Читать книгу Committed to the Baby онлайн | страница 48

Naturally, he hadn’t.

“How could you do it?” she whispered and thought she saw his shoulders flinch. “How could you let me leave when you wanted me to stay? Why, Justice? You didn’t say a word to me when I left. Either time.”

He stopped dead and even the cool wind sliding in off the ocean seemed to still. The dogs went quiet and it felt as if the world had taken a breath and held it.

“What was there to say?” His jaw tightened and he bit off each word as if it tasted bitter.

“You could have asked me to stay.”

“No,” he said, heading once more for the barn. “I couldn’t.”

Maggie sighed and walked after him, measuring her steps to match his more halting ones. Of course he couldn’t ask her to stay, she thought.

“Oh, no, not you. Not Justice King,” she grumbled and kicked at the dirt. “Don’t want anyone to know you’re actually capable of feeling something.”

He stopped again and this time he turned his head to look at her. “I feel plenty, Maggie,” he said. “You should know that better than anyone.”

“How can I know that, Justice?” She threw her hands high, then let them fall to her sides again. “You won’t tell me what you’re thinking. You never did. We laughed, we made love but you never let me inside, Justice. Not once.”

Something in his dark blue eyes flashed. “You got in. You just didn’t stay long enough to notice.”

Had she? She couldn’t be sure. In the beginning of their marriage, it was all heat and fire. They hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other. They took long rides, they spent lazy rainy days in bed and Maggie would have told anyone who had asked that she and Justice were truly happy.

But, God knew, it hadn’t taken much to shake the foundations of what they’d shared, so how real could any of it have been?

Her shoulders slumped as she watched him continue on to the barn. He held himself straighter, taller, as if knowing she’d be watching and not wanting to look anything but his usual, strong self. How typical was that, Maggie thought.

Justice King never admitted weakness. He’d always been a man unable to ask for anything—not even for help if he needed it—because he would never acknowledge needing assistance in the first place. He was always so self-reliant that it was nearly a religion to him. She’d known that from the beginning of their relationship, and still she wished things had been different.