“Thirty-five thousand.”
“No,” Justice told him. “Caleb’s too valuable a stud to let him go for that. If the would-be buyer wants to pay for calves out of Caleb, we’ll do that. But we’re not selling our top breeding bull.”
Phil grinned. “That’s what I told him.”
Some of Justice’s competitors were more convinced it was his breeding stock that made his cattle so much better than others, and they were continually trying to buy bulls. They were either too stupid or too lazy to realize that fresh calves weren’t going to change anything. To get the results Justice had, they were going to have to redo their operations completely.
The door to the study swung open after a perfunctory knock, and both men turned to look. Maggie stood in the open doorway. Faded jeans clung to her legs and the King Cattle T-shirt she wore in bright blue made her eyes shine like sapphires. She gave Phil a big smile. “You guys finished?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Phil said.
“No,” Justice said.
His ranch manager winced a little as he realized that he’d blown things for his boss.
Maggie looked at her husband. “Which is it? Yes or no?”
Frowning, Justice scowled at his foreman, silently calling him traitor. Phil just shrugged, though, as if to say it was too late now.
“We’re finished for the time being,” Justice reluctantly admitted.
“Good. Time for your exercises,” Maggie told him, walking into the room and heading for his desk.
“Then I’ll just go—” Phil waved his hat in the direction of the door “—back to work.” He nodded at her. “Maggie, good to see you.”
“You, too,” she said, giving the other man the kind of brilliant smile that Justice hadn’t seen directed at him in far too long.
“He hasn’t changed at all,” Maggie mused.
“You haven’t been gone that long.”
“Funny,” she said, “feels like a lifetime to me.”
“I guess it would.” Justice didn’t want her in here. This was his office. His retreat. The one room in the whole place that hadn’t been colored by her scent. By her presence. But it was too late now.
As she wandered the room, running her fingertips across the leather spines of the books in the shelves, he told himself that from now on, he’d see her here. He’d feel her here. He’d be able to close his eyes and imagine her with him, the sound of her voice, the sway of her hips, the way the sunlight through the window made her hair shine like a fire at midnight.
Squirming uncomfortably in his chair now, Justice said, “You know, if you don’t mind, I’ve got some paperwork to catch up on. Things pile up if you don’t stay on top of them. Think I’ll skip the exercises this morning.”
She gave him the sort of smile she would have given a little boy trying to get away with cutting school. “I don’t think so. But if you want, we can change things up a little. Instead of a half hour on the treadmill, we could walk around the ranch yard.”
Sounded like a plan to him. He hated that damn treadmill with a raging passion. What the hell good was it, when a man had the whole world to walk in? Who would choose to walk on a conveyor belt? And if she didn’t have him on that treadmill, she had him doing lunges and squats, with his back up against the wall. He felt like a lab rat, moving from one maze to the next. Always inside. Always moving and getting exactly nowhere.
The thought of getting outside was a blessing. Outside. Into the air, where her perfume would get lost in the wind rather than clinging to every breath he took. “Fine.”
He pushed up from his black leather chair, and as he stepped around the edge of the desk, Maggie approached and held out his cane. He took it, his fingers brushing against hers just enough to kindle a brand-new fire in his gut. He pulled back, tightened his grip on the head of the blasted cane and started for the door.
“You’re walking easier,” she noted.
Irritation spiked inside him. He remembered a time when she had watched his ass for a different reason. “Yeah,” he admitted. “It still hurts like a bitch, but maybe it’s a little better.”
“Wow. Quite the compliment to my skills.”
He stopped and turned to look at her. “Maybe I’m doing well enough to just cut the therapy short.”
“Ooh, good effort,” she said and walked past him toward the front door.
Now it was his turn to watch her ass, and he for damn sure wasn’t doing it to check out her ability to walk. Then something struck him: the fact that she didn’t have her son on her hip. “Uh, don’t you have to watch…”
“Jonas?” she provided.
“Yeah.”
“Mrs. Carey has him. She loves watching him,” Maggie said, striding down the hall to the front door. Her boots, which clacked against the wood floor, sounded like a quickening heartbeat. “Says he reminds her so much of you it’s almost eerie.”
Justice scowled at her back. She managed to get one or two of those pointed digs in every day. Trying to make him see something that wasn’t there. A connection between her son and him.
He should just tell her, he thought, snatching his battered gray felt hat off the hook by the door. Tell her that he was sterile and be done with it. Then she could stop playing whatever game she was playing and he wouldn’t have to put up with any of this anymore.
But if he did that, she’d know. Know everything. Why he’d let her go. Why he’d lied. Why he felt less than a man because he hadn’t been able to give her the one thing she’d wanted. And, damn it, once he told her the truth, she’d feel sorry for him—and he couldn’t stand that. Better for him if she thought him a bastard.
Maggie listened to the uncertain steps of her husband coming up behind her and stopped on the porch to wait for him. She took that moment to admire the sweep of land stretching out in front of her. She’d missed this place almost as much as she’d missed Justice. The wide yard was neatly tended, the flower beds were spilling over with bright, colorful blossoms and from somewhere close by, the lowing of a cow sounded almost like a song.
Just for a second or two, all of Maggie’s thoughts and worries drifted away, just drained out of her system as if they’d never been there. She took a deep breath of the sweet air and smiled at two herd dogs, a mutt and a Lab, chasing each other across the front yard. Then she sensed Justice coming up behind her, and in an instant tension coiled deep in the pit of her stomach.