THIS PERFECT STRANGER

by Barbara Ankrum

  "Watch out," she murmured under her breath.

  "He's curious now," Cain told her. "He's tired of running. He's decided he'd rather have me as a friend than an enemy."

  Geronimo moved tentatively forward until at last, he touched his nose to Cain's shoulder. Unbelievable, Maggie thought. Cain rubbed his nose and his neck with the flat of his hand and miraculously, the horse let him. It was the first time she'd seen him let anyone but her touch him.

  Cain moved away, walking in large circles. The horse watched at first, then tentatively followed. But he stopped after a few steps and simply watched Cain. Uncoiling the line again from his hand, he snapped it, forcing Geronimo back into his run, sending him circling the pen again for five or six revolutions. Then he repeated the procedure he'd done earlier of feigning disinterest. Again, Geronimo moved in toward Cain and nuzzled his shoulder. Cain rubbed him all over again then started the circles. This time, Geronimo followed like an obedient dog.

  Maggie watched, stunned. In less than thirty minutes, he practically had the animal eating out of his hand.

  "Now we're allies," Cain told her. "He needs one. Horses are herd animals. They're not solitary creatures." He turned to scratch Geronimo's ears. "Bring me the saddle pad and saddle, Maggie."

  In another ten minutes, after touching him all over, Cain had saddled Geronimo up and was sending him back on his way around the pen with the stirrups tied beneath his belly. When the animal had finished that cycle of retreat and follow, he hooked up a lead back to Geronimo's halter and led him to Maggie as if it were something the horse did every day.

  "That's enough for today," he said, patting the horse's muscular neck. "He'll use the lead now without a balk and be taking weight on his back within a day or so."

  Maggie simply stared at Cain. "Who are you? And what did you do with that guy who rode in here on a Harley?"

  He grinned and scratched Geronimo behind the ears.

  "Where on earth did you learn that?" she asked, touching Geronimo's nose with the palm of her hand.

  "A wise old friend down in California. He's been doing it for years."

  A friend in California. So, he had a friend, somewhere. "Will it still work tomorrow?" she asked.

  Cain grinned again. "We just had our first date. He's learning to trust me. And you. Long as we don't let him down, he'll return the favor."

  "Why didn't you tell me how good you were with horses?"

  "You didn't ask." Cain handed her the lead line. His fingers brushed hers for a lingering moment before he let go and started toward the barn.

  "That's hardly fair," she said, referring not only to the situation, but the touch. "You don't say anything about yourself."

  Cain grinned, shrugging off her protest.

  "Hey, does that mean I'm supposed to ask?" she called after him.

  "Nobody said you couldn't ask."

  "Huh. Anyone ever call you abstruse?" she yelled.

  He slapped the dust from his thigh with the brim of his hat. "Not to my face," he said, and disappeared into the shadows of the barn.

  She patted Geronimo's jaw and gave him a scratch under the chin. "Take it from me," she mused aloud, staring at the barn. "He's abstruse." And no simple drifter. But she intended to figure out him out. If it took a thousand unanswered questions.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  "I want to know who he is, where he came from, and what the hell he's doing in Fishhook."

  Laird Donnelly stormed around his walnut-paneled office, grinding the fifty-dollar Cuban cigar in his fist into useless powder. He paced to the window and back, ending abruptly ten inches from Gene Fielding's face. "And I want it yesterday."

  The attorney leaned back in his seat. "I'll do my best."

  "Your best had better be more than good. Because I won't tolerate another screwup like last time. You know that don't you, Gene?"

  He was half the size of Laird Donnelly and had little of the other man's personal power, but he had one thing the bigger man did not. Patience. He'd learned long ago that the only way to survive a hell-on-wheels Donnelly was with a full frontal approach.

  "You know as well as I do that the last screwup was Butch's, not mine. So if we're going to go around placing blame, let's put it where it belongs. I do what nobody else will do for you, Laird. I've been doing it for almost ten years. If you're not happy with the job I do—"

  "This," Laird interrupted, pointing to the 8x10 photo of Cain MacCallister walking down the streets of Fishhook, "is your friggin' job, Gene. You find out what his grandmother ate for breakfast and what kind of goddamn oil he puts in that motorcycle of his. He's standing smack dab in the middle of our future! And I'll be damned if I'm gonna sit idly by and watch while that … drifter ruins everything."

  "That's the point. He is a drifter, like you said, without two nickels to rub together. We don't know that he'll make any difference at all," Gene argued reasonably.

  A bark of laughter escaped from Laird. "Oh, he's trouble, all right. I can smell it on him." He dumped what was left of his cigar into the trash can beside the desk and walked to the chintz-draped window that overlooked his land. A storm was gathering above the mountains. "He's got a past. And I want to know what it is. Ben's widow is too damned scared to think of marrying a stranger like him on her own. Maybe it was Levi's idea. Or maybe MacCallister's. Either way, I want him out of the picture. Understand?"

  Gene stared at Donnelly's massive back and tried to imagine what his father would say if he could see what his son had become. Robert Donnelly had been a hard man, with a work ethic that would drive most normal men into the ground. It had, in fact, done that very thing to him at the age of fifty-five, ten years ago.

  Gene supposed maybe Robert had been hardest on Laird, and the younger Donnelly thought he had a lot to prove. But with Laird it went way beyond ambition. Things tended to move into the radius of obsession with him, whether it was his preoccupation with the young widow, Maggie Cortland, or the scheme he'd cooked up to make his mark on Montana.

  If he could have, Gene thought tiredly, he would have walked away from this job years ago. But he was in it up to his neck now. And his only hope of extricating himself was to see this thing through to the end. And try to retain some scrap of integrity in the process.

  He got to his feet and brushed the wrinkles from the seam of his trousers. "I'll see what I can dig up on him. Don't do anything foolish, Laird. We've got too much at stake."

  Donnelly turned slowly at that. "You, my friend, would be foolish to underestimate exactly how much this deal means to both of us. I'll do whatever it takes to make it happen. And if you're as smart as you think you are, you'll keep that in mind."

  "I don't like threats, Laird," Gene said, gathering himself up to his full five feet eight inches. "And I don't like cleaning up after you when things go wrong."

  "So see that it doesn't," Laird told him, stalking out of the room. "That's your damned job."

  * * *

  10:50 p.m.

  Maggie thunked the clock on her bedside table, sure it was broken. She'd been staring at it for what seemed like hours and it didn't seem to be moving.

  The little digital number flipped down. 10:51 p.m.

  Okay. It wasn't the clock. It was her. She'd gone to bed at nine when Cain had decided to turn in. It had been a long day and tomorrow would be even longer. She should have fallen asleep when her head hit the pillow. But a thousand thoughts swam through her head. And most of them revolved around the man in the room next door.

  All right, so this marriage thing wasn't going at all the way she'd expected. So, it wasn't as simple as she'd naively thought it would be. It wasn't entirely her fault that every time he looked up from whatever he was doing she happened to be watching him. It was … coincidental. And just because they occasionally bumped into one another in the hallway, getting ready for bed, didn't mean she'd planned the encounter. Even if that's how it might look to the impartial observer.


  Okay, so maybe she had planned it once. But that was only because she'd forgotten to tell him that one of the mares was off her oats and needed an extra flake of alfalfa in the morning.

  Maggie tugged the covers up under her chin, staring at the ceiling. In her own defense, it seemed only natural that since there were only the two of them here, her mind would wander now and again to him. Plenty else occupied her thoughts as well. The horses. Money. And of course, the mysterious Remus Trimark.

  She threw the covers off her and headed for the kitchen. Maybe tea would settle her. Padding silently downstairs, she turned the burner on under the kettle and dropped an herbal tea bag into a mug. Sometimes tea helped, she reasoned. Mostly, nothing did.

  But that wasn't anything new. She hadn't slept through the night since the day Ben died. Maybe she never would again. In the beginning, his face would wake her and her heart would start pounding erratically. The light would erase his image, but nothing could banish her feelings of guilt. She'd never know the answers to the questions that haunted her in the dark of night. Ben hadn't left a note. No goodbye, no apologies. Just … unanswered questions.

  Pulling the phone book from its spot under the counter, she began idly leafing through it.

  Tisdale … Trask … Trilburn … she pulled her finger down the column … Trimble. No Trimark. And no Remus anything.

  She flipped to the yellow pages without a clue what she was looking for. Tribune Printing … Tri-County Plumbing—

  "Good reading?"

  Maggie nearly dropped the phone book at the sound of Cain's voice behind her. She whirled to find him leaning carelessly against the kitchen doorjamb in a pair of jeans and an old T-shirt. He looked rumpled and masculine and incredibly sexy.

  "Cain," she gasped. "You scared me. What are you doing out there?"

  He thumbed a gesture back at the night sky. "Counting stars." He glanced at the phone book. "I have a couple of Clancy novels with me if you've run out of reading material."

  She clapped the phone book shut. "I wasn't really reading. I was just…"

  "Looking for an electrician?" He flipped on the overhead light.

  She laughed and shook her head. "Tea?"

  "Sure." He pushed away from the doorjamb, turned a chair around backward and straddled it. "I'm not much good at sleep myself. What's your excuse?"

  "I gave excuses up for Lent. Now I just make tea."

  The kettle began to whistle and she poured hot water into the two cups and carried them over to the table.

  "I think it's kind of a shame most folks miss seeing the world at this time of night," he said, "when everything's dark as pitch and the stars are winking in the sky like fireflies."

  She stopped stirring her honey in and looked up at him. "Why Cain. How poetic."

  He grinned self-consciously, reaching for his mug. "It's just that you don't really appreciate it until you don't see it for a while."

  "I lived in New York City for a few years," she said. "There are no stars there."

  "New York? What were you doing there?"

  "Going to school. NYU. It's where I met Ben."

  "And you ended up here?"

  Maggie took a sip of her tea. "He was from here. His father died and left him this place. He'd always thought he didn't want to stay here, but in the end, he loved it and couldn't live in the East. When he came, I came with him."

  "That must have been difficult," Cain said, sipping his tea. "Fishhook's no metropolis."

  "You're telling me." She toyed with the ring of steam her mug had left on the table. "I fell in love with it, though. It's my home. The only real home I've ever had." When Cain frowned, she explained, "I was an army brat. My parents moved every year, sometimes twice a year."

  He nodded. "Where are they now?"

  "Gone," she said. "Both of them. My father in a border skirmish in Afghanistan, ten years ago. My mother when I was seventeen."

  "Sorry," he said.

  "What about you?" she asked. "Are your parents living?"

  He took a sip of steaming tea and looked away. "No."

  "See? Both orphans," she said. "We have more in common than we thought."

  Cain took a final swig of his tea before standing to set it in the sink. "You should get some sleep."

  Maggie rubbed the back of her neck absently. At least he was consistently tight-lipped. "You go. I'm too wound up to sleep."

  He got to his feet, but instead of heading upstairs, he came around the back of her chair. "I can fix that," he said, sliding his big hands against the taut muscles of her shoulders through the thick, terry cloth of her robe.

  "You don't have to—" she began, but forgot what she was going to say as soon as thumbs found the spot between her shoulder blades.

  "Relax," he said. "I'm good at this."

  He was. The absolute luxury of a shoulder rub was too wonderful to turn down. His fingers dug deeply into the knotted muscles of her neck and upper back and Maggie groaned with pleasure.

  "You've done this before," she murmured.

  "Once or twice."

  His hands found all the right spots on her shoulders as if he knew exactly where she ached. Ben had never had the inclination or the expertise to do this. But Cain did. Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, she began to feel her shoulders relax. His hands slid inside the robe against her bare skin with smooth, deep strokes and his thumbs caressed the muscles bracketing her upper spine. There was no missing the sensuality of it. Because his slow strokes warmed her skin with a building heat.

  She should have stopped him, but she didn't have the will. Allowing her head to fall back into the pressure of his hands, she closed her eyes. It had been so long since anyone had touched her. Really touched her.

  "Cain? Can I ask you something?"

  "You can ask."

  "What made you come here? This valley, I mean?"

  "This is where my money ran out," he said, stroking the sides of her neck with his thumbs.

  "But it could have run out a hundred miles south of here. Or east. Or in Missoula." He didn't reply. He just kept rubbing her neck. "Sometimes," she mused, "I think life is odd that way. The things that happen. It seems that there's no rhyme or reason to it. But then here we are. Married, when a couple of weeks ago we didn't even know one another."

  "Frightening, huh?" he said with a grin in his voice.

  "What's frightening," she said, "is that I feel safe with you. And I don't even know you."

  The clock on the kitchen wall ticked loudly. Somewhere in the far off hills, a coyote yipped to its mate. His thumbs found two painful spots between her shoulder blades. "You carry your tension right here," he said. "Annie used to do that, too."

  Maggie stilled and opened her eyes. "Annie?"

  A long pause stretched between them before he said, "My wife."

  Funny how two little words could turn a conversation on its ear. "Your wife?" Maggie repeated, pulling away from his hands and turning in his direction. "You were married? As in past tense, right? You are divorced?"

  "No," he said. "She died a few years ago."

  Maggie wanted to bite her tongue. Like her, Cain was much too young to be a widower. "I'm … so sorry. Was she ill?"

  "No."

  She turned to face him. He was staring out the darkened window, expressionless.

  "She was killed buying ice cream at the little store around the corner. In a botched robbery."

  She touched the hand that still rested on her shoulder. "Cain. That's awful."

  "I don't tell many people that," he said. "It was … it seems like it was a long time ago."

  But not long enough, she thought, watching the emotions flicker across his face. Maggie squeezed his hand, then got to her feet, letting the chair stand between them. "Sometimes," she said, "it helps to say those things out loud. Just so you know they don't exist only in your dreams."

  His head came up with a start, and for a moment, she saw it in his face—that he never imagined anyone else woul
d know how that felt. But she did.

  "Sometimes," she said quietly, "it seems like my whole life with Ben, and even before all that, never really happened. Except at night. Then it's real." She studied Cain's face, that strong, rugged face that hid everything he felt with such pinpoint skill. "That's my excuse. For why I don't sleep."

  He gave her a half smile and brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. He was standing close. So close she could smell the soap on his hands and the scent of mint tea on his breath.

  He leaned closer, waiting for her to stop him. But she didn't. Inexplicably, she didn't.

  And then he was kissing her, sealing her mouth with his and sweeping aside rational thought. His lips were warm, his jaw, rough. The kiss, at first tentative, grew more urgent as he slanted his mouth in the other direction and cupped the back of her head in his hand.

  He took her breath away. And somewhere, in the dim recesses of her mind, she knew she shouldn't be enjoying this. But she forgot to think as he deepened the kiss, brushing the surface of her teeth with his tongue. It weakened her knees along with her resolve. She half clung to him as hunger long ago forgotten tumbled through her. But when he drew her closer still, and she felt his need for her, she cursed her inability to keep a clear head around him.

  She broke the kiss, breathing hard and pushing away from him. "I'm sorry," she said. "We can't—"

  Taking a step backward, his breath coming a little too fast as well. He turned toward the sink, pulling it together.

  "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—" she began again.

  "Don't," he broke in. "That was my fault."

  It wasn't, and he knew it. She bore every bit as much of the blame.

  "Look," he said, a muscle ticking in his jaw, "I can't … uh … I'm gonna go out for a while. You get some sleep."

  "Out?" she echoed, as if the word were foreign. "It's almost midnight."

  "Yeah. Don't wait up," he said, reaching for the hat he'd left near the door. He pulled his keys from his hip pocket and left the screen door screeching behind him.

  Maggie didn't move. Rather, she stood frozen in place. Out? As in, don't - worry - Maggie - I'll - be - discreet … out?