Maggie's Man (26 page)

"Maggie … ah!" He seemed frustrated
and distraught, and for the first time since she'd known him, at a loss for
composure. His hand raked through his shorn hair once, then twice. "I'm
mangling this."

"No kidding. And the clock is ticking,
buster." She tapped her foot for emphasis. She was beginning to sense she
had the upper hand and she had no intention of letting him off lightly. Let him
squirm a bit; it was the least he deserved.

"I'm not used to people like you," he
said abruptly.

"Oh?" She arched a fine brow.
"You mean
nice
people?
Kind
people?"

His lips curved reluctantly. "Yes.
Exactly." Then his face sobered. "I've been alone a long time,
Maggie. I think sometimes … I'm better alone. Kathy used to say I was too
remote, too self-contained, that no matter how much time she spent with me, she
never knew what I was thinking, never thought that I needed her. I didn't
really understand what she meant. But then she was dead and everyone agreed
that I'd done it. My family betrayed me, my friends believed in the betrayal.
Everyone, shaking their heads. 'Well, I never did feel like I knew him,' they
all said, as if I'd been a stranger all along. As if none of it, none of the
friendships, had been real." His voice broke. He forced himself to
continue, his gaze planted on the wall. "And then there's you, Maggie.
You've known me less than a day, you've met me under the worst conditions, and
you've already given me more, trusted me more, than anyone else. You believe in
me. And by God, I didn't realize how much I needed that."

He looked down, his voice too hoarse to
continue.

Maggie gave up on distance. She strode toward
him, not stopping until she was against his body, his damp towel against her
damp skirt, her hands splayed lightly on his bare, freshly showered chest. Her
fingertips massaged his collarbone, her gaze searched his eyes. "Tell me,
Cain. Tell me what happened that night, tell me everything. I promise to
believe."

"I introduced them," he whispered,
and she could hear the underpinnings of guilt and remorse in his voice.
"Ham suddenly appeared in Portland, said he wanted to get to know me again
as it had been five years, and without ever suspecting a thing, I invited him
to dinner."

"He wanted your girlfriend?"

"I don't think so. I think he just wanted
to get back at me. He wanted to destroy his turncoat brother who'd spit on
everything we were raised to believe. I'd just been appointed project manager
to a new program we were developing for the government. I think that might have
been the last straw for him."

"I don't understand," she told him
honestly.

"Our father … he believes the government
is evil. Schools are corrupt, public water supplies, public services. Street
signs and traffic lights contain secret codes that will one day be used to herd
together all dissidents. The ZOG hates middle-aged white Christian males, and
if Aryans don't stick together, we'll all hang separately."

"Do … do you believe it?"

"No. I'm the family heretic. I figured
that if God asked Noah to save two of
all
the animals from the flood,
then he must value the diversity of the creatures that he created, including
mankind. It was an unpopular belief where I grew up. I moved to Portland
instead. I met all the people I'd been told were evil—they weren't."

"Then Ham came."

"Yes." He said softly, "I was
willing to believe he wanted a reconciliation. I don't know why. We'd always fought.
There was no logical reason for me to think things had changed."

"He was your brother."

"He set me up. I let him in, introduced
him to my coworkers, to Kathy, and he took it all in, and in one brutal stroke
took it all away. It wasn't even difficult for him. He was handsome, charming,
and Kathy liked men with a dangerous edge. We'd been dating for a while, but
the flush was over. She wanted things I couldn't give her and we both knew it.
She must have thought Ham was quite dashing.

"And he must have thought it was very easy
to kill his brother's Jewish lover."

"Oh, my God," Maggie whispered and
pressed against him. Her open face was filled with so much horror, so much
compassion for him and Kathy both. "Oh, my God."

He found his hands buried in her thick red
hair, he found himself pressing her body slightly closer. She felt tiny and
delicate, but not breakable. She was too supple, bending like a willow when
under pressure, while he knew only how to stand stiffly and snap.

It had been more than six years since that
night, but it had changed too much to ever let go. He'd been so sure
relationships could be simply and easily defined. How much could go wrong? Even
when he'd begun to realize Kathy and Ham were involved, he hadn't wanted to
dwell on it. Kathy was a free woman. He didn't own her, she didn't own him. She
could make her own choices.

But he'd never told her about Ham's upbringing,
about his hatred and bigotry. When Ham had arrived in Portland, he seemed to
have left that behind as well, and Cain didn't push too hard or ask too many
questions. Cain had been weak, after all, wanting to believe that his brother
shared his enlightenment, that leopards could change their spots.

He'd made Ham's job so easy and Kathy had paid
the price for Cain's naiveté. Life wasn't supposed to work like that.
His
life wasn't supposed to work like that.

"But you didn't do it," Maggie
whispered softly. "Why didn't the jury believe you?"

"Ham used my own hunting knife, then testified
as an eyewitness to my alleged enraged attack on Kathy. The case was
open-and-shut."

"We'll have to change that," she
declared immediately. Already, she was gnawing on her lower lip. "Now how
are we going to prove that?"

Very gently he wrapped his hands around her
waist and set her from him.
"We
aren't going to do anything,"
he said quietly. "I'm going to go to Idaho. In the meantime, I'm hoping
Ham will arrive in Oregon. While he looks for me here, I'll try to find
evidence against him at home."

"Do you think you'll find much?"
Maggie asked, momentarily ignoring that silly
I-we
thing. She'd cross
that bridge later.

"I doubt it. It's been six years. On the
other hand, Ham likes to brag. His friends will never testify against him, but
perhaps a bartender or cocktail waitress might. Or there are a lot of magazines
and propaganda documents that circulate among militias. Generally, they include
'accounts of war,' generic anecdotes of local activities."

Maggie's eyes grew huge and her face pale.
"You mean … you mean he might have written up what he did and
published
it for others to read?"

"There are some people who think he
performed a very noble act, Maggie." His lips twisted. "I'm sure my
father is one of them."

"Well! We're just going to find this account
and bring it to a judge!"

"Maggie," he said calmly, "even
if such a thing existed, Ham wouldn't be so stupid as to use real names. I
don't think one story published in a propaganda publication will overturn a
murder conviction."

"Then we'll have to find something
else!"

"I will."

"Brandon and C.J. will help us," she
continued unperturbed. "They're very capable."

Cain couldn't take it anymore. He reached out,
grabbed her hand and abruptly dragged her against him. His palms framed her
face. He held her still and forced her to really look at him as he enunciated
slowly, "Maggie, you
can't
help me. Don't you understand yet? There
is a very strong chance that I may never be able to prove my innocence. There
is a strong chance the police will return me to jail. There is a strong chance
Ham will hunt me down, and I'm just not ready to kill my own brother. I don't
have a lot of good options yet, and I
will not
let you pay for my
mistakes. No more. I'm willing to stand alone and I'm willing to die alone if
it comes to that. I pay for my choices, no one else. That's fair."

He released her face. He took a resolute step
back and pointed toward the door. "Please leave, Maggie. Now."

"No."

"Please leave, Maggie. Now."

"No," she repeated.

His arm began to shake. "Dammit, I said,
now!"

"And I said, no!" Her chest heaved,
her eyes grew bright. She fisted her fingers at her sides and stared out at him
with blazing defiance. "No, no, no!"

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"Because I can't help it!"
she cried. "Because I want … I want to watch you
eat
in the morning, and … and shave over the bathroom sink and brush your
teeth and put on your shoes. Because I want to hear more stories about your
mother and listen to you sing along with the radio and … and I want you to hold
me in your arms again and stroke my hair and tell me it's okay because you've
got me, it will be all right. And I want to hold you, and I want to stroke your
hair and tell you it will be all right. I'll introduce you to my brothers, I'll
introduce you to my cats and my grandmother—you have to meet my grandmother.

"Because … because … because I want more
out of life than a silly, stupid, damn locket!"

"A locket?"

"That's right," she declared
fiercely, "a locket." And then her hand was wrapped tightly around
the heart pendant dangling between her breasts. With a sharp tug, she snapped
the chain. "I hate this thing," she said abruptly. "I hate it, I
hate it. I wanted a father, I wanted a daddy to be there for me. And this is
what I got instead—a cheap locket holding a picture of some woman I don't even
know. But it was what I deserved, you see. Because I never asked him to stay. I
never asked him to love me enough to be in my life and not keep running to
someone else's. I just crept around the hallways like a little mouse, so
convinced that if I was quiet enough, still enough, I could somehow hold it all
together. If I just never made any demands, he would love me, my mother would
love me … someone would love me."

She held out the locket and let it drop onto
the floor. "What a bunch of hooey. You want something, you have to ask for
it. You need something, you have to fight for it. Well, I want you, buster, so
I'm not going anywhere. You're stuck with me."

His eyes widened, startled by her vehemence as
she was startled by her vehemence. He opened his mouth as if to argue further,
as if to demand that she leave. Instead, his mouth clamped shut. He looked at
her with open, pleading eyes instead, and she could see her own need reflected
there. "Maggie," he whispered. "You are killing me."

"I know," she said. "I
know." And abruptly her fingers were on her tattered silk blouse and she
was fumbling with the buttons. She wanted it off. She wanted her bare skin
pressed against his, she wanted his lips on her cheek, her throat, her breast.
She could see by the darkening of his eyes he wanted her, too.

"Stop!" he ordered hoarsely.

"Why?" she pressed fiercely.

"Because … because I want to do that! I …
I want to do that."

He strode across the room. Two long steps and he
was in front of her. Her fingers fell away without protest and his hands seized
the silk.

"It won't change anything," he
whispered feverishly, "it won't change anything." But his hands were
fast, nimble and urgent on her buttons.

"Liar," she whispered and pressed her
lips against his pounding pulse.

Her blouse fell away, battered silk floating
down delicately to the carpet. She didn't wait for his fingers but attacked the
buttons of her skirt while his fingers efficiently released her bra. She stood
naked in just fifteen seconds. Cain joined her with a negligent flick of his
wrist that sent the towel crumpling to the floor.

For a moment she couldn't breathe, couldn't
move. She stood just inches from him, her eyes drinking in every detail. His
strong, square-cut jaw was covered with soft, flaxen whiskers that reminded her
of wheat lightened by an August sun. His chest was smooth, broad and sculpted,
his neck corded, his collarbone creased, his nipples dark brown and hard. The
pale coloring wasn't quite right for him, she thought. He should be lightly
golden, not dark bronze but lightly tan from running along mountain streams
with the sun deflecting off the water onto his skin. Prison had robbed him of
that nourishment as it must have robbed him of so much else.

She raised a single hand and flattened it
against his chest. "You're so beautiful," she whispered hoarsely.
"I've never seen … never seen anything so lovely."

"Don't talk. Just let me touch you."

She nodded mutely.

Cain's hand reached out. He was surprised to
see that it was trembling. He didn't touch her skin right away—it was so
delicate, so translucent he was afraid he would mar it with his fingerprints.
Instead he picked up a handful of her hair, feeling the thick, spongy mass,
warm and vibrant in his hand. He opened his fist, and the silky strands wrapped
sinuously around his fingers, his thumb, his wrist, his forearm. In the dawning
light of morning, her hair glowed with an inner fire, like raw energy that was
gathering, preparing and waiting to be unleashed.