“She won’t walk for a week.”
“Good.”
“How about I keep the beer on ice for us, and we’ll toast Gary after we lay him to rest?” Merritt gives Maggie the details for the services in Boerne. “It would mean a lot to me for you to be there.”
Maggie hugs Gary’s mother with her nonleash arm, gingerly to avoid the injured places. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
Merritt walks back to the parking area with the chair and the beer. Louise tries to follow her, but Maggie tugs her back. She’s glad the conversation with Merritt is over, even if it was a good one. She’s here for her house. Her shop. For closure.
Her phone rings. She glances at the screen. The call is from Emily. She walks into the shade of the lone surviving tree on the front of the property, a barren, singed oak. Louise scurries around her six-foot-diameter world, checking out the new scents.
“Hello?”
“Maggie! Wallace and I are calling to make sure you’re okay. He was on my ass to call you. About your place. The fires. The person who died. I told him we should give you more time, but he’s persistent.”
In the background, Wallace’s voice calls out, “Hi, Maggie!”
Maggie closes her eyes and lifts her face up to the sky. Her shoulder hurts. And her palms, her knees, and her bruised ribs on the side where she’d been thrown into the air conditioner by the fireball. The emotional pain of facing betrayal is more than she feels equipped to deal with right now. “Wallace needs to stay off the gossip rags and get a life.”
Emily hesitates, then repeats Maggie’s words to Wallace. There’s a scuffling sound.
Wallace’s voice comes on the line. “Seriously, are you okay?”
“Hi, Wallace. Yes, I’m fine.”
“People dot com made it sound like you nearly died.”
“I guess I did. Hank was closer to dying than me, though.”
Louise darts between her legs. Maggie steps over the leash. Her patience with the dog’s manners is growing thin.
“Is he as delectable as his picture?”
“Yeah.”
Hank’s smiling, dimpled face flashes through her mind. Saying his name makes her heart ache. Maggie had tried to talk to him repeatedly yesterday. He’d been in treatment or asleep every time. This morning her calls to his room went unanswered and the ones to his cellphone had gone to voicemail. Now that the danger of Celinda has passed, there are things she needs to know. Like why he came to Texas, whether he regrets it, and what his intentions are, toward her, Sheila, and Sheila’s baby. But if he’d wanted to talk to her, he’d surely have called her back by now.
She draws in a sharp breath. She can’t think about those things now. She has to deal with Wallace, and him leaking details of her life to TMZ. “Wallace, if we’re going to be friends, it’s not okay to talk to reporters about me.”
The pitch of his voice rises. “What?”
“I know you’re the one who told TMZ I was headed to see Gary last week. I understand. But it can’t happen again.”
“It wasn’t me, I swear.” His voice sounds sincere.
But Maggie has been fed plenty of earnest denials in her life. “I can be friends with someone who tells me the truth, even if they’ve messed up. But I can’t be friends with a liar.”
Wallace grows insistent. “Listen, I didn’t tell People.com you were going to see Gary. I’ve never talked with anyone at TMZ. TMZ doesn’t know I exist, damn them.”
There’s the sound of another struggle over possession of the phone.
Emily comes back on. “Oh God, Maggie, don’t be mad at Wallace. It really wasn’t him.”
Maggie unwinds herself from the leash as Louise doubles back and tangles them both up again. “Kind of hard to believe. He’s the one with the obsession with celebrity gossip.”
“It’s true. I know it’s not him, because it was me.”
“What?” Maggie stops fighting Louise.
“I’m so sorry. I only told Laura. And apparently those jerks writing for TMZ were in Sheridan trying to dig up dirt on you through Hank. They cornered Laura in the hospital. I know she didn’t mean to hurt you. She was trying to get them off her brother. She feels terrible. I feel terrible.”
“Oh my God.”
Louise hits the end of the leash hard.
Maggie reaches down for an untangled section of the leash and jerks her back, then extricates herself. “Stop it, Fucker.”
Emily’s voices is aghast. “What?”
“Sorry. Not you. The dog. You were saying?”
“If I’d ever have dreamed it would turn into what it did, I never would have said anything to Laura.”
This. This is why Maggie doesn’t have female friends. Because they can’t keep from running their mouths to each other. Except for Michele. She’s different, thank God. “You told Hank’s sister. Of all the people to tell, you told his sister.”
“I know. In retrospect, it was a bad call. At the time, I had this misguided feeling that I was helping Hank get over you so he could move on to become a father and husband without reservations. But it was none of my business, and I shouldn’t have done it.”
Damn straight, you shouldn’t have. Maggie sucks in a shuddering breath. “Okay.”
“So don’t be mad at Wallace. Be mad at me.”
“And Laura.”
“Well, yes, me and Laura. But I am sorry.”
“Me, too. Very, very sorry.”
A squirrel runs up the tree beside them. Louise goes after it, nearly jerking Maggie’s arm out of socket. She’s had it with reining the dog in. It’s her own property, after all, so if the law enforcement types don’t like it, tough shit. She unclips the leash. Louise bounds like a drunken reindeer toward the county personnel working the scene.
“I hope someday you can forgive me.”
Maggie sighs. Emily cares about Hank. Lord knows Maggie does, too. “It will be okay. Can you let Wallace know I’m sorry I blamed him?”
“I will. And thank you.”
“Just remember this when I do some dumbass thing that pisses you off.”
Emily laughs. “I will. By the way, Jack says hello.”
Maggie hadn’t heard a sound from Jack, but she can’t help a small grin. The wooden Indian thing he does is pretty funny, whether he means for it to be or not.
After they end the call, Maggie walks through the disaster area. She expects to feel anguish, but all she feels is numb. Junior waves to her from the far side of the scene. He’s restraining Louise by the collar. Maggie waves back, but she doesn’t go for her dog. She isn’t eager to interact with Junior or any of the rest of them. Especially Boland. He’d tried to railroad her. At best, he harassed her needlessly. At worst, he nearly made her a victim of his lazy police work. And now, when she needs a moment with her place, to say goodbye before she figures out her next steps—Sell the land and buy another shop? Rebuild? Liquidate her inheritance and travel?—they’re all here, keeping her from finding peace. Junior releases Louise and turns back to a conversation with his colleagues.
Maggie calls her dog. Louise sprints to her, the very portrait of joy.
“Come with me, girl.”
Maggie and Louise walk past the former shop and burned-down house to the partially intact barn and workroom. The roof and walls are intact, and the place is no longer barricaded, so she follows Louise in. It’s dark inside. She pushes her sunglasses onto her head, where they catch in her unruly hair. She’d rather not break her hair with her glasses, so she carefully removes them and hangs them on the neck of her crumpled, one-day worn T-shirt.
The first thing she sees is a big Dodge Ram truck with Wyoming plates. Hank’s truck. Realization hits her. This is why she hadn’t seen it out front the night of the fire. If she had, finding Hank in her house—and bed—wouldn’t have been as big a surprise. Maggie’s fists ball with a desire to find Celinda and snatch her baldheaded. The woman is clever, Maggie will give her that, but, whatever she has coming to her from
the legal system isn’t enough.
Louise sniffs, greedy for the barn scents, although all Maggie smells is smoke and chemicals. She moves past the truck and examines the remains of her professional life. How many hundreds of people and creatures have touched the salvaged treasures over their combined centuries of existence? Yet how meager they look postfire. She trails a few fingers over the tortured remains of a typewriter and a pencil sharpener on a blackened metal desk. Franklin is going to be sick when he comes out to process the insurance claim. Everything is ruined, whether from smoke, fire, chemicals, water, or a combination of them all. He should just call it a total loss and be done with it.
Her life in a nutshell. Ruined and a total loss.
Behind her, she hears voices and the sound of footsteps drawing near. People. More people intruding. She looks around for a place to hide. But no, that’s childish. She reaches up to her cheeks. No tears. She fills her lungs with air, turns, and walks to the door, chin up.
“There you are.” It’s Michele’s voice.
Maggie tents a hand to shield her eyes from the blinding sun overhead. Michele, Rashidi, Ava, Collin, Edward, and her mom. She’d texted Michele on her way over: Don’t worry about me. Just dropping by the house and shop. See you soon. She should have kept her whereabouts to herself.
She lifts a hand in a tepid wave.
Charlotte wraps her in her arms. “My sweet girl. We didn’t want you to face this alone.”
Maggie pats her mother and steps out of the embrace. “I’m good.”
“Let we take you for a bite,” Rashidi says in full island accent. He scratches Louise between her ears.
Ava looks like a bird-of-paradise in a coal pit, standing by the burned buildings in a bright green top and pink leggings. “Collin and I leave after lunch. It’s our treat. As a thank-you for putting up with us.”
“Come on.” Michele moves close enough that she can whisper in Maggie’s ear. “You’ve lost weight. You have to eat.”
“You’re all very kind. But I have to do this. Alone. Now.” Sounds of protest rise, and she lifts a hand to shush them. “I’ll eat. I promise.”
She allows herself to be hugged and bids Collin and Ava farewell.
“Thanks for not trying to steal my man,” Ava says, smiling at her.
“Who says I didn’t?”
Ava’s mouth makes an O for a moment.
“Just screwing with you. This one’s not a whore. Good job.”
“Why do I feel like I’ve just been insulted?” Collin says, scratching his head.
Michele kisses her sister’s cheek. “She has a special way with that. See you back at the house, Maggie.”
When it’s just the two of them again, Maggie sinks to the ground with the dog, her legs folding into a crisscross. Louise sits in front of her, dutifully stirring up dust from the dirt floor with her tail.
“Even with all of them gone, you make it impossible to be still with my thoughts.”
“You don’t do me any favors either.”
The male voice behind Maggie jolts electricity to the tips of her fingers and toes. She doesn’t turn her head, just continues to talk as if in a conversation with the dog. “My, what a deep voice you have, Louise.”
“Woof, woof,” Hank replies.
Long legs stop beside her. He dangles a brown paper grocery bag from one hand, the kind with handles. “How about you come up here instead of me down there. I’ve had more limber and pain-free days in my life.”
Maggie stands facing Hank. Six inches separate them. Close enough to be in his pheromone zone. And what pheromones they are. Oh, the smell of this man. She breathes in, trying not to let him see she’s huffing him. “How’s this?”
“Perfect. I’m almost close enough now to see what little eyebrows and eyelashes you have left. It makes you look extra surprised to see me.” He grins. “But you’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
She almost melts right back to the floor. She clears her throat and says, “What are you doing out of the hospital?” in a strangled voice.
His dimples beg to be touched. “You know why I didn’t do steer wrestling or calf roping?”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I always broke the barrier too early.”
She can’t help smiling. “How’d you get here? I found your truck.” Maggie points back at the barn.
“Hell, I Ubered. Paid the driver a big-ass tip to drive me around until I found you.”
Warmth floods her body. Upward. Outward. Downward. “You didn’t call me back.”
“You weren’t answering your damn phone.”
Maggie checks her phone, flustered. It’s dead. “Sorry. It must not be holding a charge.”
“I knew where you’d be, although I can’t say I was eager to come here again.” Hank puts a finger under her chin and lifts it, aiming her gaze exactly where he wants it. Into his eyes. “Thanks for saving me—again.”
“You’re welcome. Again.”
“I brought you something.”
Maggie shakes her head. “You didn’t have to get me anything. I got to see you naked, tied to the bedposts.”
He raises his eyebrows.
“Sorry. Too soon?”
But he laughs. “No. And I did bring you something. It’s why I came. You forgot it back in Wyoming. When you ran away. Again.” His hand disappears into the grocery bag and pulls out his belt and Cheyenne Frontier Days buckle.
She takes a step back. “I didn’t forget it.”
He takes a step closer. His step is bigger than hers. Now they’re three inches apart. He reaches around her waist with the belt, his arm brushing hers. She shivers. His other arm meets it mid-back, encircling her.
Her mouth goes dry. Her heart thrums madly. She’s afraid to breathe. “What about Sheila?”
He presses the belt into her back. Then he slides his hands apart along its length. Gently, he pulls each end around the sides of her waist. When he joins the ends in front, he tugs with just enough pressure to scoot her toward him. Now only one inch of warm air separates their faces. “What about her?”
“She said you proposed. That you’re going to be a daddy.”
“She’s not pregnant, if that’s what you thought. She was talking about her daughter Phoebe. You know, the nine-year-old secret daughter she pretended to the world was her sister?”
“Oh my God. But I thought . . .”
“You thought wrong. I never proposed.”
“Aren’t you two getting married?”
“She suggested it while I was under surgical anesthesia. When I woke up later, I said no.”
“Well, shit. That changes things.”
He smiles with those killer dimples and closes the last inch between them, first with his lips, then with the rest of his body. “Good. So you’re not running away this time?”
The barn spins around her as she sinks into his kiss. Yes, this changes everything. “Not a chance, cowboy.”
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Acknowledgments
The Maggie books are set one foot in Texas and the other in Wyoming, while Maggie’s life is a little bit junker and a little bit rock and roll. My own love affair with Wyoming started at an early age when my family moved to Buffalo. Then my parents “ruined my life forever” by moving us back to Texas a few years later. I didn’t return to Wyoming until 2014, and then only because I took Eric for his first visit in July, as opposed to January. My mama didn’t raise no fool.
Two cabins later, my Virgin Islands–native husband drives a snowplow and owns more coats than his famous sandals. I wrote all the Maggie stories from our Snowheresville, Wyoming,
in a big, beautiful, remote, off-the-grid, and, above all, rustic cabin on the eastern face of the Bighorn Mountains. It’s not easy shuttling between two homes in Texas and one in Wyoming, but Eric does it with a smile on his face and adventure in his heart. I am beginning to think he loves me.
The animals in this book are based on Pippin, one of our granddogs, and Katniss, my Percheron cross mare. The truck, Bess, and store, Flown the Coop, are rooted in the lives of Tiffany and Jeff, who live near our Nowheresville, Texas. I am grateful to a colorful cast of Wyoming characters (Jeff, Christina, Brenton, Colter, Mandy, Travis, Ron, Eric, and many others) for endless anecdotes. Thanks for the inspiration, all of you!
Thanks to my husband, Eric, for brainstorming the Maggie stories with me despite his busy work, travel, and workout schedule. He puts up with me recycling bits and pieces of our lives in the stories as well. I’d say he does it without reservation, but that would be a lie. I guess that makes it even more remarkable that he smiles about it in the end.
Thanks to our five offspring. I love you guys more than anything, and each time I write a parent/child (birth, adopted, foster, or step), I channel you.
To each and every blessed reader, I appreciate you more than I can say. It is the readers who move mountains for me, and for other authors, and I humbly ask for the honor of your honest reviews and recommendations.
Thanks mucho to Bobbye and Rhonda for putting up with my eccentric and ever-changing needs.
Maggie editing credits go to Rhonda Erb and Whitney Cox. The beta and advance readers and critique partners who enthusiastically devote their time—gratis—to help us rid my books of flaws blow me away. The special love this time goes to Angie, Caren, Pat, Tara, Karen, Ken, Candi, Kelly, Vidya, Ginger, Mandy, Susan, Jim, Ridgely, and Linda.
Thank you Alayah Frazier, for working with Bobbye to create amazing vector art for the covers, as we took Maggie into (for What Doesn’t Kill You) uncharted visual territory.
Sick Puppy (Maggie #2) Page 23