Hooked (30 page)

“Forget every word. You've botched your line in the worst way I've ever seen.”

Gage hated to admit failure; a part of him wondered if she was just saying that to make him feel like an ass. “Have I really?”

“Quite.”

Rising to his feet, Gage didn't bother to bring his rod with him. “You could at least smile when you tell me I've made a blundering idiot of myself.”

“I'm saving my smiles for when I get to watch you cast,” she quipped, her tone making it clear that those smiles wouldn't be of encouragement; they'd be blatant guffaws.

They spent the next quarter hour revamping Gage's
line and Meg instructing him on how to hold his arm when he aimed the pole over the water.

Once they stood on the water's edge, she gave him some last-minute hints. “The object in casting is to extend the fly line, leader, and the fly in a straight path from you to the fish.” She pointed to the rod in his hand. “That fly rod can multiply the motion of your arm, so be ready for it to travel a lot farther than you think. I'll show you what I mean.”

Gracefully, she drew her arm back and released the line. It floated like a thread of gossamer over the still water in a distant pool, then snapped right off the surface just about as quick as she reeled in the line.

“See? Now you do that.”

Gage tried. And bungled it.

His line ended up tangled in the brush because he'd overshot his mark.

Meg reprimanded him. “I told you not to flick your wrist so hard. That line is going to move way out there.”

Gritting his teeth, Gage talked between his clenched jaw. “I know that. Do you think I did it on purpose?”

She disregarded his quip. “Beginners need to relax. Mr. Gage, you're more wound up than a watch coil. I can see tension written over every inch of you. It's in the way you stand and the way you frown at me—like I'm enjoying this.”

“Aren't you?”

She said nothing for a long moment. When she spoke, she ignored his question. “You need to slow your casting stroke timing and let the rod do the work. It can't make a cast by itself any more than a baseball bat can hit a home run. Try it again.”

Gage disguised his frustration and tried again.

And again.

And again.

After a couple of hours, Gage got the wrist motion right to where he could cast without having to think through every move he made.

At noon, Meg sat down and opened the lid on a small lunch tin. Without so much as an offer to him, she began to eat.

Gage hadn't thought to bring a meal. He'd been too anxious packing his tackle and anticipating spending the day with Meg to think about food. But now that he saw her nibbling on a sandwich, his stomach grumbled.

But he'd be damned if he'd ask her to share.

Setting down his fly rod, Gage sat next to Meg and took a load off his feet.

“Why do you think Wayne cheated?” Meg asked out of the blue. “What are your hard facts?”

They'd spent hours together and she hadn't mentioned his story once. Now he could read the purpose in her eyes and knew that she wanted details. Some of his opinions she would think were unfair. Others, she would dismiss as unfounded. Perhaps she might agree with him on a few points, although he doubted it. In any case, he didn't feel like arguing with her.

“A newspaper reporter doesn't always have to have hard facts,” Gage finally said. “Sometimes there's an aroma about a story that stinks. If something smells, it's usually corrupt.”

“You didn't answer my question. Why, exactly, does Wayne's win—as you put it—stink?”

He gave her every theory he had, going down the list of the people he'd talked to and what he'd found out. He omitted Ham Beauregarde. “It doesn't add
up that your brother draws the best spot, doesn't show up at the kick off party at the saloon, and catches nearly all brown trout when that creek supports mostly rainbows.”

“Coincidence,” she stated firmly, “all of it. Luck was on his side when he drew the lottery and won the best spot—he couldn't possibly have trifled with that, and he's never been an overindulger of liquor so that's probably why he didn't go to the saloon, and lastly, there is no evidence to prove that those brown trout didn't have an established school in that creek. They are known to be in these waters. If he'd pulled out lobsters, I'd say you had a good point. But he didn't and you don't. All your theories are just speculation, Mr. Gage.”

Gage felt a muscle twitch at his jaw.

Dammit, but she sounded convincing. Gage trusted his own instincts for truth but also recognized that those instincts had to be borne out in the facts of a story. Her facts and his differed on every level. Maybe this was the first time Gage was wrong. Blinded by worn-out inclination.

“I don't care for big city newspapers and their lies.” Meg crumpled the waxed paper her sandwich had been wrapped in, and selected an apple from her tin. “It's awfully shabby of them to slander people in their scorched headlines on the front page. I don't know how you can live with yourself.”

Tension worked through Gage until his joints felt like cement, hard and tight and unyielding. She didn't know a thing about his job and the demands that came with it. If she did, she'd know that he was always on the side of fairness. “I can live with myself because I know that what I write is the truth.”

“Where's your compassion? I've yet to read a stunt column with compassion.”

“There's no room for compassion in my columns. My words are buttressed by a disarming bluntness that makes reading me appealing. I produce colorful, compelling copy.”

“My Grandma Nettie could write a more compelling argument on one of her flyers than you could in your column.” She took a bite out of her apple; a slice of ruby red skin disappeared between her white teeth. He couldn't help watching as she delicately chewed, swallowed, then hammered him into the ground once more.

“And do you know why?” she asked.

He had no comment, so she answered for him.

“Because she cares about people. About rights and fairness. She's not out to hurt anyone. She's out to help women. To make them open their eyes to the Cause.”

“I could write a column and sway women to take up the Cause, and I'll bet you I'd get at least two dozen recruits.”

“Not very likely.” She took another bite of apple, thought a moment while the sweet smell of fruit caught the current and wafted to him, then she remarked, “You analyze things too much. I've noticed that about you.”

Narrowing his eyes with immediate censure, Gage opened his mouth to denounce her assumption, then closed it.

Christ almighty, but she was a loaded pistol today.

He would have given himself over to a wry laugh if she hadn't been so close to the truth. Conceding his opponent was right had never been one of his traits,
but he found himself muttering, “I've been this way too long to change.”

“You could try.” She turned the apple, which was now little more than a core. “Pretend you really are a Bissell salesman. You have the perfect opportunity.”

Meg went to her feet, then hesitated. She looked from the apple core to Gage. “Oh my, did you want some? Oops.” Then she tossed the apple into the tin, and picked up her rod once more with a satisfied smack.

She moved to the shore and began to cast. She'd caught and released a half a dozen trout this morning. He'd caught none.

Hell and damnation.

Stretching his legs out in front of him, Gage leaned back on his elbows to discredit her suggestion about acting like a real Bissell man. A legitimate carpet sweeper salesman wouldn't know a hawk from a handsaw. The world of traveling men revolved around sales and people. Talking up their products—not putting their customers under a magnifying glass to find out what made them tick. Gage usually had somebody's number within five minutes of observing their body language. A Bissell man would merely write up his order and be on his way.

In Gage's mind, he was ruined. He could never enter a room and not size the whole of it up.

Exhaling, he rose and picked up his bamboo rod. Positioning himself next to Meg, he cast and promptly overshot his aim and landed in a clump of weeds. He swore. Giving her a sidelong glance, he yanked the silk line until it broke.

“Trouble?” she queried sweetly.

He ground out, “Looks like it.”

“Hmm. It sure does. Weren't you listening when I told you to conserve your arm motion?”

“I was listening. But in fly-fishing, listening doesn't have a whole lot to do with things, now does it?”

“I suppose not.”

Gage sat and rifled through his tackle box to get another tippet for the end of his line. Meg stood in place, staring out at the water. Then furrowed her brow. “I want you to know,” she began not meeting his gaze, “that what I said the other night—I didn't really mean it.”

It took him a moment to comprehend what she was getting at.
I love you, Vernon.

Pausing with the spindle of silk gut in his grasp, Gage couldn't help saying, “What if that's what I had wanted to say to
you?
You never let me finish.”

She grew still, startled. Flustered. A flicker of hopefulness contouring her profile . . . then disbelief. It shouldn't have mattered what she thought of him, but it did.

“I wouldn't have cared what it was as long as you'd been honest. And as long as you'd meant whatever it was.” Lifting her chin and giving him a stern frown over her shoulder, she added, “Which we now know you never meant anything sentimental you ever said to me so we can just go right on and forget about past history,
Mr. Gage.”

Staring ahead once more, she murmured, “I told you, I don't believe in love anymore.”

15

M
eg and Matthew walked back to the hotel together, barely trading enough words to keep a telephone operator busy. She had nothing to say to him. Well, she had a lot to say to him. But that wasn't the point. The point was, he disrupted her sense of balance more than any man she'd ever met.

But the fact of the matter was she had to be with him in order to clear her brother. And rather than being polite, she'd almost been downright rude when she'd told him her opinions of newspaper reporters. She'd never dared to voice such uncensored words in her life, especially in a high-handed way. What in the world had gotten into her?

She wasn't today's Meg any more than she was yesterday's Margaret. She felt caught in the middle. Still hurt. Still reeling from her discovery and those two letters. What if she hadn't taken them from Mr. Calhoon? How long would Matthew have tricked her? She could just weep at the thought because she knew the answer.

As Meg reached for the door handle of the hotel, Matthew's hand went out a fraction before hers—as if he were trying to be chivalrous and open the door for her, of all things. Their fingertips met. The contact sizzled through her, and she quickly moved out of the way.

She gave him a hard stare, then let him open the door.

Crossing the lobby in a mannish gait, Meg slowed her steps when she saw Grandma Nettie sitting at the registration counter.

Keeping her head low so that the brim of her hat hid her face, she trudged along and would have managed to get right by her grandmother with a simple nod of her head if Matthew hadn't short-stepped her on the heel of her left boot. She stumbled and caught herself from falling by taking a long and noisy step. Her tackle box and gear made an awful rattling sound.

She shot him a stern warning, which he probably couldn't see because of her beard. So she made sure her eyebrows came down in disapproval.

He merely smiled at her.

“Are you all right, sir?” Grandma Nettie asked, giving her a concerned lift of her brows that turned to curiosity. She swept her gaze over Meg's costume ending at her face with a suspicious twist to her mouth. Then a narrowing of her wise eyes.