“You unlock this door, or I swear I’ll break it in!” he warned and rattled the knob again.
This time there was no reply, only silence from within. He leaned a shoulder against it and pushed, but nothing happened and he cursed the solidness of the door. Once he’d made his intention clear, he couldn’t back down. Stepping back, he kicked at the center of the door near the lock. It shook and held. With the second kick, Chase heard the faint splintering of wood. Putting all his force behind the blow, he kicked at the door again and felt the sickening give of the wood. When his boot hit the same weakened area again, there was a ripping sound as the metal lock was torn out of the frame and the door whipped open.
Breathing heavily from the exertion, he saw Maggie standing well back from the door holding onto the bedpost that was behind her back. A wariness blazed from her. The satin gown was molded to her figure, outlining the taut nipples of her breast, the little hollow of her belly button, and the exciting vee where her legs came together. She was his wife. The knowledge rose hot within him, arousing him beyond the point of remembering any promise.
Maggie read it in his eyes, but, however much his look aroused the same sweeping passion, her pride wouldn’t let her accept him when he’d come here from the arms of another woman.
“Don’t you come near me,” she warned. “This is my room, and you have no right to be in it unless I invite you. And I don’t want you to touch me!”
Her icy rejection was a slap at his manhood. Chase retaliated in kind, his lip curling in disdain. “What makes you think I would be interested?” He had the satisfaction of seeing her wince at his contemptuous reply. It soothed his bruised ego. “Just remember, there are no locked doors in this house.” His warning had a figurative meaning, as well as a literal one. Maggie might “shut” him out of her life, but he would never permit her to “lock” him out.
Turning on his heel, he started toward his own room and stopped when he saw Ty staring at him from the end of the hall. The bewildered look of alarm in his son’s face washed away his rage. Chase shuddered inwardly when he realized how close he had come to raping Maggie—unaware that Ty was looking on. Tiredness swept through him, slumping his shoulders.
“Go to bed, son,” he said in a voice weary with regret for the apprehension he’d caused. “It’s all over.” He saw Ty cast an anxious look toward Maggie’s open, now unclosable, door. “I won’t hurt her,” Chase added. “I won’t go near her tonight, so you can rest easy.”
There was a glimmer of uncertainty in Ty’s look, as if he had caught what Chase had not—he had said tha
t he wouldn’t go near her “tonight.” But Ty accepted his father’s word and retraced the steps to his bedroom. Chase continued slowly to his own room.
Dawn came in changing sheets of color. As the sun peered over a hill at the new day, Chase shaved and dressed. Ty was walking down the hall when he left his room. They nodded a good morning and continued toward the staircase. As they passed Maggie’s room, where the broken door sagged open, Ty glanced inside and paused.
“Mom isn’t up.” He darted a questioning look at Chase.
His stride didn’t falter as he passed the door, briefly glimpsing black hair against a white pillow. “Let her sleep. We’ll fix our own breakfast.”
After the meal, Ty left the house to do his morning chores, and Chase went to the ranch office to check the previous day’s reports and make any last-minute adjustments in the day’s schedule for the crews. An hour later he returned to The Homestead. It was silent, nothing and no one stirring. He climbed the stairs to Maggie’s room.
Crossing the threshold that he had not stepped past the night before, he walked to the bed to wake her up. Uncovered, she was lying on her stomach, her face turned toward the center of the bed. Chase looked at her sleeping form, the slim, white shoulders bare, except for the narrow straps of her nightgown. His gaze followed the smooth line of her spine, the satin material tracing its path past her slender waist to its culmination point. There, he became distracted by the heart-shaped roundness of her bottom, so arousingly defined by the clinging fabric.
He knew it was either slap it or kiss it. He slapped it, bringing the flat of his hand down sharply on a soft cheek. She woke up with a gasping cry of shock and rolled onto her side, facing him and protecting her vulnerable backside with her hand. Confusion, shock, anger, and sleep were all mixed in her expression as she pushed the weight of her rumpled hair away from her face.
“It’s time to get up,” he said, his gaze drifting to the front of her nightgown as it gaped open to show the curved slope of a breast.
She turned her head to see the morning sun shining in the window. Irritation set a frown on her features as she hurriedly swung her feet out of the bed. “Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?”
“There’s no need to rush. Ty and I have already had breakfast. We fixed our own.”
“Why did you wait until now? You could have gotten me up before.” She stood beside the bed, still slightly disoriented.
Chase was totally unnerved by the scene—Maggie standing there, all soft and rumpled from sleep, the turned-down covers of the bed behind her, and the emptiness of the house. He started out of the room while he still had the willpower to walk away.
“I thought you needed the rest,” he said as his strides carried him toward the hallway. “I would have let you sleep longer, except one of my men will be over shortly to repair your door and I didn’t think you’d want to be in bed when he came.”
“What?” Her bare feet made little sound as she followed him into the hall, hurrying to keep up with him, an incredulous expression on her face. “What did you say?” she demanded.
Chase paused for only a second at the head of the stairs to glance over his shoulder. “George is a carpenter. He’s going to fix your door.” He was halfway down the first flight of stairs when her temper exploded over him.
“When he comes, you can just send him somewhere else on some other job!” she stormed.
He stopped and looked up. She was standing in the hallway above him, her hands gripping the protective railing around the stairwell. “The door has to be repaired.”
“You broke it. You can fix it,” she retorted.
“I have more important things to do.” He started down the stairs again.
“Damn you, Chase Calder!” She rushed down the steps after him. “Did you tell that man how the door was broken?”
“No.” He rounded the landing.