There was lightness in her challenging response. “What do you think that will solve?”
“Come here and I’ll show you.” Chase reached out for her hand and pulled her to the bed. Before they sprawled together across the mattress, the nightgown came off, as well as his shorts. While his roaming hands were awakening her flesh, his hungry mouth was seeking her lips.
“The light.” She reminded him it was still on.
“All the better to see you, my love,” he insisted, drawing back to view her nakedness, eager to discover all her mysteries. “You have a body any man would enjoy making love to, but it doubles my pleasure to watch you.”
“Yes.” She understood the added sensation as she observed the play of his muscles along his shoulder and arm when his hand cupped one of her breasts. “Love me, Chase.” She was shaken by the greatness of her need.
“Always.” Then his kiss was filling her mouth as his weight settled heavily onto her slight figure.
Two mornings later, Chase and Ty had just sat down to eat the breakfast Maggie had fixed when the meal was interrupted by Nate. He paused in the doorway of the dining room to remove his hat. Outside, dawn was turning the sky orange and pink.
“Sit down and have some coffee, Nate,” Chase invited, but an uncomfortable feeling threaded through him at the old cowboy’s still expression. The sensation entered places where primal instincts dwelled. He sensed trouble, the way a dog bristles at a silent shadow.
“Yes, sit down, Nate.” Maggie seconded the invitation. “I’ll bring you a cup.” She started to rise from her chair, but the foreman refused with a single shake of his head.
“No, thank you, ma’am.” He didn’t enter the room, but remained in the doorway. “Can I speak to you privately, Chase?”
Chase pushed his chair away from the table and moved with the swiftness of a man accustomed to action as he joined the retreating cowboy in the foyer. Maggie knew something was wrong, but she didn’t understand what it was. She could hear the low murmur of their voices, the conversation very brief. After she heard the front door open and close, it was a full second before she realized there were two sets of footsteps leaving the house. She rushed to the door, yanking it open to see Chase striding away from the porch with Nate.
“Chase, where are you going? You haven’t had breakfast.” Her demand for an explanation was cloaked in a wifely excuse.
When he turned, his face told her nothing, his thoughts hidden behind the mask Western men wear. “I’ll grab a bite at the cookhouse.”
“Has something happened?” She started to cross the porch to follow him.
“Nothing I can’t handle. You stay at the house.” It was an emphatic order.
Maggie’s mouth opened to protest, but Chase was already moving away, taking her obedience for granted. The command made her unease stronger as she watched him crossing the ranch yard, until it finally drove her off the porch after him. She didn’t know what it was that he was attempting to keep from her, but she intended to find out.
When he disappeared inside the stud barn, she quickened her steps. She noticed there were others hurrying to the same place, yet no sounds were coming from inside—nothing to indicate a stallion fight. Maggie paused inside the open barn door to let her eyes adjust to the interior darkness. Chase was standing near an open stall, a steely tension about him. She moved closer to look inside, anticipating the sight of an ailing stallion.
Soft morning sunlight streamed through a stall window, glistening over the tawny coat of the buckskin stallion, Cougar. Her eyes widened as she realized the silent animal was frozen in a rearing posture. How? Then she saw how and her horrified gasp was audible, despite the hand that she clamped over her mouth. A knotted rope was around its neck, tied to an overhead barn beam. The horse had been hanged.
The sight of it was blocked by a pair of wi
de shoulders. A pair of hands clasped the soft flesh of her arms as she swayed in shocked revulsion. Her horrified gaze met Chase’s. He was visibly gritting his teeth at her pinched-white face.
“I told you to stay at the house,” he reminded her in groaning regret that she hadn’t.
“Did Culley—” A sob choked her voice, cutting off the question.
Then Chase was turning her away, giving her into someone else’s care. “Take Maggie up to the house, Buck, and see that she stays there. Ty, go get Ruth. I don’t want your mother to be left alone.”
Maggie caught a glimpse of her son inside the open barn door as Buck led her out. Her mind was racing with too many resurrected fears and memories and she barely heard any of the murmured words Buck offered. She wasn’t interested in talking to him about the stallion being hanged. She didn’t want to talk to anyone about it or make any speculations aloud until she had spoken to Chase, alone.
She saw him at lunch, but Ty’s presence didn’t give her a chance to speak freely. In front of their son, they pretended ignorance of any motive that would lead someone to hang the stallion. The morning scene in the barn preyed on her mind all day.
In the middle of the afternoon, Chase walked into the cookhouse. Tucker’s large bulk was leaning against a counter, an elbow leaning on the worktop. A bibbed apron was around his protruding middle. He didn’t appear surprised to find Chase entering his kitchen domain.
“There’s coffee in the pot.” There always was, but Tucker waved toward the metal urn, just the same. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Chase helped himself to a cup, using one of the mugs off the shelf. “I suppose you heard about that old buckskin stud of my father’s.”
“I heard it was hanged.” Tucker nodded, his small eyes observing Chase as he lit a long, thin cigar. “Heard about the calf, too. I figured sooner or later you’d be coming ‘round to talk to me. I tell you right now that I didn’t have anything to do with it, and I don’t know anything about it.”
“If you did, you wouldn’t tell me,” Chase guessed, sliding the man a glance through the smoke trail of his cigar.