This Calder Sky (45 page)

Chase walked onto the porch, dusting off his clothes with his hat. A series of minor irritations that day had left him in a foul mood. Not that he had been in the best of moods this last week. Maggie had been giving him the silent treatment, barely talking at all.

Inside the house he paused, listening, but no sound greeted him. It was early. Maggie was probably still out riding. He'd like to know where she went on her rides … and who she met—if it was her brother, or someone else. She had stopped mentioning what the conditions were in the particular section of range she had ridden, which is what made him suspect she had something else on her mind while she was out there.

The unanswered questions, the half-formed suspicions sat in his mind, working on him, until every other thought he had was about her. He had told her from the beginning that she was free—that she could come and go as she pleased; the marriage was a mere formality to ensure his claim on Ty, so he had no grounds to demand an accounting of her activities when she was away from him. The possibility that she was meeting a man other than her brother awakened feelings in him that were akin to jealousy.

With telephone calls to make, he entered the den, but he walked to the bar instead of the desk and poured a straight shot of whiskey. He bolted half of it down, starting a backfire that he hoped would burn out the smoldering coals of his jealousy. He sprawled in a
leather chair, leaning his head back to stare at the stone fireplace. He lit a long cheroot and nursed it between his lips. Had any of his ancestors endured marriages with separate bedrooms? If a man couldn't keep his wife home, he wasn't much of a man. But he'd given his permission.

All taut energy lay inside him, with no release, all the frustrations of wanting without the right to possess, because he'd given it away. He downed the rest of his drink and rolled to his feet with an animal-like tension. After taking one step toward the bar, Chase stopped. Getting drunk wasn't the answer. He shoved the glass onto a tabletop and pivoted. Work. Fill his mind with other thoughts. Exhaust his body until it was unaware of any physical need but sleep.

He walked to the desk to make those phone calls and stopped short with his hand on the back of the swivel chair. All the color drained from his face. Lying in the middle of the desk was a miniature noose made from white string. It was exact in detail, right down to the nine wraps that formed the hangman's knot.

How had it gotten there? Who had put it there? Who would know the significance? Only a handful, and most of that number Chase could dismiss. That left only three—Maggie, Culley and Tucker. Maggie was his wife, but she couldn't be eliminated from the list. A cold rage filled him. Once he had believed her innocent of the rustling, but she had known about it—taken part in one raid.

The front door closed, and he turned his head toward the sound. He heard the footsteps—light, even-paced strides. It was Maggie. He'd listened to her walk often enough during his evenings working in the den. He walked to the open double doors.

“Maggie?” His peremptory tone stopped her midway across the living room, her Stetson swinging in her
hand. She looked tired and flushed from her ride. When she turned, he noticed the way her high breasts pushed out the front of the cotton blouse. “Would you come in here a minute? I want to talk to you.”

She agreed in that quiet, concise manner that provoked him with its aloofness. “Of course.” She came toward him, combing a hand through her hair that curled nearly to her shoulders.

He waited until she was at the door before he turned to escort her to the desk. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the first tremor of shock and turned to observe her reaction. She had halted, her widened gaze locked on the miniature noose while her face turned ghostly pale. That was a reaction no actress could fake. She hadn't known it was there, he realized, or she would have been better prepared. What anger remained in him was directed toward himself for doing this to her.

“Maggie.” His voice was sharp to break the morbid spell of the noose.

Her gaze jerked to him, tears welling in her eyes. “Is this your idea of some cruel practical joke?” She choked on the bitter words.

“I had to find out if you knew about it.” He walked to the bar to pour her a drink and she followed him partway.

“If
I
knew about it?” Her fingers were pressed to her breastbone, emphasizing her words as she demanded an explanation.

“Yes. That was left on the desk for
me
to find—not you. Drink this.” He extended a shot glass of whiskey to her.

She waved it aside with an impatient gesture. “I don't want it. You mean someone—” She frowned and didn't complete the sentence.

“Yes.”

“But who could have—” She stopped again.

“The list of possibilities is very short.” Chase studied the shot glass still in his hand, lifting his gaze to catch hers. “Have you seen your brother lately?”

She moved to a window, staring out of it and clasping her hands in front of her. “Yes, I've seen him.”

“Do you remember anything he said?”

“He said a lot of wild things, but he's always talked about getting even. Even in his letters, he was always mentioning it. He never did anything, though—not in all this time.”

“That hangman's rope is more than just talk.”

“I know.” She looked down at her hands. “He's my brother, Chase. I'm worried about him.”

“His scare tactics—or whatever he wants to call them—won't work. You can tell him that for me,” he said grimly.

She turned her head to look at him, a certain desperation in her otherwise calm expression. “I don't want anything to happen to him.”

His nostrils flared in contained anger. “Do you give a damn what happens to me?”

“Of course I do!” The blazing fires in her eyes burned him. For a minute Chase thought he had gotten through to the old Maggie. Then they were contained with cool control. “I care about any human being.”

“Do you?” he mocked as she looked out the window again. “Sometimes I wonder.” He caught the movement of her hands and glanced down to see her turning her wedding band around and around on her finger. “Is the ring too loose?” His symbolic thought was to make it tighter and cut off all circulation.

“No.” She glanced down, as if not previously realizing what she was doing. “I'm just used to my husband's ring.”

“I am your husband.” His mouth was a tight white line.

A stillness settled over her. “Yes.” It was a quiet affirmation. Then she was lifting her head, so cool and poised that he wanted to shake her. “Excuse me. I need to shower and change before I fix your dinner.” She moved away without looking at him and left the room.

Chase listened to the footsteps carrying her away from him. As Maggie climbed the stairs, he drank down the shot of whiskey he'd poured for her and gripped the empty glass. In a surge of anger, he hurled it at the fireplace, where it crashed and splintered in the blackened hearth.

The next morning, Maggie was dusting the furniture in the living room while Ruth ran the dustmop over the tiled floor. She heard Chase come in but didn't look around, presuming he would go to the den. It was several seconds before she felt the touch of his gaze on her and realized he was watching her. She turned suddenly, surprising him and catching the hard-biting hunger in his look before he wiped it away. There was a swift, hot rise of her pulse, disturbed by that glimpse of his needs.

“I'll be away from the ranch today, so I won't be here for lunch,” he said. “I may be late coming home. If I'm not here by seven, don't hold up dinner for me.”

“All right.” She kept her voice even. Instead of the regular ranch clothes, he was dressed in a Western-cut suit and white shirt, tailored to fit his long, muscled frame. The effect was one of power and authority—and an ease in shouldering it.

He seemed on the verge of saying something else, then changed his mind as he looked at Ruth. Donning a cream-colored Stetson, he turned and walked to the
door. As it closed behind him, Maggie released the breath she had unconsciously been holding and bent to finish dusting an end table.

“Have you quarreled?” The question from Ruth stiffened Maggie.

“No, of course not,” she denied, deliberately casual.

The small silence that followed revealed that Ruth Haskell did not fully believe the marriage was without problems. “Try to be understanding, Maggie,” she said finally. “Running the Triple C is a lonely job, with an enormous amount of pressure and responsibility. I recall that Lillie—Webb's wife—used to tell me it demanded that Webb be more than a man. And the only time he could be ‘just a man' was when they closed the bedroom door at night.”

The intimacies—the confidences that a man and wife shared—were something that made Maggie uncomfortable. Chase was her husband. Despite her slip yesterday, that was the way she thought of him. It was this that compounded her fear about what Culley might be planning.

“Chase is the heart of the Triple C. He pumps life to the farthest reaches of the ranch, ties it all together, and keeps it healthy,” Ruth continued quietly. “The heart has to be strong and good. A Calder is a special breed of man, Maggie. And it takes a special breed of woman to stand at his side. I wasn't sure at first, but you are that kind.” There was a gentle curve to her mouth. “I know you know about Sally Brogan. A woman always knows about the other woman in her husband's life. She is a gentle, loving person who served a need in his life—gave him a quiet place to go and an undemanding affection. But she is like me, a shadow destined to remain in the background. You are like Chase, able to stand in the sunlight, letting it glare
on your flaws and shine on your assets. You belong in this house the same way Lillie did.” She suddenly realized how much she had talked while Maggie remained silent. Her expression became rueful and apologetic. “I'm sorry. I probably shouldn't be saying all this, but Chase is like my own son. I raised him and … I want him to be happy. I know you have what it takes to make him very happy.”

Maggie murmured a suitable response and tried not to think about what the woman had said, but the words lingered as she continued with the housework, instilling her with an unconscious pride of possession that hadn't existed before. She found herself rearranging furniture, letting her personality assert its influence on the house. It didn't occur to her that, in effect, she was allowing her role as mistress to assume certain permanence. Too many of her conscious thoughts were spent worrying about the miniature noose and what kind of threat it might signify. That afternoon she rode the hills of the Shamrock Ranch searching for her brother without success, her hope to dissuade him from carrying out his unknown plans unrealized.

Chase wasn't home by seven that evening. When Ty came downstairs after showering and changing clothes, he noticed the table was set for only two, and the place at the head of the table was bare.

“Where's Dad?”

“He said not—” Maggie faltered, realizing how automatically Ty had referred to Chase as his father—and how automatically she had known to whom he was referring. “He said not to wait for him for dinner. He had business away from the ranch today, so he could be late.”

“He'll probably eat at Sally's,” Ty decided and pulled out his chair to sit down.

The mention of the other woman hit a raw nerve.
Maggie suddenly remembered the desire that had been in Chase's eyes that morning before he'd left. He had needs that she, as his wife, hadn't fulfilled. She was suddenly tormented with images of Chase in the arms of the red-haired widow. It was crazy, but it was true, nevertheless. She was jealous.

It was nearly ten o'clock in the evening when she went upstairs to her bedroom. She wasn't tired, but Chase hadn't returned yet and she didn't want to give him the impression that she was waiting up for him. So she tossed and turned sleeplessly in her bed, watching the luminous hands of the clock on the bedside table tick off the minutes.

A little before eleven, Maggie heard the car drive into the ranch yard. She knew it was Chase—just as she knew where he had been all this time and who he'd been with. The hurt that caused her was disguised as the anger of disgust.

Tired from the long session with the attorneys and the long drive, Chase was rankled by the sight of the darkened house; not a single light shone. Maggie could have at least left a light on for him. There was a flatness to him as he climbed the porch steps and crossed to the door. He hadn't eaten, but the prospect of raiding the
refrigerator and eating alone in the kitchen didn't appeal to him.

He entered the house and didn't bother to turn on a light. He could find his way to the stairs in the dark. Two steps into the living room, he crashed into a table, cracking his kneecap on the corner of a leg and tipping the table over. Whatever was on top of it clattered to the floor. Grabbing his knee and cursing, Chase lurched sideways and bumped into a chair that had no business being where it was, either.

The racket from below brought Maggie out of bed. It sounded like someone was down there knocking things over. Grabbing her robe in alarm, she rushed out of the bedroom and paused at the head of the stairs to flip the wall switch that turned on the light above the staircase. She heard the muffled swearing, but she didn't see Chase crouched over in the living room shadows until she reached the landing. Her first thought was that he was drunk. Then he looked up and saw her, poised on the landing.

“What's going on down here?” she demanded in icy anger, viewing the table and broken vase in front of him.

“I ran into that damned table!” He released his knee long enough to gesture at the fallen table.

“Why didn't you turn on a light so you could see where you were going instead of crashing into things and waking up the whole house?” she snapped.