Thea Devine (28 page)

… bequeathed her the sole ownership of the building at lower Main Street known as the
Morning Call Building
, to dispose of at her discretion;

… bequeathed the parcel of land known as the Colleran Ranch to Maggie Lynch Colleran solely in her lifetime, for disposal at her discretion as she should see fit and with the counsel and advice of the executor of this deed.

And nowhere did it mention anything about Dennis’s ability to assign those rights only to himself without
her
consent.

It made no sense.

She thought that if only she could know why Frank had never changed the will she would know what to do.

She leafed through the remainder of the pages. Yes, here was the clause delineating Dennis’s authority. He was to act in the capacity of her advisor. He was to disperse monies she required at
her
demand. He was to handle all legalities pertaining to business, and Maggie was to have sole discretion as to whether to sell or lease the
Morning Call
to a capable editor. Nowhere did it say she had permission to run the paper herself, she thought; Dennis had read into that somehow to please her. Or for some other reason?

By every provision written into the will, he fully expected to live a good long time, because everything oriented to the business was left to her. He just never would have done that, she thought. Especially not after he began his clandestine assignations with Melinda Sable.

There was no mention of the possibility of an heir. Or a brother. Or his mother. Or his mistress.

It was the will of a man who was in love with his wife, and it was all the more crazy because Frank’s desire for her had run its course long before the end of the first year.

She folded away the documents and picked up the Consummation of Agreement between Frank and her father. It was a standard piece of work: for the sum of one thousand dollars her father had given over his rights in the newspaper to his future son-in-law on the condition that he marry his daughter, Maggie Lynch, on the prearranged date of June 25, 1865.

It was interesting to her to read it again, because she had not looked at it since the day her father and Frank signed it. And now, five years later, it read disconcertingly like Melinda Sable had said: her father had sold her for one thousand dollars, and Frank Colleran had bought a newspaper, and somewhere in there between the time they married and the time he died, he had decided the
whole of it should go right back to her.

They sat mouth to mouth on the sofa and talked in thick whispers punctuated by the thrust of his tongue into her mouth. “I enjoyed what we did so much,” he told Melinda as he stroked her silk-clad body. “I couldn’t wait to come back.”

“I know,” she whispered girlishly. “I never knew we could do such delightful things. You were so masterful and gentle at the same time.” Her fingers brushed his thighs and his erection while her tongue sought his.

He loved her trace of modesty, her compliments. He felt the tremulous touch of her fingers, and he entered her mouth and released his aching manhood all in one motion. He reached for her hand and forced her to put it on his rigid member. He liked the fact that he had to show her just what to do.

“Was it delightful?” he whispered.

“It was a little shameful,” Melinda whispered back. “But no one but us has to know, do they? You wouldn’t tell anyone that I loved doing something so improper?” She would never tell him she was clamoring for him to do it again. She had to maneuver him into it, even if he wanted it as desperately as she did. She stretched languidly as she thought of how completely he had filled her, but she couldn’t rush him into it, no matter how aroused she felt. He wanted to coax her and have her beg him to return. It was a silly little game, so easy to play.

She gave him her lips, her tongue, her breasts, her dripping little words of encouragement. Her reluctant hand caressed him until he was ready for her.

“Did it really feel good?” he whispered.

“I never could have imagined it would feel so good,” she told him. “That’s what made it so wicked. And so unladylike.”

“And exciting,” he whispered. “Didn’t it excite you?”

She gave him a teasing little smile. “What do you think?”

“I think you want it. Tell me you want it.”

“I don’t know if I want it,” she murmured; “It felt so immoral.”

“But you told me afterwards you wanted it just that way again next time,” he protested.

“Maybe I changed my mind,” she whispered. “But then again, maybe I didn’t. Do you think it excited me?”

“I know you want it,” he growled. “And I want it, just the same way.”

“You’re so big and strong,” she whispered. “Be big and strong for me. You know how to do it. Show me how you do it.”

The teasing bitch, he thought; he turned her over roughly and shoved himself in her with one thick thrust. And then she was Maggie, all smooth sinuous movements under his hands, begging for every inch of him, the way he just knew she begged the cowdog every night in his fantasies and in his dreams.

He was sated but still not satisfied. It was not Maggie, and only his driving need pushed him there, when nights got hot, and Maggie lay untouchable in the room next door.

On a night of such sultry heat several days later they were awakened by the clang of the fire bell.

Everyone dashed down to the lobby to watch the volunteers scramble to the truck, but one one knew where to go.

Then Annie Mapes appeared in a loaded wagon on her way into town, coming sooner still sooner because the whole of the rangeland from her house on north to the Colleran’s was burning.

Maggie raced upstairs to throw on some clothes. She had to get a horse, a wagon, she had to
see;
the bastards, the bastards! That was the unthinkable threat he had meant …

“I’ll take you,” Reese said urgently, and she agreed while Mother Colleran wailed at her stupidity in the background. “If only you had sold up, Maggie… if only … if only …”

A crowd of wagons raced them; everyone wanted to see. It was a glow on the horizon even before they cleared the edge of town, and as they came closer they could see it feeding with a white heat on everything in its path.

Everyone wanted to get closer. They edged in, murmuring, shouting over the roar of the fire as it consumed a tree, and spread outward, ever outward. Soon only Maggie and Reese were inching forward, and Arch Warfield with a malevolent smile, taking notes.

“God, Maggie…” Even Reese could not have envisioned the voracious power of the fire. It was like nothing he had ever seen, not even the night that the
Morning Call
building burned.

“It’ll keep going,” Maggie said tonelessly. “It will break at the road, and down by Gully Basin. It took the house, I’m sure, and probably the Mapes’ place too. If we’re lucky, it will burn itself out down at the forest. It was a good move, Reese. Now they don’t have to clear the land. They just have to get it away from me.”

From the opposite direction she saw someone coming by the light of the flames. She knew it was Logan, just as he knew she would be the one in the forefront of the spectators.

He dismounted immediately and jumped into the wagon. “I’m driving her, Reese. You take my horse. Go
on
. There’s nothing you can do here.”

Maggie sat like a statue, her eyes on the crackling flames. Logan pushed Reese, and he automatically responded even though he had fully intended to stay rooted just where he was. Damned cowdog, he thought viciously, as Logan climbed into the seat and whacked the reins down on the horses’ backs. They reared, scared by the smoke and the flames. Logan snapped the reins again, and they took off almost uncontrollably in the direction from which he had come.

Damn him to hell, Reese swore violently as his mount reared up and almost unseated him. Damn,
damn;
he had no choice but to follow them, and he had been thinking of another assignation with the luscious Melinda. Damn the fire, damn them, damn the cowdog.

He pushed his horse, and wheeled him around in the direction from which Logan had come.

“You’re
not
going back to Colville tonight,” Logan said forcefully, as if he had to emphasize every word to get through to her.

“You know, that bastard warned me, and I couldn’t think of a single thing he could threaten me with.”

“Have some coffee.” He shoved a cup in her hands.

“Logan …”

“Don’t worry, I won’t touch you. I just don’t think you ought to go back tonight.”

“Who would believe it?” she murmured, sipping the hot liquid. She felt it steam down inside her, nudging her to life.

“Who cares,” he said roughly.

“You don’t,” she answered simply. “You don’t think I’m going to fall into your arms now, do you?”

“Whose arms are you falling into these days, Maggie?”

“That is the most abominable thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“I beg your pardon. You live in such close quarters these days, for a woman who wants room and space and freedom, it does make a man wonder.”

“That is so unfair!”

“Isn’t it? Hell, I’m only the one who’s been waiting for you all these years. I shouldn’t give a damn in hell whether or not Reese Colleran is creeping around your room, should I? He’s a town man, Maggie, and so convenient when there’s a fire to race out and view.”

“
Reese?
That’s despicable.”

“No, it isn’t. They do say history repeats itself, Maggie. He’s so damned like Frank it hurts. Maybe he’s even better. Maybe you make a lot of noise to throw up smokescreens. How the hell do I know?”

“Logan, I can’t listen to this.”

“I know, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t. It’s a regular theme with you these days. I guess your mother-in-law has the right of it: a cowboy can’t do anything for you.”

His bitterness was scorching, and something she had never seen in him.

“But you know damned well my father sold me to Frank,” she lashed out, suddenly.

“Hell, you were drooling all over him, Maggie. He was God Almighty when he came to town. Everyone wanted him and you set your sights and twitched your hips and there he was. You were something when you were twenty, Maggie. You were just as innocent as the sky and you knew everything in the world.”

“Well I didn’t know Frank wanted the
Morning Call
, and I tell you, Logan, that was all he wanted.”

“Good story, Maggie. That’s why he handed it over to you on a platter and why you’re supporting his damned family. And maybe it’s why that damned Reese thinks he can take Frank’s place.”

There was no talking to him tonight, she thought tiredly. She had never seen this side of him, all this
acrimony that had been bottled up for years. She had never given a thought to what he might be feeling or what he thought he had lost when he had given her the choice. But nobody was happy for the simple reason that she didn’t like the choices: marriage … or … ruination?

But she
was
ruined, and even now accepting his proposal was not a choice for her. Not yet.

“You know,” she said, “you never asked about Frank and me.”

“It wasn’t time.”

“Maybe it’s time.”

“You don’t have to explain anything, Maggie.”

“Frank wanted the control of the
Morning Call
and he married me to get it.”

“I like that, Maggie. As if he couldn’t have started up something on his own here.”

“Why should he have? He had nothing to lose and he was getting the possibility of an heir in the bargain. My bloodlines are very good, Logan. I’m sure he looked into it.”

The thought arrested her for a moment.
Looked into it
, she mused. Yes. There was something to that, she just didn’t know what.

“And he found you utterly enchanting anyway,” Logan said sarcastically. “Who wouldn’t?”

“He hated me,” she told him flatly. “After the first year, he hated me.”

“Why?” he asked carefully.

“Because I wanted to
do
things. We spent the first six months out at the ranch, and I wouldn’t stay in the house canning vegetables and baking bread. And then he gave up and took me to town. He hated it that I was always in the office and that I could sling type better than he could.”

She looked away from him for a moment, because the next was even harder to tell. “And he hated how willing I
was when we made love. He … he thought it was unladylike. He called me his, his home whore, and after a while he used me like one. Then he went out and found someone he could pay to do the same things I wanted to do. But that was different, because then he had control. And he brought in his mother to make sure I wasn’t… I didn’t …”

She swallowed convulsively. “The baby was … he didn’t want a baby. We had a fight that night, a horrible fight; he was sure it wasn’t his, that I was the worst kind of bitch, slut, wanton, filth, and that his mother had missed something along the way. The fight got physical, but you know he was so much bigger than me. He pushed me. He struck me. He walked out on me before he knew what had happened, and he went to her and paid her for her services that night.”

“Maggie …” he said softly.

“No, you should know this,” she whispered, wiping the tears that were welling up in her eyes. “He was a bastard through and through. He didn’t even care, and I didn’t care after that. I was glad he had that piece of trash to go to. I didn’t want him any more. He didn’t deserve me. When he died, he was leaving her house. He was shot in the back, just like A.J.”

Yes, she had thought that before, she was sure. Just like A.J. He looked into it. She focused on the thoughts and not on the pain she had just recreated so painstakingly for Logan.

“The son of a bitch,” he muttered.

She took another breath. “And then everything came to me. I didn’t understand it then, I don’t understand it now. I went over his papers the other day, and the only thing that read differently to me was the contract between my father and Frank. It literally said that my father would hand over his interest in the ownership of the paper for the sum of one thousand dollars when
Frank married me. So he married me.”