Beyond the Misty Shore (17 page)

He might have. Him alone, having lost his parents, thinking Carolyn alone, too, after having lost hers. Maggie picked up her spoon and stirred the crumbled wafers soaked with melted whipped cream into the pudding. The banana scent enticed her, and she took a nibble, then a bite. Hadn’t MacGregor told her this same thing? That he’d thought he’d loved Carolyn but... no. No, he’d said he’d thought
she’d
loved
him
but that she hadn’t. Big difference.

Maggie looked at Miss Hattie. “I lied to him.” She dropped her spoon. It splattered pudding onto the table and landed with a dull
thunk
.
Why had she said that? She hadn’t meant to say that!

Miss Hattie didn’t bat an eye. “I know, dear. And I suspect he does, too, though of course he doesn’t know your reasons.”

Heat gushed up to her face. Not eager to meet Miss Hattie’s gaze, Maggie dabbed the corner of her napkin at the pudding splotches. “Do you know them?”

“Your mother and I had a nice, long chat about it—and about her ceramics class. She’s loving every second of it.”

Maggie squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her forehead. Great. Just great. Now Bill
and
Miss Hattie knew the truth about why she’d come here. She should just take out an ad in the
Portland Press Herald
and call it a done deal. “Are you going to tell Tyler?”

“Not unless he specifically asks me. But if I might give you a bit of advice—”

“I know. I should tell him.” Maggie sighed and slumped over the table. “But I can’t. Not now. I waited too long.”

Miss Hattie sent her a sympathetic look, her eyes bright. “You know best, I’m sure. But remember that love is too precious to be squandered on half-truths and deceptions, dear. It’s like quicksilver. It can be snatched away as quickly as it’s given.” Her gentle nod set her white hair to shimmering in firelight. “Don’t let it slip through your fingers, mmm?”

Love again. Why was she insisting that Maggie loved the man? “I agree in theory, just not in this case. I really don’t love Tyler, Miss Hattie. I, care about him, but I don’t love him.”

“Really?” She arched her brows and retrieved her knitting from the little black bag beside her rocker, then situated the shiny green needles in her hands.

“Really.” Maggie didn’t... did she?

Of course not. She’d never love
any
man—and that was that.

“Well, as I said, I’m sure you know best. But for a woman who doesn’t love a man, you sure are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to protect him.”

“I’m not and you know it.” Certainly her mother had dispelled that illusion. “I’m trying to find out if he had anything to do with Carolyn’s death.”

“He didn’t.”

The woman sounded just like Bill Butler. The idea of MacGregor being involved was
not
that far a stretch. Maggie grimaced and lowered her voice. “The Portland police report says no other car was involved in the accident, and there were no signs that anyone had tampered with Carolyn’s car. They did a very thorough investigation and found nothing unusual.”

“Then why do you feel suspicious?”

“Because, to me, something
extremely
unusual happened.”

“What?” Curiosity glinted in her eyes.

“There was a painting in the car with Carolyn. The car exploded and she burned beyond recognition, but that painting wasn’t touched.” Maggie leaned closer, dropped her voice a notch lower. “The police in New Orleans insist Carolyn stole that painting from the gallery. But if it’d been in the car at the time of the accident, then it would have been destroyed like everything else. Since it wasn’t, that’s got to mean that someone put it into the wreckage
after
the accident. And that means someone else had to be there.”

“You suspect Tyler?” Miss Hattie guffawed, then stilled and stared up at the ceiling as if listening to something Maggie couldn’t hear.

The little hairs on Maggie’s neck prickled. Did Miss Hattie hear the entity’s whispers, too?

“Oh my.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “What is it?”

“Nothing, dear.” Miss Hattie lowered her gaze to meet Maggie’s, worry creasing her aged brow. “Nothing at all.”

This nothing was definitely something. Miss Hattie fairly reeked of it. Maggie licked at her lips. “Miss Hattie, is there anything... unusual going on here?”

“At Seascape?” The worry disappeared and her laughter tinkled through the fire-warmed kitchen.

Stiffening, Maggie nodded, not at all reassured.

“Why, things here are just as they’ve always been, dear.”

Maggie let out a nervous little laugh, then started to express her relief, but stopped short.
As they’ve always been?

It had been the longest,
the most miserable, of all his miserable months of weeks here. Maggie avoiding him at every turn. Him knowing she avoided him to protect him and worrying that nothing he could do would protect either of them. Him fearing that this entity—whatever in hell it was—would play with them until it tired, then do only God knew what to them. And, T.J. finally accepted it, him knowing that more than his next breath, he needed to talk with Maggie. To just be close to her.

She’d gotten to him.

How had it happened? Why hadn’t he seen it coming and stopped it?

Hell, he
had
seen it coming. He just hadn’t realized his heart had been at risk. Had he mistaken serious attraction for a good dose of lust because the woman had stunned him?

He stared at his bedroom ceiling and pondered on it. Maybe. Her reaching out to him when he’d deliberately been acting like an ass toward her had stunned him. But maybe she’d gotten to him because when she’d said she wasn’t interested in him he’d known she’d been telling the truth and he’d let his guard down. Or maybe—just maybe—she pulled off this coup because, before he’d recovered and raised his guard back into place, she’d crept inside him and seeped soul-deep. At this point, what difference did
how
or
why
make? It had happened, pure and simple.

Unlocking his bent arms from behind his head, he rolled out of bed, then crossed the creak-ridden floor to the window and looked outside. Gloomy and gray. He sighed. Again.

She’d taken this last warning to stay away from him seriously. Not once had she forgotten to hang out the
Occupied
sign on the bathroom door’s nail. Not once had she snitched his razor. He frowned and tapped the heel of his fisted hand against the window sash. He’d nearly slit his throat because he’d expected a dull blade and instead had gotten one that hadn’t been touched. And not once had she ventured down to the boundary line to watch him attempt—and fail—to cross it without her.

That might just hurt most of all.

He paced the length of his room, the woven rug muffling his footsteps. God, it felt stifling in here.

Back at the window, he jerked it open. Pine-tinged fresh air gushed in and he breathed in deep, filling his lungs. Still, he felt ready to suffocate. Almost as if the house had shrunk in on him and he couldn’t get enough oxygen into the room.

Claustrophobia? With his head hanging out a window? With crisp air blowing against his face, tugging at his eyelids, and slicking back his hair?

Hell, it wasn’t logical. But then what around here
was
logical anymore? Maybe if he went outside...

Fifteen minutes later, he’d combed the lawn, the garden, stood on the Seascape cliffs, climbed down the stone path to the little strand of beach then back up again, and he
still
felt smothered. Stopping on the jagged rocks, he stared out onto the foamy, white-capped sea. Even its roar howling in his ears, its cold and misty salt spray gathering on his skin, didn’t soothe him this time. Seascape grounds just weren’t big enough. He had to get away from here or he’d lose his mind. But there was only one way to do that.

Maggie.

And, God, but it appalled him to have to humiliate himself and ask her for help. To have to accept her pity—especially considering the odds ranked about a hundred percent that she’d turn him down cold.

Maybe not.
A man’s voice sounded in T.J.’s head.
Ask her.

Was it T.J.’s own voice? The entity’s?

Does it matter?

Did it?

All she can say is no...

No.

No way.

Uh-uh, absolutely, positively, unequivocally, no way. Miss Hattie
had
to be wrong. That’s all there was to it.

Maggie sighed, shrugged, then grimaced. Sitting alone on the bench, she stared out on the wind-rippled pond. Without the sun’s brilliant glint, the water looked murky, dense and dark and almost threatening. Of course, Miss Hattie had been wrong. Maggie had been at the
in love
brink, but she hadn’t taken the plunge. She didn’t love MacGregor. Spit, most of the time, she didn’t even like him.

But there was something... special about him.

The way he talked? Slow and reassuring, as soothing as the ocean’s gentle roar. The way he looked? Gorgeous, but his lure went much deeper than that. She appreciated his easy moves—what woman wouldn’t? They were relaxed, his carriage proud but not boastful. And he did have a perfect nose. Because he was so big? She did like that. His size and strength tugged hard at her feminine cords, but neither would appeal so much if he weren’t gentle and vulnerable—which he hated—and open in admitting his flaws. Heck, he even admitted them when they weren’t valid—like with his parents.

She wrapped her arms around her bent knees and dipped her face against the sharp wind. Men weren’t often that comfortable with their masculinity, or in their skin. Nor did the prospect of deceit typically trouble their consciences so much. Her father’s certainly hadn’t been. But MacGregor was... sensitive where her father had been calculating, keeping score and making sure he stayed one up on her mother. Of course, an artist had to be sensitive to paint, so that had come as no great surprise. But his sensitivity carrying over into other aspects of his life
had
surprised her. Oh, he was a nagging pain in the gluteus maximus, with an attitude and a killer snarl as fierce and disarming as his killer smile. True, but under the bluster, that sensitivity was there. When he held her, she sensed it so strongly it stunned her. The way he made her feel stunned her, too. Sighing, she hugged her knees tighter. She wasn’t sure she was crazy about feeling stunned, but she did really like the way he held her. And the way he hassled her. She even liked the way he drove her up the wall when she was in the tub.

Oh-oh.
She pulled up a dead blade of grass and slid it between her forefinger and thumb.
Serious trouble brewing here. Very serious trouble.
She liked too much about the man, especially his huge hands and the way he skimmed them over her back... She positively hated loving that. And, aside from his lethal kisses, she just might hate loving their through-the-bathroom-door conversations most of all.

Sighing deeper, she tossed the grass blade onto the stony ground and watched the wind catch it and send it tumbling toward the big oak down by the water. Poor grass. It was as out of control of its destiny as she seemed of her own. She didn’t love MacGregor, no. But she sure did miss him.

“Maggie?”

She jerked, turned and saw him standing not three feet behind her, wearing a gray shirt and jeans and a black cashmere sweater that made him look as dark and dangerous and as alluring as the
Seascape
painting. Her heart started a slow, hard beat. “You’ve got to stop sneaking up on me, MacGregor. You’re stunting my growth and I’m determined to reach five-eight.”

His eyes twinkled. “Hate to break it to you, but I think your growing years have passed.”

She feigned a sigh. “There you go again, blowing my fantasies.”

“Old habits die hard.”

They did. And sometimes, without a whimper. Depressing, that.

“How about if I make it up to you?” He shrugged. “I have shattered a lot of your fantasies.”

He’d generated a lot of them, too. Especially in the past week. “How?”

He flipped his sweater over his shoulder and held it with a careless thumb. “I could tell you that you look fantastic in burnt umber.”

“Burnt umber?”

“Brown.” He smiled. “Burnt umber is a paint color.”

“Ah.”

“Sorry. Like everyone else, artists notice things in the familiar—even when they can’t work.” He cocked his head, lowered his lids to half-mast and gave her a killer smile that wilted her knees. “Or, I could take you to the Blue Moon Cafe for dinner.”