Thea Devine (8 page)

For one telling moment she felt overwhelmed with a sadness and frustration that vented itself in an emphatic
thump
of the pump handle, which sent water spraying all over her. She reached blindly for the soap and touched a warm intrusive hand.

“Let me,” Logan said softly, catching her hands tightly in his own. “Let me.”

“I don’t want you to do anything.”

“Of course you don’t,” he said soothingly, as he doused her hands with cold water. “You never did.”

She wrenched her hands away and he pulled them right back. “Surely you weren’t that oblivious, Maggie.”

“I must have been,” she said, unable to keep the surly
note out of her voice.

“Or I was too subtle.” He reached for the soap and began rubbing it on her wet hands until they were coated with lather. He massaged the soap into her skin with slow mesmerizing motions that immobilized her with panic.

His hands on hers were warm, hypnotic, compelling—the last thing she wanted to feel, his fingers moving slowly and sensitively up and down the backs of her hands, her knuckles, her long slender fingers. Turning her hands palm side up, he felt, yes, felt, the tender skin of her palms, and caressed each finger with the slick soapiness of his hands.

She couldn’t move. The slippery wet seduction of his expert massage was as stunning to her as his kiss. He did not look at her; he didn’t need to. The bend of her body told him all he needed to know. He had all he could do to stop himself from telling her how he had dreamed of her hands touching him in just the way he touched her now.

But words weren’t necessary now; he had said all he needed to say, and as he held her hands captive and captivated, he didn’t let up his sensual exploration of them. He knew she felt it as deeply as if he were exploring the secrets of her body.

Not subtle now, she was thinking, as she watched with blinding intensity the movement of his fingers over her hands. She felt disembodied and connected at the same time. He was doing it to her and she was feeling it down to her toes. At the same time, she was watching and commenting on it in some nether region of her mind, wanting desperately to resist the sensual movement of his fingers.

She thought that if he moved his fingers up just a little, right to the veins at the base of her wrist—yes—and then suddenly found the hollow directly below her thumb—yes— and so gently around to her wristbone…. But how could it be that his fingers sliding the satiny wet soap
all over her hands could arouse her to such a fever pitch that she felt wild to invite his kiss and to feel his hands on her body?

He sensed it. He felt the shift of tension in her. Then and only then did he lift his head and look into her eyes.

Her face was still, as if she were holding in all the emotion she was feeling and could only reveal it in the hunger of her eyes. It was all there, and it was all for him.

He pulled her toward him so that only the grip of his hands on hers separated them. Very gently his lips grazed hers, and then his mouth settled on hers insistently, tugging, demanding, his tongue licking her lips, tasting their texture.

“You knew,” he murmured. “Every time you came out with me, every time you challenged me, every time you talked to me, Maggie, you knew….”

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “Don’t tell me now.”

“You have to know.”

“Not now.”

“
When
, Maggie?”

His question hung on the breath of air between them. If only she could tell him: she wanted everything and nothing. If he could possess her without conquering her; if he could love her without needing her always; if he could let her give rein to her wanton feelings without giving her a child; if only he would just kiss her.…

He didn’t even need an answer from her. His mouth found hers unerringly and this time his own greed overcame his patience. This was Maggie, for whom he had yearned for so many years, butter in his hands, fluid against him with a reluctant need that she did not yet know he could assuage. No, she knew. She knew because she trusted
him
and no one else, and as he began his erotic exploration of her mouth she wound her arms around him and answered him as completely as if she had spoken the words.

She sought him with the same hot wet eagerness with which he wanted her, without fear of what he would think or the carnality of her nature. She held him for the moment, demanded his kiss just for the moment, and savored him as if she were going to die tomorrow. It was only Logan. She felt safe in his arms and secure in the notion he would never go beyond the boundaries that she set.

And yet she could not get enough of the voluptuous feelings he evoked. He knew just how to kiss her, just when to ease up and when to pursue her, when to tantalize her and how to arouse her. Her blood turned molten at the way he played with her, and she had to grasp him tightly, to pull him closer where she could feel the tumultuous desire in him that could fill the empty place in her.

She felt as though they were in a cocoon, alone together, joined, tense with the expectation of what was to come, what, above and beyond sanity, she wanted to come.

“Oh, Maggie …” She heard his voice, hoarse with feeling as his hands cupped her face and he rained neat little kisses all over her mouth. “Oh, God, Maggie …” His tongue dipped into her mouth and out again, leaving her bereft. Her fingers grasped his hair and pulled his mouth down on hers again.

She knew how to ask for what she wanted, and yet, just for a moment, she hesitated. What
would
he think, what would he do? How could she make him do her desire without telling, without showing? A sensual excitement possessed her at the thought of his response to her volatile emotions.

“Maggie …” His voice was a mere breath hanging over her.

“What?” She licked her lips and waited.

“Is it me, or is it memories?”

Oh my God, she thought; he understood, he understood everything. “Both,” she whispered, her body flexing against him, just the faintest movement, an invitation to discover what she really meant.

He held
her
now, not her memories; he could wipe them away or he could alienate her forever. He felt violent again with the knowledge that her memories were with Frank and not with him. His mouth closed over hers again, to make new memories and evoke fresh desire, to awaken those voluptuous feelings that came solely from his touch, his mouth.

He never thought he would feel such anger when he finally had her in his arms. What she needed she had discovered with Frank. He knew her repressed need drove her, not any desire for him. Not yet. Not yet.

How odd that he resented this undreamed of sensuality in her that wanted to use him the way he would seek out a woman for hire if he were possessed by the same unslaked desire.

He had to build on that and not toss it away out of a jealous rage that had nothing to vent itself upon. Whatever Frank Colleran had taken that had been precious to him was unredeemable now. Maybe Frank’s influence had made her what she was: a ferocious tigress devouring him with an irresistible voluptuous heat that was oh so tempting and yet that might shut the door to all of his dreams.

She felt the explosive tightness in him that signified his readiness for completion—any kind of the completion—the kind of completion that would leave her helpless and possibly with a child.

No! She twisted away from him abruptly. Oh no, no! Somehow, a shred of sanity got the upper hand over her desire. Immersed as she was in a sensual fog, she nonetheless knew the next step was not the one she wanted to take. She would live with the void and count
her blessings; even he could understand that. But she couldn’t look at him and she couldn’t stop shaking with the force of her need.

But then, what were his luscious kisses but the foreshadow of the thing she now sought so desperately to avoid.

She couldn’t avoid
him
. He still held her, and the tautness in him was every bit as galvanic as hers: release was one turbulent moment away, and he had to clamp down on his need and submerge himself in hers.

With every ounce of self control he possessed, he let her go.

She didn’t move. Her body fought the same war as his, she wanted him the same way he wanted her, with the force of the moment and the burgeoning allure between them, born of something old and something disturbingly new, the thing that would disrupt her life and put her in a place she did not want to be.

She couldn’t give in to it. Her whole posture told him clearly that she was fighting it but that her common sense and her memories would win.

He had to find the thing that might bind her to him again. He didn’t care how or why or whose reasons were pure and whose were not. He needed her any way he could have her, and her indecision gave him a blessed respite to seduce her need.

“There are other ways, Maggie,” he said softly, so gently, so …
urgently
… that her head snapped up.

“No, there is only one way, and that way will allow you to walk away and me to become dependent forever. I can’t allow that. I apologize for losing control and letting you …” She couldn’t finish beyond that; she felt close to tears with the knowledge that she had to send him away altogether and that she would never again experience the things he made her feel, the things she
had denied and buried when Frank had finally abandoned her for a woman more submissive and less imaginative. No, those were old wounds she had no right resurrecting, particularly with someone like Logan. He would want so much and she could give so little.

“There are other ways,” he reiterated insistently. “Maggie, let me show you.” He reached out and touched her cheek.

“No.”

His hand slid downward, from her jaw to her neck and she shuddered. “Let me love you, Maggie.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” His fingers slipped around the prim neckline of her dress, beneath her hair to the base of her neck where they rubbed her aching flesh gently, reassuringly, and in a way that was so arousing that she wondered whether he could touch her anywhere that would not electrify her whole body.

“Logan …” She stopped as his fingers began playing with her hair and he drew closer to her and closer. He was going to kiss her again and she drowned in the feeling.

“Yes?” He was winning and he knew it. The least little pressure of his fingers pushed her to yield. He felt her body give in to her feelings even as she warred with her ambivalence over her need.

“Don’t kiss me.”

“I won’t.” His lips touched hers again and he heard the faint moan at the back of her throat. “I won’t make love to you. I won’t show you anything you don’t want me to. I won’t….” Oh, and now, as his whispered words penetrated and he positioned her mouth exactingly beneath his, she sighed, “Don’t,” and opened her mouth willingly to receive his kiss. He murmured, “I won’t, I won’t, I
won’t
,” against the softness of her lips, her tongue, the sweetness of her taste. “Trust me, Maggie,”
he whispered to the willingness of her body as he held her now; he felt her fingers dig into his shoulders ferociously.

His tongue seduced her all over again, and this time she let no reservations about the course she would take deter her from feeling the ineffable desire that he aroused in her.

Other ways
intrigued her. She knew nothing of other ways, and yet he was willing to contain his ardor to ensure hers with
other ways
….

She felt as though she were steaming out of control, and yet she didn’t care. What would he do? What “other ways?”
What
could subdue the fierce hunger in her that wouldn’t leave her feeling fragile and exploited?

When he set her away from him she felt as though she had fallen off a cliff. But he still held her close, and his expression as he looked at her was soft and beguiling. She had known him forever, but this expression she had seen on his face in a time and a circumstance she could not recall.

She touched his mouth wonderingly and felt his sweet smile.

“You knew, Maggie.”

His words were soft, noncensuring, and still she felt stupid that she hadn’t known, hadn’t been perceptive enough to realize, not before and surely not after. But then Frank had become a part of her past and she didn’t want to know anything of any other men.

The thought of Frank cooled her fervor. There would always be Frank, she thought. Not even Logan could make him go away. Not even death could wipe his memory from her soul.

She knew that the fire in her was damped down for tonight. It was enough that she had allowed herself to feel this much, to give this much. She needed time to examine what she felt and how he aroused her. She needed to
come to terms with it, to allow herself to let him show her “other ways” and to discover somehow a way to allay the guilt that would surely follow if she used him this way.

Logan let her go as he sensed her moving away from him in her mind and in her heart. He had time now, and her own nature and her overriding curiosity on his side. No one else had touched her in quite the same way. He had this in his favor as well.

He tilted her face up to his and marveled at how lovely she was, and how sensual. “Tomorrow,” he murmured, not even sure if he wanted to give her that much time.

“Yes.”

She watched him go. It was late by then, and she wiped her hands and thought about the way he had touched her. She wondered how she would ever get through the day until tomorrow.

Chapter Six

She slept. It was as if something had been released within her, some tentative decision made. She had thought she wouldn’t sleep at all. The next day was Sunday, a day when she had plenty of leisure time to consider things she did not want to think about at all.

Sunday the office was closed. The town went to church and then those who had spare time afterward congregated at Arwin Bodey’s store. Sometimes Maggie walked over, sometimes she stayed in the office.

This morning she was torn. Mother Colleran, whose expression was suspiciously benign, pronounced herself pleased with Frank’s memorial service, so much so she was thinking of going to church this Sunday. Reese looked bemused as she added, “Of course,
you
will accompany me. Maggie hasn’t been to church, apart from this week, since she and Frank were married. You would think she would feel she could use some heavenly guidance. By the way,” she added with malice as she rose from the breakfast table, “what was that Logan Ramsey doing here so late last night?”

Maggie froze. “Visiting,” she said shortly, pushing back her chair. “I will clean up, Mother Colleran, if you and Reese are ready to go.”

Her mother-in-law nodded and went to get a hat and Reese sent her a helpless look. “I’m damn well not ready to go sit in church all morning,” he hissed as Maggie removed his plate.

“Neither am I,” Maggie said calmly. “I suggest you find someone to bring her home and escape as early as you can.”

“I thought churchgoing was women’s work.”

“Not this woman,” Maggie corrected, removing herself to the kitchen as Mother Colleran appeared duly swatched in black and impatient to leave.

“Will you be here, if I can get back?” he whispered as he passed her on the way out.

She shrugged. “Probably.” But she truthfully did not know what she wanted to do with her freedom this day. She watched them emerge from the apartment door at the back of the building, where a horse and buggy awaited them on Mother Colleran’s instructions. She saw Reese look up at the windows, almost as if he could see her there and knew she would be watching.

She let the curtain drop. Reese couldn’t possibly see her. She didn’t want to be seen. She wanted to be alone today to think about Logan and the evening before.

Her body reacted instantly as she remembered his kisses and his words, and the things he wanted—the things she wanted. No, impossible things. How could she even have let him kiss her when she could offer nothing in return? All that could happen was that he would find out exactly what kind of woman she was. What kind of woman Frank had thought she was.

She thought that woman was gone forever, carefully hidden where no one could see.

And still Logan had found her.

Or he had always known she was there.

The thought was overwhelming. Could any man see the hunger in her and know what she was? Could Reese?
If he had said the same words, and had kissed her the same way, would she have been as ready to fall into his arms?

All she could think about was her willingness in Logan’s arms the previous night. The memory excited her and blotted out everything else.
Everything
. All these years she had closed up inside her this desire seemed like a useless wasteland of deprivation to her now. One kiss, one touch, the right words, and she had come alive like some fairytale princess from a spell. All that hard-won composure and denial had been just a lie she had told herself.

Whatever Frank had felt those three years ago about her and burning ardor, he had not denied himself the thing he refused her. But it was always so with men, she thought. They could have everything and allow their women nothing.

So Logan would come and he would hold her and kiss her and talk of other ways and her need would be assuaged for the moment, and perhaps, she thought, that was all there had to be.

He would never hurt her, she thought, and it reassured her to know that as she wandered from the back of the apartment into the parlor that overlooked the street and looked out of the window there.

It was quieter than it had been the day before, with only an intermittent wagon or lone horse cantering its way along the plank boardwalk. There were no pedestrians—a lone cowboy perhaps on his way to Arwin’s store, but everyone punctiliously attended church on Sunday.

From the window where she stood, she thought Colville looked like a small peaceful town that had been blessed by God, a place that could never be touched by commercial greed.

She decided to go to Arwin’s store and face the derision
of the congregants there. Without a doubt, public sentiment was not running in her favor.

It was already crowding up when she arrived, but Arwin at least was happy to see her. The jibes were good-natured as she made her way to the back of the store.

“So what do you think, Arwin?”

“Have a cup of coffee, Maggie.”

“That doesn’t require a lot of thought,” she said, smiling, taking the cup he offered her.

“How’s that Reese fella?”

“He’s off to church with Mother Colleran, and not too happy about it.”

“Well, he’s here on a visit, ain’t he? Come to see the old lady? What else has he got to do?”

“You’re right; I never thought of that. She’s so busy deifying Frank, she probably hasn’t even noticed who took her to church today to begin with.”

Arwin clucked at her. “That was nasty, Maggie.”

“Well, was it?” she asked reasonably. “Every damn body in town thinks it’s his duty to theorize that the coming of Denver North is exactly what Frank would have wanted. Why, as far as they’re concerned he would have sold the ranch to facilitate matters for them. Frank must have been some seer. I never saw that in him, but maybe everyone else did.”

“He was a regular magician, Maggie, full of hocus-pocus.”

“That’s about it,” she agreed caustically.

“Well, you’d probably better lay off a bit then. If everyone’s so convinced, they’ll resent you even more for selling it down so consistently. They’ll think you can’t see both sides, they’ll think—maybe—you were doing Frank dirty by opposing the things he wanted, which, by definition, are the things they want.”

“Oh, please, is it that bad?”

“Worse. There’s a group that have made a passel of
money selling off land, and they’re going to build closer in to town and be right there when that line comes steaming through. They’re going to travel up to Cheyenne and take the line whichever way the wind is blowing at the moment, Maggie, because they ain’t never been two miles down the road from the center of town in their whole lives. You watch out for them; they’re powerful and ignorant.”

“I’m still going to fight, Arwin.”

“Who?” he asked cynically.

“Frank,” she retorted, setting down her cup.

“What if I told you Melinda Sable is looking to buy and build along the far side of town?” Arwin asked confidentially, drawing her slightly aside and turning so that their backs were to the assembling crowd.

“How?”

“Danged if I know. I heard a breath of it the other day, couldn’t believe it. Don’t know where she’d get the money, but I’m damned sure that whoever loaned it to her is looking to make a big profit.”

“Well, it wasn’t Frank,” Maggie said acerbically. “Damn, that’s bad news.”

“Supposed to be secret news, but nothing’s secret in this town.”

“Or this store.”

“It’s the only thing that keeps me going, Maggie.”

“Me too,” she said satirically.

“Don’t go off the deep end about it,” Arwin cautioned. “It’s just rumor.”

“I know. I’ll have a field day with the engineers when they come and try to figure out how to grade the track around Big Gully.”

“They mayn’t have to in the end, Maggie. I’m willing to bet they’re going to have cases full of money to offer Sean and Annie, and maybe even Logan.”

“Maybe,” she sighed.

“And maybe they got the payoff reserved for you, Maggie,” Arwin added carefully, slanting a birdlike look at her.

“I heard that too,” she said. “It’s crazy.”

“You ain’t running cattle; you refuse to live there and build it up, Maggie. What do you expect people to say?”

“Possibly that I mean what I say. But… oh … there’s Reese.” She waved to him as he stood uncertainly in the doorway looking around. She wondered how he had gotten away from his mother so quickly. Services were not over till noon and it was only eleven o’clock. “Reese, this is Arwin Bodey. I believe you two nodded to each other yesterday morning. Arwin, this is, of course, Frank’s brother, Reese Colleran.”

The men shook hands cordially and everyone watched covertly as the buzz of conversation continued around them.

“And where is Mother Colleran?” Maggie asked sweetly.

“In excellent hands,” Reese said firmly, in a tone that brooked no questions. He had found a place for her and a ride, and he had been amused to see his mother welcomed into the fold of the church ladies who revered her for being Frank Colleran’s mother. For the moment, for the morning, it was enough, and it left him with the free hour or so to find Maggie and share that fleeting time with her. “Are you finished here?”

Maggie leveled a humorous look at Arwin. “I expect I am. Arwin has filled me in on all the gossip and I can now go back to the office and write the locals column. Isn’t that right, Arwin?”

“Don’t tease, Maggie.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” She allowed Reese to precede her as they walked out of the store, and she could hear the muted whispers around them: “That’s Frank’s brother.” “Oh, you can see he’s a Colleran.” “Don’t he
have the look of Frank about him?” “They say he’s living with Maggie and the mother….”

The last was the worst, and they made the door before Maggie could hear the anonymous response to it.

“Well now,” Maggie said as they stood outside in the brisk spring sunshine. “I take it you have something in mind?”

“Nothing much really. We’ve done the hotel dinner, I’ve seen you run the paper, we’ve scouted the surrounding area for railroad spies, and you’ve shown me what’s left of the Colleran ranch and property. I don’t believe there’s much else except your own fine company, Maggie.”

She shook her head. “That’s really too much, Reese. This is my day of rest, too. I don’t generally do much more than trade words with your mother for hours on end about how unfairly I treat her or how unfairly Frank’s will treated her.”

“Let’s walk then, and you can tell me about that.”

“Oh, but surely you’ve gotten an earful of my crimes.”

“I refuse to let her vilify you.”

“Nonetheless,” Maggie said, carefully watching his expression, “she threatened me with
you
.”

He looked shocked. “How can that be?”

“Apparently things are going to change somehow now that you’ve come.”

“Truly, Maggie, it’s an old, disappointed woman’s rantings. What could possibly change?”

“I couldn’t figure that out myself. After all, Frank’s will was lawfully probated, and I’ve complied with all the terms to the letter of the law—which includes, by the way, responsibility for your mother and a stipend for her, which she refuses to take. I’ve undertaken running the newspaper, and by the terms of the will, I’m to keep the Colleran ranch intact except for certain circumstances that Mother Colleran has interpreted as meaning lucrative
offers. Neither she nor you were left anything by Frank, and I think your mother somehow thinks I engineered that, even though Frank and I were not close at the time he died. This is a will made by a man who loved his wife and was confident of her abilities. I don’t know why he did not change it. It wasn’t changed to reflect the status of our marriage at the time he died.”

“I see.”

“I wonder if you do. Your mother was adamantly against Frank’s marrying me, and now, since you’ve told me about—Priscilla, was that her name?—I can perhaps understand that. But she never accepted the marriage, even after Frank assured her over and over that it was exactly what he wanted to do, and she has resented me for all these years.”

“Of course Frank loved you. You are a beautiful and vital woman.”

Maggie ignored that. “Yet your mother insists on staying with me and fighting with me as if somehow she were defending Frank against me. It makes no sense to me whatsoever.”

“She loved Frank too much,” Reese said soberly.

“Yes, she did. And she’s very anxious to keep the town myth about him perpetuated.”

“Perhaps he really was an extraordinary man.”

“Do you believe that?”

“No.”

Maggie smiled. “He was an extraordinary salesman, and he knew how to sell himself.”

They walked in silence a few moments more. Reese marveled at her all over again, her perception and her strength. He was willing to bet that no one in Colville saw Frank Colleran in quite the same light as Maggie, and though it was possible her candor was tinged with the faintest odor of the scorned wife, she was also a woman who seemed to see things with unclouded clarity. She
couldn’t have been in love with Frank at the end. Possibly she was even grateful to Melinda Sable for becoming his convenience.

However, he also knew she would never confess any of this to him. All he could hope to do was make her understand that she had an allure and a seductiveness for him as well. But he was already aware that fine words and easy phrases would never convince her of his sincerity.

“Most men in business know how to sell themselves, Maggie,” he said suddenly, as the thought occurred to him as well as a way to approach her.

She stopped and turned to look at him. “Is that true? Do
you?
” She had to shield her eyes from the sun at that moment; she had to see his face clearly.

“I hope to sell myself to you, Maggie,” he murmured intimately. He wasn’t surprised when she turned away from him; he had the feeling that her reaction was that those words had come too easily to him and that they had made her suspicious. He took her arm and pushed her to continue walking. “Sounds glib, doesn’t it?” he said, just a little ruefully.

“It sounds rehearsed,” she said succinctly, “and not worth your effort. You’ve known me all of three or four days, and you couldn’t possibly know that yet.”