Rose Hill (29 page)

“I had fun, too,” she said when he stopped.

“Come over tomorrow night,” he said, “and I’ll cook dinner.”

“Sure,” Maggie said, a little buzzed from the kissing.

“Okay then, see you tomorrow,” he said, and got out of the car.

Maggie was glad it was dark enough so the instant hot flash she knew was making her cheeks burn was not easily detected. She drove home feeling fizzy and girly, smiling and giggling to herself like an idiot.

She parked in the alley behind her building and when she got out of the car, saw Duke running by with some small, unfortunate rodent clamped in his jaws.

“Your landlord's home now, Duke, you better get a move on.”

Duke
kept on at a trotting pace, and didn't waver from his path.

Maggie let herself in the back stairwell and locked the door behind her. From this small alcove, she could walk up the backstairs to the hall outside her apartment or go on through to the bookstore. Someone had shoved a note under the back door and she stepped on it with snowy, wet boots before she saw it, stuck to the bottom of her right foot. She shook off her gloves and picked it up, holding it under the stairwell light to read.

“Call me when you get home,” was written on it, and it was signed “S” for Scott.

Maggie instantly felt deflated, guilty, and irritated. She sat on the small folding chair she kept by the door and pulled her boots off, then took her coat and scarf off and hung them on a hook.

She put on the slippers she left by the back door earlier, disarmed the security system, and slipped through a connecting door to the bookstore, which was closed and dark, with only a few lights left on for security. She went to the front counter and reached over it to retrieve the daily sales log, to see how they'd done during the day, and the number was good. Ski season was always good for business, there was plenty of snow, and now that the students were back, they used the café to meet friends, study, and keep fueled with espresso and coffee drinks.

Maggie was too wound up to go to bed. She wanted a few minutes to try to regain the sweet feeling she'd had with Drew before she saw Scott's note. She knew Scott was probably out walking around, keeping an eye on her apartment for a light to go on. She wasn't ready to let go of the happy romantic feeling Drew's company had provided in order to re-enter the complicated world of whatever it was she felt about Scott.

They were friends, and if they both could undergo some sort of personality transplant, maybe they could be more. Right now, though, it seemed too difficult. There was a physical attraction that was too strong to deny, but there was also what seemed like too much history, and what Maggie believed were unrealistic expectations on his part. They talked around it sometimes, but they didn't talk about it, and it left things between them feeling, Maggie thought, ‘unfinished,’ for lack of a better word.

Maggie leaned back against the counter and closed her eyes, going back over the events of the evening, ending with Drew's kiss, and
felt her face flush again at the memory. She wanted this feeling. She wanted a new romance untainted by the past or tangled up in family relationships. Drew seemed like a genuinely nice man, and he was interested in her. Why couldn't it be that simple?

Maggie knew why, and felt she was doomed to sabotage any new romantic possibility. She heard a noise, turned, and saw Scott framed in the window of the front door, watching her. She felt her blood run hot throughout her entire body, not in the tame way Drew's kiss made her feel, but in a runaway train way that frightened her and made her heart pound. They looked at each other for a few moments, and then she walked forward to unlock the door.

“Hey,” he said, as she opened the door.

Maggie backed up to let him in, and with the first whiff
of his particular personal scent she forgot Drew completely. Somewhere inside her, when her defenses were down and Scott was near, a fire blazed into life, and the heat was almost unbearable.

She locked the door behind him. She was not quite able to meet his gaze, which she could feel boring into her.

“Do you want some coffee or tea?” she asked him, gesturing toward the café side.

“No,” he said quietly.

It seemed like he was trying to read her mind and succeeding. She felt an immediate need to put a physical barrier between them. She quickly crossed to the other side of the store, went behind the café counter, and filled the hot water pot. When she turned around, he was sitting at the counter, still looking at her intently, with a questioning expression on his face.

“What's up?” she said in what she hoped was a light tone.

“Did you have a good time at Hannah's?”

Although she willed it not to with all her heart, her face flushed in what she thought probably looked, even in the dim light, very much like shame. She turned away and made herself busy getting a mug and teabag ready.

“I did have fun. Hannah is campaigning to keep Dr. Drew in town, and we were all brainstorming about finding a decent place for him to live.”

“Was that all she’s campaigning for?” he asked, and Maggie could hear how miserable he was, as if he could hardly bring himself to ask the question or hear her answer.

It stung her, and she felt horrible for making him feel the same way she felt when she knew he was with Sarah. How could she think she was free to start anything with Drew when she was still so wrapped up in whatever this was with Scott?

“You know Hannah,” she said. “It's hard to tell what she's cooking up in that dingy head of hers.”

He came around the counter and turned her toward him so fast she was startled. He looked in her eyes for just a moment before he backed her against the counter, took her in his arms, and kissed her. This wasn’t a friendly, sweet kiss like Drew’s. This was demanding and all-consuming. Her senses reeled as she at first gave in to what her body wanted so badly to do, but then she pushed him away, saying, “I can't do this!”

“You can, Maggie, but you
won't,” he said. “Gabe’s gone and he’s not coming back. You need to accept that and get on with your life.”

Maggie’s face crumpled as she dissolved into tears. Scott’s anger seemed to evaporate instantly and he took her in his arms again, this time gently. Maggie, who rarely cried, and certainly not in front of anyone, willed herself to stop, but the tears kept flowing.

“Why can’t we just be friends?” she asked him, as she struggled not to relax into the warmth of his embrace. “Why does everything have to be so complicated?”

He kissed her forehead, her eyebrow, her cheekbone, her neck, and then one corner of her mouth as he rubbed her back.

“It might not be easy,” he said, “but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.”

His breath on her face was warm and his scent was all around her. His hands and lips were so insistent. Maggie felt all her resistance melting away, replaced by a feeling
of inevitability, as if she were letting go of the side of a boat she'd been clinging to, slipping under the dark water, sure to drown, but not much caring anymore. It felt so good to give in.

She had just opened her mouth under his to say, “Okay,” when someone pounded on the front door of the bookstore, breaking the spell.

Scott cursed and went to the door. He flung it open and Skip almost fell into the store.

“Cal Fischer found Willy Neff–he drowned in the river!” Skip said.

Scott turned back to Maggie, who was standing in the shadows.

“Go,” Maggie said. “You have to go.”

“I’ll come back if I can,” he said. “If it’s not too late.”

Scott left with Skip, and Maggie locked the door behind him.

“It’s already too late,” she said.

Out at the farm Sam was wide-awake, fighting the urge to go down the hall to his office and do some work. He knew he should wait until Hannah fell asleep, lest he incur her wrath.

“I really think they make a cute couple,” she said as she got into bed. “And God knows it's about time Maggie got back up on that particular horse.”

“Speaking of which…” he said, as he wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled her neck hopefully, but Hannah pushed him back.

“Oh no, Romeo,” she said. “You kept me from finishing my chores earlier today, don't you remember?”

Sam grinned and said, “I certainly do remember, but you can't blame a man for trying to get more of a good thing.”

Hannah considered him a moment, and then laughed.

“You sexy, rotten bastard,” she said. “How can I resist that face?”

Sam lunged after her in the bed, making her squeal and laugh.

Afterward they lay entwined and breathless. Hannah brushed the hair back from her face and said, “I’m hungry.”

Sam laughed and rolled over, and as if on cue both dogs jumped up on the bed and settled at the end.

“You think Drew and Maggie did anything?” Sam asked her.

Hannah scoffed at the notion.

“Maggie's like a crock-pot, not a microwave,” she said. “He'll have to heat her up in stages.”

Hannah yawned, curled up in the crook of Sam's arm, and fell asleep within minutes. Once her breathing slowed he eased his shoulder out from under her head and moved gingerly to the edge of the bed, where his wheelchair sat waiting.

“Bastard,” she said with a yawn, but turned over, hugged her pillow, and fell right back asleep.

“I love you too, honey,” Sam said, as he maneuvered himself into his wheelchair, and headed for the office.

Sam had an encrypted e-mail response from his friend who worked for the bureau, thanking him for the tip about Theo’s safe. Sam had hesitated before getting the Feds involved, but when Hannah described what was in the safe, he thought everyone would be safer if they had the contents instead of the local sheriff’s office. Blackmail was a nasty business, but blackmail involving powerful politicians was especially dangerous.

Volunteer firefighter and certified water rescue diver Calvert Fischer had been rowing his boat, with a dog, a spotlight, and a shotgun, across the Little Bear River at around 11:00 p.m. when he saw something beneath the surface of the water. His plan, when he took the barriers down at the end of Pine Mountain Road and backed his boat into the river, was to hunt down and shoot a ten-point buck he’d seen earlier, feeding on the opposite bank. When he realized he was looking at the reflection of his spotlight on the submerged windshield of a small pickup truck, those plans changed instantly.

The truck was facing upriver, held in place under water by the current pushing it against a dam built to control
the water flow just below town.

Cal quickly rowed back, hauled the boat out, stowed the gun and the dog, woke up his wife, and made the call. By the time Scott and the volunteer fire department’s recovery crew arrived, Cal was in his wet suit, smearing petroleum jelly all over his face in preparation for entering the frigid water. They took the rescue boat out and lowered Cal in. Within minutes he was back up, having attached a towing chain to the front axle of the truck. Curtis Fitzpatrick was waiting on the shore with the wrecker to pull it out.

By the time someone from the county morgue picked up Willy’s body, it was past two in the morning. Everyone was frozen and exhausted, but Cal asked Scott if he would come inside his house so he could have a word. Cal changed into warm, dry clothing, his wife Sue made coffee, and the two men sat in the kitchen at the table, where Cal told his tale.

“So let me get this straight,” Scott said quietly afterward, but not without a certain amount of anger in his voice. “On the night Theo was murdered, you took the barriers down in order to back your boat into the river, row to the other side, and illegally hunt for out of season deer. Then your dog ran off so you didn’t get back home until after two in the morning.”

“Yes,” Cal said nervously.

“It was closer to 2:30,” his wife Sue said. “The fog was so thick I was afraid he was lost in the woods.”

Scott continued addressing Cal, his voice level.

“While you had the barriers down, Willy either accidentally or intentionally drove his truck into the river.”

“Yes,” Cal said. “The barriers are padlocked and I’m the only one besides the chief who has a key.”

“You know how drunk Willy gets,” Sue said.

That’s no excuse,” Cal told his wife. “He’d still be alive if I hadn’t taken those barriers down.”

“Maybe,” Scott said.

“I am so, so sorry, Scott,” Cal said, near tears.

“It was an accident,” Sue said.

“And you’ve told me everything?” Scott demanded.

“Everything, honest to God, Scott. I couldn’t live with myself telling a lie about a thing like this. I was hunting and I did leave the barriers down, and I knew it was wrong. If they’d been up, he would’ve hit them and not gone in the water. He would still be alive.”

Cal broke down then and cried into his hands, and it was pitiful to see. Sue rushed to his chair and put her arms around him, comforting him, and turned a pleading look to Scott.

“It was an accident,” she cried. “You’ve got to believe us.”