Maggie's Dad (12 page)

“You have the rest of your life,” he said shortly. “However long that is!”

“No.” Her voice was weaker. She was fighting tears. She turned her head away and tried to get up, but he held her there.

“You can live with me. I'll take care of you,” he said heavily. “Whatever you need, you'll get. The best doctors, the best treatment.”

“Money still can't buy life,” she told him. “Cancer is…pretty final.”

“Stop saying that!” He gripped her arms, hard. “Stop being a defeatist! You can beat anything if you're willing to try!”

“Oh, that sounds familiar,” she said, her eyes misting over with memory. “Remember when you were first starting to build your pedigree herd up? And they told you you'd never manage it with one young bull and five heifers. Remember what you said? You said that anything was possible.” Her eyes grew warm. “I believed you'd do it. I never doubted it for a minute. You were so proud, Powell, even when you had nothing, and you fought on when so many others would have dropped by the wayside. It was one of the things I admired most about you.”

He winced. His face clenched; his
heart
clenched. He felt as if he was being torn apart. He let her go and got to his feet, moving away with his hands tight in his pockets.

“I gave up on you, though, didn't I?” he asked with his back to her. “A little gossip, a few lies and I destroyed your life.”

She studied her thin hands. It was good that they were finally discussing this, that he'd finally admitted that he knew the truth. Perhaps it would make it easier for him, and for her, to let go of the past.

“Sally loved you,” she said, making excuses for her friend for the first time. “Perhaps love makes people act out of character.”

His fists clenched in his pockets. “I hated her, God forgive me,” he said huskily. “I hated her every day we were together, even more when she announced that she was pregnant with Maggie.” He sighed wearily. “God, Annie, I resent my own child because I'm not even sure she's mine. I'll never be sure. Even if she is, every time I look at her, I remember what her mother did.”

“You did very well without me,” she said without malice. “You built up the ranch and made a fortune doing it. You have respect and influence….”

“And all it cost me was you.” His head bowed. He laughed dully. “What a price to pay.”

“Maggie is a bright child,” she said uncertainly. “She can't be so bad. Julie likes her.”

“Not recently. Everybody's mad at her for making you leave,” he said surprisingly. “Julie won't speak to her.”

“That's a shame,” she said. “She's a child who needs love, so much.” Antonia had been thinking of
what had happened the past few weeks, and Maggie's role in it.

He turned, scowling. “What do you mean?”

She smiled. The reasons for Maggie's bad behavior were beginning to be so clear. “Can't you see it in her? She's so alone, Powell, just like you used to be. She doesn't mix with the other children. She's always apart, separate. She's belligerent because she's lonely.”

His face hardened. “I'm a busy man…”

“Blame me. Blame Sally. But don't blame Maggie for the past,” she pleaded. “If nothing else comes out of this, there should be something for Maggie.”

“Oh, God, St. Antonia speaks!” he said sarcastically, because her defense of his daughter made him ashamed of his lack of feeling for the child. “She got you fired, and you think she deserves kindness?”

“She does,” she replied simply. “I could have been kinder to her. She reminded me of Sally, too. I was holding grudges of my own. I wasn't deliberately unkind, but I made no overtures toward her at all. A child like Julie is easy to love, because she gives love so generously. A child like Maggie is secretive and distrustful. She can't give love because she doesn't know how. She has to learn.”

He thought about that for a minute. “All right. If she needs it, you come home with me and teach me how to give it.”

She searched over his rigid expression with eyes that held equal parts of love and grief. “I'm already
going downhill,” she said slowly. “I can't do that to her, or to you and my father.” Her eyes skimmed over his broad shoulders lovingly. “I'll stay with Barrie until I become a liability, then I'll go into a hospice… Powell!”

He had her up in his arms, clear off the floor, his hot face buried in her throat. He didn't speak, but his arms had a fine tremor and his breathing was ragged. He held her so close that she felt vaguely bruised, and he paced the floor with her while he tried to cope with the most incredible emotional pain he'd ever felt.

“I won't let you die,” he said roughly. “Do you hear me? I won't!”

She slid her arms around his neck and let him hold her. He did care, in his own way, and she was sorry for him. She'd had weeks to come to grips with her condition, but he'd only had a day or so. Denial was a very real part of it, as Dr. Claridge had already told her.

“It's because of the night you took me to the bar, isn't it?” she asked quietly. “There's no need to feel guilty about what you said. I know it hasn't been an easy nine years for you, either. I don't hold any more grudges. I don't have time for them now. I've put things into perspective in the past few weeks. Hatred, guilt, anger, revenge…they all become so insignificant when you realize your time is limited.”

His arms contracted. He stopped pacing and stood holding her, cold with fear.

“If you take the treatments, you have a chance,” he repeated.

“Yes. I can live, from day to day, with the fear of it coming back. I can have radiation sickness, my hair will fall out, the very quality of my life will be impaired. What there is left of it, that is.”

He drew in a sharp breath, rocking her against him. His eyes, if she could have seen them, were wide and bleak in a face gone rigid with grief.

“I'll be there. I'll help you through it! Life is too precious to throw away.” His mouth searched against her throat hungrily. “Marry me, Annie. If it's only for a few weeks, we'll make enough memories to carry us both into eternity!”

His voice was husky as he spoke. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever said to her. She clung, giving way to tears at last.

“Yes?” he whispered.

She didn't speak. It was too much of a temptation to resist. She didn't have the willpower to say no, despite her suspicion of his motives.

“I want you,” he said harshly. “I want you more than I've ever wanted anything in my life, sick or well. Say yes,” he repeated insistently. “Say yes!”

If it was only physical, if he didn't love her, was she doing the right thing to agree? She didn't know. But it was more than she could do to walk away from him a second time. Her arms tightened around his neck. “If you're sure…if you're really sure.”

“I'm sure, all right.” His cheek slid against hers.
He searched her wet eyes. His mouth closed them and then slid down to cover her soft, trembling, tear-wet mouth. He kissed her tenderly, slowly, feeling her immediate response.

The kisses quickly became passionate, intense, and he drew back, because this was a time for tenderness, not desire. “If you'll have the treatments,” he said carefully, “if it's even remotely possible afterward, I'll give you a child.”

As bribery went, it was a master stroke. She looked as if she thought he was going insane. Her pale eyes searched his dark ones warily.

“Don't you want a child, Antonia?” he asked curtly. “You used to. It was all you talked about while we were engaged. Surely you didn't give up those dreams.”

She felt the heat rush into her cheeks. It was an intimate thing to be talking about. Her eyes escaped his, darting down to the white of his shirt.

“Don't,” she said weakly.

“We'll be married,” he said firmly. “It will all be legal and aboveboard.”

She sighed miserably. “Your daughter won't like having me in the house, for however long I have.”

“My daughter had better like it. Having you around her may be the best thing that ever happened to her. But you keep harping on my daughter—I told you before, I don't even think Maggie's mine!”

Her eyes came up sharply.

“Oh, you think you're the only one who paid the
price, is that it?” he asked bluntly. “I was married to an alcoholic, who hated me because I couldn't bear to touch her. She told me that Maggie wasn't mine, that she'd been with other men.”

She tried to pull away, but he wouldn't let her. He put her back on her feet, but he held her there in front of him. His eyes were relentless, like his hold on her. “I told you that I believed Sally about George, but I didn't. After that one, she told so many lies… so many…!” He let go of her abruptly and turned his back, ramming his hands into the pockets of his slacks as he went to look out the window that overlooked the city of Tucson with “A” Mountain in the distance. “I've lived in hell. Until she died, and afterward. You said you couldn't bear Maggie in your class because of the memories, and I accused you of cruelty. But it's that way with me, too.”

The child's behavior made a terrible kind of sense. Her mother hadn't wanted her, and neither did her father. She was unloved, unwanted. No wonder she was a behavioral problem.

“She looks like Sally,” she said.

“Oh, yes. Indeed she does. But she doesn't look like me, does she?”

She couldn't argue that point, as much as she might have liked to reassure him.

She joined him at the window. Her eyes searched his. The pain and the anguish of his life were carved into his lean face, in deep lines and an absence of happiness. He looked older than he was.

“What stupid mistakes we make, Antonia, when we're young. I didn't believe you, and that hurt you so much that you ran away. Then I spent years pretending that it wasn't a lie, because I couldn't bear to see the waste and know that I caused it. It's hard to admit guilt, fault. I fought it tooth and nail. But in the end, there was no one else to blame.”

She lowered her eyes to his chest. “We were both much younger.”

“I never used you to get loans on your father's name,” he said bluntly. “That was the farthest thing from my mind.”

She didn't answer him.

He moved closer, so that as she stared at the floor, his legs filled her line of vision. They were long legs, muscular and powerful from hours working in the saddle.

He took her cold hands in his. “I was a loner and a misfit. I grew up in poverty, with a father who'd gamble the food out of a baby's mouth and a mother who was too afraid of him to leave. It was a rough childhood. The only thing I ever wanted was to get out of the cycle of poverty, to never have to go hungry again. I wanted to make people notice me.”

“You did,” she said. “You have everything you ever wanted—money and power and prestige.”

“There was one other thing I wanted,” he said, correcting her. “I wanted you.”

She couldn't meet his eyes. “That didn't last.”

“Yes, it did. I still want you more than any woman I've ever known.”

“In bed,” she scoffed.

“Don't knock it,” he replied. “Surely by now you've learned how passion can take you over.”

She looked up. Her eyes were guileless, curious, totally innocent.

He caught his breath. “No?”

She lowered her gaze again. “I stopped taking risks after you. Nobody got close enough to hurt me again. In any way.”

He caught her small hand in his and rubbed his thumb slowly over its delicate back. He watched the veins in it, traced their blue paths to her fingers. “I can't say the same,” he replied quietly. “It would have been more than I could bear to go without a woman for years.”

“I suppose it's different for men.”

“For some of us,” he agreed. He clasped her fingers tight. “They were all you,” he added on a cold laugh. “Every one was you. They numbed the pain for a few minutes, and then it came back full force and brought guilt with it.”

She reached out hesitantly and touched his dark hair. It was cool under her fingers, clean and smelling of some masculine shampoo.

“Hold me,” he said quietly, sliding his arms around her waist. “I'm as frightened as you are.”

The words startled her. By the time she reacted to them, he had her close, and his face was buried in her throat.

Her hands hovered above his head and then finally gave in and slid into his hair, holding his cheek against hers.

“I can't let you die, Antonia,” he said in a rough whisper.

Her fingers smoothed over his hair protectively. “The treatments are scary,” she confessed.

He lifted his head and searched her eyes. “If I went with you, would it be so bad?” he asked softly. “Because I will.”

She was weakening. “No. It wouldn't be…so bad, then.”

He smiled gently. “Leukemia isn't necessarily fatal,” he continued. “Remission can last for years.” He traced her mouth. “Years and years.”

Tears leaked out of her eyes and down into the corners of her mouth.

“You'll get better,” he said, his voice a little rough with the control he was exercising. “And we'll have a baby together.”

Her lips compressed. “If I have to have radiation, I don't think I can ever have children.”

He hadn't wanted to think about that. He took her hand and brought it hungrily to his mouth. “We'll talk to the doctor. We'll find out for certain.”

It was like being caught in a dream. She stopped thinking and worrying altogether. Her eyes searched his and she smiled for the first time.

“All right?” he prompted.

She nodded. “All right.”

 

Dr. Claridge was less than optimistic about pregnancy, and he said so. “You can't carry a child while you're undergoing the treatment,” he explained patiently, and watched their faces fall. He hated telling them that.