THIS PERFECT STRANGER

by Barbara Ankrum

  Harold spoke first. "She looks … happy."

  The observation definitely lacked conviction. "She found a buyer for Geronimo today," he replied, checking out the dozens of gaming booths as they walked.

  "Ah, that must be it," Harold said unconvincingly.

  Cain slowed to a stop. "You have something to say, Harold?"

  The older man clasped his hands behind his back. "Only that Maggie's like a daughter to me. And I don't want to see her hurt."

  "That's not my intention."

  "Is it still your intention to leave at the end of that contract I drew up for you?" he asked bluntly.

  Jaw tightening, Cain stared off into the crowd, aware that he was being backed into a corner. "Yes."

  Harold started walking. It took Cain a moment to follow. "You'd never think of Maggie as fragile," Harold said carefully. He stopped in front of Atlas's Hammer where younger men were testing their testosterone levels by trying to ring the bell for a dollar a shot. "I haven't thanked you yet for saving her life."

  "You would've done the same."

  Harold threw two dollars down and picked up the huge wooden mallet. "Or I would've died trying," Harold agreed, as he swung the hammer down on the small metal target. The little red ball rose halfway up the scale to "Ninety Pound Weakling." With a sigh, he handed Cain the mallet. "Try your hand?"

  He took it, centering himself over the target. In the distance he could see the food judging booths and caught sight of Maggie and Moody under the tent. He smashed the mallet down hard, and forcing the little red ball satisfyingly all the way to the top. The buzzer sounded and lights flashed. The carny working the booth handed Cain a stuffed chartreuse unicorn. At least that's what he figured it was supposed to be. He and Harold moved toward the food booth.

  "My granddaughter's got one of those," Harold said. "Thinks Sedgewick's all that with a cherry on top. Funny what little girls get attached to."

  Cain just kept walking.

  "Wanted Sedgewick's to come for her fifth birthday party. Her father told her that Sedgewick's was just a television character and not a real unicorn. But she didn't listen. She just loved him the way little girls do. She was so sure he'd come."

  Harold glanced up at Cain. "So her father found a Sedgewick costume and rented it. Showed up and played the part. He made the party and he thought everything was going well until it was time to go. Seems Katie thought Sedgewick had come to stay. She cried all night long."

  Cain shook his head sympathetically. "That's a real sad story, Harold. I'll try to remember it next time I plan a five-year-old's birthday party."

  Harold smiled and started to walk again.

  "Maggie's a grown-up," Cain said. "And party games and innocent Ferris wheel kisses are the least of her worries."

  With a frown, he asked, "What do you mean?"

  "Somebody tampered with the brake line on Maggie's truck."

  Harold stopped dead. "What?"

  "I haven't told Maggie yet. We had the truck towed back to her place and it took me two days to get the carburetor and the fuel pump dried out. So I didn't notice the brake line until yesterday. It was punctured with some kind of tool for a nice slow leak. Any idea who might've done that?"

  As if the question had conjured him, Laird Donnelly turned up twenty feet away, heading right toward them. He had his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and a smile Cain didn't like at all on his face.

  "Well, now, if it isn't the newlywed groom and his lawyer."

  Cain's fists tightened of their own accord. He wanted to beat that stupid grin right off of Donnelly's face.

  "Isn't that strange," Harold said wonderingly to Cain. "And we were just talking about you."

  "You were?" Laird folded his arms across his chest. "I'm real flattered, boys."

  "Yeah," Cain said, "We were just saying that the sheriff might be interested to know you've expanded your ranching skills to brake jobs."

  He laughed. "Brake jobs? 'Fraid I don't know the first thing about brakes unless they've got four legs and a set of reins."

  "That so?" Cain asked moving closer, but Harold put his hand on his arm.

  "Now you, on the other hand," Laird said to Cain, "you must've learned all kinds of practical skills while you were behind bars. Let's see … license plates? Manhole covers…"

  Cain felt the blood leave his face. Felt Harold's gaze turn to shock. Saw Maggie walking toward him looking happy and excited.

  And his only coherent thought was Not yet. "'Course I suppose Maggie's the one who'd know more about your … special skills." Laird said as she moved beside Cain.

  He lunged at Donnelly, but Harold grabbed his arm and held him back.

  "Leave her out of this, Donnelly," Cain warned with low menace.

  "What is this?" she asked, her panicked gaze moving between him and Donnelly.

  "'Course Maggie knows all about this, doesn't she? I mean, surely you told her before you said your 'I-do's.' Didn't you?"

  Confused, she turned to Cain. "What's he talking about?"

  His throat felt like cotton and he couldn't seem to swallow. Dammit, dammit!

  Laird clucked his tongue. "Aw, you didn't tell her, did you? Shame on you, MacCallister." He turned to Maggie. "By rights, he should've told you."

  Her voice sounded small, as if she really didn't want to know. "Told me what?"

  "Well, about the state of Texas's hospitality he enjoyed for the past three years. In a federal penitentiary, Maggie. Your husband's a cold-blooded killer."

  * * *

  Chapter 11

  « ^ »

  Shock fingered down her spine, cold and awful. Maggie turned back to Cain, whose tight-jawed expression made the hair on the back of her neck prickle. "Cain?" she said, curling her hand around his arm. That same arm that just moments ago had been holding her. "He's lying. Tell him he's lying."

  Cain didn't say a word. White as the plates catching pennies behind him, he stared at the ground, unable to even meet her eye. Maggie jerked a look at Harold, whose horrified expression probably mirrored her own.

  "Oh, my God," she whispered.

  Moody, who'd stayed behind at the food tables to pick up her ribbon came hurrying up, waving the thing.

  "Didn't I say I made the best chocolate—" her confused gaze traveled between her and Cain and Harold "—sauce? What?"

  Maggie shoved away from him. Impossible. Impossible. Not Cain. He would've told her. He would've warned her. "Cain?"

  Slowly, his gaze—devastating in its hollowness—rose to meet hers. His blue, blue guilty eyes.

  Maggie reeled away from him, plunging into the crowds and running blindly away. She heard Harold call after her and the sound of Moody's voice. She wanted to disappear. Be sucked down into the ground and disappear. Would she never learn?

  All around her crowds of people were laughing and talking as if the world hadn't just been thrown off-kilter. Her head throbbed and her cheeks were suddenly wet and she needed to—what? Hide? Run? There was nowhere to go.

  She stopped and looked up at the House of Mirrors entrance directly in front of her.

  "Maggie!"

  This time it was Cain's voice she heard. She whirled around to see him shoving through the crowds after her. She tugged some tickets from her pocket and stumbled into the mirrored entrance to the fun house. Behind her she heard Cain curse and argue with the ticket taker outside. She hurried in, following the maze of mirrored glass until she'd lost herself. Then, pressing her forehead against a mirrored wall, she flattened her palms against it and wept.

  Somewhere at the far end of the maze, she heard children shrieking with laughter as they tried to find their way out while her insides tumbled around like bits of broken glass.

  How could he have lied to her that way? Not tell her something so huge? A murderer. A cold-blooded murderer? She'd made love to him. Cared about him. A shudder went through her.

  "Maggie?"

  She jerked her head up at the sound of his voice.
He was inside, working his way through the maze. She moved backward and a thousand Maggie's moved with her. "Leave me alone!" she shouted.

  "Maggie, just let me explain."

  She started to blunder her way along the glass, moving away from the sound of his voice. "There's nothing to explain. You lied to me."

  "I didn't lie. I just didn't tell you."

  She felt her way along. "Oh, is that it? Well, I guess it never occurred to me to ask if you'd killed anyone lately."

  "I didn't think you needed to know."

  She saw him behind her in the mirrors, but she couldn't tell where he was.

  "Really," she said, her voice like chipped ice. She could see dozens of Cain's behind her somewhere in the mirrors but she couldn't tell which one was real. "You didn't think I'd want to know I was sharing a house with a—" She faltered. She couldn't even say it.

  "It didn't seem to matter to you who I was," he said, "as long as I married you and got you your loan."

  Silence fell over the mirrored room as Maggie contemplated his words. Damn him. He was right. She hadn't asked and she hadn't cared. She'd been desperate and he'd said yes. She'd trusted her gut and this is where it had gotten her.

  Cain took a step closer. "The man I killed was the man who murdered my wife."

  His words seemed to ricochet around the glass room. Maggie stopped moving and looked back. He was still there watching her from a hundred different angles.

  "What?"

  "I did kill him, Maggie. Donnelly was right about that part. And I was in prison."

  "What part wasn't he right about?" she asked in a small voice.

  Cain sighed tiredly. "The cold-blooded part. At least that's what the state of Texas decided when they overturned my verdict four months ago and let me go."

  She waited, not saying a word.

  Cain closed his eyes and tipped his head back. "I went there to kill him. To rip his life away from him the way he had Annie's. I went with a gun and an intention and I waited for him. When he came out from that seedy, back alley bar, I pointed that gun at him so he'd know how she'd felt at the end. I wanted him to beg me to not to kill him and then I wanted him to feel his life slowly leaking out of him the way that goddamned technicality had punched a hole in the case against him."

  A hard smile crossed his mouth. "And he begged me. On his knees, he begged me not to kill him. And as my finger tightened on the trigger … I realized Annie would hate what I was doing. Killing him wouldn't bring her back. So, I broke his jaw and left him moaning on the ground. I turned around to leave but I heard him slide a gun from somewhere and cock it behind me. I dove for the ground. His bullet missed. Mine didn't."

  Maggie had forgotten to breathe. She felt the cold glass under her palms and could hear the thud of her heart in the empty room.

  "Naturally," he went on, "the jury didn't see things that way. I mean … there I was with a gun, waiting for him in an alley. My court-appointed lawyer was too busy trying to figure out how to shave to defend me and the whole witness process seemed to baffle him. Even my old man was convinced."

  "Your father?" she asked. "I thought you said he was dead."

  Cain gave a sharp, humorless laugh. "To me he was. He'd disowned me years before for marrying Annie. I wasn't about to go to him when I lost her. So I got fifteen to life."

  He looked up at her in the mirrors and scrubbed his fingers against his skull. "Six months later, some lawyer bent on righting wrongs came and filed an appeal for me based on incompetent representation and found new evidence and a witness who'd never been called. After three years, a jury figured maybe the first one had been wrong. Or maybe they just figured I'd paid the debt for ridding the world of a scum like him. The state of Texas overturned my conviction four months ago."

  A handful of children spilled into the maze, squealing with laughter, barreling past Cain and finally her. Maggie got spun around and when she looked back, Cain was gone.

  She turned and started back, feeling her way along the walls and bumping into a few. "Cain?"

  Suddenly he was there again, moving and reflected in a thousand places. "Still wish I'd told you before?"

  "You should have trusted me," she said, inching toward his reflection only to have him disappear again.

  "Your reaction was," his voice said from somewhere nearby, "predictable."

  "That's not fair!" Maggie moved farther down the mirrored aisle and bumped into his reflection. She looked around her. "You can't know that, because you decided I couldn't be trusted with the truth." She shook her head. "Because it was safer for you to lie. What is that? Some genetically linked trait in men?"

  "Don't compare me to Ben."

  Her eyes stung as she searched the mirrors for him. "Why shouldn't I? How is what you did different?"

  Suddenly he was right beside her in the flesh. She could feel the damp heat of his skin and the vibrating tension his closeness always brought. His gaze moved over her with unrelenting intensity.

  "I never asked you to believe in me," he said.

  Maggie's lips parted, feeling the crush of that truth against her chest. He hadn't. But she'd done so recklessly anyway. And heaven help her, she still did.

  He didn't touch her. He just stood there like a coiled spring ready to explode.

  "I'm sorry, Cain. I was wrong."

  His expression was unreadable as he stared down at her. "It doesn't matter now. It'll be all over town tomorrow. It'd be better for you if I left."

  She fisted the material of his shirt in her hands. "No. That's exactly what he wants. Don't you see that? He'll win if you go."

  Cain cursed under his breath as he took her shoulders between his hands. "Don't you get it? He'll use me against you now, Maggie."

  "It was self-defense."

  "It's a small town. It's not about the truth, but what the truth looks like." He let go of her, but he was still close enough that she could see the muscle twitching his jaw and feel the damp heat radiating from him. "It'll go better for you if they think you didn't know and sent me packing, than if you do know and let me stay."

  "Nothing will be better for me if you leave."

  "Dammit, Maggie, I'm not the kind of man you should count on. I've been places you wouldn't want to know about. And I've done things—" He sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. "Dammit, we both knew this was only temporary."

  She reached for his hand and felt it quake at her touch. "I don't care about those things. I only care about the man standing in front of me. The one who held me last night in his arms…"

  "That was sex, Maggie. Don't confuse me with another kind of man. One who could love you the way you deserve to be loved. I can't be what you want me to be. Maybe once, but that part of me died a long time ago."

  She knew he was wrong about that. "I won't ask you to love me, Cain. Stay because you promised you would," she said quietly. "Stay because if you go, Laird Donnelly will have everything he wants. And we'll have nothing. Stay because I'm asking you to."

  His gaze was on her mouth and she pulled him closer until her breasts brushed against his chest. Despite his claims to the contrary, she saw in his eyes what he didn't want her to see—an eddy of those damned emotions he was so good at denying.

  He cupped the back of her head in his hand and dropped his mouth down on hers. He kissed her hard and deep with an urgency that stole the strength from her knees. She wanted to drag him inside her and keep him there, safe from all the forces bent on his destruction. But she couldn't protect him, any more than he could protect her.

  "Take me home, Cain. Make love to me. I don't want you to go."

  * * *

  They didn't make it all the way home. Cain pulled the motorcycle off the highway onto a side road a few miles south of Maggie's place because she was doing things to him with her hands that made driving any farther suicidal. She had his shirt nearly off before he'd lifted the bike up onto its kickstand. He ripped off the rest and returned the favor with her blouse.

  Sla
nting his mouth against her hers, he dragged her up against him until close wasn't close enough. So, he lifted her in his arms and headed for the cattle crossing grate that separated the road from the pasture beyond.

  It was dark with only the moon and the stars overhead for light, but he took her there in the thick, soft grass. They tore at each other's clothes until the night air washed over their bare skin. The tall grass and the pines nearby rustled in the evening breeze.

  Kneeling above her, Cain stared down at her pale beauty, knowing it wasn't his to possess and never truly could be. She deserved so much more than him. But she was like a drug. She made him do things he shouldn't do. Want things he couldn't have. Believe things about himself that were patently untrue.

  And none of that mattered. Because the wanting was more powerful than anything else. He cupped her breasts in his hands, lifting and caressing, brushing his thumbs against the pale dusky pink of her nipples. Maggie arched against him, then pulled him down to her, impatient and needing him nearer.

  She wrapped her legs around him and he drove into her. Their union was hard and fast and raw. Everything this night had been and more. Somewhere in the still functioning part of his brain he knew that staying was a terrible mistake. Because someday soon, when trouble came—and it would—she'd hate him for staying every bit as much as she'd hate him now if he left her. But then he forgot to think at all as she moved underneath him, urging him to let all of that go.

  They found release together there. And for a long time afterward, they didn't talk. He simply held her, watching the stars wink above them. And when, at last they rode home, Cain knew he would stay. Not for any of the reasons she'd offered. He'd stay because he was too selfish to give her up just yet.

  * * *

  The sound of Jigger whining downstairs woke Maggie the next morning as sunshine spilled through the east-facing window of her bedroom. He had to go out, but Maggie couldn't drag herself up just yet. She turned to look at Cain, who was sprawled on his stomach beside her with his arm across her belly and one knee draped over her leg. She blinked languidly and smiled. Last night was something of a blur, but she remembered coming home after the adventure in the meadow and not making it to the bedroom before he had her in his arms again.