Читать книгу Committed to the Baby онлайн | страница 39

Phil Hawkins was a good manager, but he wasn’t the boss.

Yet even as he thought it, Justice knew he was lying to himself. His itchy feeling had nothing to do with not trusting his crew. It was all about how he hated being trapped in the damn house. Now more than ever.

The past few days, he’d felt as if he was being stalked. Maggie was following him around, insisting on therapy sessions or swims in the heated pool or nagging at him to use the damn cane he’d come to hate. Hell, he’d had to sneak away just to get a few minutes alone in his office to go over ranch business with Phil.

Everywhere he went, it seemed, there was Maggie. Back in the day, they’d have been falling into each other’s arms every other minute. But nothing was as it had once been. These days, she looked at him as if he were just another patient to her. Someone to feel bad for. To fix up. To take care of.

Well, he didn’t need taking care of. Or if he did, he’d never admit it. He didn’t want her being paid to be here. Didn’t want to be her latest mission. Her cause. Didn’t want her touching him with indifference.

That angry thought flashed through his mind at the same time a twinge of pain sliced at his leg. Damn thing was near useless. And three days of Maggie’s torture hadn’t brought him any closer to healing and getting on with his life. Instead, she seemed to be settling in. Making herself comfortable in the log house that used to be her home.

She was sliding into the rhythm of ranch life as if she’d never left it. She was up with the dawn every day and blast if it didn’t seem she was deliberately close enough to him every morning so that Justice heard her talking to her son. Heard the baby’s nonsensical prattle and cooing noises. Could listen in on what he wasn’t a part of.

She was everywhere. Her or the baby. Or both. He heard her laughing with Mrs. Carey, smelled her perfume in every room of the house and caught her playing with her son on several occasions. She and the baby had completely taken over his house.