Man of Her Dreams (15 page)

“Where do you plan to receive guests at the open house next month?” she asked.

“Huh? I don't know. I figured they'd just come on inside the main barn.”

She frowned at him. “That seems rather vague. You don't want your guests to be ill at ease, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“And how will you keep track of who you've spoken with, of who's seen what? Where will you serve refreshments?”

“Refreshments?”

“Haven't you decided what you're going to serve yet? Hors d'oeuvres or cookies, wine, coffee, or hot cider?”

He scowled. “Shoot, Mary Margaret, I'm trying to get buildings finished and fences painted. When am I supposed to think about reception areas and whether to have smoked pheasant or Fig Newtons?”

The Cheshire cat couldn't have come up with a better smile. “When, indeed. What you need is someone to take care of all those details for you, sugar.”

“Well, I—”

Maggie turned toward her partner. “Katie, darlin', we're not so awfully busy at the store right now, are we?”

“No.”

“And when was the last time I had a vacation?”

“March. You spent two weeks with your sister Lisa Jane in Boca Raton.”

Maggie frowned at her friend. “That hardly counts. That was family. Surely you wouldn't object to me taking a couple of weeks off to help Rylan, would you?”

Katie smiled too sweetly. “Not at all, darlin', but if Mrs. Pruitt comes in and demands to have her bathrooms redone again, you are going to owe me in a big way.”

“Deal.” She swung back toward Ry. “Yes, sugar, I can get free to help you prepare for the open house.”

“Thank you,” he said automatically, then sat back, bewildered. He wasn't quite sure how she'd done it, but Maggie had managed to place herself in his company for the next two weeks, had managed to make him think it had been his idea, and even had him feeling grateful. He sighed and shook his head. “You're a wonder, Mary Margaret.”

“Oh, look,” Maggie said, sitting up in her seat, her face glowing. “It's time for the class to start.”

Maggie watched with her heart in her throat as each horse and rider negotiated the demanding course. Many failed the test in the first round. Front or hind legs knocked rails from their cups, adding costly faults to a rider's performance. A miscalculation of distance resulted in a fall of both horse and rider that had Katie Leone white. She had nearly lost her life in a similar accident.

A field of thirty was gradually whittled to eight. That was the number of horses that had made it around the arena without a single fault. Rough Cut was one of those to make the second round.

Marissa McLaughlin, riding Debutante, was the first to ride, scoring a clean round and setting a sizzling pace. Her performance held up throughout the round. Then Christian and Rough Cut entered the ring.

Maggie was so nervous, she almost fell off her chair. She grabbed Ry's hand as soon as the whistle sounded and hung on for dear life. The stallion attacked the course, galloping to each fence with his ears pinned, and sailing over with inches to spare. Christian held nothing back, asking the big bay for everything he had. Rough Cut gave it all and then some. He cut one turn so sharply that Atherton lost a stirrup just a stride before the highest jump on the course. Maggie gasped as she saw him come up out of the saddle on the way over the fence. But the Englishman had earned his reputation as one of the top riders on the circuit. He hung on. Rough Cut sprinted for the finish line, crossing it two hundredths of a second faster than Debutante.

The occupants of the Quaid Farm box were on their feet cheering as Christian saluted the crowd with his riding crop. Mrs. Claiborne threw her red hat into the air. Miss Emma screamed and started doing the twist as Junior wagged his tail and barked. Maggie found herself engulfed in a Rylan Quaid bear hug. She was certain he was crushing each and every one of her ribs, but she was too happy for him to care.

He pulled her down to the arena with him for the awards presentation, grinning from ear to ear when Christian rode in to wild cheers from the partisan crowd.

Rough Cut was draped with a blanket proclaiming him winner of the Albemarle Cup, while the sterling silver champagne bucket was presented to Ry along with a check.

He cradled his prizes in one arm and hugged Maggie with the other.

“What do you want to do to celebrate?” he asked her. “Dinner? Champagne?”

She crooked her finger and, when he bent over, whispered the most outrageously suggestive thing she could think of. Ry's eyes instantly turned smoky with desire while his cheeks flushed. Maggie giggled and ran a finger down the side of his face. “I didn't know there were that many shades of red.”

Ry laughed. “Just wait till I get you home.”

Maggie batted her lashes at him. “I'd rather not.” She glanced around at the grandstand full of people watching them, then turned her gaze back to Rylan. “But I don't think we have a choice.”

EIGHT

A
FIRE CRACKLED
in the large stone fireplace, casting the only light in the room. Warmth was the primary sensation. Warmth from the fire, from the thick soft blanket that covered her from shoulder to toe, from the solid body of the man she snuggled against, and from his arms wrapped around her. The warmth of contentment filled her. Contentment from making love, from being full of good food and good wine, from knowing this was all real instead of a dream.

Nuzzling her cheek against Ry's chest, Maggie sighed and smiled. After Rough Cut's victory there had been champagne back in the stables for family, friends, and syndicate investors. From there the party had moved to Briarwood, to Nick's restaurant, where they had celebrated with a fabulous dinner. Not that she was antisocial or anything, but Maggie's favorite part had been the private celebration she and Ry had shared.

The sterling champagne bucket that had been awarded to them that afternoon now sat on the coffee table with a nearly empty bottle of wine sticking up out of it. The firelight glowed on the fine engraving that marked the piece as the Albemarle Cup. Tomorrow it would take its place among the hundreds of other trophies on one of the shelves that lined the walls of the large room. Tonight it was being included in the celebration. Just as Maggie was being included.

A particularly feline smile turned her lips. She loved the way Ry was including her in the celebration.

She stretched, arching her body against his, glorying in his strength and hardness. He had a magnificent body. Her hands couldn't resist exploring it, the hills and valleys of muscles and their lines of delineation. Lazily raising her head to watch, she began at his wide, wide shoulders and moved slowly downward, over his thickset chest. She ran her thumb down over the rippling planes of his stomach, changing course abruptly when he stiffened and sucked in his breath. Tossing the red blanket back, she stared at the pure male beauty of him as her hand traced over his hip, then started up his other heavily muscled thigh.

“So handsome,” she whispered, watching her fingertips trail back up his rib cage and nestle into the curling dark hair that carpeted his chest. She let her gaze continue up to his face. He was watching her intently. “I love your body….” She leaned down to brush a kiss across his mouth. “…the way it looks…” Her eyes locked with his as her hand slid back down. “…the way it works…”

Ry tried to force himself to lie still while she explored. He had always considered himself a man of tremendous self-control. Until Maggie. Even now, when they had already spent a night together and had already made love once, his blood was jumping in his veins. The need, the desire had not been slaked in the least. In fact, the more he had of her, the more he wanted. In that respect, she was wreaking havoc on his famous plan, but he couldn't complain when she touched him, when she looked at him as though he was the one and only thing in the world she wanted.

Before she could drive him completely over the brink and into madness, he turned the tables on her, rolling her onto her back. He propped himself up on one elbow. His other hand ran gently down from her shoulder to cup her full breast with its wide dusky center and pouting nipple, down the sweeping curve to her narrow waist, and over the rounded flare of her hip.

“So feminine…soft…pretty…”

Maggie's heart fluttered. Words like that were rare from him. She soaked them up and felt each one of them blossom inside her.

“I like this little swell right here,” he said, stroking just below her navel.

“What a kind euphemism for fat,” she said, chuckling softly. “You'll never see this body in a fashion magazine.”

He kissed his way down to the spot. “I never was one for those long, skinny women.”

“Hallelujah.” Her breath grew shorter as his kisses became longer and more passionate and slipped lower than the area he had been admiring. His lips nibbled their way back up her hip, paused at her breast, then found their way back to her mouth.

“Did the ladies give you any trouble about coming to stay here with me?” he asked, rolling onto his back and snuggling Maggie to his side once again.

“No. Mrs. Claiborne thinks the world of you—”

“Except for my language.”

“—and Miss Emma told me she was envious enough to make it a mortal sin.”

Ry laughed. “They're something else, those two.”

Maggie smiled fondly. “They're wonderful. I love them like family. Besides, they agreed with me. They both said a social function like this open house needs a woman's supervision.”

He snorted. “With the possible exception of car maintenance, women think everything needs a woman's supervision.”

“I didn't hear you complaining about my supervision earlier this evening.”

“Oh, that was supervising, was it? I could have sworn that was moaning and sighing in wanton abandon.”

“Wanton abandon!” She raised up and loomed over him, brown eyes sparkling with reflected light from the fire. “Huh! I'll give you wanton abandon, mister.”

Ry's gaze fastened on the sway of her breasts no more than a hair's breadth from his chest. “Hallelujah.”

They made love slowly. Ry let Maggie take the lead until his fragile hold on control slipped. Then Maggie wrapped her arms around him and hung on, arching up to meet his deep hard thrusts until fulfillment came, as hot and brilliant as the shower of sparks that burst upward from the fire in the grate.

Ry held himself deep inside her, gasping as he absorbed shock wave after shock wave of her pleasure. Gradually the intensity decreased. Tenderly he brushed her hair back from her face and kissed her sweet red lips. “Ah, Maggie…oh, honey…I…”

If there had been more words, they were stubbornly lodged in his throat. No, he thought as he gazed down at her, it felt more as if they were lodged in his heart. He wanted to tell her…something. That he cared, cared deeply. That he wanted to make her happy. That…ah, hell, nothing seemed adequate.

“I love you, Ry,” she whispered, watching him struggle with feelings he didn't seem to understand.

His dark brows pulled together in concern over stormy eyes the color of Spanish moss. “Maggie—”

She lifted a hand and pressed her fingers to his lips. “Let me say it. I love you. I'm going to keep on saying it, because it's what I feel.”

And because, maybe, if she kept on saying it, someday soon he would be able to believe in that love and say those same words to her.

         

Maggie didn't consider it a plan really. Everything she did was open and aboveboard. She wanted to give Ry a taste of the kind of life they could have together. There was certainly nothing devious in that. And it wasn't as if she hadn't told him that was what she was going to do. So if she told him at unexpected times that she loved him, if she showed up in his office with lunch and wearing nothing but a sexy negligee under her coat, he couldn't say he hadn't been forewarned.

What she spent most of her time doing, however, was working. There were a million tiny details to putting on an open house. Ry had been too busy to see to any of them. While he and his crew worked on the buildings and fences, she took care of ordering the food, calling a sign maker, lining up workers, contacting the greenhouse for bouquets. While Ry and Christian instructed grooms to clean every piece of tack and brush every horse on the place until the shine on their coats was blinding, Maggie was overseer to the small army of help rented to scrub and polish Ry's office as well as the lounge that looked out on the indoor riding arena.

Both those rooms underwent a whirlwind redecoration. Braided rugs were spread across the floors, tasteful, comfortable chairs replaced the mismatched wobbly-legged ones. Patchwork pillows and a quilt done in the royal blue and gray that were the Quaid Farm colors added a homeyness to the lounge. Ry's office was decorated with hunting prints. As a special present, Maggie bought him an oversize leather-covered desk chair with brass nail-head trim. His desk was cleaned and oiled, the cheap old blotter replaced with one that matched his chair. His paperwork was neatly tucked into the new set of stack trays on the corner of his desk.

When she could spare five or ten minutes, Maggie spent them with the orphaned foal, grooming him or just petting him and talking to him. She managed to get in one riding lesson with Christian. He patiently assured her she wasn't hopeless, but it was plain no one on the U.S. equestrian team was in any danger of losing his spot.

On top of this mountain of work, she also saw to Ry's meals, his house, his needs. When he was thirsty from working out under the sun, she was there with a glass of lemonade. When he came in at the end of a long day feeling as if he'd “been rode hard and put away wet,” she saw to it he had a hot shower, a hot meal, and a long, loving massage.

Was she making any headway? she wondered at the end of day six. It was hard to say. Ry seemed to genuinely appreciate her help with the arrangements. He ate the food she cooked and didn't hesitate to reach for her when they went to bed at night. But he didn't seem any closer to telling her he loved her.

He told her he wanted her. He told her he needed her. He told her she was a godsend. But he never said the words she'd vowed she had to hear before she would marry him.

Maybe she was being too stubborn. It could take Ry years to express those feelings. Why did she have to hear them? If she knew he felt them, wasn't that enough?

No, that wasn't enough. It wasn't so much that she had to hear him say he could love. What she really wanted was for him to know he had that wealth of love inside him. It was a wonderful feeling to love someone, to revel in that love, to nurture it and feel it grow. If she gave in now, he might never take that chance with his heart, and he would go on cheating himself, cheating them both.

She sighed as she bent to pull on her riding boots.
Patience, Maggie, patience.
He would come around. Sooner or later. Maybe something would happen to open the door to his heart. Maybe one of these times when she told him she loved him, it would sink into that hunk of titanium he called a skull.

Straightening, she looked at herself in the front hall mirror and made a face. Sure, she looked okay in her rust breeches and oatmeal-colored sweater, with tortoiseshell barrettes in her hair. By the time her lesson was over, her bob would have bounced itself up into a Bozo-the-Clown look. With any luck she would run into Ry before she rode and not after.

         

Ry sank down to the welcoming softness of his new desk chair. The day had been unbelievably long. Only half the equipment he'd ordered for the new veterinarian facilities in the breeding shed had been delivered. The rest, the delivery man had informed him, was on back-order. Dammit, when a man shelled out top money for top equipment he expected it to be delivered on time. Then one of his many mongrel dogs had spooked a young horse he'd just picked up at an auction. The filly had crashed through a section of new board fence and toppled three five-gallon buckets of paint.

There had been a dozen other small irritations, mostly in the form of bills. He had never been very fond of parting with his money. This open house was costing more than he had expected. So were the renovations to the farm. He had to keep reminding himself that while all the cash was flowing out this week, it would be flowing in next. Next week the syndication would be finalized, the investors would pay him. Then, next spring, when they were booked up with visiting mares and hauling money to the bank by the wheelbarrow, he would look back on these two weeks and laugh.

Tonight he wasn't laughing. He had a headache the size of Rhode Island. He needed a shower, a meal, a glass of good white wine, and quiet. What he didn't need was Maggie coming to him with another piddling problem to solve or a color swatch to approve or a receipt to sign. And if she told him one more time that she was in love with him…

What, jerk?
a little voice inside his throbbing head asked.
What will you do, yell at her? Throw her off the place? Go ahead, show her just how unlovable you really are.

“Oh, hell,” he muttered, rubbing a hand across his forehead.

Maggie was only trying to help. She'd done a hell of a job shaping up the areas where the guests would be received and entertained. Arrangements for food and drink had been taken care of. If those details had been left up to him, the way his schedule was running, he would have ended up serving the guests stale crackers and peanut butter out of his kitchen. He hadn't even had time to check on Rough Cut since they'd brought him home, even though he'd been aching to take the stallion out for a little exercise. Maggie had been a big help.

So what was his problem? Why was he so ready to bite the poor woman's head off?

Because he was tired. Because he was feeling edgy. She wanted something from him he couldn't give her. She wanted to give him something he would sooner not accept. And the whole business was forcing him to look into a part of himself he would rather have left alone—old feelings, old hurts, old fears.

“Let sleeping dogs lie, Maggie,” he said under his breath.

He swung his chair around to face his desk, but when he went to put his feet in the cubby hole they were met with an outraged bark. Ry slid out of the chair and ducked under the desk, groaning at the sight that greeted him.

“Shasta, you can't keep your puppies under here.”

The golden retriever gave him a pleading look. Her brood lay curled up next to her belly, sound asleep. She had obviously carried them one by one out of the new kennel Ry had moved her to and stowed them under his desk. Carefully, he scooped up two puppies in each hand and carried them around to the new braided rug in front of his desk. Shasta followed him, whining a protest. He crawled half under the desk again to scoop out more puppies.