The Bride Wore Blue (13 page)

“Now look over the other wing. There’s a log cabin on the far shore.”

She strained and just barely made out the roofline of the structure he was referring to.

“I see it.”

“That’s your friend Greene’s place.”

“Really?” She looked the spot over with more interest. “I didn’t realize he lived that far from me.”

“It’s not really that far. Not by water. Want to pay him a visit?”

She frowned, hesitating. Abel was an extremely private man. She didn’t feel comfortable dropping in unannounced.

“It’s probably not a good idea. He hasn’t exactly made himself visible the last few weeks.”

He gave her a knowing smile. “That’s because he knows I’ve been taking up your time.”

“How could he know that?”

His smile turned brooding. “He knows. Trust me. He knows.”

Despite the fact that she voiced her reservations again, Blue took the Cessna in for a smooth water landing. As they settled down, Maggie told herself there was no reason for the taste of unease that had begun to rise in her throat like sour milk. Blue’s only reason for stopping was to give her the opportunity to see Abel. He was not using her to provide himself with an opportunity to do a little impromptu investigating that might implicate Abel in the poaching crimes.

Unease was replaced by guilt. How could she even think it? She knew Blue better than that. He deserved better from her. This man, whom she had trusted with her body, with her life, and was dangerously close to trusting with her heart, was not about to put that trust at risk and disappoint her.

M
aggie sat tensely as Blue taxied the plane into a shallow bay. A narrow dock harbored a small fishing boat and a canoe on one side. The float plane just fit on the other.

“It doesn’t look like he’s home,” she said with a wary look toward the shore when Blue cut the motor.

But for the water sounds and the bird song and the July breeze whispering through the trees, all was quiet. As quiet as a church during a funeral. As still as the eye of a storm.

She wasn’t sure why those particular analogies came to mind. Neither was she sure why she’d made such a rapid emotional descent from the exhilarating high of her first piloting experience to this sick feeling of deepening dread.

“Coming here was a mistake,” she said, in a last-ditch effort to persuade Blue she wanted to leave.

“We’re here, Maggie.” His smile relayed confusion over her hesitance. “It’s a little too late to leave without announcing ourselves, don’t you think?”

“Maybe he’s not home.”

“I thought you’d like to see him,” Blue said, looking genuinely puzzled.

“His boat’s here,” he added, when her silence was her only response. Easing out of the cockpit, he tied up to the dock. “He can’t be far away.”

Slowly, she joined him on the dock, shading her eyes against the late-afternoon sun as she searched the lakeshore for signs of Abel.

No Trespassing signs were posted in multiple and conspicuous spots—at the end of the dock, again at the point where dock met shore, on the birch and aspen lining the bank.

“I don’t think he wants to be bothered,” she whispered, as if she were in a library and afraid to bring down the wrath of a temperamental librarian.

“I don’t think the warnings were meant to discourage friends.” His staged whisper mimicked hers. He gnnned when she scowled at him. “The trouble with owning property on this lake is that vacationing fishermen have a tendency to make themselves at home if they see a welcoming dock and an absentee owner. The signs are just a form of protection from unwanted visitors. Now come on.”

He took her hand and led her up the narrow planks toward shore, her unease thickening. Even Hershey, whose usual exuberance would have had him barreling toward the woods in search of a chippy to chase, tiptoed ahead of them, slow and wary.

Her reservations multiplied with each step. A question she didn’t want to entertain kept crashing her thoughts like a battering ram. Why had Blue decided to stop? He’d told her once that in all his travels of the lake, he’d never paid Abel a visit. Why today? A niggling and relentless voice— the voice of experience that reminded her how she’d been used in her life—kept warning her it was because she was his admission ticket.

By the time they reached the steps of stone that led up the sloping path to his log cabin, however, her hesitancy gave way to a curious fascination as she took in Abel Greene’s private domain.

Abel went to extreme measures, it seemed, to not only live in nature, but to commune with it. Towering Norwegian pine grew in such close proximity to a massive log cabin that she wondered how he’d managed to build it among them. He’d taken special care not to disturb the huge, gnarled roots that extended out of solid rock like crooked, arthritic fingers. Every twisted claw that bent back in on itself had been filled with soil and planted. Wild iris, baby strawberries, sweet williams, nodding columbines and a dozen other varieties Maggie recognized but couldn’t name filled the mini flower beds, becoming one with the forest floor, enhancing the natural drama of the landscape.

“It’s beautiful,” she whispered, her awe overriding the last of her trepidation. “Look.” She nodded to a spot farther up the slope. “Listen.”

The exotic and elusive sound of wind chimes had drawn her attention, as well as the multitude of bird feeders catering to everything from hummingbirds, to chickadees, to finches, and a dozen other varieties that flitted from one to the other even as they stood there watching.

“What is that?” She pointed to a spot farther from the cabin.

Blue drew his brows together. “A salt lick. Deer love ‘em. That’s a mineral block beside it. And from the looks of things, they like the corn he must feed them, too.”

Telltale corn chaff and deer tracks littered the ground, lending credence to Blue’s conclusion.

“The man grows flowers, feeds birds and deer, hangs wind chimes,” she said expansively, then voiced aloud the thought that had been hammering at her. “How could
anyone suspect him of being involved with anything as hideous as poaching bear?”

She turned to Blue, her conviction firm, until she saw the look on his face. It was a look that made her blood chill by degrees.

“Sonofabitch,” he swore under his breath as his gaze locked on a spot past hers.

With a weary breath and a grim set of his mouth, he walked over to a shed that was built into a rock wall. When he reached it, he hunkered down to get a better look at whatever it was that had drawn him there.

Maggie’s heart hit her ribs like a rock fired from a slingshot. “What?” she asked anxiously, following him as he examined the barrel-shaped apparatus partially hidden under a canvas tarp beside the shed.

“What is it?” she insisted, coming up behind him, her footsteps muffled by the moss and pine needles blanketing the forest floor.

Blue didn’t answer her. Abel did.

“It’s a live bear trap.”

Maggie and Blue spun as one toward the sound of Abel’s voice. Hershey made a whining noise deep in his throat, the hair on his back trying to bristle in the moment before he spotted the wolf dog, Nashata, by Abel’s side.

Maggie sucked in a sharp breath, her hand flying to her throat. “Abel. My God. You scared me half to death.”

He didn’t speak. He just stared at her, his eyes darkened with what she recognized as disappointment and betrayal.

“I’m a little surprised myself,” he said finally, and let Nashata go to Hershey, who was now gamely wagging his tail. “Surprised to find you here, that is.”

Filled with feelings of guilt for intruding, her smile was forced. “Blue thought it might be nice to pay you a visit.”

Abel’s gaze swung to Blue’s and locked. A muscle flexed in his jaw as he gave a jerk of his chin and his satin black hair, hanging loose and long about his bare chest, fell back
behind his shoulders. “I’ll just bet he did. Find what you were looking for, Hazzard?”

Maggie felt a sick, sinking sensation deep in her stomach as she watched the two men’s eyes clash.

“I’m sure Abel has an explanation for the trap,” she said quickly. Too quickly, her voice defensive, protective and not a little bit pleading as she looked back to Abel for confirmation.

“I’m sure I do,” Abel said stiffly. “The problem will be getting anyone to listen.”

With a long, hard look at J.D. he turned and walked away.

Torn between a need to go to him and slink away like the snake she felt she was, she just stood and watched him go.

“Come on, Maggie,” Blue said, his voice hard as he snagged her arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

Maggie was unnaturally quiet on the short ride back to her bay. But then, he wasn’t much better, J.D. acknowledged grimly as the Cessna glided up to her dock. It was nearly dusk when he eased out of the cockpit and turned to her, offering her a hand out. She ignored it, climbing out of the plane on her own steam. For a moment, all he could do was stand there.

He’d known she was upset. She had every right to be. And he was partially to blame.

Steeped in regret, damning himself for a fool and Greene for disappointing her, he couldn’t think how he was going to make it up to her. Because of him, she’d had to face head-on the disappointing possibility that Greene was not the man she thought he was. Because of him, she’d been confronted with some damning evidence that might put Greene behind bars.

“Nice going, Hazzard,” he grumbled under his breath. “This trick definitely fits under ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time.’”

It
had
seemed like a good idea. He’d gotten a sense over the past few weeks that she’d had a need to see Greene again, if for no other reason than to make sure he was all right. As it turned out, he should have listened to her and not set down.

He saw again the bear trap and the look in Greene’s eyes. Yeah, he wanted this poaching business stopped, but not at Maggie’s expense. And while Greene had always been a suspect, J.D. really hadn’t wanted to find out he was involved. While the presence of the trap wasn’t conclusive evidence, it sure as hell pointed a finger straight in his direction.

After making the Cessna fast, he walked the slope to the cabin. Maggie was curled up in a chair by the window, staring out over the bay, her face blank of emotions.

A silence as heavy as his regret hung in the air as he slowly walked to her side. “I’d have done anything to have spared you that.”

After a long moment, she met his eyes. The ice in them chilled him to the bone. “Anything but miss the opportunity to take advantage of my friendship with Abel.”

The rancor in her tone hit him like a broadside blow from a two-by-four. Before he could collect himself enough to react, she slammed him again.

“I thought you were different. I
counted
on you to be different.”

J.D. just stood there, stunned by words made all the more cutting because of the accusation in her eyes, unable to connect with why it was directed at him. He knelt by her chair, then stared at empty air when she rose and deliberately walked away from him.

Something inside him snapped as he watched the rigid, closed-off set of her shoulders. Something deep and elemental that demanded she make sense of her actions and accusations, something that held court to a rapidly building anger.

Jaw set, brows creased, he let out his breath between clenched teeth. Rising, he propped his fists on his hips and stared at her back. “What are you doing?” Panic, coupled with anger, bore down hard. “What the
hell
is this about?”

She turned back to him, the ice in her eyes sullied by a heartbreaking regret. “It’s about manipulation. It’s about trust. I trusted you. I
trusted
you…and you used me.”

He’d never been in an earthquake. Never experienced the ground rumble and shift and drop out from under him as he stood helpless to let it happen. He felt like he was in one now. Everything that was important to him seemed to crumble beneath his feet and dump him into a deep and unforgiving chasm.

He reacted like a man caught on the edge of disaster with a tight, controlling leash on his emotions, with an unswerving determination to come out of it alive. “I’d like to play this cool, Stretch. I’d like to stand here and take this, tell myself you’re upset and let it go. I’d like to…but right now, I just haven’t got it in me.” His gaze bore into hers, hard and demanding. “Explain, please, exactly how I ended up the bad guy in all this.”

She shook her head, tears glistening. “It was so easy, wasn’t it? You knew Abel wouldn’t welcome you, so all you had to do was come up with an excuse to take me to see him. Once you got me there, how could you not take advantage of the opportunity to try to catch him in the act?” The hurt in her words was eclipsed only by her conviction. “I don’t even know why I’m surprised. I should be used to it by now. Someone has always found a use for me if it meant they could get what they wanted.”

He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. He counted to ten. Then twenty, and was afraid even then that if he didn’t go very, very carefully he just might have to hit something—like the wall. And for the first time in his life, he realized he had the capacity to be a violent man.

The force of the discovery rocked him. Blood pounded in his ears as he struggled to regain control and filter through his emotions. With more strength of will than he thought possible, he settled himself down. And he forced himself to see through the anger she directed dead center at him.

He’d sensed the change in her back at Greene’s. He’d attributed it to shock. He’d seen the hurt and had read it as disappointment in Abel Greene.

What he hadn’t seen—what in retrospect he should have realized—was that the raw, crippling emotion clouding her eyes with accusations of betrayal was not directed at Abel but at him.

He saw it now. She made sure of it. It was all there. Disappointment, clear and cutting. Outrage, pure and perverse.

“You’re reaching, Stretch,” he said, fighting to keep the anger from his voice. “You’re reaching real far.”

He swallowed hard, made himself breathe and tipped his head toward the window and a night that seemed bright in comparison to his dark disappointment.

“You know…trust runs both ways. I’m trying very hard right now to trust that this really isn’t about me. I’m trying
damn
hard to trust that you’ve just suffered a major disappointment and since I’m the one who’s handy, I’m the one taking the blame.”

Her silence filled the room, heavier than stone, as damning as a guilty verdict. He turned back to her, looking for a sign that the truth of his words had reached her. But in that protective gesture she’d used with such regularity in the beginning but which he hadn’t seen for weeks now, she crossed her arms tightly beneath her breasts, distancing herself even further.

“What happened to you?” he demanded when she drew further into herself and turned her back on him again.

He wasn’t having any of it. He stalked up behind her, gripped her by her shoulders and spun her around, making her confront him. “Who hurt you? Who hurt you so badly that you need to blame me for the damage he’s done?”

He let out a deep breath when she stood silent and defensive before him. “Why can’t you see that I’m not him?”

Abruptly, he let her go. “Damn you. Damn you, Maggie,” he gritted out, unable to bite back his resentment. “You owe me a helluva lot more than stubborn silence.”

After a last penetrating look that begged her to confide in him, he swore under his breath and turned away.

He had to get away from her. He had to get away from her now, before he said something he’d regret even more than he regretted her lack of faith in him.