Thea Devine (32 page)

“Let me read it.”

Maggie thrust the paper into her hands. “I promise, contingent upon the sale of the property known as the Colleran ranch, to settle upon my mother-in-law a sum in the amount sufficient for her to maintain herself
comfortably in a separate household, the only two provisos being that she remove herself from Colville, and that she release me from this room per our agreement,” Mother Colleran read.

“You have to sign it too,” Maggie said.

The old woman looked at her maliciously. “Anything, Maggie dear. Give me the pencil.” She scribbled her name at the bottom of the paper and Maggie snatched it back.

“Now we walk out to the desk, Mother Colleran, and we give this paper to Miles for safekeeping, and he can only give it to a lawyer of our mutual choosing.”

“You said
nothing
about that.”

“Well fine, I’ll tear it up and go back into the room. Why should I share anything with you, after all?”

“All
right
.”

They walked carefully side by side to the lobby and gave the signed sheet to Miles who folded it into an envelope and wrote Maggie’s instructions upon the back.

“I haven’t seen you,” Mother Colleran said. “I hope I never see you again.” And she turned her back on Maggie and walked back into her suite.

Maggie watched her go and then carefully made her way out onto the hotel porch.

And stopped dead.

Converging on the hotel from different directions were Reese, Mr. Brown, and Dennis. And following hard on Dennis’s heels, Logan zigzagged in and out of the shadows.

She ran. She didn’t even know where she was running until she was a long way from the hotel. The only place she could safely go was back to Melinda Sable’s.

Such a safe place, she thought, skirting around crowds of men standing outside the saloon. It was a usual
night … the bar was crowded, the poker tables were tight, and someone soon was going to let off some steam.

She slipped up onto the veranda of Melinda Sable’s house. A maid answered the door at this time of night. A polite maid, who told her plainly that Annie was busy and she didn’t know if Maggie were allowed to wait.

“Oh course Maggie is allowed to wait.” Melinda drifted into the entrance hall on hearing voices. “Hello, Maggie. Have you come to take me up on my offer?”

Maggie sank onto a little bench that backed the curving staircase. “I’m running away from Reese. He’s a little single-minded these days. Aren’t you offended?”

“I’m never offended by hundred-dollar bills, dear Maggie.”

Maggie felt offended. “I shouldn’t have come here,” she murmured. “I needed a place to hide; I thought of Annie.”

“You think they won’t follow you here? Reese will wind up with me as usual tonight, and worse than ever because he can’t have you, Maggie. But I don’t mind. I think in a way it kind of completes the circle: Frank didn’t want you and desired me; Reese is desperate for you and can only settle for me. Very balanced, don’t you agree?”

Maggie rubbed her hand over her face. She was so tired now, and not up to bandying words with Melinda. She was sure her brain ached from trying to figure out the different combinations of events that could have ended in her sitting exhausted in the hallway of Melinda Sable’s house.

She knew some kind of resolution was coming. It was only a matter of time—a matter of moments, as the door knocker thumped resoundingly against the paneled door.

Reese pushed his way in. “There you are, Maggie.”

“I think I am.” He was calmer now, she saw, but no less single-minded. He was alone, and she wondered
where Dennis and Mr. Brown were. She wondered what Reese was going to do. Surely he wasn’t going to drag her from the house, or worse, drag her upstairs and force himself on her.

There was a glitter in his eye that told her he was but a step away from doing just that. There was no one to stop him; Melinda had melted away, leaving her to confront him alone.

“So, Reese …”

“It’s very simple, Maggie. You must come back with me and negotiate personally with Mr. Brown.”

“Why is that, Reese?”

“Because he is not going to accede to your outrageous price, Maggie, and I’m the only intermediary who can bargain for you now.”

She felt like her head was going to fly right off of her body.

“Did I hear you right?
You
are
Mr. Brown’s
agent?”

“You heard right. And he is a man who doesn’t like to spend a lot of money unnecessarily.”

Maggie tried to gauge how far she could push him. He was very edgy, but no more unnerved than was she. He wouldn’t listen to reason, she thought, and he might be pushed too far by her reneging on the negotiation altogether, but it was the only tool she had for dealing with him.

“Then he and I have nothing to talk about,” she said quietly.

“No, no Maggie, you don’t understand.”

“I guess I don’t,” she said. “We have nothing to talk about, Reese. Mr. Brown’s offer has always been too low, and apparently my price is too high, and from what you say we have no means to meet somewhere satisfactory to both of us.”

He didn’t listen, just as she knew he wouldn’t. He was right on the edge, and he started speaking to her slowly as if he were dealing with a dim-witted child.

“Let me explain it again, Maggie. You must come back with me and together we will negotiate with Mr. Brown.”

“Dennis is the only one who can negotiate for me, Reese. You know that.”

He flew into a rage. “No, no, no. Damn it, Maggie. I had a job to do and I came here to do it, and you are not going to screw it up for me. You almost did tonight. We’re both very lucky Mr. Brown will see us tonight, you hear? And you better not do anything to ruin it for me.”

She saw a glimmer of an answer in his incoherent words. Just a glimmer. It might be prudent, she thought, to go with him to see Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown knew the answers. She was sure of that now.

“Well, Maggie Colleran. Here we all are together,” Mr. Brown said, settling himself on the sofa in their suite. “You know, of course, that Reese has been my able assistant all these weeks. No? Oh my, yes. Reese is employed by Denver North, Mrs. Colleran. At a handsome salary, I might add. His job was to get you to sell at a profitably low price for us. But it didn’t quite work out that way, did it, Reese? Well, not yet at any rate. Did you say something, dear Mrs. Colleran?”

“No,” she said sharply, but she knew she had made a sound of comprehension. Reese … Reese had spread the gossip; Reese had arranged the notices … Reese had set the fires. She knew Mr. Brown was watching her and reading everything as it came to her, because her consternation was written clearly on her face.

“Devalue the land, my dear,” he explained gently.

“But not for
you
,” she said crisply. “You weren’t fool enough to think that I would assume that.”

“I had hoped. Reese got people to wonder who would buy the land now. Nice touch, don’t you think?”

Reese, with a charm that was nearly as charismatic as Frank’s. Reese, with his treacherous fingers lighting the match that incinerated all her hopes and dreams.

“Oh yes, we needed by then to put you in a position to force a choice, Mrs. Colleran. It worked out beautifully, actually. The whole thing went. There was nothing you could salvage, and you had to begin again.”

“And the
Clarion?
”

“Set up by Reese, funded by the company, of course. I was surprised you didn’t see that right away, Mrs. Colleran.”

But A.J.?

“Why Reese?” she whispered.

“Oh my dear Mrs. Colleran. Reese has always worked for the line. How on earth do you think that scoundrel Frank even heard about the proposed northern expansion?”

Another blow. Low … breathtaking.

“He bought into Colville, my dear; he bought the paper so he could drum up support for the track, convince people that it was a good thing and that they needed it, so that we would find a most receptive environment when we arrived. And didn’t he do a good job?”

“Except he didn’t count on Maggie reversing all that public awareness with negative publicity,” Reese put in raggedly. “He would have killed you, Maggie.”

“So someone killed him,” she shot back. “I don’t suppose you know who it was?”

“I can’t pay your price of course. Twenty thousand dollars is as high as I am authorized to go,” Mr. Brown said, ignoring her question.

“Then we have no more to talk about—until you consult with your superiors,” Maggie snapped. “And do be aware please that only Dennis Coutts can make any offers, counteroffers, or refusals. This is by the terms of Frank’s will and it’s immutable.”

“The bastard,” Reese muttered.

“We will handle it.” Mr. Brown said soothingly. “You may go, Reese. I must assume that Mrs. Colleran is not receptive to listening to any more explanations.” He left reluctantly. “Such a biddable employee, Mrs. Colleran. But ruthless, truly ruthless. I was truly hoping that you would be responsive to his suit. A woman like you could bring out the best in a man.”

“Yes, but how would that have fit in with Denver North’s plans?” Maggie asked caustically.

“Oh, that. Well, Reese was to have received a sizable bonus if he brought you and your land into the Denver North fold.”

A shot rang out—then another. They jumped up simultaneously before Maggie had even a chance to comprehend what he had just told her. They dashed out the door together through the lobby into the crowd of frightened spectators who stood surrounding a body on the ground.

She knew it was Reese before she even looked—and that he had been shot in the back, like Frank, like A.J.

“Ain’t it coincidental you’re right here on the spot, Maggie?” Sheriff Edson murmured as Doc Shields and several helpers bore the body away.

She turned on her heel and stalked away from him. When she returned to the suite, Mr. Brown was gone and Logan was waiting in his stead. She walked into his arms and let him hold her a long, long time.

“I know who killed Reese,” he said, stroking her hair.
“I know almost everything.”

“I know about Reese,” she said brokenly. “Frank knew about the northbound track because Reese told him. Reese worked for them. Reese … oh, my God. Reese …”

“Maggie,” he whispered, cradling her head. “It’s almost over, almost. Come to my room, Maggie, and let me hold you through the night.”

Chapter Nineteen

“He accepted fourteen fifty an acre, Maggie. I thought you’d be pleased. Unless you want to jockey back and forth with him?”

“I assume you will find pleasure in your fifty thousand dollar fee, Dennis?” she asked, not answering him.

“It’s enough to make a start somewhere else,” he said, and did not look at her.

“That’s fine then,” she said.

It was late afternoon of the following day. Maggie had slept in, upset by the sudden violence of Reese’s death, exhausted by all the emotional revelations, and consumed by the knowledge there was more yet to come.

“When will you leave?” she asked, as she signed a paper he placed before her.

“Within two weeks. We need to make out the contract of sale between you and Denver North and give them time to wire the money here. There is no other business I need to wind up.”

“No, Frank was your only client, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he was.”

“And you drew up the will?”

“I drew up the will.”

“You have to tell me, Dennis, why did it all come
to me?”

He smiled grimly. “I thought you would have figured it out, Maggie. It came to you because
I
wanted it to. I dissuaded Frank from changing the will. If everything had gone to his mother, or to Reese, or to that Sable woman, I would have had no control over it whatsoever, and in point of fact, they might have sold the land long before it could have commanded this much money. It was a very marketable asset.

“And then of course, it occurred to me that Frank might never die before he consummated the deal, and he would get everything and I would get nothing.

“So you see, Maggie, I arranged it so he got nothing and I got a chance to try to convince you to marry me so that I could get control of the property.”

“A gamble, Dennis.”

“Not as long as you weren’t married and you hung onto the land. You were the only one, Maggie, who was stable enough to understand what it all meant, because you didn’t care about the money. At least not then. That was a very lovable trait, Maggie, because I felt I could pick up what meant nothing to you, the property, and give you the security to keep on with the paper.”

“You killed A.J.”

“I won’t admit that. But I did feel that a power of attorney from you, if you were in a situation where you couldn’t negotiate once Mr. Brown came to town, might be very beneficial.”

“And Reese,” she added tonelessly.

“My dear, Mr. Brown would never have met your price while Reese was alive, and I never would have gotten my excellent fee. Edson will never prove anything, Maggie, about either you or me.

“Just remember, Frank had always been a lucky son of a bitch. He brought me along on his coattails. I decided to ride solo on the last trip, Maggie, but I did my best for
you, always. I loved you, Maggie. I meant it when I said I wanted to marry you. I really did believe, from what Frank wrote to me, that he very well would have liked us to marry, but I know you can’t believe that after his rejection of you. It doesn’t matter now anyway.

“I’ll complete our business and leave town. There’s a release form in Frank’s client agreement with me that will take care of the provisions of the will, and then you’ll be free to find a new lawyer.”

“All right, Dennis, I trust you on this. You’ll just walk away, a richer but hardly wiser murderer.”

“You hate that, but you can’t do anything about it, Maggie. Don’t try.”

It was a warning, and she knew she wouldn’t breathe a word of it, ever. When he left, the whole thing would die.

“Mother Colleran, I trust you’re settled comfortably for this week in your room.”

“I hate it. How much money are you giving me?”

“We haven’t chosen a mutual lawyer yet. Perhaps you want to investigate that for me.”

“I want the money. I know that Brown agreed to pay you a great deal of money and I want my share.”

“You will certainly get a share, Mother Colleran. It will be worth it to see you embark on an exciting new life …”

“Hogwash, Maggie.”

“Why did you let me go?” she asked suddenly.

“I want the money. I never had money, Maggie, ever. They kept me bound to them, both of them, by the fact that I was dependent on them for an income. If I could have gotten control of that land, I would have sold up in a minute. Reese told me to put pressure on you. I thought he would make it possible for me to leave this place. I want to leave here so badly, Maggie. Don’t deny me
the money.”

“I promised,” Maggie said, feeling just a little sorry for her. She was an unattractive old woman who had held a monster up on a pedestal for such a long time. Where would she go? How would she live? She had a fleeting desire to want to know, and she squelched it.

Mother Colleran would be just fine, wherever she went; money would ease her way, and her unruly mouth would do the rest.

They buried Reese the day after, in the cemetery, beside Frank. Mother Colleran held onto Maggie with two clutching hands, and dry sobs racked her body. Maggie couldn’t cry and she couldn’t make the old lady let go, couldn’t find either remorse or sorrow about Reese’s death, couldn’t forgive Dennis for his slavering greed.

He had been the one to play the double-cross. Frank had trusted him and all he had seen was the golden promise of the future, if only Frank could be gotten out of the way.

Conspiracies. Two separate conspiracies with one end, one aim: to marry her and sell the land for a fat profit that would pad their pockets and cheat her on every level possible.

No sorrow for Reese; he had known exactly what he was doing. He was a pawn for Mr. Brown, nothing more, nothing less. He had lied, sought her affection, stolen her home, burned her property, all in the name of cheating her out of the rightful value of her land. Whatever bonus he might have obtained by marrying her, he would have earned it, especially when it was weighed against what Mr. Brown might have had to pay.

No, Dennis couldn’t let Reese cheat him out of his fee. By no means. As though Maggie would have had no say in the matter and would just have laid down and allowed Mr.
Brown to roll right over her with whatever offer he happened to come up with next.

Stupid men. Stupid, stupid men, always wanting to hold on and push and direct and tell a woman what to do.

She looked at Logan, who stood across the graveyard plot from her, and she wondered how like them, really, he was.

She saw Mother Colleran off on the stage to Cheyenne the following week. They had settled on an amount between them with Maggie’s new lawyer, and the old lady was satisfied with her stipend and willing to sign a release that she would not apply to Maggie again for money.

She was glad to go, and in that waning moment just before the stage set off, Maggie felt a pang of affection for her, as if their enmity had existed on an entirely different level altogether.

And then the driver swatted the horses with the reins, and the cumbersome coach gave a jerk, and the stage lurched forward and moved briskly out of town, with Mother Colleran waving a handkerchief until long after it could possibly have been seen by Maggie.

Maggie stood watching the coach as it disappeared down Main Street.

All the ends are tied up now, she thought. Her money was in her hands, to use as she would. Logan waited for her at the hotel, as Mother Colleran did not want the cowboy seeing her off as well. She still had the property on Main Street to sell or leave vacant as she would.

She had all the answers that she ever wanted to know.

She had everything and she had nothing, and on the day that should have been the happiest of the past months she felt uncertain and unsure, and as if she did not even want to make that one step that would take her into a certain future with Logan.

She knew why. For all his loyalty and patience and understanding, she still didn’t know that he wasn’t the same beneath the skin as Dennis or Reese.

She didn’t know whether, if she fell into his arms, he would change like a weathervane, blowing this way or that.

He had stayed so much in the background, just loving her and giving her the room she needed, that she wasn’t sure at all that once he came into the foreground he wouldn’t take her over completely. Or that he didn’t want her the way the others wanted her: for the value of the dowry that was now held in the bank in
her
name.

He walked down Main Street to meet her, certain that she was having second thoughts about everything.

But that was Maggie. How did a man love someone like Maggie, with her fierce independent spirit and her utterly feminine surrender to him? He was almost sure what she would say to him the moment she saw him. She would say she wasn’t sure, she didn’t know. She wanted to wait. She wanted him.

He knew. Here was a beginning, not an ending, and yet she would see it as an ending with no beginning.

He wondered whether he ought to even try to convince her otherwise.

He saw her in the distance, serenely walking toward him, her curly hair tousled by the wind, her dress plastered against her slender body, her eyes searching the street, searching—he knew it—for him.

He caught her in his arms, and she pushed him away slightly. “You know Logan, I was thinking…”

Oh those disastrous words, he thought with a groan.

“But you see I hadn’t thought …”

He didn’t even know what she had or hadn’t thought. This was crazy; she had to make up her mind about him
one way or the other. He just could not love her enough for both of them.

“I just think I need a little more time.”

He could have predicted those would be her closing words.

“Fine,” he said shortly. What could he do, after all, in the middle of the afternoon on Main Street? The woman, for all his ravishing pursuit of her over the last weeks, still did not know her own heart.

And then he looked at her and thought she knew indeed. She had to heal, she had think, she had to remember. He had to not push, but he was going to find it very hard to go back to the ranch with only his cook, housekeeper, and ranch foreman for company.

She needed this distance, he thought, and maybe just a little disinterest on his part, maybe just a little less encroachment on her freedom. He didn’t know.

In his heart of hearts, he wanted her to come begging.

She watched them break ground on the Colleran land at the invitation of Mr. Brown, who seemed excessively pleased at the price he had paid and the pace at which things were proceeding.

She was conscious of the supreme irony of it. The man now considered her an associate with whom he had done business. She wondered how she would feel as she watched the fields being torn up and filled in and the markers laid for the trackworkers when they got there.

“The future, Maggie Colleran. You put Colville into the future.”

Yes, she thought and where did I catapult myself? Right into limbo with no home, no work, no Logan, who had been suspiciously absent from her life in the last week or two. She had garnered a great deal of gossip by her bold sale, not a lot of “I told you so’s” when rumor of
the price got around.

“Not a good move, Maggie,” Arwin said, shaking his head.

“I had no choice,” she said stonily, but she wondered whether everyone was aware that was the case. And why was it their business anyway?

She stayed at the hotel and rented Dennis’s former office just to have a place to go to sit and think.

A waste of money, the office and the hotel room both. She could have been with Logan, except that Logan didn’t seem to want to be with her anymore.

She would not beg him.

She had thought he wanted her. By every evidence that she could understand, he had wanted her, and his desire was white-hot, burning out of control, equal to hers. He had come for her all those weeks ago, he had come and she couldn’t understand why he now stayed away.

She spent a great deal of time wandering around the
Morning Call
building site. She knew Jean was working for the
Clarion
, a base disloyalty, he told her, he knew it, but where else was there for him to go?

She saw in his eyes after that that he had lost all hope of her, that she would never forgive him for his defection.

But she felt defeated too, how could she blame him for anything?

One day she rode out to Logan’s ranch, but no one was there.

Another day she saw him in town and they greeted each other awkwardly. She saw the heat in his gaze and she knew that he wanted her, and she waited for him to ask, but all he said was, “How can I ask you to choose between your new freedom and me?”

He wondered when she would learn that she could have them both.

* * *

And now the nights grew hot as spring crept in. Sultry sometimes with the yearning for someone’s arms around her, and a body rigid with all the possibilities of the long night ahead.

She felt herself responding to it, falling headlong into a shattering desire for what could not be quenched without that one perfect body beside her.

He was right, she was wrong; there had to be other ways besides her rigidly one-sided way that denied them both the thing they most wanted.

Other ways … oh, God, she remembered how he had enticed her with that very phrase, aroused her curiosity and her voracious femininity. How he had shown her those other ways, how he had denied himself for her to show her the nature of her desire and the infinite variety of ways to fulfillment.

Other ways.

It didn’t have to be
her
way.

How did she go to him and say, I want it to be
our
way?

She thought she had thrown away the chance.

Melinda Sable said, “But there’s no one in your life right now, Maggie. You might come and stay with me for a while and see how you like it. That little Annie Mapes is working out very well.”

This was the worst, thinking that Logan himself would stoop to paying someone for that sensual surcease he had been denied by her. What if he did?

Oh God, that body in someone else’s arms? Not
hers?