Confessions (30 page)

From the lambent flame she'd viewed burning in his faraway gaze, Mariah had the feeling that he hadn't exactly been thinking about her culinary skills, but decided, yet again, not to push.

“As a matter of fact, I'm a dynamite cook.”

“Really?”

She took a sip of coffee and eyed him with repressed humor over the rim of the mug. “Really. Although I'm no Julia Child, I've taken lessons in Southern Italian, French, Chinese and Indian.”

“I'm impressed.”

“You're suppose to be. Did you think I sent out to Spago every night for boiled water?”

He managed a self-conscious grin. “I suppose I was guilty of stereotyping you. Just a little.”

“More than a little.” Her own grin was quick and more
than a little seductive. “Lucky for you, I'm not the type of woman who holds a grudge.”

“Lucky.” His gaze unconsciously shifted from her smiling face to her bruised wrist.

Viewing his frown, Mariah stifled the spark of frustration. “What is it?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” The force with which Trace stabbed his omelet told Mariah differently.

“You know,” she murmured, “it's really not fair. You know everything about me. About my relationship with Laura. With my father. With Maggie. You even know about my marriage. But I don't know anything about you other than what I read in your jacket. And what little you've told me about your wife.”

“Not everything is in my file.”

“My point exactly.”

“There are some things I've done that I'm not proud of.”

“Join the club.”

Thinking of what he'd heard of her own tempestuous youth, and knowing that she was assuming his was no worse, Trace laughed at that, but the sound held no humor.

“The reason you didn't find any record of my more colorful exploits was because the court records were sealed.”

“Court records?”

Her surprise, Trace decided, was not feigned. “It's the old story,” he said with a brusque casualness he was a very long way from feeling. Sure, she was hot for the law-and-order sheriff, the guy in the white hat. How would she feel about him after she learned that he'd been convicted for armed robbery and assault?

What was even worse was how much Trace cared about her reaction.

“Hell,” he said gratingly, “you've probably written it a dozen times yourself—the standard inner-city career choice—whether to grow up to be a criminal or a cop.”

“You chose to be a cop.”

“That was later.” He took a drink of coffee and wished it was something stronger.

No longer hungry, he pushed his plate away, braced his elbows on the table and decided she was right. There was little he hadn't unearthed about Mariah. It was only fair that she know exactly who it was she was sleeping with.

“This could be a long story,” he warned.

She leaned back, crossed her legs and said, “I'm not going anywhere.”

It was amazing, Mariah thought, as Trace began unraveling his life story. Although they'd been born into totally different environments, they had so very much in common.

Both had been virtually abandoned by their mothers at an early age, although unfortunately for Trace, his kept coming back to reclaim him, whether because of some fleeting maternal need or simply a financial one—in the form of her bimonthly Aid to Dependent Children check—Trace never knew.

And as bad as things had been in so many of his foster homes, they'd been far worse with Reba Callahan. Trace told his tale in a low, flat unemotional monotone, but blessed—or in this case cursed—with a vivid imagination, Mariah could envision all too clearly the drinking, the beatings, the men.

When he described finding his mother horribly beat up on more than one occasion her heart went out to the angry, terrified young boy, who could not protect his mother. From her poor choice in men. Or from herself.

Unable to continue this conversation with the table be
tween them, she stood up and went around the table to sit in his lap.

“It isn't the same at all.” She placed her hand against his cheek and felt a muscle clench. “What you and I have.”

“I know that. In here.” He touched his temple. “But it's still not that easy.”

“We'll work on it,” she promised. “Together.”

The words went straight to his heart. What had he ever done in his life Trace wondered, to deserve this woman? “Together.”

“What about your father?” she asked quietly. “Wasn't he ever around?”

“I never knew my father. Hell, I don't think my mother even knew who he was.”

Although
her
father had been a mixed blessing at best, at least he'd provided for her physical comforts, Mariah considered. And fortunately, she'd had Laura's stabilizing influence to keep her from getting too far out of hand. While Trace had had no one.

“Cops have a saying when a perp tries to resist arrest. We can do this easy. Or we can do it hard.”

Mariah nodded. “I've heard it.”

“I was always hard.” She listened with an aching heart as he went on to describe his rocky adolescence, when he'd gotten into trouble with almost monotonous regularity. “The juvenile justice system was a joke,” he told her with a shake of his head. “Little more than a revolving door. Then one night, I finally got into the kind of mess that landed me in an intense repeat offenders' program.”

As surprising as his story had been thus far, Mariah was stunned by the idea of Trace being arrested for armed robbery. And assault.

“I didn't actually pistol whip that 7-Eleven clerk,” Trace assured her quickly. “To tell the truth, I didn't even
know the robbery was going down. But I was in the car, waiting for Al and Joey to filch those six-packs. We were going to the dump,” he revealed, “to shoot rats.”

“Nice combination,” Mariah couldn't help murmuring. “Kids and alcohol and guns.”

“Pure TNT.” Trace's tone was as grim as his expression.

It was then that Mariah understood why he'd been so concerned about the teenagers who'd been driving him crazy with what she'd considered little more than kids' pranks. Trace, more than anyone, could understand what a slippery slope it was from setting off illegal firecrackers to armed robbery.

“The program was like something from every chain gang movie you'd ever seen,” he revealed. “
The Defiant Ones, Cool Hand Luke,
you name it.”

Mariah shuddered at the idea. “That's horrible.”

“Not so horrible.” Surprised at how painless this was turning out to be, Trace kissed one bare shoulder, then the other. “I was throwing away my life. I needed a wake-up call.”

His lips were feather soft. Even as she considered his tough self-analysis, Mariah felt herself melting into his lap. “I've never thought prisons are the answer.”

“Spoken like a true bleeding-heart liberal.”

“That's right.” He was teasing, but only partly. “A cop and a liberal,” she mused, linking her fingers around his neck, “who would have thunk it?”

“Who indeed?” He ran a finger along the top of the spandex bodice and kissed her. A brief flare that ended too soon for either of them. “But in my case, the liberal social workers had all thrown up their hands. It was the detective who made the bust, then stuck around, who helped me see the error of my ways.”

“That's why you became a cop,” she decided.

“John Gallagher was part of the reason. Along with the discovery that breaking rocks into gravel wasn't exactly an ideal life plan,” he agreed. “Six months into the program, I decided that if I was going to spend my life in the criminal justice system, it'd be a helluva lot easier on the other side of the bars.”

“I'm so glad you were clever enough to make that choice.” She skimmed her lips up his cheek.

“It doesn't bother you?” His fingers curved around her chin, holding her gaze to his. “Where I came from? Who I was?”

“It angers me that you had such a rough childhood. It makes me sad to think of you not knowing love. But whatever you experienced, the good and the bad, is what made you who you are, Trace.”

Realizing that she was on the verge of telling him that he was, first and foremost, the man she loved, Mariah took a mental step back. “A good man,” she said instead.

“I seem to recall you calling me a hard man.”

“Why, now that you mention it, I seem to remember that as well,” she agreed. Turning so she straddled his thighs, she pressed against him, soft female breasts to hard male chest. “But you know what they say.”

Her skirt was bunched up around the top of her slender golden thighs. Heat pooled. “What's that?”

She laughed. A low throaty laugh that shot straight to the groin. If Eve had laughed like that, Adam never would have gotten around to eating that apple, Trace thought. “That a hard man is good to find.”

She touched her smiling mouth to his. Tilted her golden head back and opened to him.

 

“You're in love.”

Mariah did her best not to squirm beneath her mother's judicious gaze. “I hadn't realized it showed.”

“Well, it does.” Maggie poured them both a cup of tea from the pot room service had just delivered. “And I have to tell you, darling, I wholeheartedly approve of your choice.”

She picked up a pair of tongs and dropped two lumps of sugar into Mariah's cup. Ever conscious of her weight, Maggie settled for a slice of lemon.

“Isn't it strange, how fate works,” Maggie mused aloud. “You and I were so eager to leave Arizona, yet here we both are, like Dorothy, discovering that the happiness that has eluded us for so long is right here, in our very own backyards.”

“I take it you're referring to Kevin?”

Although Mariah truly hated admitting she was wrong, she'd reluctantly come to the conclusion that the Phoenix actor who had originally been hired to drive Maggie's limousine, was proving to be far more important to her mother.

She had also been more than a little embarrassed to learn that she'd misunderstood the situation the day she'd discovered her mother half undressed.

Kevin
had
been putting her to bed. But alone. After which he'd emptied the gin bottles down the bathroom sink. The next morning, Maggie had informed Mariah with a certain wonder, not only had he not taken off running when he saw how haggard and ancient she looked but he'd vowed to stay around as long as it took to help her through this crisis.

For the first time that Mariah could remember, Maggie actually appeared at ease with herself and with her life.

An attractive pink that had nothing to do with the expertly applied blush stained Maggie's cheeks. “I know he's impossibly young and doesn't have a lot of money, hell, he doesn't have any, but he's good for me, Mariah.”
Her expression was as earnest as Mariah had ever seen it. “He says he loves me.”

A week ago, Mariah wouldn't have believed it for a minute. Then again, a week ago, she never would have believed she could have come back to her hometown and fallen in love with Whiskey River's new sheriff, either.

“Congratulations.” She realized she meant it. “How do you feel about him?”

Maggie sighed. “I'm afraid I love him, too.”

“Then what's the problem?”

“It doesn't bother you?”

“Your life is your own, Maggie. What I think shouldn't matter. But,” Mariah tacked on with a smile, “I am happy for you.”

Tears welled up in Maggie's eyes. “I have to go to Phoenix this weekend. To meet his parents. Lord, can you believe it? His father's president of a small liberal arts college. And his mother is a philosophy professor. And a docent at an Indian art museum.” She took a drink of tea, seeking calm. “Can you imagine me sitting around a Sunday dinner table with those people?”

If Maggie's expression hadn't been so nervous, Mariah would have laughed at the idea of her mother having to pass muster with her young man's parents. “They'll be thrilled to meet you. Why, I'll bet they're telling all their friends and neighbors right now. When you and Kevin drive up in front of their house, the sidewalk will undoubtedly be jammed with people wanting to get a glimpse of the famous Maggie McKenna.”

“Do you really think so?”

It always surprised Mariah how her mother, for having been a worldwide household name, could have such little self-confidence. It also explained how her father had managed to pull off his Machiavellian stunt concerning Maggie's fatal accident. Anyone else would have insisted on
seeing the police report firsthand. But Maggie, shattered and insecure, had believed the worst of herself.

“I know so.” Mariah gave her an encouraging smile. “You're a movie star, remember?”

“I
was
a movie star. Past tense.”

“Tell that to the Gray Line tours that still bring people by your house. Or all the tourists who brave Hollywood just to stand in your footprints outside Grauman's.”

Maggie looked only partially reassured. “I could go to Phoenix with you,” Mariah suggested. “If you'd like.”

“Would you do that? For me?”

“I'd be doing it for my mom,” Mariah said simply.

Tears welled up in Maggie's still remarkable eyes. “Thank you.” As mother and daughter embraced, Mariah felt as if Laura were watching. And giving her approval.

Mariah was leaving the lodge when a couple entering the lobby caught her attention. Ducking behind a potted palm, Mariah watched Fredericka Palmer and Alan Fletcher approach the elevator.

Fredericka's usually smooth hair was ruffled, as if the wind had been blowing through it, which was impossible, since the summer air today was almost stultifyingly still. Her poppy red lipstick was smeared at the corners. As they entered the elevator, Mariah guessed they weren't going upstairs to discuss real estate prices.