One Bright Morning (44 page)

“
I told you I wasn’t an
angel, but just a poor widow woman who was trying to help you get
better.”

Jubal shook his head. His warm hands sent
shivers of pleasure shooting through Maggie’s body like lightning
when he smoothed her shirtwaist down over her arms. Then he slipped
the straps of her chemise down and, when his hands covered her
breasts, Maggie groaned with delight.

“
You were wrong, Maggie. You
are an angel. You’re my angel.”

“
Thank you, Jubal,” Maggie
sighed. She began to nibble her way across his broad chest, to the
accompaniment of his growl of pleasure.

When she tentatively tongued his hard
nipple, he decided it was time to get down to business. He quickly
unbuttoned her skirt and untied the tapes to her petticoat and
drawers. They lay as they fell when he picked her up and deposited
her on the bed. Then he quickly shed his boots, trousers, and
underwear, and joined her.

Maggie didn’t know anything about being an
angel, but she was pretty sure that making love with Jubal was as
close to heaven as she’d ever get in this lifetime. His touch sent
her soaring, and when they were joined and locked in the timeless
rhythm of love, he rocketed her higher and higher until she
exploded in a starburst of pleasure. She called out to him just
before she went over the edge into bliss, wanting him to join her
there.

He did. He’d never experienced anything like
it, this loving with Maggie. The confession of love he’d made to
her, the one that had been wrung out of him against his will and
against his ego, and that he had been sure would weaken him,
instead seemed to free him. He was free to give her all of his
passion and all of his love, and to receive all of hers with joy.
When he heard her call to him and felt the ripples that meant she
was almost there, he couldn’t hold back any longer. He soared with
her into the abyss, and knew it couldn’t get any better than
this.

It took them a long time to recover.
Maggie’s rippling contractions seemed to go on forever. Every one
of them was an affirmation of love to Jubal. She was his. She was
his and nobody could take her away from him. Not Prometheus
Mulrooney, not society’s stuffy restrictions, and not the dead,
although admittedly good, Kenny Bright. She was his. The knowledge
made his heart swell until he was sure it would burst with the
fullness of emotion.

Maggie, of course, was crying. This time,
though, she was also trying to talk to him.

“
Oh, Jubal, I love you so
much. I didn’t think I could ever love anybody again. I didn’t
think I could ever love anybody at all like this. I didn’t know
what it was like.”

At least, Jubal thought that’s what she was
saying. It was hard to understand her words, since they were
drowned in tears and being muttered in between the breathy kisses
she was tattooing onto his chest and cheeks. Her hands were almost
convulsively gripping his muscled arms. Jubal smiled when he
realized that, even through her haze of passion, Maggie was very,
very careful not to pinch his bullet scar.

“
Oh, Lordy, Maggie. I love
you so much it hurts,” he whispered into her hair.

She kissed him passionately.

It was a funny thing, but now that he had
finally admitted to having succumbed to the weakness of love, it
didn’t bother him much anymore. In fact, he found that he enjoyed
speaking the words to her. Of course, the way she reacted when he
said them helped some.

“
I love you, Maggie,” he
murmured once more.

She kissed him again.

He grinned with satisfaction. This love
stuff might not be so bad after all.

“
Better start thinking about
our wedding, Maggie Bright, because we’re getting married as soon
as I can arrange it.”

The glowing smile Maggie gave him nearly
knocked him flat. She was an angel. He didn’t care how absurd it
sounded. He knew she was an angel. His angel. His very own,
personal angel.

“
The patio,” Maggie
whispered, rapture making her voice an angel’s kiss against his
ears. “We can be married in the patio. With flowers.”

It took Jubal a while to get dressed to go
to the post office, since he and Maggie had a lot of hugging to do
before he left, but he finally managed to get himself out of the
hotel room. He stopped by the front desk to order a bath for Maggie
before he went to the restaurant and made special reservations for
their evening meal, too. It was to be their engagement party, for
just the two of them, and he intended it to be special.

As for Maggie, she washed and dressed
slowly. She had to stop what she was doing every once in a while
just so she could think about the astounding turn her life had
taken.

“
I’m sorry, Kenny,” she
whispered. “I loved you. I really did love you. I still do. You
were so wonderful to me. I hope you don’t mind that I love Jubal,
too.”

Maggie wasn’t a deep philosopher; her life
had held no room for impracticalities like philosophy. But she did
harbor a deep respect in her heart for the spirit of her departed
husband. She’d always sort of savored the idea that Kenny’s spirit
was still around, somewhere, looking after Annie and her.

It might have been her imagination that
whispered reassurance to her in that hotel room, so softly that she
couldn’t really hear. It might have been her hopeful heart that
told her that Kenny was happy for her, that he was glad she had
found somebody to take care of her and Annie now. But Maggie didn’t
think so.

“
Thank you, Kenny,” she
breathed through her happy tears.

Chapter Eighteen

Jubal felt like the lowest kind of snake. He
didn’t know how on earth he was going to tell Maggie that her farm
was gone, and it was because of him. He walked slowly back to the
hotel and wondered if there wasn’t something he could bring to her,
some gift he could give her, that might soften the blow.

Even before he completed the thought,
though, he knew what the answer was. There was nothing he could do
but simply tell the truth. Anything less would be a lie. Anything
more would be a bribe.

Oh, God, please help
me
, he thought. It was the first time in
years that Jubal had uttered a prayer.

His heart ached when he opened the door to
their room and saw her. Maggie had bathed and washed her wild-honey
hair and was dressed in the best she owned. Jubal was surprised at
the sudden ferocious impulse he felt to snatch her away with him,
find the best dressmaker in El Paso, and buy her pretty things. He
knew she’d never had anything, and he found himself wanting to make
up for a lifetime of poverty and want right now, this minute. He
knew he was being irrational.

Maggie ran into his arms. Until now, she
hadn’t known it was possible to be this happy to see somebody who’d
only been gone for an hour or so. She felt renewed now that she’d
made her peace with Kenny. Now she wanted only to begin her new
life, free and happy, with Jubal Green.

When she was finally willing to let him go,
she stepped back and looked up into his face, and her shining smile
dimmed. “What’s the matter, Jubal?”

Her heart began thudding in a painful
cadence. She recognized that look. It was a bad-news look, and it
frightened her. “Is everything all right?”

Maggie frantically ran through the stored
knowledge in her brain, trying to determine what could have put
that look on Jubal’s face. She knew everybody on the ranch was all
right. They’d just left them this morning. She wondered if he had
any relatives she didn’t know about who might have died. Maybe
there had been a stock-market crash that affected the price of
cattle.

Jubal cleared his throat. “There’s a letter
from Sadie Phillips for you, Maggie.”

Maggie’s sudden, golden smile almost broke
his heart. She grabbed the edge of Sadie’s letter, but Jubal didn’t
release it.

“
I have to tell you
something first, Maggie.” He figured Sadie would have written
Maggie about the fire.

Maggie looked up at him with an uncertain
smile playing on her lips. This was odd behavior for Jubal. He
usually wasn’t hesitant about things. He got happy fast and he got
mad fast and he got over it fast.

“
What’s the matter,
Jubal?”

Jubal cleared his throat again. “It’s your
farm, Maggie,” he said softly.

Maggie’s eyes widened and the expression
that crossed her face made Jubal want to shut his own eyes against
it. It was an expression of heartbreaking fear, and if he didn’t
already hate Prometheus Mulrooney for everything else he’d done, he
would have hated the man for making Maggie’s face look like that.
He figured he’d best just get it over with.

“
Mulrooney burned it
down.”

Maggie’s mouth dropped open. Jubal released
the letter, and she blinked up at him for a second or two. Then she
walked numbly to the bed, sat down, opened the envelope with great
care, and took out the letter. She read Sadie’s words without
uttering a sound.

Jubal knew enough about Sadie Phillips to
realize that the letter was probably chock-full of emotion-wracked
prose, and he swallowed hard and tried not to be angry with
Sadie.

Maggie read the letter twice. Sure enough,
the farm was gone. Even when she took into consideration Sadie’s
extreme emotionalism and love of drama, Maggie could tell that her
farm was lost forever. Kenny’s farm. Kenny’s dream. It has been
burned to the ground. The newly repaired chicken coop, the
brand-new goat pen, the shed, the fence, the house itself:
everything was gone.

She could picture the little clearing in her
mind, but she couldn’t make herself envision the charred remains
that must be all that was left of her life, an ashen pile of rubble
huddled alone and forlorn next to the pretty green woods. Next to
Bright’s Creek that must still be bubbling and splashing as it
rambled merrily along past the blackened ruins of her home.

A tear slid down her cheek as she stared
with a unseeing eyes across the room. She didn’t see the hotel
wall, decorated with its elaborately framed painting of Niagara
Falls. She saw Kenny’s Farm, bright in the sunlight of an early
spring morning, always warm, always welcoming, no matter how tired
she was, no matter how worn down or discouraged. It was the first
home she had ever known. She had lived with her aunt and uncle, but
Kenny’s farm was the first home she had known.

Jubal watched her for what seemed like
forever. Then he couldn’t stand it any longer. He took a step
toward her and she looked up at him.

God damn Prometheus
Mulrooney to eternal hell
, passed through
his mind.
And God damn me for making
Maggie go through this
.

When Maggie saw the look on Jubal’s face,
she was afraid that he would be angry because she was sad that her
farm had burned down. She didn’t want him to think she loved him
the less because his enemy had hurt her. She wanted to apologize to
him.

“
I’m sorry, Jubal,” she
began.

Then she stopped. He hated apologies, too.
Maggie didn’t know what to say then. She just sat still and silent
as tears wet her cheeks. She had never felt so helpless, worthless,
and unhappy in her life. Practically everything she had ever loved
had just been burned to the ground and now lay in ashes at her
feet, and she didn’t know what to do or say or think.

“
Oh, God,
Maggie.”

Jubal’s ragged whisper rasped from his
throat and he bent to pick her up. When Maggie shook him off, he
was sure his heart would break. He wanted to hold her, to cradle
her on his lap and in his arms and rock her as one might rock a
hurt child.

“
No, Jubal. Please don’t
touch me right now,” she whispered.

So Jubal backed away from her. His chest
ached with the longing to love and comfort her, and dread began to
coil up from his belly like a black, poisonous snake.

Oh, God, Maggie, don’t turn
away from me now. Not now, when we just found each
other
.

He didn’t know how long they stayed like
that, Maggie sitting on the bed, staring at the wall in front of
her, but seeing the pictures in her mind; Jubal standing against
the far wall, watching her, wanting her, aching for her. Every now
and then, a shudder would ripple through her body, and Jubal’s
fists clenched with each one of those shudders, as if he longed to
slay the monster of unhappiness that had invaded their room.

They both became aware of Jubal’s muttered
words at the same time. Jubal hadn’t realized he’d been speaking,
and Maggie hadn’t been listening.

But slowly his, “I’m sorry, Maggie. It’s my
fault. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry,” penetrated the fog of unhappiness
that surrounded them. Unhappiness had filled the room up so that
the air was thick with an almost palpable agony.

Maggie couldn’t stand to
hear him sound so unhappy. She lifted her gaze from Niagara Falls
and found his face.
Poor
Jubal
, she thought.
He wants so much to help
.

But there wasn’t any help he could give her.
There wasn’t anything he could do that he hadn’t already done. The
reality of her life, that she was back to having nothing but
herself and her baby, settled like a cloak of mourning around her
shoulders.

“
It’s not your fault,
Jubal,” she whispered to him.

Jubal didn’t know what to say to her then.
He wished like the devil that he possessed a glib tongue. But he
didn’t.

Finally he said the only thing that he could
think of to say, “Please let me hold you, Maggie.”