by Webb, Peggy
The clock on the mantel ticked loudly, filling the silent room and marking off the passing minutes, but the two of them stood suspended in time. In slow motion, Adam turned her in his arms. Maggie looked down into his face and saw passion and desire written there. With a dreamlike movement she lowered her lips to his, savoring their familiar warmth.
Still clinging to her, Adam lifted her from the raised hearth and slid her down his body until her feet were touching the floor. Her arms wove around his neck, and rational thought flew from her mind like dandelions before the wind. She was aware only of the delicious way his hard, muscular body was touching hers and the way his lips rekindled the flame that had been burning in her ever since they’d met in the woods. The flame flickered to life and became a blazing conflagration as his tongue explored the warm inner caverns of her mouth.
The kiss deepened as Adam’s hands moved down the small of her back, cupping her buttocks and moving her in tightly against his body. She groaned when his lips left hers and moved in a scorching line down the side of her throat. Her head dropped back on the slender column of her neck, letting her hair sweep backward like a golden curtain.
“Maggie, Maggie.”
Dimly she heard the metallic whisper as Adam opened the long zipper in the back of her dress. His hands gently pushed the white wool away, his lips searing across one shoulder, then stopping to linger briefly on the small pulse at the base of her throat.
Maggie wound her fingers into his dark hair and pressed his head closer.
“Lord, I want you, Maggie,” he said huskily. She was only dimly aware of being lifted and carried to the sofa. Adam lowered her to the cushions and sank down on top of her. In the dim light of the room, his eyes were so dark they were almost black, as they memorized the lines of her face, her throat, her barely exposed breasts. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered hoarsely as he lowered his head once again to claim her lips.
His hands molded her trim hips to his lower body, and she loosened his shirt from the waistband of his pants and slid her hands across the smooth muscles of his back. His skin was smooth-textured and sleek. Maggie let her fingertips trail across his skin, reveling in the feel of him. He felt so right, and she wanted him with a fierce intensity that shocked her.
Her body was heavy with need, filled with a molten liquid that coursed through her veins, burning away any lingering thoughts of resistance. She felt his weight shift as Adam sat up to gaze at her. Fierce desire burned in the eyes that roamed her body. He lifted her hand and pressed hot kisses on the tips of each of her fingers. “My wild, willful Maggie.”
He lowered his head to the inviting crevice between her breasts and planted warm, moist kisses there. Maggie writhed under him, barely aware of the ridges of the sofa cushions against her back and the scratchy feel of Adam’s coat against her cheek. “I will tame you, my tigress,” he murmured into the soft swells of her breasts.
Something inside Maggie pulled back at his words. Suddenly she was aware of the shrilling of the teapot from the kitchen. Tame her? Tame her! She stiffened, and shoved against his chest with all her strength.
Adam sat upright and looked at her, puzzled. “Maggie?”
She jerked her dress back up over her shoulders. “Not while I have breath in my body,” she snapped.
Adam reached down to cup her chin with his hand. “Maggie, what’s wrong?”
She swatted at the hand as if it were a pesky fly. “I’ve come to my senses.” She raked a hand through her hair, pushing it back from her hot face.
“I don’t understand your sudden mood change.” He reached out to smooth back a stray curl from Maggie’s forehead. “I have protection, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” she said furiously. “So you planned this ‘taming’ in advance?”
He sprang up from the sofa. “Do you think I could ever plan what happened between us?” He towered over her, scowling.
Maggie glowered up at him. “Didn’t you?” she accused.
“You have the memory of an elephant and the tenacity of a bulldog.” Leaving her lying tumbled and unfulfilled on the sofa, Adam walked toward the door. A cold blast of air chilled the room when he opened the door. Turning, he spoke softly. “See you in the fighting arena, Maggie.” And then he was gone.
Clutching her dress around her, Maggie sat up. Her heart was thundering and her body was limp with the aftermath of passion. She tucked her legs under her and leaned her head against the sofa back. If she could only get her aroused and throbbing body to move, she would find something to throw against the wall.
“That... that hunter!”
The clock on the mantel ticked loudly and the teapot screamed for attention in the kitchen.
Maggie ignored them both as she sat on the sofa trying to put herself back together again. Outside the wind howled around her windows in December fury. The sound was mournful and vaguely satisfying to Maggie. It matched her mood.
At last she rose from the sofa. Glancing down, she saw Adam’s topcoat lying in a rumpled heap against the cushions. The well-organized banker, self-appointed tamer of Maggie Merriweather, had forgotten his coat. She smiled a small, triumphant smile as she walked from the den.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The sun shining through her bedroom window awakened Maggie. She rolled over in her tangled knot of covers and groaned. She didn’t want to wake up, for waking meant remembering last night, and remembering brought a strange kind of hurt.
Opening one eye, which was still gritty from too little sleep, she peered at the new day. Everything looked normal. The sun beamed through her sheer, cream colored ruffled curtains, bounced off her brass bed, and illuminated the framed pictures of her family. But everything was far from normal, and Maggie Merriweather knew it. She was frighteningly close to being in love with her enemy.
Heaving a resigned sigh, she sat up in the middle of her bed, wrapping the blanket around her shoulders to ward off the chill. She propped her elbows on her knees and her chin in her cupped hands and stared morosely at the ceiling. How could it have happened? Of all the men in the world, why did it have to be Adam Trent?
Falling in love with him would be so easy. He had a kind of personal magnetism that was hard to resist. Forgetting him would not be easy. But she could, and she had to. She and Adam were poles apart in everything except their passion for each other. He was accustomed to organization and statistics and decorous behavior. Especially decorous behavior. Maggie grimaced. Everything she did was madly impulsive and totally unpredictable. She was not decorous at all.
Maggie sprang from the bed, grabbed her robe, and headed to the kitchen. In her den, Adam’s coat lay on the sofa and Adam’s picture hung on the wall. Her steps slowed, started up again, and finally halted. Adam was everywhere. He was lounging against the sofa cushions laughing about his old second-grade teacher, leaning against the mantel watching the fire, standing in the doorway chiding her about the tea. Forgetting him was going to be harder than she’d thought.
Grabbing the coat off the sofa, she flung it into the hall closet and slammed the door shut. Satisfied that she had at least done that much, she marched to the kitchen, determination ringing in her steps. She banged open the cabinets with unnecessary vigor, grabbed a plastic Snoopy bowl, and stomped to the refrigerator. Milk sloshed onto the counter as she filled her cereal bowl too full.
Taking the soggy mess to the table, Maggie sat in her chair and brooded. Love was sometimes a hurtful thing. Why did she and Adam have to be so different? Irreconcilable differences, she thought. That was what they had.
The scratching of claws on her kitchen floor announced the arrival of her three dogs. They stood in a row, wagging their tails at Maggie and looking pitifully hungry.
“You poor starving babies. Did you think I was never going to get up this morning?” Leaving her soggy cereal floating in its bowl, she went to the cabinet to get the dog food. “After all. It is Saturday,” she reminded them as she carried th
e food toward the kitchen door.
They scurried out before her, through the doggie door, wagging tails and jumping all around in the knowledge that they were going to be fed. Maggie smiled as she followed them to the carport. “Such high spirits you guys have. I wish they were catching!”
o0o
But they weren’t. Not even a phone call to her dad and a beautiful church service on Sunday lifted the gloom that had settled over her when she realized the full extent of her feelings for Adam. Maggie decided that it was one of the longest weekends she had ever spent, and she was more than happy to be back at school Monday, surrounded by chattering seven-year-olds.
“So? How was the banquet?” Martha Jo asked in the hall between second- and third-period classes.
“Remind me to kill you when I have time.” Maggie turned to a sandy-haired urchin entering her room. “No, Jeff. You may not take your dog to reading circle. Leave him in the hall.”
Jeff hung his head and scuffed his feet on the floor. “Aw, shucks, Miz Meweweaver. He likes to read.”
“In you go, Jeff. You can bring him in for the party.”
“What was that all about?” Martha Jo asked when the boy was gone.
“Jeff’s parents won’t let him have a real pet, so he created an imaginary one. Ralph goes everywhere he goes.” She turned to the fantasy pet. “Sit, Ralph.”
“I think your vacation is overdue, Maggie,” Martha Jo said with a laugh.
“Haven’t you heard about teaching?” Maggie quipped. “Insanity comes with the territory.”
“I thought it belonged exclusively to banking.” Adam Trent stood in the hall, poised and smiling and looking every bit as delicious as Maggie remembered. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“And you must be Adam Trent.” Martha Jo stuck out her small hand. “Hi. I’m Martha Jo Peterson. Welcome to Bedlam. You’re just the sort of distraction we need today.”
Taking Martha Jo’s hand, he smiled that smile, the one that always melted Maggie’s marshmallow heart and transformed her into a Raggedy Ann without any stuffing. She was so busy getting stiffening back into her legs and starch back into her heart that she didn’t hear a word they were saying. All she knew was that suddenly Martha Jo was gone and she was standing alone in the hall with Adam and he was holding her hand and she had to start all over again with the starch. Shoot!
“This is getting to be a habit with me.” Adam smiled down at her.
“What is?” Maggie’s confusion was genuine. She was so disturbed by seeing him again—particularly after coming to the painful conclusion that she was only a breath away from loving him—that she didn’t know what to say.
“Bearing gifts and saying ‘I’m sorry.’ You must believe that I never intended for you to be stoned at the banquet. So I have brought this as a peace offering.” He indicated the enormous tree that trailed down the hall behind him. He held the trunk easily with one hand.
“I would hardly call the few nasty remarks at the banquet a stoning.” What happened later on the couch had been a stoning. She had come away from that encounter bruised and battered. But it would not happen again. The starch hardened in her legs and spread throughout her entire body as she became determined to spurn both the man and his tree, a tree she had been wanting for a week for her students’ party. “It’s too bad you went to all that trouble to bring me a tree. I have twenty-two students inside waiting for a reading lesson.” She stepped inside her room, and Adam came in behind her, tree and all.
“Don’t mind me. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.” Hefting the large cedar tree upright, he carried it to the corner of her room and proceeded to place a stand on the floor and anchor the tree in it. He looked as if he owned the room and everybody in it.
“Is that a Cwis’mas twee, Miz Meweweaver?”
“Can we help decorate it?”
“Cool!”
“Who is that man? Is he your husband?”
Maggie knew she had been outfoxed. Her students were bouncing up and down with excitement, and Adam was puttering about the tree humming. Humming! He even had the gall to wink at her. “We will not have reading circle today.” she announced unnecessarily. “Today we will trim the tree.”
Turning her back on the hubbub, she gathered the handmade ornaments and garlands from the top shelf of her supply closet. Standing on tiptoe, she reached to get the lopsided treetop angel that had fallen to the back.
“Here, let me do that.” Adam was suddenly behind her, reaching his arms around her to retrieve the ornament.
Maggie stood very still for a moment, willing herself to ignore the way her blood was sizzling through her veins. “You’ve done quite enough already,” she said stiffly.
His right hand caressed the length of her arm as he dragged the lopsided angel out with his left. “I’m staying to help trim the tree.”
She whirled on him, her eyes blazing. “You haven’t been invited.” Of all the overbearing, blue eyed, gorgeous men, he took the cake! This was her classroom, and she would not let him invade it the way he had invaded her den. Unconsciously, she rubbed the arm he had touched.
“Yes, I have. A little kid named Ralph asked me to stay.”
“Ralph?” Maggie’s eyes sparkled with suppressed laughter.
“A cute kid with freckles and sandy hair. He seemed sort of bashful. Instead of coming right out and asking me, he said, ‘Ralph wants you to stay.’ “
“Ralph is his dog.” She burst out laughing at the look on Adam’s face.
“I might have known you would have animals in your classroom, Maggie. If you’re anything, you’re unconventional.”
She almost didn’t tell him about Ralph. Let him think what he wanted. Maybe he would decide she was completely off her rocker and stay away. Then she wouldn’t have to be bothered about stiffening her spine and stilling her pulse and hardening her heart whenever he was around. It was getting to be an enormous chore. “The little boy is Jeff, and Ralph is a figment of his imagination.”
A tiny girl with apple cheeks and flaxen curls bounded up to Adam and took his hand. “Come on, Mr. Merriweather. We’re ready to put Phyllis on the tree.”
Adam glanced at Maggie in astonishment. “Phyllis?”
“You have her in your left hand.” Maggie laughed. “The tree top angel.”
Following them to the tree, she pondered the case of mistaken identity. What if she really were Adam’s wife? Just thinking about the possibility made her hot all over. It would never happen, of course. Bankers, like nursing-home directors, didn’t marry Joan of Arcs. Joan of Arcs stuck out like sore thumbs in staid old banks and snobby country clubs. But most of all there was the matter of the animals. Her heart felt like stone as she stood on the edge of the circle and watched Adam help her students trim the tree.
They adored him. He chatted and laughed with them and took turns holding them up high to trim the top branches of the tree. Maggie even noticed that he had brought a live tree, with its roots balled in burlap for replanting after Christmas. That was exactly what she would have done. Had he done that because of her, or was he genuinely interested in preserving forests?
“Ready for Phyllis, Mr. Merriweather. “
Adam had not corrected the children’s mistaken idea, she noticed.
“I’m afraid I can’t reach the top, but your teacher can.” Before Maggie realized what was happening, Adam had thrust Phyllis into her hands and had swung her up in his arms. With his strong, gentle hands spanning her waist, he lifted her toward the top of the tree. “Can you reach the top, Maggie?”
With his hands on her, she could have reached the stars, but she didn’t tell him so. She made a strangled sound that vaguely resembled “yes” as she struggled to concentrate on anchoring Phyllis to the treetop. The heady scent of fresh cedar made her light-headed. At least she told herself that was what it was. It took her longer to place the angel than it should have, and Adam was enjoying himself immensely.
At last Phyllis was secure
. “All through,” she announced.
As Adam lowered her to the floor, he whispered. “Call me if you ever need a stepladder. The job has its compensations.” He placed a fleeting kiss on her cheek, and it was done so quickly, she wasn’t sure it had happened. Except that her cheek still tingled from his touch.
“Remember that you’re in school, Adam.”
“I was always naughty in school.”
“Fortunately, you are leaving soon.”
“On the contrary. Ralph has invited me to stay for the Christmas ‘page nut.’ I told him I would.” His eyes gleamed at her as he leaned casually against the wall beside the tree. “I’ll watch from here. I don’t think I would fit into one of your desks.”
“I’m going to have to do something about Ralph,” she muttered as she marched, heels clicking, to the front of the room. She was aware of Adam’s eyes on her as she restored order and assembled the children for their pageant. Each child had a part in the story. Maggie moved to the back of the room with her prompting book as the shepherds and the host of angels took over.
“Behold!” An exuberant voice rang through the room as the second graders began their pageant. Their eyes were round with wonder, and their tiny fists clutched wrinkled slips of paper, their lines in the play.
“I bring you good te... t...”
“Tidings,” Maggie prompted. The fresh green scent of the cedar tree filled her nostrils, and the nearness of Adam filled her heart. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.
With a sense of shock, Maggie felt Adam’s hand at the back of her neck, underneath her hair. Slowly, he lifted her hair and bent to plant a moist kiss on the nape of her neck. “I love watching you work, Maggie. You were right: you do give a hundred percent to everything you care about,” he whispered. “I can’t wait to get my hundred percent.”
If he had intended to throw her off balance, he had succeeded. “Never,” she whispered fiercely.