by Nora Roberts
Morgan’s car out of the river.”
“No one has the right to take a life,” Maggie said in a shaky voice. “Not their own or anyone else’s.”
He remembered that they had fished her husband’s car out of the water, too. He remembered that the final verdict had been suicide. “You’d be better off not making comparisons,” he said roughly.
“They seem to make themselves.”
“What happened to Jerry Browning was a tragic waste of a life and of a talent. Do you plan on taking the blame for that, too?”
“I never took the blame,” Maggie said wearily.
“Did you love him?”
Her eyes were eloquent, but her voice was steady. “Not enough.”
“Enough to be faithful to him for six years,” Cliff countered.
She smiled as her own words came back to her. “Yes, enough for that. Still, there’s more to love than loyalty, isn’t there?”
His hand was gentle again when he touched her face. “You said you hadn’t taken the blame.”
“Responsibility and blame are different things.”
“No.” He shook his head. “There’s no responsibility or blame this time, either. Don’t you think it’s the height of egotism to feel responsible for someone else’s actions?”
She started to snap at him, but the words hit home. “Maybe. Maybe it is.” It wasn’t easy, but she shook off the mood and smiled. “I think the hamburgers are done. Let’s eat.”
Chapter Seven
Maggie found the kitchen cozy with the smell of hot food and the patter of raindrops that had just begun to strike the windows. When she thought of it, she decided she’d never really experienced coziness before. Her parents had lived on a grand scale; huge, elegant rooms and huge, elegant parties, boisterous, eccentric friends. With her own home in Beverly Hills, Maggie had followed the same pattern. Extravagance might’ve been what she needed during that phase of her life, or it might’ve been a habit. She wasn’t sure when it had begun to wear on her, any more than she was certain if she’d ever been as relaxed as she was at that moment, eating in her half-finished kitchen with a man she wasn’t quite sure of.
He was strong, she mused. Perhaps she’d never allowed a strong man into her life. Her father had been strong, Maggie remembered. He’d been the type of man who could do and get precisely what he wanted simply because he wanted it. The strength hadn’t been a physical one, but one of personality and will. But then, her mother had matched him with her own combination of grit and exuberance. Maggie had never seen a more perfect relationship than theirs.
Theirs had been an all-consuming, enduring love, with qualities of practicality, compassion and fire. They’d never competed, never envied each other’s success. Support, she thought. Perhaps that had been the real key to the quality and lasting power of their relationship. Unquestioning mutual support. She hadn’t found that in her own marriage, and she’d come to think her parents had been unique.
Something had happened to the balance in her relationship with Jerry. As he’d grown weaker, she’d grown stronger. Eventually, they’d come to a point where all the support had been on her side and all the need on his. Yet she’d stayed, because it had been impossible to forget that they’d been friends. Friends don’t break promises.
She wondered, as she studied Cliff, what sort of friend he would be. And she wondered, though she tried not to, what he would be like as a lover.
“What’re you thinking of?”
The question came so abruptly that Maggie almost overturned her glass. Quickly, she sorted out her thoughts and chose the least personal. She could hardly tell him what had been the last thing on her mind. “I was thinking,” she began, picking up her wine again, “how cozy it is eating here in the kitchen. I’ll probably demote the dining room to the last thing on my list.”
“That’s what you were thinking?” By the way he held her gaze, she knew he sensed there’d been other things.
“More or less.” A woman who’d been interviewed and questioned all her life knew how to evade and dodge. Lifting the bottle, she filled Cliff’s glass again. “The Bordeaux’s another present from my agent. Or another bribe,” she added.
“Bribe?”
“He wants me to give up this mad scheme of camping out in the wilderness and come back to civilization.”
“He thinks he can persuade you with puppies and French wine?”
With a bubbling laugh, Maggie sipped. “If I weren’t so attached to this place, either one might’ve worked.”
“Is that what you are?” Cliff asked thoughtfully. “Attached?”
At the question, her eyes stopped laughing, and her soft, wide mouth sobered. “In your business you should know that some things root quickly.”
“Some do,” he agreed. “And some that do can’t acclimate to the new territory.”
She tapped the side of her glass with a fingertip, wishing she understood why his doubts dug at her so deeply. “You don’t have much faith in me, do you?”
“Maybe not.” He shrugged as if to lighten a subject he wasn’t so certain of any longer. “In any case, I’m finding it interesting to watch you make the adjustments.”
She decided to go with his mood. “How’m I doing?”
“Better than I’d thought.” He lifted his glass in a half toast. “But it’s early yet.”
She laughed, because arguing seemed like a waste of time. “Were you born cynical, Cliff, or did you take lessons?”
“Were you born an optimist?”
Both brows lifted to disappear under the fringe of sable bangs. “Touché,” Maggie said. No longer interested in the meal, she studied him, finding that while his face was very much to her liking, she still couldn’t judge him by his eyes. Too much control, she thought. A person would only get inside his head if he or she was invited. “You know,” she began slowly, “after I’d stopped being annoyed, I decided I was glad you were coming by this evening.” Now she grinned. “I don’t know when I might’ve opened the wine otherwise.”
This time he grinned. “I annoy you?”
“I think you’re well aware of that,” Maggie returned dryly. “And that for your own personal reasons it pleases you to do so.”
Cliff tasted the wine again. It was warm and rich, reminding him of her mouth. “Actually, I do.”
He said it so easily that Maggie laughed again. “Is it just me, or is annoying people a hobby of yours?”
“Just you.” Over the rim of his glass, he studied her. She’d pinned her hair up in a loose Gibson style that accentuated her delicate, old-fashioned features. She wore some dark contouring shadow that made her eyes seem even larger, but her mouth was naked. This was a woman, Cliff thought, who knew how to accentuate her own looks to the best advantage, subtly, so that a man would be caught before he analysed what was Maggie and what was illusion. “I like your reactions,” Cliff continued after a moment. “You don’t like to lose your temper.”
“So you like to provoke me until I do.”
“Yeah.” He smiled again. “That about sizes it up.”
“Why?” she demanded in a voice filled with exasperated amusement.
“I’m not immune to you,” Cliff said, so quietly her fingers tightened on the stem of her glass. “I wouldn’t like to think you were immune to me.”
She sat for a moment, stirred and baffled. Before her emotions could rise any closer to the surface, she stood and began to clear the table. “No, I’m not. Would you like more wine or some coffee?”
His hands closed over hers on the dishes. Slowly, he rose, his gaze fixed on her face. Maggie felt as though the kitchen had shrunk in size. Like Alice in the rabbit hole, she thought confusedly, unsure whether to sample that tempting little bottle or not. The patter of rain outside seemed to grow to a roar.
“I want to make love with you.”
She wasn’t a child, Maggie told herself. She was an adult, and men had wanted her before. She’d resisted temptations before.
But had any ever been quite so alluring? “We’ve already been through this.”
His hands tightened on hers when she tried to turn away. “But we never resolved it.”
No, she couldn’t turn away, or run away, from a man like this, Maggie realized. She’d have to stand her ground. “I was sure we had. Perhaps coffee would be best, since you have to drive this evening and I have to work.”
Cliff took the dishes and set them back on the table. With her hands empty, Maggie found herself at a loss. She folded her arms under her breasts, a habit Cliff had discovered she used whenever she was upset or disturbed. At the moment, he didn’t care which she was, as long as she wasn’t unmoved.
“We haven’t resolved it,” he repeated, and plucked a pin from her hair. “We haven’t begun to resolve it.”
Though her eyes remained steady, she backed up when he stepped closer. It made him feel as though he were stalking her, an odd and thrilling sensation. “I really thought I’d made myself clear,” Maggie managed, in what sounded to her like a firm, dismissive tone.
“It’s clear when I touch you.” Cliff backed her up against the counter, then pulled another pin from her hair. “It’s clear when you look at me like you’re looking at me now.”
Maggie’s heart began to pound at the base of her throat. She was weakening; she felt it in the heaviness of her limbs, the lightness in her head. Desire was temptation, and temptation a seduction in itself. “I didn’t say I didn’t want you—”
“No, you didn’t,” Cliff interrupted. When he drew out the next pin, her hair fell heavily to her shoulders and lay there, dark and tousled. “I don’t think lying comes easily to you.”
How could she have been so relaxed a few moments before and so tense now? Every muscle in her body was taut in the effort to combat what seemed to be inevitable. “No, I don’t lie.” Her voice was lower, huskier. “I said I didn’t know you. I said you didn’t understand me.”
Something flashed into him. Perhaps it was rage; perhaps it was need. “I don’t give a damn how little we know each other or how little we understand each other. I know I want you.” He gathered her hair in one hand. “I only have to touch you to know you want me.”
Her eyes grew darker. Why did it always seem her desire was mixed with anger and, though she detested it, a certain weakness she couldn’t control? “Can you really believe it’s that simple?”
He had to. For the sake of his own survival, Cliff knew, he had to keep whatever was between them purely physical. They’d make love through the night until they were exhausted. In the morning, the need and the bond would be gone. He had to believe it. Otherwise … He didn’t want to dwell on otherwise. “Why should it be complicated?” he countered.
The anger and the longing flowed through her. “Why indeed?” Maggie murmured.
The room had lost its cozy ambience. Now she felt she’d suffocate if she didn’t escape it. Her eyes were stormy, his almost brutally calm, but she kept her gaze level on his while her thoughts raged. Why should she feel the need to rationalize, to romanticize? she asked herself. She wasn’t an innocent young girl with misty dreams, but an adult, a widow, a professional woman who’d learned to live with reality. In reality, people took what they wanted, then dealt with the consequences. Now so would she.
“The bedroom’s upstairs,” she told him, and, brushing by him, walked out of the kitchen.
Disturbed, Cliff frowned after her. This was what he wanted, he thought. The lack of complications. Yet her abrupt acceptance had been so unexpected, so cool. No, he realized as he started after her, that wasn’t what he wanted.
Maggie was at the base of the steps before he caught up with her. When she looked over her shoulder, he saw the fury in her eyes. The moment he took her arm, he felt the tension. This, he discovered, was what he wanted. He didn’t want her cool, emotionless agreement or a careless acquiescence. He wanted to build that fury and tension until the passion that spawned them broke through. Before the night was over, he’d draw it all from her and purge himself, as well.
In silence, they climbed the stairs to the second floor.
The rain fell, strong and steady, against the windows and the newly seeded earth below. The sound made Maggie think of the subtle rhythmic percussion she’d imagined in the arrangement of the song she’d just completed. There was no moon to guide the way, so she moved from memory. Darkness was deep and without shadows. She didn’t look when she entered the bedroom, but she knew Cliff was still beside her.
What now? she thought with sudden panic. What was she doing, bringing him here, to the single spot she considered purely private? He might learn more than she wanted before he left again, yet she might learn nothing more than she already knew. They wanted each other; it was unexplainable. It was undeniable.
As her nerves stretched tighter, Maggie was grateful for the dark. She didn’t want him to see the doubts that would be clear on her face. As the need grew stronger, she knew she wouldn’t have been able to conceal that, either. Darkness was better, she told herself, because it was anonymous. When he touched her, her body went rigid with a dozen conflicting emotions.
Feeling it, Cliff ran his hands over the slope of her shoulders, down to her lower back. He found he didn’t want her to be too relaxed, to be too yielding. Not yet. He wanted to know she struggled against something deeper, something unnamed, even as he did.
“You don’t want to give in to this,” Cliff said quietly. “Or to me.”
“No.” Yet she felt the tremor, not fear but pleasure, course through her body when he slipped his hands under her thin wool sweater. “No, I don’t.”
“What choice is there?”
She could see his face through the gloom of darkness, close, very close, to hers. “Damn you,” she whispered. “There’s none at all.”
He slid his hands up her naked back, through the neck opening of her sweater, until his fingers found her hair. “No, not for either of us.”
His body was firm against hers. His voice, soft and low, was faintly edged with anger. She caught the scent of soap, sharp, unrepentantly male, that lingered on his skin. His face was mysterious, indistinct in the darkness. He might’ve been anyone. As Maggie felt the next fierce pull of desire, she almost wished he was.
“Make love with me,” she demanded. A decision made quickly, freely, would leave no room for regrets. “Take me now. It’s all either of us wants.”
Was it? The question had barely formed in his mind when his mouth was on hers. Then there were no questions, just flame and flash and power. Understanding, if there had been any before, dimmed. Reason vanished. Sensation, and only sensation, ruled. While perhaps both of them had expected it, they were caught in a maelstrom in which neither of them had any control. Racked by it, they fell together onto the bed and let the fire rage.
He could find no gentleness to give her, but it seemed she neither demanded nor expected any. He wanted her naked but not vulnerable, soft but not yielding. If he had spoken the needs aloud, she could have been no more what he’d asked for. As she arched against him, her lips clung in a wild, urgent kiss that was only a prelude to passion. He pulled at her clothes, forgetting finesse, then caught his breath when, in an equal frenzy, she began to strip him.
Clothes were tossed aside as if they were meaningless. Her scent rose up from her skin, from her hair, clouding whatever logic he might have tried to regain. The mattress swayed and dipped as they rolled over it, mindless now of the rain, of the dark, of time and place.
Then they were naked, heated flesh to heated flesh. The desperation grew in each to have all there could be of the other. Whispered demands, labored breathing, moans and sighs of pleasure, drowned out the sound of falling rain. Her body was small and supple and surprisingly strong. All three aspects combined to drive him mad.
This was what it meant to be consumed. Maggie knew it as his hands skimmed over her, inciting thrill after thrill. She hungered, no, starved, for each new demand. Greedy for what pleas
ure he would give and what pleasure she would take, she allowed him whatever he wanted. She felt no shame, no hesitation, in tasting, in touching, in asking for more or in taking it.
If his body had been designed to her wish, it could have been no more perfect. She reveled in the leanness, the cords of muscle, the long, narrow bones that ran along his hips. Wherever, whenever, she touched, she could almost feel the blood throb under his skin.
She wanted to know he had no more control than she. She wanted to know they were both victims of their own combined power. The fuse that had been lit between them with a look was burning quickly. Desire was madness, and if the words she’d written were true, she’d cast aside her reason for it.
With a savageness they both craved, they came together, fighting to prolong an outrageous passion, greedy to capture that final flash of pleasure. She thought of whirlpools and high winds and the bellow of thunder. She felt the spin, the speed, and heard the roar. Then both her mind and body shuddered from the last violent surge.
Love? Maggie thought some dim time later, when her thoughts began to clear again. If this was making love, she’d been innocent all her life. Could something with so gentle a name have such a violent effect on the body? Hers was pulsing and throbbing as if she’d raced up one side of a mountain and fallen off the other. She’d written songs about love, songs about passion, yet she’d never fully understood her own words until now.
Until now, she thought, when the man who lay beside her had dared her to live her own fantasies. With him she’d found the answer to the dark, driving needs that gave the grit, or the