's spirit, her soul, her boundless capacity to love.

  He wanted to lose himself in her, to know her as intimately as he had once so briefly known her. But, because he really was trying, first Tanner talked.

  They were curled together in the quilt on Maggie's bed, her head resting on his chest, his fingers stroking her ear and hair to let their passions cool a bit, let their rampaging hearts slow down.

  Finally Tanner lifted his head enough to press a kiss onto the top of hers, then he lay back again and swallowed, trying to decide where to begin.

  "I can't believe I'm really here," he said at last, because that more than anythi
ng was really what he felt in his heart.

  Maggie raised her head and their eyes met. Hers were a warm jade now, with nothing left of the coldness he'd seen in them over the past two weeks. "I can't, either," she said softly. "I never believed you'd come back."

  "I had to. Besides, I did come back before," he reminded her.

  "But you didn't say anything."

  "Merritt was here."

  Maggie looked at him horrified. "You mean you would have said you loved me then? Why didn't you? I told you John was a friend."

  "I know. But you were looking like you wished I was dead. It seemed like a big mistake."

  "You stayed anyway."

  "I couldn't leave," he said simply.

  Maggie drew her finger down his cheek wonderingly. "Then later, after John left...why didn't you tell me?"

  "Every time I saw you, you glared at me. If looks could've killed I'd have been six feet under."

  "I was afraid...of what I felt for you."

  Tanner stared. He hadn't thought it had happened to her, too. "Then you know how I felt."

  Maggie nodded. "I was afraid I'd betray myself before you left again. I almost did when I gave you that check."

  "I wish to God you had."

  "But...what happened? You did leave. And then you came back. What changed your mind?"

  Tanner lifted one shoulder in an awkward shrug. How could he explain what he didn't know for sure himself?

  "It was Texas, I guess," he said at last.

  "Texas?" Maggie rolled over to lie looking at him, her chin resting on her arms, which were folded across Tanner's chest.

  He stared up at the ceiling, remembering how he'd felt out there in the middle of nowhere, when the vastness of a world without Maggie had really hit him.

  "It's where I headed when I left. I don't know why, really. I guess because it was there. But the closer I got, the bigger it got—and every bit of it was lonely. It scared me to death." He raised himself up on his elbow and looked at her. "I know how to be alone. Over the years, well, you know I've been alone a lot. After the mess I'd made of marriage to Clare, I thought it was better that way. But the closer I got to Texas, the closer I got to bein' empty, to seeing the rest of my life as nothing but empty. And...I've been empty for so damn long, Maggie. Too damn long." His voice broke, his throat closed. "I just never knew it until I met you."

  It was more than he'd said in one breath in years, maybe in his entire life. It might be more than he could ever say again, unless Maggie helped him change. But for what it was worth, it was what he felt.

  And Maggie understood. She edged up and kissed him tenderly. It was a long kiss, a slow, thorough, leisurely kiss that began to heat once more his barely cooled blood. But then she stopped kissing him and lay her smooth cheek next to his stubbled one, nuzzling him briefly.

  "I thought I'd die when you left after we'd made love," she confided. Her voice had an ache in it that he'd never heard before, and he turned his head to try to see if her expression was as hurt as her words. It was. "I wanted to."

  "No," Tanner protested.

  "I did. It was awful. The ultimate rejection."

  "I didn't mean— I thought I was protecting you!" he said with anguish. "I didn't know what else to do. I sure as hell couldn't resist you. I'd just proved that. And you said you loved me—"

  "I did!"

  "Though God knows why you should have," he said grimly. "I was a jerk to you. 1 didn't want you here right from the start. I tried to get rid of you."

  Maggie cocked her head, smiling slightly. "Did you?"

  Tanner blinked, confused. "Didn't I?" Sometimes now he wondered just what he'd been doing. A corner of his mouth lifted, too. "Is that what Bates would call an approach-avoidance conflict?"

  Maggie's smile widened and he noted the tiny dimple at the side of her mouth. "I think that's it."

  "Well, whatever you call it, it was a hell of a mess," Tanner said. "I wanted you. Desperately. And I was pushing you away at the same time. I had to. It was pretty damned clear you weren't into one-night stands, and as far as I was concerned, a relationship had no future."

  "And now it has." Maggie said the words simply, starkly and with absolute faith.

  Tanner shut his eyes and considered the idea. A future. A marriage. He and Maggie together. Forever. And he believed it—perhaps for the very first time.

  "It isn't going to be easy," he said.

  "I think you've already proved that," Maggie replied dryly.

  He grinned. "But you reckon you can bully me into making a tolerable husband anyway?"

  "I think you're going to make yourself into a wonderful husband," Maggie told him.

  Her confidence startled him. It was so much greater than his own. All the way back home during those hundreds of miles and hours of driving, he'd thought about his hopes, about his fears, about what a marriage would ask of him, about whether he would have the courage to open up, to trust, to try.

  And then he thought about Maggie, about her love for him, as deep and abiding as any he could imagine. He thought about his love for her, which seemed new and fragile and untried.

  He thought about telling Andy some months ago that the only way to learn something was by doing it.

  The same, he supposed, went for loving. And for being a good husband. Maybe even, someday, being a father.

  "What about kids?" he asked her suddenly. "Do you want any?"

  "Of course I do. Lots of little Tanners. Half a dozen at least."

  "Half a dozen?" He looked at her, horrified.

  Maggie laughed. "Well, maybe two or three." Then she hesitated. "You want some, don't you?" she asked, as if it had just occurred to her that, given his earlier experience, he might not.

  "I do. Very much. I never realized how much until just recently. Until I told you about—about the baby... I'd never talked about him at all. I'd never let myself think about all the things I've missed, that I wanted and was afraid to want. I'd never really grieved."

  Maggie slipped her arms around him then, holding him close, kissing him. And the passion he'd kept banked for so long burst into flame. He kissed her back, hungrily, eagerly, fervently.

  And then he loved her, fully and completely. He showed her with his hands and his lips and his body the things that he still couldn't find the words to say. And he gloried in her response, in her desire as she met him move for move, in the glow of love that shone in her eyes when together they shattered and at the same time became one.

  "Maybe we could try for half a dozen," he said as soon as he could get his breath.

  Maggie giggled and slipped her arms around him, hugging him close. "We'll try for a hundred if you want. I love you, Tanner."

  He drew back, looking down at her, questioning, worried. "Tanner?" he echoed.

  She gazed at him, touched his cheek, smiled. "Robert," she amended, touching her lips to his. "I love you, Robert."

  He never corrected her again.