by Stacey Keith
Maggie watched Gus bullet through the open front door. Then she turned toward the garage, where her father had car guts strewn across a red plastic tarp. A vintage Esso gas pump stood against one wall. A wheeled tool chest stood against the other. Wall calendars, most of them years out of date, showed all the shiny fast cars that Doak loved. Priscilla used to say they were the reason he’d chosen to become a firefighter in the first place—just to drive the hook-and-ladder.
Now that he was retired, her dad spent most of his time in the garage. His old Zenith was tuned to a station that played Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline—all the classics. The mini-fridge had greasy palm prints on the door handle. When she was a girl and Doak asked her to get him a root beer or a sarsaparilla, Maggie had refused to touch the handle without a shop rag. But she’d sit for hours on the cracked red leather high stool, kicking her feet against the rungs, asking him a million questions.
Her father had always been there for her. She had never doubted his love. And for the first time, knowing what she knew about Jake’s mom and dad, her heart felt an even greater sense of gratitude.
“Hey, Gypsy,” her dad said, using his old nickname for her. He pushed out from under a car on his rolling mechanic’s creeper. “What brought you out here? The Chevy need an oil change?”
Doak had rebuilt her red 1953 Chevy pickup almost from scratch, “Macgyvering” hard-to-find parts himself. Maggie found the cracked leather bar stool and sat on it. “No, the truck’s fine. I had some free time is all.”
He seemed to study her. Maggie couldn’t really tell because she refused to meet his eyes. It was worse being here. Instead of soothing her, the familiarity of childhood made her feel a thousand times lonelier and beyond the reach of comfort.
“Your sister came by this morning,” he said, pushing back under the car. “She and Lexie and Mason are headed up to Dallas.”
“I miss them,” Maggie said, trying not to sound so forlorn. “Cuervo is only half the fun when they’re not here.”
“Hand me that socket wrench, will you?” he asked, pointing to the black case on the table behind her.
She hopped down. “Quarter inch?”
“The three-eighths.” He gave her a warm, sentimental smile when she handed it to him. “Just like old times, eh, Gypsy?”
“Yeah.” She swallowed hard and then turned away so he couldn’t see her strangling on her grief. This was pointless. She shouldn’t have come.
“It was nice meeting your friend the other night,” her dad said, cranking the socket wrench. “He seemed like a pretty smart guy. Smarter than Todd at least.”
Maggie banked down a wave of desperation. She picked up a ball of twine that had unraveled. Her dad had never liked Todd. All hat and no cattle, he’d said, but she’d just dismissed it as typical overprotective dad stuff. What a pity she hadn’t listened.
“A box of rocks is smarter than Todd,” she muttered. “It’s not a fair contest.”
Doak banged something loose and then set the part on the floor beside him. “Did I ever tell you about the time I stood up your mother?”
Maggie stopped rolling the twine and tried to remember. Having a marriage like her parents’ marriage had always been a dream of hers, a dream that seemed further out of reach than ever before. Jake was nothing but another misfire, another shining example of how many times she’d gotten it wrong so far.
“It was our second date,” her dad said. “Our first had been fantastic. We’d gone to the Regal. Don’t you remember? I took her to see Commando, starring that big guy with the funny accent.”
“Arnold Schwarzenegger?”
“Yeah. She loved it, and that movie wasn’t really the kind of thing most girls would like, you know? There was a lot of shooting.”
Maggie finished spooling the twine and set it on the work table. She looked over at her father even though his legs were the only things visible. “Why did you stand her up then?”
“Because I liked her. And it scared the crap out of me. I’d never liked a girl that much before. It kind of spooks a fella when he wakes up one morning and realizes being single isn’t as much fun as it used to be. That maybe, just maybe, there’s a girl out there he’d rather not shake loose of.”
“Oh, Dad,” Maggie sighed. “I know what you’re trying to tell me. But that’s not the case with me and… Things are a lot more complicated now.”
“More complicated than they were in my day?” She heard him chuckling beneath the car. Instead of annoying her, it made her sadder. What if the things she wanted didn’t exist anymore? The tightknit family, the happy children, the strong communities that helped to shape them. Maybe this wild yearning she felt was for something she could never have. Not with Jake. Not with anybody.
Her dad rolled out, grabbed a shop rag and wiped his hands with it. The blue eyes resting on her were as full of love as her very first memories of them. “Know what I think?” he said.
She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
“The heart knows,” he said gently. “Sometimes a man’s just gotta wait till he catches up to it. But the heart is always up ahead, lighting the way. Let’s hope he’s smart enough to find it.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
By the time Maggie returned to her apartment, Gus was sacked out on the truck seat beside her, his belly stuffed full of Grandma’s treats. While Maggie rubbed his soft ears to wake him, she wondered if her fur baby, Gus, would be the only child she could ever hope to have. There was adoption, sure, but who had the money for that? Even with all the help in the world, being a single mom wasn’t easy. Look how Cassidy had struggled before she and Mason were married. Look how fast Jake had run after just one dinner with her parents.
She couldn’t think about Jake. She wouldn’t.
After taking Gus upstairs, she came back down again and opened the bakery. Coralee’s wedding anniversary was coming up and Maggie wanted to surprise her.
She assembled the ingredients for yellow cake. At first, it was hard to marshal her thoughts. They kept tugging at her. But constructing this cake would be tricky and she had to pay attention.
Coralee loved UFOs and Coralee loved Ed. So Maggie had decided to make a UFO cake—complete with Ed’s “alien abduction.”
Okay, so maybe Maggie thought the whole UFO thing was nutty. Her mother certainly did. Every time Coralee opened her mouth to talk about aliens, Priscilla would roll her eyes and mutter “lunatic” under her breath. But that didn’t matter. Coralee deserved something spectacular.
The problem was recreating the energy beam that had sucked Ed up. Maggie couldn’t do it with sugar glass. Even if she made some, it wouldn’t support the weight of the spaceship. She thought about it while blending the cake mix, pouring it into two round pans and then putting the pans inside the oven. She got her bag of gum paste out of the freezer to thaw.
It took her three hours to finish. By then it was a quarter to eleven and the street in front of her shop was completely deserted. But a comforting sense of accomplishment nudged aside some of her sadness. She set the cake in the center of her work area and took photos of it with her smartphone, proud of what she’d done and wishing there was someone to share it with.
Maybe this is what single mothers go through with their kids, she thought. Here was this amazing, beautiful child and you were the only one who really saw, who really cared. Which was exactly why she didn’t just want children. She wanted a family. She wanted the whole three-hundred-and-sixty-degree experience of love, even if it was a fairytale.
She snapped photos from a variety of angles so she could print the best one and put it in the ringed binder on the counter. For the tractor beam, she’d used something simple: an upside-down glass. Not only was it the right shape, it supported the cardboard base that held the ship. After shaving down two round yellow cakes, she’d spackled a layer of buttercream between them, froste
d the outside with silver fondant that would harden overnight into a smooth shell, and then decorated the saucer with candy “lights”.
But her moment of real inspiration came when she found a package of glow sticks left over from Halloween. She took one out, snapped it to activate the light, and then curled it up inside the base of the glass. Now little gum paste Ed, with his arms outstretched toward the spaceship, was bathed in an alien green glow.
Maggie hid the cake inside the pantry and washed the dishes. Her fun distraction was over, she realized glumly as she turned out the lights. After locking up, she started up the stairs to her apartment.
“Maggie,” said a deep, familiar voice in the darkness.
She froze. Her heart gave a forward lurch and started pounding. It can’t be, she thought. I’m imagining things.
Jake came out from underneath the stairs. Because she was on the second step, her hand clutching the rail to keep from tumbling over in shock, they were almost the same height. Tingles swept her body. Maybe she should have been furious with him, but all she felt was a hot, bright joy. The street light bathed one half of his face, leaving the other half in semi-darkness. Dark carved out a sharp wedge beneath each cheekbone and defined the curve of his lips. He wore a turtleneck and jeans. Standing next to him made her lightheaded.
But she also felt alive. For the first time since Jake had left, she felt as though she were no longer going through the motions, no longer doing her Maggie impersonation. She was Maggie. He’d come for her. Jake was here, right here.
He shoved his hands in his pockets with a bashfulness she’d never seen before. “I’ve been waiting,” he said. “And now I can’t stop looking at you.”
Her heart wouldn’t stop booming. “You could have come in.”
“I didn’t know if you were alone.” He plunged one hand through his hair and looked away. “I owe you an apology. No way I’m doing that in front of witnesses.”
Maggie didn’t care about apologies. She didn’t care about anything except touching him. She almost laughed at the sheer delight of it, the dizzying intensity. How did this feeling not kill you? How could one person bear so much desire?
“Look, I flew down here to see you,” he said. “Come back to Dallas with me, Maggie. Right now. Tonight.”
Her mouth fell open. No matter how tantalizing the proposal, all she could think about were her responsibilities here. Maggie Roby didn’t go flying off in the middle of the night. Maggie Roby had inventory. Tomorrow, she had to order supplies and tote her ledger and—
“Monday is your day off,” he said. “Don’t think I didn’t know that. I want you to see what life is like on my side of the planet. I need you there with me.”
Maggie pressed one hand to her chest. “Who’ll take care of Gus?”
“Call somebody. There must be a million people out there who owe you favors. Now, go pack a bag. I’ll wait for you in the car.”
This was crazy. And it wasn’t even Gus that made her hesitate. One phone call and her mother would happily come and get him. But doing something this out-of-character was nothing short of terrifying. Thrilling, yes, but a lot like the first big drop on a rollercoaster where the guy pulling the levers can’t be trusted to set you down in one piece.
How many times had she wondered what Jake’s life was like in Dallas? Now here he was offering it to her.
Maybe she was dreaming. It felt as though she were. There was even a dream-like quality to seeing him there in the shadows. Every molecule in her body screamed at her to do it. To risk it. To forget who she was supposed to be and start living.
But this was more than a midnight adventure with a man who made her love-drunk. It was a turning point. A revelation. She would return to Cuervo a different woman from when she left. Once her eyes had been opened, there would be no closing them again. But if things didn’t work out, God help her, she would have to live with the memory of what she’d lost for the rest of her life.
“Yes,” she said breathlessly. “I’ll go.”
* * * *
Jake was thirty-one years old and had never been in love before. The more he thought about it, the crazier it sounded. Being in love was like going to a meeting about buying property that he didn’t know anything about—no notes, no Power Point presentation, no clue. He was living the lyrics to every country-western song ever written, worried he’d fuck it up and say the wrong thing. Or fail to say the right one.
There should have been an app for this, one that guided you along the tracks and prevented you from flying off them. He actually cared. How insane was that? He was so hungry to be with Maggie, he couldn’t think straight. She was food and he’d been starving for a very long time.
The drive to the airport with her riding shotgun had been an exercise in half-finished sentences and yearning. She smelled like a combination of sugar cookies and rose perfume. Whole minutes would pass where all he could hear was the car engine purring through the night and nothing else. Longing was this palpable thing between them. Words would have gotten in the way. He hated words. They trivialized the power of this moment. This hotly anticipated prelude to possession.
Jake would have preferred the Airbus since it would have gotten them back to Dallas faster, but civilian helicopters weren’t allowed at night. Still, the look on Maggie’s face when she saw his Boeing 767 on the jet way made him feel as though he could have fought Godzilla and won. She was everything he ever wanted just standing there with her eyes shining and her hair buffeted by the wind. The women he’d flown with in the past were so busy acting worldly and sophisticated, they couldn’t bother being impressed by anything that wasn’t their own reflection in the mirror.
Not his Maggie. She spun around, one hand over her mouth and said, “This is your plane? Seriously?”
On board, she shook hands with his flight crew, who looked slightly bewildered. In his circles, acknowledging the help in any but the most superficial way was considered gauche. But Maggie had lovely manners. He noticed things like that. It made him want to use nice manners, too. She made him want to be a better man.
He joined her on the couch, which faced two club chairs and a table. The windows across from them had blinds inside the glass that opened or closed at the touch of a button. Maggie had a big smile on her face as she looked around. Then she turned to him.
“No seatbelts,” she said, grinning.
“I like to live dangerously.” Private planes didn’t actually have seatbelts, at least not in the main cabin, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.
Her face was close to his. His pulse slowed to a steady thrum as he zeroed in on her lips—full pink lips that would soon be swollen from his kisses. All he could think about were breathless moans and the thick musky signature of sex. Keeping his hands to himself until they got to his place was going to be way tougher than he’d thought. And judging by the look in Maggie’s eyes, he wasn’t the only one thinking that.
Her position on the couch made that flimsy skirt of hers inch higher up her thighs. The design of her blouse didn’t show much cleavage, but anyone with eyes could see she had a lot going on in there. No matter how country Maggie tried to be, there was nothing she could do to hide the sensuality that rolled off her in sugar-cookie-scented waves. It was a hypnotic, female sensuality that probably had every man eating out of her hand. If Jake had a shred of self-respect, he would have run like hell, but he was a goner.
Despite the roar of takeoff, he could have sworn he heard the sound of his blood rushing to his groin. All he could think about was Maggie’s warm breath against his skin. She was the purest temptation he’d ever known. He was rock hard and they weren’t even touching yet.
If he hadn’t manned up and rolled the dice, he wouldn’t be here right now. Breathing her. Taking in all that heat as it came shimmering off the curves and valleys of her soft flesh. He remembered filling his hands with that flesh, sl
iding his tongue along the length of her. Inside her. Her sweet clean taste. None of it left his erection in any doubt of what it wanted right now.
But on his own plane in front of his own crew? A mile-high club with Maggie wasn’t possible no matter how badly he wanted it. And the restless crossing and recrossing of her legs told him better than words what she was craving.
How the hell were two people who were seconds away from ripping each other’s clothes off going to find the decency to wait?
Thank God the flight to Dallas was only forty-five minutes. It took him another forty-five minutes just to drive his second-favorite car, the Jaguar, back to his penthouse on North Harwood. They could have gone up to his weekend getaway, but that was in Marble Falls and there was nothing in this life or the next that could have made him wait a second longer. The minute they set foot inside the elevator that took them from the parking garage to the first floor of his place, her fingers were in his hair. Her lips were pressed against his. She gave a soft laugh and he groaned and pulled her closer, slanting his mouth against hers.
She tasted the way sin tasted, if you dipped it in sugar. The erection that had been siphoning off brain cells since the moment he’d set eyes on her tonight painfully reasserted itself. He slid his hands to her hips and pressed her against him, loving how she shivered in response. How she squeezed herself against him as though trying to climb on top, and good holy Christ he wanted her to. Getting inside her had been a sick, feverish obsession since forever. If he didn’t, he wasn’t going to make it much longer. Bad things happened to people who waited too long. Bad goddamn things…
But the instant he’d been given a taste of her, he wanted it all. He wanted to lose what was left of his mind inside her. Every earthy, intimate, kinky thing he could think of came rushing to the forefront of his imagination.