Free Rosanne Bittner by Paradise Valley

you. At the end of the hallway is a back door, and not far beyond it in the backyard is the privy.” He backed out of the room as though embarrassed to be alone in a bedroom with a woman. “I am glad to meet you, Señora Tucker. I hope you enjoy your stay here. We will all help however we can.”
    “Thank you, Julio.” After he left, Maggie walked to the bed and sat down, bouncing slightly to see what the mattress was like. Right now, any mattress would feel wonderful, but this one was better than most, thicker and softer than anything she’d ever slept on. Had it belonged to the mystery woman who’d apparently turned all this down? Had she and Sage slept on this mattress?
    As soon as the thought hit her, she jumped up from the bed, amazed she’d even wondered about such a thing. It wasn’t her business, and she didn’t care. Still, what woman wouldn’t be thrilled to live in a fine house like this? Compared to the plain little cabin Maggie lived in most of her life back in Missouri and the not much bigger one she’d shared with James, this house was like a castle. Sage Lightfoot had done a good job building a fine home to raise a family in.
    She walked to the dressing room and pulled the curtain aside. There sat the iron bathtub. A couple of dresses hung on the wall. She could tell by their length that Sage’s “almost” wife had been taller than Maggie, and the dresses were quite fancy, much finer than the plain gingham dresses Maggie always wore. She touched the lace on one.
    From the look of things, the woman who’d worn these dresses had not just been an “almost” wife. She’d lived in this house, which likely meant Sage had been married to her. Maybe he still was… or maybe, they had divorced or split up, and the dresses belonged to nothing more than a fancy prostitute.

Eleven
    When the men Joe sent for Maggie’s wagon returned with her belongings, the fact that she’d never see James again hit her harder than she’d expected. Her life now was surreal, an adventure that seemed to be happening to someone else. In a sense it was, because she was not the same Maggie who left Missouri to come west.
    Myriad emotions kept her awake most nights… her attack… fear of the unknown… and odd feelings of gratefulness mixed with attraction for Sage Lightfoot, who lay recovering in the next room. For nearly two weeks she’d nursed and fed him, wondering if he would even survive when a serious infection settled into his arm. The threat of losing the limb had sent Sage into a tirade of profanity and threats. He’d told Joe that he’d kill any man who tried to amputate. If they put him out first and did it anyway, he’d kill them when he woke up.
    The men apparently took Sage’s threat seriously. No one again mentioned taking off his arm. Maggie still knew next to nothing about Sage’s past, but she could guess plenty, and her guess was that Sage and some of these men had once lived the outlaw life. She had no actual facts, but there wasn’t one man on the ranch who wasn’t pretty rough around the edges.
    Still, probably thanks to orders from Sage, Maggie felt no threat. Bill told her that early on, just like his threat to kill any man who tried to take his arm off, Sage had threatened to take down any man who didn’t treat Maggie with respect. She knew that by now, most of them had a pretty good idea of what had happened to her, but it didn’t seem to make her any less worthy.
    She was actually grateful for the constant care Sage required the first few days. It kept her busy and allowed time for her own healing. When Sage got a little better, he asked Julio’s wife to stay at the house with Maggie, so there would be no suggestive talk of Maggie being alone there with Sage. Rosa Martinez Jimenez was a plump but pretty woman who didn’t say much, mainly because she spoke little English, and Maggie spoke no Spanish. The two sons Rosa and Julio shared were grown and worked on the ranch, and Rosa often