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Pulling her gaze from the darkness beyond, she swivelled a look at him. “Have you? I mean, ever fallen in love with a piece of land?”
He took a sip of coffee. “Ancient history.”
Maggie nodded. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else now. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep it.”
He filled his lungs with the scent of the snow off the mountaintops and the burgeoning green covering the hills. “It’s worth fighting for.”
She held her mug up to his for a toast to that sentiment. He smiled and returned the favor.
“To the good fight,” she said, and slugged a drink of the bittersweet coffee. He did the same and she had trouble taking her eyes off the way his muscular throat moved as he swallowed. The sight made her skin go suddenly tight.
Jigger nudged between them and Cain dropped his hand on the dog’s furry head for a scratch. The dog’s whole body quivered with pleasure.
“Can I ask you something?” he said as the silence stretched between them.
“Shoot.”
“Who was that guy in the coffee shop this morning?”
She tightened her hand around her cup. She knew instantly who he meant. “Guy?”
“Tall. Blowhard. Bent on ruining your day?”
Maggie smiled in spite of herself. “Oh, that guy.” She didn’t want to talk about Laird. “He was nobody. Just a rancher.”
“Not according to him.”
“True,” she agreed. “He’s under the misguided impression that he owns this valley.”
“Does he?”
“Not everything.” Maggie smoothed her right palm across the wood railing and a splinter slid neatly under her skin with a vicious prick. “Ow! Darn it!”
“Lemme see,” he said, grabbing her palm and inspecting it in the moonlight.
She tried to pull away, but his strong hand held hers firmly. “It’s nothing,” she complained, ignoring the sting. “Just a splinter.” But it felt like a ponderosa pine trunk had found its way under her skin.
“Hold still.” He bent over her hand, and turned it toward the kitchen light spilling through the open door. She didn’t mean to inhale the clean, soapy scent of him, or stare at the worn seams on his dark leather bomber jacket where his shoulders had strained it. And she couldn’t help herself from taking in the deep, dark brown of his hair or the way it curled over the edge of his shirt collar.
Lord, Maggie thought, giving herself a mental shake. You’ve been alone way too long.
It took less than ten seconds for him to get a grip on the splinter and pull it out. He lifted a smile up at her triumphantly, only then seeming to realize how close he was to her. His smile faded as he dropped her hand and stepped back. “Better put something on that.”
She rubbed at the spot gingerly with her thumb. “Thanks. I will.”
His large hand seemed to dwarf the railing as he brushed at the loose paint and splintery wood on the rail. “This could use some sandpaper and a fresh coat of paint.”
“Along with nearly every other surface on my property,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll get right on that. In my spare time.”
“Sorry, it’s none of my business.”
“Don’t apologize. I’ve gotten way behind on things here. But painting railings isn’t exactly a priority when I’m barely managing to pay my bills. That’s why I was in town today,” she said with a sigh of resignation. “Getting turned down for a loan.”
He shook his head, “I always did have good timing.”
“Need I remind you that I probably wouldn’t be standing here now if you hadn’t ridden up on your bike when you did?”
He turned to look out over her darkened pastures again. “That was just lucky.”
“I used to believe in luck,” she said. “But now I don’t think there are any coincidences.”
“You mean you think I was supposed to ride up and drag you out from under that horse of yours?”
She laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe you just needed a meal so you could get on to the next thing. Maybe that’s all this is.”
“Pretty deep for a horse rancher,” he said with a smile.
She returned it. “That’s what I get for spending too much time with the animal kingdom. I get philosophical.”
“And lonely?”
She smoothed her hand over her palm. “Sometimes. Mostly I’m too tired to be lonely.”
“That’s my cue,” he said. “I’d better turn in, too.”
For reasons she couldn’t explain, she wasn’t ready to let Cain go yet, but could think of nothing to stop him. “There’s fresh bedding in the trunk beside the cot. Blankets and… It get’s a little cold still at night, even for June.”
He reached a hand out to her and she took it. His fingers curled around her palm with gentle firmness. “Make sure you take care of that hand. I’ll be out of your hair first light. Thanks for everything.” He let her go and smiled. “Goodbye, Mrs. Cortland.”
She watched him head toward the barn. Before he could disappear into the shadows, she said, “It’s Maggie.”
He turned back to her.
“My name,” she explained. “And you don’t have to rush out first thing. I mean, I could probably find one or two other chores around the place if…you aren’t in too much of a hurry to get back on the road.”
He cast a restless look around her dark yard. “Are you askin’ me to stay?”
She pressed her hands together. “Asking? No. That wouldn’t be fair of me. I can’t really pay you. Not what you’re worth. But I still have to cook tomorrow and well…you’ll still be hungry. Right?”
He thought about it for a minute, rubbing a hand absently against his belly. “I’ll move that stack of wood closer to the house in the morning,” he said at last. “Maybe…sand down that railing of yours. Then, we’ll talk.”
Relief washed over her as he turned and melted into the darkness. She shook her head and wrapped her arms around herself against the chill. “Crazy,” she told herself. “You are definitely, unquestionably, nuts, Maggie.” But something told her that Cain MacCallister might just be her one last chance.
Cain lay with his hands propped under his head on the cot in the tack room, staring up at the blackness above him. The cot was comfortable, if a bit too short for his six-three frame, and the room smelled comfortingly of leather, horses and hay. It wasn’t the sound of the animals moving restlessly in their nearby stalls that kept him from finding sleep. Or the songs of coyotes far off yipping to each other.
It was Maggie. She was interfering with his dream.
He closed his eyes and sighed, trying to shove her out of his mind. He’d spent the last hour trying to call up Annie’s image in his memory. He almost had it once: the blond hair that framed that oval-shaped face of hers; her eyes, not quite blue, but not really green either, but always a pool he’d wanted to dive into. He was having trouble with her nose and her mouth. It was the mouth that bothered him most, because he could always remember her mouth. More specifically, her smile.
He kept confusing it with Maggie’s, the way her mouth turned up at the corners and that little dimple dented one cheek near her mouth.
Focus, man. Don’t get distracted.
But the little bruise above Maggie’s eye popped into his mind again…the soft feel of her hand in his…even the smell of her hair.
Damn. He squeezed his eyes shut. What the hell was wrong with him?
Annie’s voice. Remember it. Yeah. There it was. He could hear it now: “Be right back. Save me some popcorn. Be right back, save me some…be right…save me—”
Shoving off the blankets, he sat up, finding the cold floor with his bare feet. He felt dizzy and his chest, dammit, his chest was doing its usual timpani roll.
Seven little words that had changed his life.
Snapping on the lamp parked near the cot on the little wood table, Cain dragged in a few deep breaths. He re-oriented himself as he reached for his backpack. He shoved things aside, then threw them on the floor, one by one, until his hand closed around the thing it sought. Cool, smooth glass. It took shape in his hand.
The whiskey inside the bottle sloshed against the sides with a magical sound, calling to him. He cradled it in his hands, tempted by all reason to break the thin paper seal that stood between him and true destruction.
He craved it right now, something that he hadn’t done in a long time. Even when he’d gotten out, he’d managed to steer clear of bars where he knew he might be tempted. But he’d bought this bottle to remind himself what was back there in that dark place he’d visited in the months after Annie’s death. The ones that had nearly killed him.
He’d spent the last three years building his strength, finding the quiet place inside him that could silence the noise outside. The guilt and the pain. He could call it up when he needed it. Except tonight.
Tonight, he found himself tempted again, not just by the siren of oblivion, but by a woman he hardly knew who had already made him forget the curve of Annie’s lips.
Cain turned the bottle over in his hands, smoothing the cool glass with his fingers. It would be easy, he thought. One twist, one sip or two and the noise would stop.
But he wouldn’t stop at two or three, or even four. Not until he reached the bottom of the bottle and the darkness it promised. And slow suicide, as appealing as it had once been, wasn’t his style anymore. If it was going to end, it wouldn’t be slow and it wouldn’t come in a liquid form.
So with its paper honor code still intact, he slid the bottle back inside the leather knapsack and reached instead for his wallet, resting on the table beneath the lamp.
He pulled out the dog-eared photo, soft from years of handling. Annie smiled up at him from the picture and Cain stared at her hollowly. He rubbed his thumb over the image. How many times had he wished he’d gone that night instead of her? Maggie had said she didn’t believe in luck, good or bad. He figured a man was only born with so much of it and he’d used all his up when he’d met Annie and stolen those few short years with her. Their luck had run out simultaneously that night even though they’d been miles apart. And a man like him didn’t get second chances.
Minutes later, he didn’t know how many, Cain reached for the light switch and flicked it off. For a long time, he just sat there in the dark, counting the seconds ’til morning. If he could just make it to dawn, he’d be all right.
He wouldn’t think about luck, or about the woman sleeping a few hundred yards away, or anyone who reminded him what it was to be alive. Because he owed Annie that much.
Dawn had barely lightened the sky when the phone beside Maggie’s bed rang. Groggily, Maggie looked at the clock. 5:45 a.m. She frowned. Who would be calling her at this hour? And why, after a sleepless night, did they have to pick this particular morning to wake her up?
She dragged the receiver to her ear across the sleep-rumpled bedclothes. “Hello?”
There was only silence on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” she repeated, sitting up on one elbow. “Is anyone there?”
Nothing. Angry, she began to shove the receiver back in its cradle when she heard a voice, the words too indistinct to make out.
Pulling it back to her ear, Maggie listened. “Hello? Is someone there?” Nothing. “Okay, I’m hanging up now.”
“Don’t,” said a man’s voice.
A shiver went through her and her hand tightened on the receiver. “Who is this?”
“A friend.” The voice was cigarette hoarse and unfamiliar.
“I know my friends’ voices. And I don’t know yours.”
“Your husband…” the man continued, undeterred. “Ben?”
Her heart started to pound. “What about him?”
There was a long pause. “He didn’t fall on his own. He had help.”
“Wh—what are you talking about?”
“If you want to know more, find Remus Trimark.”
“Who?” Maggie scrambled into the bedside drawer for a pen and a scrap of paper. “Who’s Remus Trimark?”
There was another long pause before the caller said, “It’s not over,” and clicked off.
“Hello?” The dial tone buzzed in her ear. Maggie stared at it, feeling dizzy and off balance. Not over? What’s not over? She hung up the receiver and scribbled the name he’d mentioned down on the back of an old Hallmark anniversary card from Ben.
She remembered to breathe.
Remus Trimark? What kind of a name was that, and what did he have to do with Ben’s death? And why had the man on the phone waited six months to tell her about it?
She eased back down on the pillow, clutching the card between her shaking fingers. Her mind raced over those last days with Ben, trying to remember something, anything he’d said about a Remus Trimark—what an odd name—or anyone he’d mentioned for that matter. She came up blank. Completely blank.
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t already racked her brain for months on end, trying to piece together the how’s and why’s of his death. Trying to deconstruct those last weeks. The only conclusion she’d come to was that she and Ben had been so far apart by then it was as if they were strangers.
She turned the card over in her hands, running her fingers over the picture on the front of a yellow rose in a slender glass vase. He’d given her this card on their first anniversary. Inside, the sentimental Hallmark greeting had nothing to do with why she’d kept this particular card. It was the handwritten inscription there that had made her tuck the card away here years ago.
Happy Anniversary, sweetheart. When we’re old and gray, sitting around the fire on some cold winter night, remind me to thank you for taking a chance on me.
All my love,
Ben.
It seemed so far away now, those days when he’d loved her so completely. That fire had been banked long before he’d died. He’d gambled that away along with nearly everything else.
He had help.
The stranger’s words echoed in her ears. Help? What did he mean by that? And how was she going to find some man named Remus Trimark? In the phone book?
The sound of thunking came from outside Maggie’s window. Silently, she slid out of bed and padded barefoot to the window. The filmy drapes billowed as the cool night air slid through the one inch crack between window and sill. She wrapped her arms around her waist and searched the dusky yard for the source of the sound.
She spotted him half-hidden beneath the ash tree in her yard, shirtsleeves rolled halfway up his elbows, hacking away at what was left of that old tree limb.
Cain.
