Chapter 2 Maggie #2
The ground felt like it gave beneath my feet when a familiar figure emerged from the shadow of the barn door.
My heart plummeted when a German Shepherd trotted after him.
No. Absolutely the fuck not. I refused to believe it. Not even after my dad said, “Everyone, this is Jack Remington.”
Jack walked toward us with that same unhurried stride I remembered from the bar.
Same broad shoulders. Same capable hands.
Same quiet confidence that didn't need to announce itself.
He stopped in front of my father, and for one wild second, I thought maybe I was wrong.
Maybe this was a different guy. Maybe the universe wasn't actually this cruel.
But he turned to face the group, and those whiskey eyes swept across the assembled Blackwoods, and I knew I wasn’t wrong.
I knew because my body knew.
My skin remembered his hands. My mouth remembered his mouth.
My thighs remembered being wrapped around his hips while he drove into me so deep I forgot how to breathe—the way he'd growled my name against my throat when I tightened around him, the way he'd pinned my wrists above my head and told me to say it again—
Stop. Stop it right now.
I could feel my cheeks burning. Could feel heat pooling low in my belly despite the fact that I was standing in the middle of my family's rodeo surrounded by approximately twelve hundred people.
Oh God. Oh God. Oh no.
This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. The universe could not possibly be this cruel, this ironic, this absolutely fucking biblical in its punishment for one night of well-deserved stress relief.
Daddy was completely oblivious to the fact that I was having a full-scale internal meltdown three feet away while he introduced my one-night stand to everyone.
"Jack, meet the family. My wife, Louisa, my eldest Wyatt, and his wife, Ivy.
My sons Clay, Hunter, and Liam, and his fiancée, Stephanie.
And here are my daughters, Maggie and Sophia"
Jack shook hands with everyone, calm and polite and completely fucking unreadable.
When he got to me, his expression didn't flicker.
Didn't change. He took my hand like he'd never touched any other part of me, like I was just another Blackwood to meet, like that night in Wild Creek had never happened.
"Ma'am," he said.
Ma'am.
I was going to kill him.
"Mr. Remington," I managed, and my voice came out steady, which was a miracle of biblical proportions considering my internal monologue had devolved into nothing but screaming.
His hand was warm and calloused and familiar in ways that made me want to yank it back and also never let go. Sully looked up at me with those intelligent eyes, and I swear to God the animal recognized me. His tail gave one slow wag before he settled back into watchful stillness.
I dropped Jack's hand like it burned me.
Across the group, I caught my mother's eye. She was watching me with that quiet, assessing look that had been seeing through my bullshit since I was old enough to have bullshit to see through. Her gaze flicked from me to Jack, then back to me, and something shifted in her expression.
She knew.
No. She couldn't know. There was no way she could’ve known. I was being paranoid. I was projecting. I was losing my entire goddamn mind in the middle of a family gathering.
I looked away before she could read anything else in my face.
"Jack's going to be helping out with the horse operation," Daddy said, apparently determined to make this as painful as possible. "Figured Maggie could show him around, get him oriented. She knows that side of things better than anyone."
No. Absolutely not. Hard pass. I’d rather cut my hand off.
"Of course," I heard myself say instead, because what else could I say? Sorry, I can't show the new hire around because I fucked him in a motel room you paid for last week, and now I can't look at him without remembering exactly how good he is with his hands?
Yeah. That would go over great.
"Happy to help," I added, and the words tasted like dirt.
Jack nodded, still infuriatingly calm. "Appreciate it."
His voice. God, his voice. Low and unhurried, just like it had been when he'd asked me what I wanted in that dim motel room. Just like it had been when he'd told me to let go.
I needed air.
I needed space.
I needed approximately ten years of therapy and possibly a lobotomy.
"I'll catch up with you after the main events," I said, already stepping back. "Got a few things to handle first."
"Take your time."
He smiled—small, polite, nothing like the secret smiles he'd given me at the bar—and somehow that made it worse.
Because it meant he was playing this perfectly.
Acting like we were strangers. Giving me exactly what I should want, which was discretion and professionalism and no hint of what had happened between us.
I hated him for it. But I hated myself more for wanting him to look at me the way he had that night.
I turned and walked away before my face could betray anything else.
I made it approximately thirty feet before Ivy materialized at my side. "So," she said, in a deceptively casual tone. "The new ranch hand."
My head whipped towards her. "What about him?"
Her eyes lit up with amusement. “Nothing. Just... observing."
My chest tightened, my mind scrambling to come up with something to say to get her off my back. “Well, observe somewhere else."
"Maggie." Ivy caught my arm, pulling me to a stop. Her eyes were sharp, concerned, too knowing. "What's going on? You went white as a sheet back there."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. Tell me what’s going on.”
"I'm just tired. It's been a long day."
Her frown deepened. "It's barely noon."
"Long morning. Long week. Long month. Take your pick.” I pulled my arm free gently. "I'm fine, Ivy. Really. Just need some coffee and fewer people asking me if I'm okay."
She didn't look convinced, but she let it go—for now. "Okay. But if you need to talk..."
"You'll be the first person I call."
I wouldn't. I couldn't. Because this wasn't the kind of thing I talked about. This was the kind of thing I buried deep and never mentioned and pretended had never happened in the first place.
I spent the next two hours doing exactly that.
But no matter where I went, I was aware of him.
Jack, talking to my father by the horse pens. Jack, crouching down to let a curious kid pet Sully. Jack, standing quietly at the edge of the arena, watching the events with that still, steady attention that had drawn me to him in the first place.
He didn't approach me. Didn't seek me out. Didn't do anything that could be interpreted as inappropriate or overly familiar.
He was the perfect new employee.
I wanted to scream.
I'd told myself that night was contained. A sealed box. A memory I could take out when I wanted to and put away when I didn't. I'd driven home feeling empowered, refreshed, proud of myself for taking something I needed without apology.
And now that sealed box had walked onto my family's ranch with that unnerving quiet and a gaze that seemed to read every thought I'd ever buried, and a dog who apparently remembered me, and I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do about it.
My mother found me near the end of the day, hiding behind the food stalls with a beer I wasn't really drinking.
"Long day?" she asked, settling beside me with her own cup of something.
"You could say that."
"The new hand seems capable. Your father's impressed. Says he has a real feel for horses." Mom took a sip of her drink, watching me over the rim. "The kind of person who doesn't spook easily."
"That's good."
"Mm." She was quiet for a moment, but I knew there was more coming. “Anything you want to tell me, sweetheart?”
And there it was.
I looked at her. My mother, with her knowing eyes and her patient silences and her uncanny ability to see straight through every wall I'd ever built.
"Nope," I lied. "Nothing at all."
She nodded slowly, like she was filing that answer away for future reference. "Okay. But if that changes—"
"You'll be the second person I call,” I finished for her.
Her brows furrowed. "Second?"
"Ivy already called dibs on first."
Momma laughed softly. "Fair enough." She squeezed my arm and stood. "Don't hide back here too long. People will start to wonder."
She walked away, and I sat in the fading light, beer in hand, wondering how the hell I was going to survive working beside a man I'd sworn I'd never see again.
Tomorrow I'd have to show him around the ranch. Walk him through the horse operation. Stand close enough to smell him and feel the heat of his body and remember exactly what it had been like to have that body pressed against mine.
And I'd have to do it professionally. Calmly. Like none of it mattered.
You can handle this, I told myself.
Jack Remington was just another problem to manage.
I told myself that all the way home.
I almost believed it.
But when I closed my eyes that night, I didn't see problems to solve or crises to manage.
I saw dark eyes that saw too much, hands that had left me loose and boneless and smiling into the dark, and a smile that had been just for me—back when I was only Maggie, and he was only Jack, and neither of us had any idea how complicated it was about to get.
Tomorrow, I'd be professional.
Tonight, I’d let myself remember.
And I tried very, very hard not to think about how much I wanted to do it all over again.