Thea Devine (21 page)

“All right,” she said finally. “Why don’t you do the article—if you’re man enough to let me edit it.”

The challenge was enough. She could almost feel Mother Colleran smiling. She felt as if she were being drawn into some kind of trap. She had given in to him, hadn’t she? Or maybe, she thought, she was precipitating some kind of climax.

“It is good that you permitted Reese to take some of the burden, Maggie.”

“I suppose I had no choice,” Maggie said from her position at the type case. She was setting type alone, and Jean was performing all of A.J.’s duties as they prepared
to print this week’s edition of the paper. She felt a brief rush of anger again. The whole week she had been sure A.J. was going to walk right through that door, and now she was left to cope because something was missing.

There was a different atmosphere in the office now, a kind of brisk efficiency. Reese didn’t encourage spectators or visitors, and he claimed the regulars distracted him when he was trying to write. Out the door they went, but because he had his fair share of the Colleran charm, none of them resented it. Maggie was agog with amazement.

But the sense of comraderie was gone as well. They shifted into a functional team who worked well, especially because Reese handled Arch Warfield.

Maggie wasn’t sure just how it had happened. Warfield came in with his usual snide remarks, and Reese jumped in immediately and deflected him. Now, suddenly, Warfield was Reese’s project and not her own.

“I think it’s time Warfield found another job,” she said to him after Warfield left the office.

“He’s a good reporter, Maggie. He finds things out in fine detail. It’s a valuable talent.”

“His attitude isn’t. He acts like I owe him something for some reason.”

“He’s probably resentful of the fact he’s stuck in Colville.”

“He can take the first stage out to Denver as far as I’m concerned,” Maggie said, and Reese smiled at her indulgently.

“Don’t let personalities get in the way of keeping good workers,” he said chidingly.

Because of that, Maggie had not seen Warfield’s article until the very moment she began typesetting it. The headline screamed at her:
Sheriff Hedges on Guilt of Only Murder Suspect
.

It could only mean
her
.

She looked up at Jean. “I’m beginning to think it is not
good. Come look at this.”

He stood by her shoulder and she pushed the article directly into the light. They both read:

“He misuses the words,” Jean said quietly.

“Indeed he does,” she agreed, her indignation rising. “I wonder how he thought I would miss this.” But she
knew; he had thought that Jean would be typesetting tonight and that it was so automatic that he never read the words. She took a pencil and began rewriting, cutting the phrase with the possible scenario and connecting the paragraph at the point where it read, “for which we have only her word,” and adding, “and we have absolutely no evidence at all that she even had a motive for wanting Mr. Lloyd’s death.”

“That’s better,” she said out loud. “Let him invent all he wants. He won’t get in
my
paper.”

Logan came that night, as if he had read her thoughts. It was late and she was standing helplessly in the middle of the room with stacks of papers at her feet all sorted and folded with inserts. She didn’t know whether to begin bundling or just sit down and cry for the sorrow of how much she missed A.J.

And then he was there, leading her to the place where he would comfort her, away from the light and the turmoil of her work.

She nestled into his lap as he settled into her chair and just let him hold her for a long, long time. He felt so good, so strong; she felt surrounded by him, suffused with his musky male scent and the desire in him that was never far from the surface.

He did not need to do a thing to arouse her; just the closeness of his long strong body awakened her senses. He could feel her need grow in response to his masculinity. Her breathing altered, slowing down, become deeper, thickening as the thought of everything they had done together swirled through her mind.

They were alone there, although this time there was a small dimmed lamp in the back room that sent a long slender finger of illumination into the office.

And there was his hard throbbing manhood reaching
for her, thrilling her with his need.

She settled herself tightly against him and let herself feel his arousal, let him know by her sensuous little movements how much she enjoyed feeling it in that way.

“Is this a night for kisses, Maggie?” he murmured in her ear.

“I would love your kisses,” she whispered.

“You know what might happen,” he cautioned her huskily.

She licked her lips breathlessly. “Hurry up and kiss me,” she sighed, and took him into her mouth before she had finished the last word.

His kisses were gorgeous, voluptuous, all she wanted just at that moment. He sucked at her tongue, he kissed it, he played with it, and she knew she had needed him tonight just for this.

He didn’t touch her anywhere else. He cupped her face and held it immobile so he could delve into her mouth as deeply as possible. It was the most sensual of all kisses, penetrating her as fully as if he were making love to her.

His hard driving possession of her mouth sent little spirals of sensual hunger coiling around her vitals, and the culmination of each lush kiss made her beg for still more. He whispered to her in the dark, erotic words that made her moan with excitement and undulate wildly against his body. He heard her whisper, “I need you,” and he answered her need with a husky growl, “Tell me,” before their mouths melted together once more in a swirling intense kiss.

“Would you …”

“Anything…”

Another kiss, deep, enveloping, and her body arched upward against his powerful erection. His hands felt the curve of her thighs and buttocks as she strained against him, telling him with the bold movements of her body and her brazen kisses.

“Show me,” he whispered, and she moaned, “yes,” and kissed him again hungrily as if she could not bear to leave his erotic seat. And then she slid off his lap and leaned against the table so that her back was facing him.

She knew that he was more than ready for her, and she pulled up her skirt in overt invitation. He came up behind her and she felt the heat of his hands grasping her and the nudge of his hard sex against her buttocks, then the massive thrust of him possessing her.

“Oh yes,” she whispered, “oh yes,” as each separate sensation thrilled her—the feeling of him behind her, deep and hard within her, her buttocks thrust against his hips, the feeling of being clothed and naked all at once, the exciting knowledge of what was to come, and the driving sense of his surging hot manhood within her, explosive with need—her need.

“Don’t move,” she murmured, her voice throaty with desire. “Just let me feel you,” and he held himself still until he heard her enchanted command: “
Now
.”

Then he began a series of tight thrusting little movements that kept him deep inside her, thrilling her to the core with the way his hands guided her, encouraged her, caressed her, and played all over her writhing buttocks as she enticed him to deep strokes that made her shimmy against him in shameless abandon.

He drove into the velvet core of her, making her cry out as she met his every thrust.

He could feel the building of tension in her with every wild wanton twist of her buttocks, and he held her tightly there to feel every voluptuous movement, meeting her demand with long thick strokes until her body stiffened and curved into his, and he surged into her, once, twice, three times. Finally he pulled himself almost all the way out of her and drove again with one last thrust that sent her into a spasm of pure explosive rapture.

It was almost too much for him. His hands flexed
against her as he held himself tightly to give her time to savor her release. But she wanted him, she wanted more, and she turned to look at him with a flaring invitation in her eyes.

She loved the sight of them together like that, and she moved against him, angling her body to give him the erotic invitation that he needed to begin his torrential drive toward release.

She didn’t expect his urgent thrusting to awaken her again, but her breathing became thick and she wet her lips as she felt the cascade of feeling building and building. She drove herself against him frantically, seeking his heat and the hard hot sense of him joining with her. It was too much, too much. They plunged simultaneously into climax in one stunning moment of union that left them utterly satiated.

And then she couldn’t bear for him to move. Not yet, not yet, and he leaned over her and held her for a precious moment.

Someone entered the back room and stopped abruptly as he heard the soft slithery sound of a presence in the office beyond.

He heard voices, and he pressed himself against the wall lest he be revealed by his shadow. And he listened.

He heard Maggie first, uttering a soft sensual sigh, and then the damning words: “I love that, that was
wonderful
,” and then Logan’s voice murmuring her name, and in such a way that he had to forcibly restrain himself from barging into the room.

Slowly Reese edged his way along the wall until he could just see into the office. What he saw made him freeze.

Maggie didn’t need a savior: she needed salvation. There was only one conclusion he could draw from the scene that met his eyes: the coarse cowboy had had his way with the revered, pristine, touch-me-not Mrs.
Frank—and damn her bitchy soul to hell.

And how he had had her. It didn’t leave much to the imagination, as he watched Logan’s hands slowly and familiarly slide over the fabric of her skirt, caressing her bottom as she just stood there, leaning against the desk, enjoying the feel of his hands on her.
Damn her, damn her, damn her!
Who would have guessed from those dark spinster dresses and thick leather apron she wore that she was really a bitch ready to roll with the first man who got to her. Oh, hadn’t he been wrong about Maggie. All her fine words about him not approaching her, and look at who she had chosen in his stead.

Damn her. She didn’t want to be dependent on anyone, did she, he thought resentfully. The evidence before him suggested she was a slave to the greatest need of all.

His imagination ran riot, thinking about all the things Maggie must have done in the dark of the room, wallowing in the hands of that cowboy.

The aloof, reserved, ascetic,
chaste
Maggie Colleran. Damn her. Damn her. But now he knew. Oh, he knew what Maggie Colleran was all about, and it had nothing to do with business at all.

She had the soul of a whore, and he felt a malicious vindication that his instinct about her that night when he had found her alone, nearly naked in the office, had been correct. Oh, more than correct. If only he had even had a glimmering of what lay beneath the surface of her cool disdain he would have acted on that instinct and shown her what a man felt like.

Yes. He slithered away into the shadows, his mind consumed with images of Maggie naked and willing. She was a rutting bitch, and she needed to be handled like the whore she was. Next time—and there would be a next time, he vowed viciously—it would be with him, and he knew just how to put her into his power.

Chapter Thirteen

The first sight that greeted his eyes the following morning was Maggie bent over a stack of papers that she was bundling for distribution.

Immediately his mind filled with the image of her as he had seen her the night before, and his pendulous organ stiffened to attention as his lustful thoughts crowded out any coherent conversation for several long lascivious moments.

“Good morning, Maggie.” Amazing his voice sounded so normal. He had lain awake all night imagining Maggie with the cowboy, her exquisite moaning and writhing in ecstasy. All these weeks she had slept down the hallway from him, and he could have taken her in spite of her protests if only he had known what a whore she was.

“Reese—just in time. I was going to deliver by myself.”

He could make her deliver, he thought, taking a paper from the top of the pile just to scan the contents.

Damn. Damn her! The whoring bitch, to cut his story like that. That he would make her pay for. That and everything else since he had arrived in town, including her virginal touch-me-not attitude.

“Looks good,” he said, keeping his voice even. “Tell
me what to do.” Oh yes, tell me, he thought viciously, tell me just like you told the cowboy what to do.

He lifted the bundle and followed her out the back door to the buckboard. Even as he imagined himself throwing her onto the wagon bed and taking her there, they loaded the bundles onto the wagon. “That’s fine.” Maggie said. “Now, there’s four more bundles inside that will be picked up later for distribution to the outlying ranches. And after that, there’s nothing else except breaking up the type trays so we can start again. Thanks, Reese.”

He helped her up onto the driver’s perch and murmured, “My pleasure.” My pleasure it will be, he thought, watching her snap the reins.

He couldn’t get her out of his mind: he kept envisioning her hot and seductive, waiting for
him
, smiling at
him
with a wanton invitation. How could he not have seen what kind of bitch she was? Damn, and he had treated her with the respect that only his brother’s wife deserved. He became obsessed with catching her together with Logan just one more time …

The argument raged all around the pot-bellied stove in Bodey’s store: What mattered most? The money, the railroad, the town, the consequences? Even Maggie could not have forseen such a rabid debate about it. It was like watching a storm brew. All the components were there: rumbling, expanding, heating up… At some point lightning would strike, and Maggie’s ominous feeling would take on some definitive shape.

Meantime, she watched men squandering outrageous salaries daily on the streets of Colville. They got drunk, they went looking for a lady for hire, they bought things from Arwin to send back home, and when they were bored, they tore up the town, just as she had predicted.

“Oh, Maggie, you’re making too much of it.”

Or not enough
, she thought. God, she missed A.J. It had been two weeks now. Logan was running cattle, Reese was in the office even as she tried to get him to go away, the work of setting up every week was becoming more and more burdensome, and she didn’t understand the cause. It was like Reese was all over her, never leaving her alone, demanding her help, evading her objections, and making himself uselessly helpful.

But for once Mother Colleran wasn’t griping and things were running somewhat smoothly. She didn’t have the sense something awful was about to happen.

Except that she would not see Logan until this Sunday, and she could not even think that far ahead for how voraciously she wanted him.

“Ah, Maggie, you can see the railroad business isn’t such an intrusion after all,” Reese said one afternoon.

“Excuse me? My friend Annie Mapes’ brother is driving her to distraction with his drinking and gambling, and every night someone comes in and shoots up the street. But no, it’s no intrusion. Just the boys having some fun, right?”

Just one boy wanting to have some fun, he amended in his mind. He knew all the things he wanted to say to her, too, and he used any excuse to try to touch her now. He had decided he was not going to have her until he had caught her with Logan one more time. The waiting was hard. The vision of her that night had magnified into the notion that she had been aware that someone was watching, and that it was him, and that her cold indifference was merely an attitude designed to tease him into begging
her
.

What if he had begged her the night he found her downstairs alone, practically naked? Had she been waiting for Logan or him? Did it matter which man?

“It’s damned hard work, Maggie, you know that. A man has to have some release.” This man needs some
release, Maggie. Let me give it to you just the way you want it.

She felt tired of him, of the whole argument. Money was flowing into Colville. It was the only god anyone answered to.

“Fine. I’ll have to find some new antagonist; this one has obviously poled right over me. As have you,” she added tartly.

I’d like to pole right into you
, Reese thought. The time was coming, the time was almost right. He had got his mother shut up so that Maggie would feel gratitude to him, and he was making himself as helpful as possible to her, but something was different, something was off slightly.

He knew part of it had to do with the fact that A.J.’s murderer was still at large, and part of it was that things had seemed to slow down to an almost manageable pace. The inevitable was happening, and Maggie’s fierce struggle had been a useless waste of her time and talent. It was almost like she was beaten down by it, had given up because there was just nothing more to fight.

But she kept on. The houses were a fire hazard, the men were a hazard to themselves, their salaries were going toward credit, many men had left town already, discouraged by the working conditions and the work, there were new single women arriving in town every day, painted ladies who were renting every available room in town. They sashayed up and down the streets at night; they enticed the men by day, coming out to the building sites in wagons that offered the space to take a sensual respite; and they raked in the money the men were so willing to spend. There had been two fights over favorites.

If Maggie had been among them, he thought lustfully, someone would have been killed. They would have all wanted her if they had even a notion of her whorish nature or the fact that a mere cowboy was servicing her
over her damned desk in the dark of the night.

He adored the contradiction of it, and the fact that only he knew.

He couldn’t wait for Logan’s return.

She watched the track coming closer day after day and thought the day would come when it would run right over her.

In a week where a day seemed like a lifetime, finally there was only another day to be gotten through before she would see Logan. She had pushed out the paper for another week, with all her concerns headlining the front page. She knew already the church women were up in arms about the prostitutes, but they were a minority. She didn’t know how far to push, and thought that far probably wasn’t far enough. Meanwhile, the excitement of Logan’s lovemaking had receded into a distant memory, and she hated that. Only at night could she resurrect the intensity of it, and after a while she stopped doing that because her yearning was too overpowering.

If she were living at the ranch, she thought the forbidden thought, she could have seen him every night. He would have come home to her, tired from his day’s work, hot, sweaty, rigid with a clamoring desire which could only be slaked by her; and she would have been waiting for him every night, ripe, seductive, excited by the scent of him and his throbbing need to possess her.

She needed him just like that, but she needed this too, she thought, as she sat alone in the remnants of the week’s work, without the stamina to rise up and finish the chores that had to be done.

Jean came to her rescue this time, offering to return in the evening and help her clean up. She did not know if there were enough money in Frank’s legacy to pay him for his loyalty to her.

Once again they worked side by side dismantling type
frames and cleaning the press. They worked for the most part without speaking, and she felt grateful to him.

But then she looked at him for one unguarded moment and caught the passion flaring in his eyes. She turned away, straight into the outstretched hands of Reese, who had come downstairs when he heard noises. She knew he had seen the same unchecked desire and that he was intensely displeased.

“You shouldn’t encourage him,” he said sharply when Jean had finally left.
You should encourage me
, he thought savagely.
Me
.

“I haven’t,” she protested, pacing edgily around the backroom. She supposed he had to say what he was going to say for Frank’s sake, because no one would be pleased that she had had a moment’s weakness for an itinerant artist. Nonetheless, Reese didn’t really have the right to chastise her like that.

“You didn’t see his eyes.”
Did you see mine? They’re hungry for the sight of you naked, Maggie
.

“I saw.”

“You’re an amazingly seductive woman, Maggie,” he said daringly.
Oh yes, oh yes. Now
.

“Me?”

And look at her playing sweet innocent when she knew exactly what she did with that sweaty, cow smelling cowboy with his hands all over her.

“I think it’s the idea of you in this position of power. Men want to conquer you.”
I want to seize you and throw you under me, take you by force
.

“Nonsense,” she said testily. But Dennis had said the exact same thing. “Men would love to step on me and push me out of the way and I won’t let them do it. Look at you.”

He drew in his breath in an angry hiss.
I would love to step on you and push you, Maggie. Let me do it to you; I
know how to do it just how you like it
.

“I thought I was helping you,” he said stiffly. “I am not trying to trample you, Maggie. I do have feelings about you, if you don’t remember.”
Feelings, oh God, do I have feelings. If I told you my feelings would you present yourself to me and let me do anything I wanted to you? Oh Maggie, I just dream of doing it to you
.

“I do remember.”

I’d like to give you something else to remember, Maggie
. “I’m glad Maggie. We said we’d be friends. I was hoping that after these two weeks we worked together you’d feel that we became a little closer.”
A lot closer, like you were that night with the cowboy. Could you get that close to me, right now? I’m engorged with feelings for you, Maggie. I’d just love to show you how solid they are
.

“I think you’ve settled in nicely, actually,” she temporized.

“I do too.”
But I haven’t settled in nearly as hard as I want to, Maggie. And you’ll feel it when I do, every inch of it
.

“Jean wishes I would poke my nose somewhere else.”
And I wish I could poke something else in you
.

“We need his talents, Reese.”

And I need your talents, you whore. Just like the cowboy. How did he seduce you, or did you beg him dammit?
“Don’t fall for him, Maggie; women always fall for men like him. Don’t be kind. Let him know as only you can that he can’t have you.”
Only me, only me
.

“You’re assuming so much, Reese. He has affection for me. I know that. Maybe he feels a little more.”

You preening whore, He’d love to feel a little more
. “You cannot let it go beyond that. He is merely an assistant at work.”
Who’d love to work his way into you, bitch, and you know it
. “I won’t say anything more. Maybe it isn’t my business.”

“Maybe it isn’t,” she shrugged. “And maybe I like your consideration.”

Then consider me, Maggie
.

“I’m tired,” she added, and he looked for the signal, the beckoning, but there was none, unless he counted her inviting little yawn and the way she opened her mouth, or the enticing sway of her hips as she made her way up the stairs. He raged that he hadn’t taken her that other night, on the stairs, with her taut nipples and naked body already there for him, without her whore’s games and bitch’s denials.

He watched her primping and readying herself to meet Logan. She was going to the hotel to have lunch with Logan.

“Oh, what a coincidence,” he murmured. “It happens I’ll be there myself. Mother and I …”

It was so late, it was well after church, well after her patience had nearly ground down to the breaking point.

“Walk with us,” Reese suggested, and she couldn’t think of a way to excuse herself.

They made an odd threesome. Reese held Maggie possessively by one arm, all the while bending a courteous ear to his mother, who was shooting black looks in his direction that he refused to heed.

“It doesn’t hurt to let him wait a little while,” Reese said.

“You know he’s an old friend,” Maggie said. She didn’t quite know what to think about this public display or Reese’s vacillating humor. Today he seemed absorbed, faintly aloof.

She would have run a mile, he thought, if she knew he were planning to follow her all day. They stepped up into the hotel entrance and were taken immediately to the dining room.

Logan was waiting, and the sight of him took Maggie’s breath away.

When had she ever seen him dressed like a gentleman?
His eyes met hers, clear as the sky, and he smiled gently at her.

“Maggie. Reese. Mrs. Colleran.”

Oh, he was so damned polite, a cowboy dressed up in a man’s clothes, Reese thought snidely. “Ramsey. Well, Mother and I have a table waiting. Excuse us.”

Maggie watched them walk away and then the waiter seated her. “Why here, Logan? I wanted to come to you.”

“And I wanted to come to you,” he said softly, his eyes roaming her tired face, noting that the sparkle had gone from her eyes. “This is for you, Maggie. I believe there is more to
us
than just our lovemaking.”

“But I wanted …” But how could she say what she wanted in the midst of an afternoon crowd of people, some of whom she had known all her life.