as if agreeing with him. Despite the situation he found himself in, Jonah grinned. “I know, I know, we’re the ones who don’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain, not her. But legend has it Maggie’s as stubborn as hell and if she said she was coming out here to find answers, this is where she probably is—but where?” he asked, frustrated.
Lowering his head, Jonah shoved his hat farther down on it, hoping to keep the wind from blowing it off.
“You see her, Cody?” he asked the palomino. “Because I sure as hell don’t.”
With one hand holding on to his hat, the other one wrapped around Cody’s reins, Jonah raised up from his saddle, standing as best he could in his stirrups. He was blinking furiously to keep the rain out of his eyes as he scanned the area again, searching for a familiar shape, or some indication that Maggie was indeed out here, or at least had passed this way.
As he surveyed the area, Jonah realized that his horse had ridden in very close to this humongous oak tree. The tall, wide branches were offering him some degree of shelter from the rain—just in time, it seemed. The rain was coming down harder and harder now.
Some sort of natural reflex had Jonah glancing up over his head. It was not unheard-of for animals to go climbing up into the first available tree they could find. It was a self-preservation instinct to keep them from being swept away in a storm or a flood. The animals that he knew reacted this way were mountain lions—and bears.
The last thing he wanted was to be under a tree when a mountain lion or bear decided it wanted a snack more than it wanted to stay dry.
But when Jonah looked up, it wasn’t a mountain lion or a bear that he saw.
Maggie!
Thank God.
“A little old to be climbing trees, aren’t you?” Jonah asked her, amused despite the less than ideal conditions they found themselves in.
Startled, Maggie had been so intent on holding on, she hadn’t even realized that he was there.
“Oh lord,” she cried, “you are the answer to a prayer!”
It had taken her more than a couple of moments to convince herself that she wasn’t hallucinating. After all, she had lost track of how long she had spent up here in this tree. She could hardly believe that she was finally going to be rescued. And if that wasn’t enough, this knight in shining armor was nothing short of gorgeous.
Part of Maggie wasn’t fully convinced that she wasn’t imagining all this. That she really would be rescued. Her arms had all but gone numb from hanging on to the branch she had climbed up on eons ago. At this point, she couldn’t remember not being up here.
Jonah slowly angled Cody, as well as himself, right beneath the woman he had come to rescue. He wrapped the horse’s reins around his saddle horn, then tightened his thighs about Cody’s flanks so that he could hold his position as steadily as possible.
Having taken all the precautions he could, Jonah raised his arms. “Climb down,” he instructed the woman perched above him. “Don’t worry. If you slip, I’ll catch you.”
Maggie looked down uncertainly. She really had her doubts about his assurance. “That’s a pretty tall order,” she called back.
Jonah could appreciate why she was so uneasy. There were several feet of space separating her from his outstretched arms.
He reassessed the situation. “Are you going to make me climb up there and get you?”
It was more of a challenge than a question. Or maybe she was just interpreting it that way. Maggie didn’t know. But she had never been the type of woman who would willingly cleave to the “damsel in distress” image. She wasn’t the type to be rescued, either. She preferred doing the rescuing, the way she had tried to come through for her parents.
“Just hang on to your patience,” she told him, slowly shifting her weight so that she could start to make her way down.
It took a second for her to release her grip on the branch, but she knew that it was either this or just staying where she was, clinging to a branch like some helpless female while this tall, dark and gorgeous specimen of a man played superhero. While that did intrigue her, it just wasn’t her way.
Holding her breath, Maggie inched her way down.
The branch swayed and groaned with every move she made—or maybe that was the wind that was groaning. She didn’t know. The only thing she did know was that she had to move slowly because there was no way in hell that she was going to come tumbling down out of this tree and wind up on the ground right in front of Mr. Magnificent’s horse.
Watching her progress, Jonah grew steadily more uneasy. He continued to hold his arms up and opened. The wind yanked at his Stetson, then ripped it right off his head.
“Damn,” he muttered.
Maggie thought the remark was meant for her, but the next second she saw the cowboy’s dark Stetson fly by her and then it disappeared into the darkened distance.
“I owe you a hat,” she told her rescuer, raising her voice so that he could hear her above the howling of the wind.
“Just get down here,” Jonah ordered, reaching up even higher. “We’ll settle up later.” His shoulders were beginning to ache. “You sure you don’t want me climbing up there to get you?” he offered, watching Maggie’s painfully slow descent.
“I’m sure!” she snapped, irritated that it was taking her so incredibly long to reach him.
It certainly hadn’t felt as if it had taken her this long to climb up into the tree. But then, at the time, she’d been propelled by a dire sense of urgency. Maggie had been convinced that the floodwaters would just keep rising to the point that she would be in danger of being swept away.
Mercifully, they had receded and even though the rain kept falling, it didn’t do so with anywhere near the intensity that the weather bureau had initially promised.
If it had, all of Texas would have been submerged by now, Maggie thought, inching her way down. And then she managed to reach the man who had come to her rescue.
“Sorry,” Maggie apologized just as she finally reached Jonah’s arms. “I really didn’t mean to yell at you.”
“Did you yell?” he asked, feigning ignorance. “I didn’t notice.”
Having succeeded in lowering her into the saddle, Jonah shifted so that he could position himself right behind Maggie.
Seated snugly, he closed his arms around her as he took hold of the reins again.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“Other than feeling stupid and having my pride wounded because I had to be rescued out of a tree? No,” Maggie answered.
Taking a moment longer to remain under the tree and somewhat out of the direct path of the storm, Jonah considered her answer.
“Could have been worse,” he told her.
Maggie
