Desperado. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ of going to jail, it was Maggie who sat beside him and held his hand while Mrs. Barton had hysterics and became the voice of doom. Maggie, in her quiet, gentle way, gave him the comfort and strength he needed to face his problems and overcome them.

      She’d only been ten years old, but she had a maturity even then that was surprising. She was an introvert by nature, but she seemed to sense that Cord needed someone bright and happy to bring out the best in him. So she developed a sense of humor and picked at Cord and teased him and made him play. Maggie had taught him how to laugh.

      He studied her wan, drawn face on the white pillowcase and wondered why he’d always treated her as an outsider. He was alternately hostile and sarcastic, never kind or welcoming. Maggie had done more for him than anyone in his life except their foster parent. Maybe, he pondered, it was because she knew him so well. Despite his spiny outward appearance, Maggie knew him right inside, where he lived. She knew that he had nightmares about the night his parents had died in a hotel fire. She knew that he was haunted by Patricia’s suicide. She knew that when he was being his most sarcastic, he was hiding wounds. He couldn’t hide anything from Maggie.

      But she hid her whole life from him. He knew next to nothing about her, really. She’d been a sad, frightened, jumpy child with odd moods and terrors. She’d avoided relationships like the devil, yet she’d married a man she hardly knew, a much-older man, and been married and widowed in weeks. She never spoke of her husband. She was job-oriented and somber as a judge usually. Even a brief engagement to his friend Eb Scott hadn’t really softened her much, long before her marriage to Evans. He’d wondered at the outward distance she seemed to keep from Eb. It hadn’t made sense, until later, when he understood the magnitude of his misconceptions about her.

      She looked so fragile, so vulnerable, lying there. Even in sleep, she looked tormented. She looked tired. No wonder. Flying all the way from Morocco without a pause, and then out to his ranch only to be turned away practically at the door. He hadn’t even asked if she had a way back to town. That was harsh. Even for him.

      He hesitated for an instant before he reached out and touched her arm through the cotton fabric that concealed it.

      * * *

      MAGGIE WAS DREAMING. She was walking through a field of wildflowers in the sun. In the distance, a man was laughing, holding out his arms to her—a tall, dark-haired man. She ran toward him, ran as fast as she could, but she never closed the distance. He watched her from afar, like a cat toying with a desperate mouse. Cord, she thought. It was Cord, and he was taunting her as he always had. She could hear his voice, hear it as clearly as if it were in the room with her...

      A hand was shaking her, hard. She moaned in protest. She didn’t want to wake up. If she woke up, Cord wouldn’t be there anymore.

      “Maggie!” came the deep, insistent voice.

      She gasped and opened her eyes. She wasn’t dreaming. Cord was sitting on the edge of her bed, one lean hand beside her head on the pillow supporting his leaning posture.

      He studied her face, devoid of makeup, framed by long, wavy dark hair in soft tangles. She was wearing pajamas, a jacket and pants that covered her up completely. It used to puzzle him that Maggie dressed in a luxurious but conventional style to go to work, and she slept in the most unisex clothing she could find. She never wore sexy clothes, even when she’d been a teenager, and she never walked around in her nightclothes, even when she was little and they were living with Mrs. Barton. He wondered why he’d never noticed that before.

      She focused on him and her face clenched. “What are you doing here?”

      He grimaced. “Field-dressing crow. I’m sure it’ll taste terrible, too.”

      Her eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”

      He shrugged one powerful shoulder. He didn’t like admitting his faults, but he owed her. “I didn’t know you were in Morocco. I thought you were right here in Houston, and that you’d waited four days to drive out to see about me.”

      Her heart ran wild. Cord had never explained anything to her. Over the years, she’d become accustomed to his barbed remarks, his hostility, his sarcasm. He’d never apologized or shown any signs of caring what she thought about him.

      Her eyes drank in his strong, handsome face. “Maybe I’m still asleep,” she murmured.

      “Pity,” he said, studying her drowsy face with a faint smile. “I don’t apologize very often.”

      She watched him. “You didn’t tell Eb you wanted me to come at all, did you?”

      He hated to admit that. She looked as cynical as he usually did. But he wasn’t accustomed to lies. “No,” he replied honestly.

      She laughed ruefully. “I should have known that.”

      “Why were you going to work in Qawi?” he asked abruptly.

      “I was in a rut,” she said simply. “I needed a change. I wanted adventure.”

      “You lost your job because of me,” he persisted, frowning.

      “Big deal! There are jobs everywhere, and I have a good background in investments. I’ll find something. Preferably,” she added teasingly, “in a multinational corporation, so that I can work overseas and never get in your hair again.”

      “Why do you want to leave the country?” he asked irritably.

      “What is there for me here?” she countered simply. “I’m twenty-six, Cord. If I don’t do something, I’ll dry up and blow away. I don’t want to spend the best years of my life commuting to downtown Houston to play with numbers. I’m not a baby anymore. If I have to work, at least I can choose something in an exotic location. Preferably something adventurous, and exciting,” she said as an afterthought.

      He frowned. “Why do you have to work?” he asked suddenly. “Amy left us both a little money. Besides, Bart Evans had an extensive stock portfolio and you were his widow.”

      Her face hardened. “I didn’t take one penny of his money. Not property, not stocks, not savings. Nothing!”

      That was surprising. “Why not?”

      She lowered her eyes to the coverlet and closed them briefly under a wave of pain she didn’t want him to see. “He cost me the most precious thing in my life,” she said in a husky, throbbing tone.

      That was an enigmatic statement. He didn’t understand it. “Nobody forced you to marry him,” he pointed out, and with more bitterness than he realized.

      That’s what you think, she thought to herself, but she didn’t say it aloud. She crumpled the coverlet under her bright pink fingernails and looked up at him bravely. “I had his estate divided between his two ex-wives.”

      He laughed shortly in surprise. “You did what?”

      “You heard me,” she remarked with a shrug. She let go of her grip on the bedspread. “I thought they deserved the money more than I did. They lived with him longer than I did. He had no living relatives.”

      His dark eyes narrowed. He’d been curious about her marriage for a long time. He’d never mentioned it to her, because she closed up like a clam when her husband’s name came up. She never discussed it. But it had left scars on her emotions that СКАЧАТЬ