Читать книгу Committed to the Baby онлайн | страница 51

And yet being on the King Ranch had been so easy. Was it just because she’d loved Justice so much? Or was it because her heart had finally figured out where she belonged?

But then, she asked herself sadly, what did it matter now?

“See you later, Mike,” she said, then tugged at Justice’s arm. “Let’s get you moving again. Gotta get your exercise in whether you want to or not.”

“I never noticed that slave-driver mentality of yours before,” Justice muttered as they left the barn and wandered around the side of the main house.

“You just didn’t pay attention,” she told him. “It was always there.”

He was moving less easily, she noticed, and instinctively she slowed her pace. He fell into her rhythm and his steps evened out again. She knew how much he hated this. Knew that he detested having to depend on others to do things for him. And she knew he was in pain, though heaven knew he’d be roasted over live coals and still not admit to that. So she started talking, filling the silence so he would have to concentrate on something other than how hard it was to walk.

“Phil said you planted new grasses?” That was a brilliant stroke, Maggie thought. Get the man talking about the ranch and the prairie grass pastures and he’d get so involved, he wouldn’t notice anything else. Not even pain.

“On the high pasture,” he told her, easing around the corner of the log house to walk toward a rose garden that had originally been planted by his mother. “With the herd rotation, we’ll keep the cattle off that grass until winter, and if it holds and we get some rain this fall, we’ll have plenty of rich feed for the herd.”

“Sounds good,” she murmured, knowing her input wasn’t needed.

“It was a risk, taking the cattle off that section early in the rotation, but we wanted to try out the new grasses and it had to have time to settle in and grow before winter, so…” He shrugged, looked down at her and unexpectedly smiled. “You’re taking my mind off my leg, aren’t you?”

“Well,” she said, enjoying the full measure of a Justice King smile for as long as she could, “yeah. I am. Is it working?”