Taming Maggie

by Webb, Peggy

  “That’s a good idea, Maggie. Do you need any money? I didn’t leave everything I’d saved down in Mexico.”

  “Thanks, Dad, but I think I’m okay. I’ll see you in a few days.”

  “All right, darlin’. I’ll tell Jim where you’re going. And Maggie, a little prayer wouldn’t hurt.”

  “I know. ‘Bye, Dad.” She cradled the receiver gently. Talking with her father always made Maggie feel better. She had been desolate when she left Adam. She had believed that their love was impossible, their problems insurmountable. But now she wasn’t sure. Her father’s advice had offered a small glimmer of hope.

  Maggie drank her cup of tea and then walked to the bedroom to pack her bags. Tomorrow she would drive to Gatlinburg.

  o0o

  She had lost something very precious. Something that she wanted desperately to find. Maggie sat straight up in bed. “Adam!” Her hand reached out and clutched an empty pillow.

  Fully awake now, Maggie hugged the pillow to her chest in the darkness of her bedroom at the ski chalet. She had been dreaming, and in that half conscious state, the truth had shown itself to her with perfect clarity. That “something precious” was Adam, and she couldn’t stand to lose him.

  Impatient with the dark, impatient with herself, and impatient even with Adam, she climbed out of bed and felt her way through the darkness to the kitchen. Her fingers fumbled against the wall until she found the light switch. Blinking at the sudden blaze of light, Maggie adjusted her sleep-filled eyes and squinted at the clock. Five o’clock. The silent hour of early birds, early risers, and... hunters.

  Maggie slumped down in a chair beside the table and rested her head on her crossed arms. There it was again. Just as real and as scary as ever. In spite of her love for Adam, could she ever adjust to his hunting? Could she learn to live with it? She was no closer to the answer than she had been two days ago, when she came to the ski chalet.

  Morosely Maggie rose from her chair and walked to the refrigerator. She never could think on an empty stomach. As she put the bacon on to fry, her mind was filled with Adam, with the love they had shared in the Tallahatchie River bottom cabin, and with the aching loneliness she had felt these last two days without him. There had to be a way.

  Maggie buttered two pieces of toast and popped them onto her plate with the bacon and eggs. Now that her mind was actively searching for a solution rather than denying any possibility of a future for them, she was ravenous.

  Her fork clinked against the plate as she lifted the first piece of bacon to her mouth. Suddenly she sat dead still, the fork poised in the air. That was it! Of course, that was it! She burst out laughing. She laughed so hard that tears rolled down her cheek, tears of joy.

  “Thank the Lord for bacon,” she announced to the empty room. The truth had been there all along; she had just been too stubborn to see it. Bacon started out as pigs, little animals with pink, pointy ears and squiggly tails. That was what Adam had tried to explain: true sportsmen used the game they killed for food. And how was that different from steak or bacon or lamb chops?

  She finished her breakfast with relish. When it was viewed in that light, she could not only tolerate Adam’s hunting, she could even understand it. She sipped her tea and looked out the window to the mountains, growing pink with the first glow of dawn.

  With the thorniest question of all solved, the rest came easy for Maggie. She wanted to make a home for Adam. She wanted picnics and family dinners and long, leisurely evenings by the fire with the man she loved. And she wanted children. Lots of them. She would not have as much time for her causes. Martha Jo could take over as president of FOA, and Maggie would work with them when she had time. There probably were more conventional and perhaps even better ways of achieving their goals. She’d think about that later. Right now, Adam was the only cause she had on her mind.

  By the time Maggie had dressed in a fuzzy green jogging suit that matched her eyes, the sun was gilding the tops of the mountains with bright gold. She zipped into town, made her purchases, and zoomed back to the chalet, humming the entire time.

  She spread a piece of heavy poster board on the floor. Getting down on her hands and knees, she worked with a black magic marker, grinning broadly as her hand raced across the poster. She laughed aloud as the bold black letters took shape. She would go straight to his bank with her sign. She’d mount the check-writing table again and this time announce to the whole world that she loved Adam Trent.

  She sat back on her heels and viewed the finished work. Not bad, considering that the entire time she had been working on it she had thought of nothing except being in Adam’s arms.

  o0o

  A raucous blaring outside her door brought her to her feet. There it was again. A wobbly, brassy sound that put Maggie in mind of one of Jim’s sick cows bellowing.

  Someone pounded loudly on her door. “Maggie! Open up and let me in.”

  Adam! Her bare feet flew across the tiled floor. She flung open the door and catapulted herself into his arms. “Oh, Adam. Oh, Lord, I’m glad to see you.” She showered kisses on his surprised face. “I love you, Adam Trent.”

  “Say that again.” His eyes drank in her face, savoring every last detail.

  “I’m glad to see you,” she teased.

  “No, Tigress. The other.”

  “I do love you, Adam Trent. I really do!”

  He carried her across the threshold and set her on her feet. His eyes roamed up and down her body as if he could never get his fill of looking. “If you hadn’t said that, I was going to drag you off to the altar anyhow.”

  “And ruin your reputation as a staid old bank president?”

  “I’m afraid my reputation is ruined anyway.” He grinned sheepishly as he held up his right hand. A shiny new silver trumpet was clutched in his fingers.

  “Is that what I heard?” Maggie burst into laughter. “Oh, Adam, you’re terrible on the trumpet. Have you ever considered the piccolo?”

  “The man at the music store suggested I buy a set of drums after he made me toot this damned horn. He said I didn’t have the lips for playing brass. I told him he wouldn’t have a customer if he didn’t just wrap up the horn and be quick about it.”

  Maggie took the silver trumpet from his hands and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I know what you do have lips for, Adam Trent. Come here.” And she showed him.

  When she came up for air she was full of questions. “How did you find me and why did you come and why the silver trumpet?”

  “Your dad told me after I calmed down and convinced him I was not a crazed maniac. Oh, Lord, Maggie. I was like a grizzly bear with a toothache after you left me.” He crushed her fiercely to his chest. “The silver trumpet is my sign to you. I’m giving it all up. The guns, the hunting, everything. You’re all I want, Maggie.”

  His lips swooped down to claim hers, and her feeble “no” was smothered. His hands roamed across her bare skin underneath the soft jogging top, and she pressed against his hard body. As their tongues sought and probed, the flames of passion burst anew within them.

  “Does this place have a rug?” he murmured against her lips.

  “Um-hmm.” Her jogging shirt made a bright green splash on the floor. “Over there.” Her jogging pants landed with a muffled whoosh on the back of a straight-backed chair.

  “Maggie. It’s been years.” Adam’s belt buckle clattered on the tiled floor.

  The sun smiled through the window at them as Adam’s lips roamed over Maggie’s body, renewing an old acquaintance and making new discoveries. The misty mountains presided in solemn dignity as their bodies at last joined in heart-thundering reunion. The shadows were long on the wall when their mingled cries of satisfaction filled the room. And, outside their window, a mockingbird offered his benediction.

  “Adam Trent, I think I’m addicted to you.” Maggie smiled down at her beloved, and her hair flowed across his chest in a bright sheaf of gold.

  “Maggie Merriweather, I plan to keep
it that way.” He sat up on the fireside rug and stretched. Suddenly he grimaced and reached underneath him. “What’s this?” He was holding her poster.

  “Turn it over.”

  The poster board rattled as Adam turned it over and read the bold black letters—I SURRENDER. His eyebrows shot upward. “Maggie?”

  “I was planning to take your bank by storm. Just march right in with my sign and announce to everybody in Tupelo that I love you and that I’m giving up causes.”

  “I’m sure you were planning to stand on the check-writing table.” He grinned at her.

  “Of course.”

  “And it never crossed your mind to come and knock discreetly on my door?” In the evening shadows of the room, his blue eyes sparkled like sunshine on the Mediterranean.

  “Never.” She gave him an arch look, and then asked seriously, “Are you sorry?”

  “No, Maggie.” He hugged her fiercely to him. “I did my damnedest to tame you, and I made two remarkable discoveries.”

  She reached up and trailed her fingers along his jaw line. “And what were they?”

  “You can’t be tamed.” He chuckled and planted a kiss atop her shining hair. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  She leaned against his shoulder, and together they sat contentedly in front of the fire. The sun disappeared behind a shadowy purple mountain, and the only light in the room was the flickering blaze of the fire in the stone hearth.

  “Adam?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Don’t change. I love you just the way you are.” She twisted in his arms and looked earnestly up into his face. “You once said that love allows differences.”

  “I know that, Maggie, but is it a difference you can live with?”

  “As long as I have you.”

  “Maggie, when I wasn’t raging like a wounded lion and storming Doc Merriweather’s house, I did some serious thinking about us.”

  “And?”

  “I’m not sure I can afford enough silver trumpets for all our kids if their mother persists in her style of protest.” His right hand caressed the length of her leg as he talked. “How about channeling all your energy in a different direction and taking on a partner?”

  “Who?”

  “Me.”

  “You must be joking!”

  “No, I’m not. I know you will always want to fight for the animals, no matter what you think now, and the most effective way to do that is to lobby for legislative changes that need to be made in that area. I’ll help you.”

  “We’ll take our horns and storm the governor’s office!” Her green eyes sparkled with excitement.

  “Without our horns, Tigress.” He reached for his, his hands as familiar as her own skin.

  Maggie sucked in her breath as the heat spread slowly throughout her body. “Agreed. And I have a proposal for you. I want you to donate all the game you bag to the Children’s Home for food.” Her voice was becoming thick and husky as his hands worked their magic.

  ‘That sounds like a workable compromise to me. Agreed.” He lowered his head and began to plant slow, sensuous kisses across her shoulders and at the nape of her neck. “There’s one more thing, Maggie.”

  Her breath was coming in ragged bursts as she turned to him. “What?”

  “On momentous occasions such as this one, the compromise must have a stamp of approval by both parties.”

  “Like this?” Her breath fanned his cheeks as she lifted soft, yielding lips to his.

  “No. Like this.” And he rolled over her on the rug as they sealed their pact.

  o0o

  They were married on the first day of January in the small brick church in Belden, with all their family as witnesses.

  Jim winked broadly as she walked down the aisle on her father’s arm. Paul and Martha Trent beamed at their son, and Elijah Jane, who always cried at weddings, sniffled loudly into her handkerchief.

  Thirteen gray heads nodded their approval from two pews near the front of the church as the Deerfield Nursing Home residents beamed at Maggie.

  Adam stood at the altar waiting for her, his smile lighting her whole world and his eyes promising a lifetime of magic.

  As she placed her hand in Adam’s in a gesture that would join them forever, she heard Grandmother Trent’s pleased stage whisper. “I’ll have me a granddaughter now. I know that look in Adam’s eyes.”

  EPILOGUE

  “Will you please go downstairs and light the fire, Elijah Jane?” Maggie stood in a patch of sunlight at her bedroom window, her eyes eagerly scanning the curving driveway below for the first sign of Adam’s car.

  “Light the fire? On the fourth of July!” Elijah Jane shook her head. “The saints preserve us.” She painstakingly rubbed lemon oil into the bedpost. “What are you up to now?”

  Maggie laughed as she watched Beau, Adam’s calico cat, chase fat Muffin around a rosebush. It had taken Beauregard only a few days to establish his position as reigning king of the hill after she and her dogs had moved to Adam’s house. They kept her cottage as a getaway place. Still laughing, she turned to face Elijah Jane.

  Her smile broadened. Elijah Jane had her lips pursed, muttering to herself, but her eyes were glowing with possessive pride. A bright red nightcap sat slightly askew on her grizzled hair—to protect her hair from dust, she said—and her purple blouse was tucked into a shocking pink skirt. She loved bright colors.

  Elijah Jane had been coming every Wednesday since she and Adam had been married, because Grandmother Trent had asked how Maggie could produce a great-granddaughter if she had to bother with less important things, like housework. Though Maggie wasn’t about to sit back and let Elijah Jane do everything, she loved having her there, loved her sense of humor and her wisdom - even her wise cracks. She especially loved that Elijah Jane still viewed Adam as a naughty little boy and told endless stories about his childhood.

  “What makes you think I’m up to something?” Maggie’s eyes swung back to the driveway, checking.

  “You’re always up to somethin’. Decoratin’ that Easter ham with taffy and then you and that little scamp Adam disappearin’ while we try to find the ham under that sticky mess! Lordy, Lordy.” She tried to keep a stern face, but her lips kept turning up at the corners as she recalled that first big family dinner when Maggie had cooked and invited all the kin. Lordy, Elijah Jane thought, she loved being part of this family. It seemed like only yesterday Adam was a little boy with a frog in his pocket.

  “I wanted to make the ham different.” In the distance Maggie saw a glimpse of silver as Adam’s Mercedes entered the lane of oaks that led to their house.

  “Different’s not the word for it.” Elijah Jane turned to the bedside table and picked up a covered porcelain temple jar. Its contents rattled in her hand. “And keepin’ buttons in a jar! Who keeps buttons in a jar?” She opened the top and peered inside. “They look mighty like that little squirt’s buttons.” Her eyes twinkled as she looked at Maggie, then back at the buttons. “What ya’ll been up to?”

  “I’m not about to tell!” Maggie hitched up her army pants as she saw Adam nose his car into the garage. “Hurry, Elijah Jane. Here he comes.”

  Elijah Jane’s hips rolled with every step as she left the room. “Lightin’ fires in the dead of summer. Wearin’ baggy britches. Umm-umm.” Alternately muttering and chuckling, she flopped down the stairs.

  Holding her hand over her hammering heart, Maggie waited upstairs, listening for the first sound of Adam’s voice. “How’s my best girl, Elijah Jane?” The housekeeper giggled and Maggie could picture Adam giving her a big bear hug that lifted her off her feet. “Now, where’s my gorgeous wife?”

  “Upstairs and up to devilment.”

  Reaching into the closet, Maggie took out a large poster-board sign mounted on a broom handle. Holding the sign aloft, she grabbed her silver trumpet and raced down the back stairs.

  Tiptoeing, Maggie entered the family room unnoticed and positioned herself behind
Adam. Lifting the silver trumpet to her lips, she began playing the opening bars of the William Tell overture.

  Elijah Jane continued to light the fire as if nothing had happened.

  Adam whirled around, grinning, his eyes rapidly taking in the army pants— Maggie’s crusading uniform—the silver trumpet, and the sign. “Maggie?” His eyebrows rose in question.

  “I’ve got a new cause, Adam.”

  “So I see. Out with it, Tigress. What can we expect this time?”

  Maggie whipped the sign around so that Adam could see the printed letters. Her face was wreathed in smiles.

  Shock, disbelief, and delight chased across Adam’s face. “Is it true, Maggie?”

  “Glory be!” yelled Elijah Jane. “We’re gonna have a baby!”

  Adam closed the small space between himself and Maggie and scooped her into his arms. The “Congratulations, Daddy” sign slipped to the floor as she wound her arms around his neck.

  “It’s true, Adam.”

  Adam lifted Maggie off her feet and started toward the fire. “Elijah Jane, I need you to run to the store and get some fresh mushrooms.”

  “The refrigerator is full of fresh mushrooms. I saw ‘em myself.”

  “Elijah Jane, the Blazer keys are on the key board in the kitchen.”

  “Every Wednesday it’s ‘Go get fresh mushrooms.’ That man has enough mushrooms in his kitchen to open his own grocery store.” Elijah Jane was smiling from ear to ear by the time she reached the kitchen door. Behind her came the sound of buttons rolling on the hardwood floor. She banged the door loudly to announce her departure.

  In the family room nobody noticed. Adam settled Maggie gently onto the fireside rug. Shivers skittered across her skin as his hands traced her body. “All we need now is a snowstorm,” he murmured. His eyes were liquid blue fire as he brought his lips to hers.

  “I think I can arrange a storm. Without the snow.” Then there was no more time for words. Maggie closed her eyes as the fire that was Adam Trent reached out and consumed her.

  Unnoticed, the silver trumpet clanked to the floor and lay among the buttons, glinting in the flames from the Fourth of July fire.