Thea Devine (3 page)

“I never did express my condolences,” Reese said after a long moment of silence, during which Maggie had walked into her bedroom to take off her apron and then had returned to the parlor.

“I’m sure your loss equals mine,” she said prosaically, but she saw her words made him uncomfortable, as if he hadn’t considered that he had lost anything at all.

“You’ll be happy to know,” Mother Colleran broke in, “that Reese will be staying in Colville.”

“How nice,” Maggie murmured, and turned toward the kitchen area to pump up some water to wash her hands.

“With us,” Mother Colleran added loudly, with just a touch of malice.

Maggie whirled. “No.”

“My son is …”

“… perfectly welcome to stay at the perfectly good
hotel in town,” Maggie said, keeping her voice neutral and continuing into the kitchen.

“I will not turn my son out of my home,” Mother Colleran called after her adamantly.

Maggie reappeared instantly. “It is
my
home, and Mr. Colleran is not welcome to stay here.” She rested her stormy gray gaze on Reese Colleran, daring him to intervene, to countermand that decision. His face hardened perceptibly, dangerously; he was not accustomed to hearing refusals.

“I will not have the whole town saying you turned my son out,” Mother Colleran contradicted shrilly, knowing exactly when to hammer home a point.

Maggie’s ears pricked up. What if the old witch had deliberately arranged to have Reese come home this day of all days just to push her into a corner because she knew that Maggie was not proof against the town’s opinion?

“How can you be so callous as to send him to a hotel when you know Frank’s room is available? What would everyone say if Frank’s only brother had to put up at the hotel for weeks—months, perhaps? As usual, you’re not thinking of anything but your own comfort.”

Yes, she thought, not even responding to this assault, what would everyone say about a young, attractive, and presumably unattached male living with
her?

“Frank would turn in his grave at your rudeness and thoughtlessness,” Mother Colleran went on, her voice rising slightly. She was getting to Maggie, she could see it in her stony expression, always a sure sign of Maggie’s anger. “If Frank were alive,” she concluded triumphantly, “he would have found room to accommodate Reese.”

“Yes, as close as they were,” Maggie muttered angrily, now truly backed into a corner. No one but Mother Colleran could have engineered such a situation and have expected Maggie to make the negative decision.

She was reveling in it, Maggie thought, because she knew exactly who was going to take the criticism for either decision, and that person was
not
her mother-in-law.

But what difference did it make to her, after all? She could sleep in the office if it came to that. Whatever Reese Colleran’s purpose in coming to Colville, she did not have to be a part of it by choice. He would have to fight her every inch of the way—assuming that he and Madame Mother were, somehow, plotting against her. Perhaps, she thought with grim humor, it would be better to have him right underfoot where she could see at all times exactly what he was up to.

“Perhaps Mother Colleran has a point,” she said grudgingly, and noted immediately that Reese’s pale blue eyes glinted at this reluctant concession.

“Then I guess you’ve got me,” he said in a faintly caressing drawl.

His presumption fired her anger. “
I
don’t want you,” she hissed, as much in reaction to having given in as the undercurrent of meaning in his words.

“But I predict you will,” he said insinuatingly, and his goading words sent her into a spasm of rage that she fought to conceal from him and her mother-in-law. She turned away from them and slowly went back downstairs to the office, mindful as she did so that she had forgotten her apron and wouldn’t be able to accomplish much anyway, dressed as she was.

Her feeling of contentment utterly evaporated. The room downstairs was noisy and crowded. Nominally, it was the place to be three days prior to the publication of the paper. Jean Vilroy was in the thick of it, taking and laying out advertisements right on the spot. A.J. was to one side, taking notes on something someone was saying.

“Miz Maggie—” A.J. motioned to her, and she moved quickly to his side. “This here is Dodd, ma’am, come right from the stage posting.”

“Howdy, ma’am.” Dodd was a small man, unremarkable and unnoticeable with his sandy hair, tanned complexion, and dusty clothes. He was someone’s cowhand somewhere, Maggie surmised, and he picked up a quick two bits here and there by nosing around for information he thought A.J. might be able to use.

The news today she had already conjectured, but A.J.’s gloomy expression confirmed it. “They’ve come,” she said, a statement of fact, neither bad news nor good.

“Stage just arrived up from Denver,” Dodd elaborated. “There’s three of ’em, and all the equipment, and they’re stayin’ by the hotel, ma’am; names are Bollar, MacNeil and Wayne, railroad men, by the look of ’em, with money to spend to get the job done.”

“I see,” she said neutrally. There wasn’t anything to be said. She could not have stopped them with her words. There were land barons whose interest went beyond the good of the community; they would not be stopped.

Ironically, she was one of them, a fact that continually burdened her. For a signature on a piece of paper, she and all the rest of them could retire with untold wealth and do whatever they wanted to do. She could leave Colville; buy a house in the big city; travel; buy a husband, come to that, if she were in the market for one; buy a business; anything …

It pleased her instead to hold onto the Colleran land with two tight fists and an immovable stance about the coming of Denver North. The anomaly of it infuriated the Harold Danforths of the town, a fact that made her feel even more powerful.

In this matter, “what Frank would have wanted,” which everyone, from her mother-in-law on down, tried to convince her
was
the northward linkage of the railroad
line to Cheyenne, left her cold, and no one could understand why she wouldn’t want to comply with what her deceased husband would have done had he been alive.

But she knew. Frank had bought the town, and everyone revered him and thought he had their best interests at heart, when actually Frank had had his own best interests centermost all the time. But who would have believed it?

“I expect that’s that,” A.J. said, his gentle voice interrupting her reverie.

“Maybe not. Arch Warfield was waiting at the station. I wonder what information he’ll come back with.”

“Now, now, Miz Maggie, if it ain’t right, we’ll fix it.”

“ ’Ain’t we always fixing it?” she asked tartly.

“He’s all we got,” A.J. reminded her.

“We’ve got me.”

“Miz Maggie, you go on and fire us all and do the whole thing your own self, and I’ll come visit you in Doc Shields’ office in about two weeks’ time.”

“I wish we had … well, I wish I could go out and do it all,” Maggie said wistfully. “All right. Enough. The survey team is here, and you can bet I’m going to survey the survey team. Is that your copy, A.J.? Why don’t I rough it up before I start the page layouts, and then you can go check the express office. We’ll close early, and the devil with the deadline.”

She watched A.J. pay his informant and then begin the subtle overtures that would sweep the office clean of loiterers in a matter of moments.

He was so good at it. He couldn’t write; he wasn’t a reporter or a manager; he was just A.J., who knew how to handle people and get information. His value was unquestionable, and indefinable.

She took his page of notes and made her way to her worktable. She was most at home here, with a pencil in
her hand and words at her command. She could always make words do what she wanted them to do. She wasn’t nearly so facile with people. She was too blunt, too curious, too apt to ask for whatever she wanted. She didn’t know how to circle around things or to pretend. She had never mastered the kind of comaraderie that made people beholden to her. But Frank, Frank had been very good at that.

He just hadn’t been very good with her.

She shook away the thought. Not even a year could wash away the betrayals and disappointments. She had been sure she had buried all that with Frank.

A commotion behind her told her that Arch Warfield had just burst into the room. And wasn’t Arch a prime example of Frank’s ability to handle people? She couldn’t manage Warfield and all his resentments, even after a year, the way that Frank had. Arch wouldn’t let her fire him, and he stayed around and sulked. It was almost as if he believed Frank had not died and would walk in the door in the next moment. All his loyalty lay with the man who had hired him, and if he and Frank had had some secret agreement, she knew nothing about it. When Frank died, he had been free to leave, and still he remained, waiting, irritating her, handing her biased copy he knew she would immediately rewrite.

“There it is.” His voice came from over her shoulder and simultaneously his hand thumped down his notes.

“There what is?”

“The lowdown on the survey team. Got everything you wanted, lady boss. Every detail, fairmindedly as possible, just the way you like it.”

She slanted a look up at him. “How refreshing.”

“Don’t get smart, Maggie mine.”

“I’ll get even smarter,
Mr
. Warfield. I already have the report, down to the names and the room numbers at the hotel. You’re late, and we paid less for the information
than we pay you, Mr. Warfield, and somehow I think we got a better deal on this one.” She turned back to her papers. “I think that’s all.”

“
You
think that’s all,” Warfield sneered. “That ain’t all, Mrs. High-and-Mighty-Frank, not by a long shot. You don’t know nothing about what’s going on with this Denver North project.”

“And of course
you
do, Mr. Warfield. I’ve noticed how diligently you’ve been expending your efforts on behalf of the paper. Perhaps there are other interests that might be willing to pay your salary.”

“Oh no, Maggie Colleran, you don’t get rid of me. Frank promised me, wrote me out a contract—”

“Which no one has ever seen,” Maggie put in, unperturbed by his vehemence. She had heard this story before and had provoked him in this very same way innumerable times, always with the same reaction.

“And I ain’t leaving, Mistress Maggie, no matter what you say.”

“The day may come,” Maggie muttered, tired of his theatrics. The story never changed. The contract existed, and his blackmail rested solely with what the townspeople would think if Maggie fired him. They would believe in the contract, even without the evidence, and the fact that Frank had hired him. She had never heard of a more gullible herd of cows than the townspeople of Colville, she thought exasperatedly.

She felt the urge to let them reap the reward of their own stupidity. Who was she to be their keeper when they had the likes of Arch Warfield to show them the way? Damn, why couldn’t he just leave?

He left. Somewhere in the midst of her vitriolic reflections, he skulked away. The office got emptied, the outside light waned, and a welcome quiet descended around her.

As Jean moved back to his desk to lay out the advertisements
she heard A.J. leave through the front door on his way to the express office, the sound of Jean’s pen as he worked, and the flick of a match as he lit a lamp.

He was not a talkative man, she thought, pausing for a moment in her furious rewriting. He was calm and temperate, spare and fastidious in his work and his person, as unlikely a person to find in a small town newspaper office as Frank Colleran had been, and as successful in his way as well.

His was a solid, reassuring presence, and he never left the office before she did. Of course he could not know that she did not wish to leave the office tonight to face her self-satisfied mother-in-law and her cocky brother-in-law.

She turned to tell him that she would be staying late, and her heart jumped into her throat.

Logan Ramsey was sitting at Jean’s drawing board, one of Jean’s pens in his long fingers, his face in shadow once again so she could not see his expression, and his lean body totally relaxed.

It was stunning to see him sitting there as casually as if she had seen him yesterday, when she had not seen him in so many months. Her composure totally deserted her.

She couldn’t say a word, and neither did he for the space of several long, intense moments. Then she finally managed to push words out from her dry throat.

“Hello, Logan.” That was fine and conventional and just what a widow of one year should say to an old friend. She put down her own pen for want of something to do until he spoke.

“Hello, Maggie.”

She didn’t expect to have such a reaction to his voice. A rush of galvanic heat spurted through her body and settled in a knot in her stomach. She couldn’t think of another thing to say, and it confused her. It had to be because she had been thinking about him today, nothing
else, and she was so glad to see him.

She
was
glad to see him. “You weren’t at the church today.” Her words sounded awkward, grasping at any topic to fill the silence between them.

“Did you think I would be?” There was a repressed violence in the question. “Did you honestly think that I, of all people, would want to memorialize your four years of hell with Frank?”

His vehemence shocked her, but even she had no cause to know that it was compounded not only of his utter hatred of Frank but also his knowledge of the fact that Reese Colleran had come to town.

“Perhaps you could have come merely to support me,” she suggested, her tone faintly acid because of the wallop of disappointment his words sent right to her gut. “
I
had to go through it, damn it.” She wheeled her chair away from him. “Is there anything else, Logan?”

“I thought there was,” he said sardonically.

She swiveled around to face him. “That wasn’t an apology, obviously.”

“No, I won’t apologize for that, Maggie. I’m sure you were surrounded by strong arms—and strong stomachs. I could even make a winning wager on who did attend.”