And her poise. How much grace and sense of self, how much strength had it taken for her to say she hoped they could still be friends when he’d… God. He dropped his head into his hands.
If he’d been hoping for sympathy, he wasn’t going to get it.
“You used her father against her,” Jessi said through her teeth. “You told her she had no idea what it meant to love because of him.”
“Jessi, I—”
She held up a hand. “Then you implied she wasn’t capable of love.”
“No, I…” He remembered telling her he didn’t want to hurt her, didn’t think he could—and it hit him. “Jesus, I meant I never thought she’d let me in enough to hurt her.”
“Yeah, that would make her a cold, closed-off bitch instead of a damaged, unfeeling bitch. So much better.”
Dex closed his eyes, but he couldn’t shut out reality. No wonder Maggie had looked like he’d struck her. He had, with words, and words, he knew, could be the hardest blows of all. “I have to apologize.”
“No you don’t, not now.”
“I can’t leave it this way.” He appealed to Hold, who spread his hands and gave him a poor-bastard look.
“I’d suggest you listen to Jessi,” Hold said. “She knows Maggie better than anyone.”
“But I have to take it back. I have to explain what I meant.”
“Words,” Jessi sneered. “Do you feel any differently?” She huffed out a breath when he only stared at her. “Do you love Maggie?”
“Give me a minute to think.”
“Thinking? What is it with men?” She rounded on Hold, who had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. “What are you going to say to her that you didn’t already say in your stupid male fashion?”
He could only stare at her, speechless.
“Exactly. All you’ll do is cause her more pain. Stay the hell away from her.” She turned her back and flounced back to her desk, plopping into her chair. “Honestly, men,” she said with great disgust. “We don’t need you anymore,” she said, rounding on Hold. “You’re the genealogist; you should know we can make babies without you.”
“What did I do? Besides being born male.”
“That’s enough,” she said darkly.
“And just so you know,” Hold added, taking his life in his hands, in Dex’s opinion, “You still need us to make babies. Humans haven’t been cloned successfully.”
“Yet. And they probably have cloned human beings, except it’s being hidden from the public by some secret government agency. Run by men.”
Hold opened his mouth, but Jessi said, “Oh, just go somewhere else. Somewhere Maggie isn’t.”
Wisely, Hold got to his feet.
“And take genius over there with you.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dex followed Hold back to Maggie’s tiny office, grateful there was little of her left there. Her desk had been cleared of her things to make room for the family Bibles and papers Jessi had been quietly collecting throughout the community, in some cases “borrowing” them without permission so the rest of the Windfallers wouldn’t put two and two together and figure out why Dex had come to the island.
“You want to talk about it?” Hold asked him.
“No.” He just wanted to put it out of his mind, forget how hollowed out and brittle he felt.
“Glad to hear it,” Hold said. “That would make us girls, and despite Jessi’s current disgust for the entire male gender, I’m not ready to switch sides.”
“Work,” Dex said shortly. Work would take his mind off the mess of things he’d made with Maggie. Work would set him to rights… or as close as he could get.
He turned to the chart that took up an entire wall of the small office. And gave up trying to forget about Maggie when her name jumped out at him. “Jessi.”
She came to the doorway, looking like a pissed off pixie. “I am not at your beck and call,” she said. “Yell at me again and—”
“Shut up.”
“Shut up?” she sputtered. “Shut up? Maybe you should take your own advice, Mr. Keegan. Maybe—”
“Why is Maggie’s name on here?”
That stopped her, verbally and physically, as she halted in mid-stride, her gaze shifting to the chart. She crossed her arms, glared at him. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Lose the snotty attitude and pay attention. She told me she wasn’t from the island.”
Jessi frowned. “I’m not letting you off the hook for the snotty attitude comment, but you must be wrong.”
“She told me… Shit, she told me she moved here in high school.”
“There, you see? She’s absolutely right. But her mother was born and raised here. You just misunderstood her.”
Misunderstood, hell. Dex ran a hand back through his hair, paced away, then back, which didn’t take long as the room was barely eight by ten. It also didn’t help him arrive at a plan of action.
Under normal circumstances, he’d have been at her house by now. He’d have tossed the lie in her face, and they’d have had a nice argument, some name calling, maybe a little yelling before she went sullen. Under normal circumstances.
He looked over at Hold.
“Jessi called over to the house. Maggie’s on her way.”
“Good,” Dex said. “We can get to the bottom of this.” And he could find out why this time she’d lied to him, and if she’d done it because she realized just what hiding her ancestry meant.
Maggie took her time walking over to the office. She’d splashed some water in her face, done what she could to get some color back into her pale skin. The bleakness in her eyes she could do nothing about, but she didn’t want to appear any more pitiful than she had to. It was going to be difficult enough to see Dex again so soon.
Jessi met her in the lobby and folded her into her arms. The hard, long hug nearly ruined her efforts at putting on a brave front.
“What can I do to help?” Jessi wanted to know. “Booze, ice cream, male bashing? I could make a little wax figure of Dex and you can stick hat pins in sensitive areas.”
“I’m fine,” Maggie said, working up a slight smile to go along with the lip service. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“There’s no practice for this.”
“Maybe not, but let me have my illusions for now. We can eat ice cream and bash men later.”
“It’s a date.”
She looked toward the sound of subdued male voices coming from the open doorway. “What’s so important?”
“The genealogy, Maggie. I’m sorry.”
“Shit,” she said, still too numb to feel much more than a little mild disgust over forgetting that sooner or later Dex would see her name on Hold’s chart and realize she’d kept the truth from him. “He’s probably not going to be at a loss for words this time.”
“I’m sorry,” Jessi said again, “If I’d known—”
“How could you when I didn’t even know it mattered myself until just recently.”
“And you’ve had other things on your mind.”
“Yeah. He won’t believe that.”
“To hell with him.”
Maggie would have agreed with that sentiment, except she was already in Hell, and she didn’t want to run into Dex Keegan there, either.
“Let’s just get this over with.”
Maggie walked in, Jessi following close on her heels—hovering, Dex decided. But it was Maggie’s face he couldn’t take his eyes from. She was pale but dry-eyed. Absolutely dry-eyed. Her expression was so placid it baffled him, as much as the pain that had him rubbing at his breastbone—which he stopped when she glanced at his hand and her mouth twisted up in a faint smile.
“Not going to yell at me?” she asked him, lifting her eyes, her starkly cold blue eyes, to his.
“Yeah, I’m pissed that you lied to me,” he said, his voice just as even as hers.
“I told you I didn’t grow up here. That’s not a lie.”
“You left out the part
about having relatives on the island. An omission is still a lie, Maggie.”
“You mean like asking me to omit the truth to Jessi?”
“Damn straight,” Jessi put in. As if Maggie needed any help.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It was none of your business at the time. It’s none of your business now.”
Dex swallowed that, and while it made him feel better that the whip in her voice proved she wasn’t as calm as she looked, there was still that pain in his chest, still the knowledge that he’d hurt her, and that even though he hadn’t done it on purpose it was still on him.
“Don’t,” she said, reminding him of something else about her; how well she’d learned to read him. “Don’t make this your fault. It isn’t about you.”
“That’s not what you said a little while ago.”
“Well, you managed to convince me. Thank you for that.”
“Pretty easy to change your opinion, Maggie.”
That got her. She turned away, left him feeling like even more of a heel. Jessi shot him a look that promised retribution, slow and bloody retribution, before she went to Maggie.
Maggie shrugged her off, turned back, still pale, still in control. But she wasn’t looking him in the eye anymore.
“So my name’s on your chart. What’s the big deal, Hold?” she said in a voice so steady Dex wanted to shake her until that control snapped and she cried or punched him, anything to make her stop being so damned cold, so damned different from the woman he’d come to… like and respect.
But if he put so much as a finger on her, he was afraid he’d be the one to shatter.
“We’ve traced a few of the families still on the list you and Dex gave us,” Hold answered Maggie’s question. “But before we had the list, Jessi started with the families she knew fairly well.”
“Including mine.”
“Yes. Your grandmother would have been a baby around the time Eugenia Stanhope went missing.”
“Me and everyone else in my generation.”
“Exactly. It didn’t mean much to Jessi or me, but when Dex saw your name and who you connected back to—”
“The Finleys.”
“Emmett Finley, to be exact,” Dex put in.
Maggie shrugged. “Emmett is my great uncle. So what? His name wasn’t on the list. Nobody in my family died in the measles epidemic of ’31 and ’32.”
Dex studied her face. All he saw was puzzlement. “You said yourself it’s likely the name isn’t on the list we found, Maggie. If Eugenia was substituted for a child around the same age who died, the family might have kept it a secret, even from the other Windfallers.
“Emmett recalls the night the Perdition blew up,” he continued when she only stared at him. “He described it to us, remember? I think it’s likely he saw it firsthand.”
“Or he’s embellishing on a story he heard a long time ago.”
“I don’t think so. He remembered how it smelled, even from twelve miles away, how the ground shook, the hiss of the burning timbers as they fell into the water.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions.” But she cupped her elbows, and moved a little closer to Jessi.
“I’m sorry, Maggie,” he said, “I can imagine how upsetting this is for you, but it’s a possibility we can’t afford to overlook.”
“There’s no concrete evidence,” she insisted. “Nothing on this chart or in the journals points to my family. All you have are the ramblings of an old man whose mind is… blurry.”
“Jesus,” Dex bit off.
“Like I said,” Hold jumped in, “it’s not a conclusion, just a possibility.”
“A strong possibility,” Dex said, reigning in his temper. “If Emmett was helping the bootleggers the night the Perdition exploded, and if Eugenia survived and somehow got off the ship with them—”
“That’s a lot of ifs.”
“Not when you string them all together.”
“There’s one more thing,” Hold put in. “Your eyes, Maggie.”
“I blew off the resemblance because Maggie said she wasn’t from the island,” Dex said.
Maggie ignored him, talking to Hold. “What about my eyes?”
“If you’ve ever seen one of the Stanhopes in person, you never forget their eyes.” His gaze shifted to Maggie. “Vivid, brilliant blue, like the sun on tropical waters.”
Maggie folded her arms, but Dex could see the upset beneath her calm exterior, even if she did manage to keep her voice steady. “Why didn’t you say something before this?”
“I had no idea this case was about the Stanhopes when I came. After Dex told me…” Hold spread his hands, “I wanted to be sure. Your eye color is rare, but it could have been a coincidence. I wasn’t certain until Dex saw the chart and made the connection to the Finleys.”
Maggie blew out a breath, squared her shoulders. And didn’t look at Dex. “So test my DNA,” she said to Hold. “Rule me out and that’s that. The two of you can go on searching for the real descendant, if there is one, and I can get back to my life.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not going to be wrapped up as tidily as all that.”
Maggie snorted softly. “Spit it out, Mr. Private Investigator.”
Dex inhaled, exhaled, managed to find a small store of patience. Jessi was right; there was no talking to Maggie now. Whatever else she was feeling, she was on the way to working up a good head of anger, and it was focused on him. “My room was ransacked.”
Jessi clapped her hand over her mouth, but Hold just shook his head and said, “You sure know how to bury the lead, son.”
“He didn’t just bury the lead,” Maggie said, “he buried the whole thing.”
“I told you about it at the Horizon, the night we had dinner.”
“Because AJ let the cat out of the bag. And you said it was no big deal.”
“I didn’t have anything connecting me to the Stanhopes, and nothing was taken.”
“And you think the rock slide is connected?” Hold said.
Dex rolled his shoulders. “Yeah. Whoever broke into my room was definitely looking for something, but chose a time when the room would be empty. The rocks were meant to cause harm.”
Maggie, still holding herself a little ways apart, said, “When did we establish that the rock slide wasn’t an accident?”
“Like I pointed out at the time, it’s a little too coincidental,” Dex said.
“Then who’s the target?” she shot back, still angry but not so much she couldn’t be logical.
“Me,” he said bluntly.
“And who do you think pulled the trigger? Because it had to be one of us. A Windfaller. There aren’t any outsiders on the island. Except you.”
Jessi jumped into the tense silence. “Even if it was intentional, Dex, how could it be aimed at you? Any one of us could have come along that road.”
Maggie shook her head. “Mort stays out here more often than not, and you always take the easier road in from the village, Jess. I take that way on occasion, but I was here the night before the rock slide. Dex is the only one who could have taken the road that morning,” her gaze shifted to meet his, “driving too fast to stop in time.”
Jessi blew out a breath. “Tell me it was just a warning.”
“I’d like to,” Dex said. “We can’t be sure until we know who’s behind it.”
“How serious do you think this threat is?”
“As serious as the Stanhope fortune and that’s hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“The descendant could be in line to inherit a chunk of that,” Maggie added. “If Dex is right, someone is willing to kill to prevent it from happening.”
“I wouldn’t say no to being a Stanhope, and sure, that’s because of the money, but it would also mean…” Jessi broke off, terrified as understanding dawned. “I have to get Benji.”
Hold stepped into the doorway. “First, he’s in school, so he’s safe. Second, you’re not going anywhere by yourself.”
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“Because I need a big, strong man to protect me? Please.”
Maggie smiled faintly. “Take him into the village, Jess. Let the women get a good look at him. You won’t have to worry about him following you around. He’ll be busy trying to keep his virtue intact.”
“Who says I want my virtue intact?”
Jessi scowled. “Come with me, then, and get yourself… debauched.”
“Try not to talk about why you’re here,” Dex put in.
“He is pretty free with information,” Jessi said. “Pillow talk would be right up his alley.”
Hold grinned. “Honey, when I’m in bed, ain’t a whole lot of talking going on.”
“Big words,” Jessi said.
“Words ain’t the only big—”
“No, there’s your ego,” Jessi said with a conspiratorial smile for Maggie—who wasn’t in a conspiratorial mood.
“If you two are finished, we were agreeing to keep this from the rest of the island.”
Dex shrugged when they all looked to him. “The Stanhope family has waited this long, a few more days or weeks won’t mean anything.”
“So what do we do now?” Hold wanted to know. “I’m new to all this life and death stuff.”
“You should go pick up your son, Jessi, but only because I think it’ll make you feel better. I doubt either one of you are in danger. The threat seems to be focused on me, and if it is an islander, that’s just another layer of assurance you won’t be a target. As for the rest, I don’t know yet. Let me give it some thought and we’ll meet back here tomorrow.”
Maggie made her opinion of Dex’s plan clear. She didn’t use words, she used the door.
He followed her through it. “Why didn’t you tell me your mother was born here?”
“Seriously, Counselor?”
“Fine. I get why you kept it to yourself in the beginning.”
“We’ve been over this. My answers haven’t changed.” Maggie shoved through the lobby door, stepped out into a freshening wind. She closed her eyes for a second or two, let it wash over her and carry away some of the pain that seemed to swirl around her like a dense, heavy fog.
Knowing Dex was right behind her, she didn’t give herself long, and when he fell into step with her she ignored him. Until he followed her up the steps and through the front door of her house.
Temptation Bay (A Windfall Island Novel) Page 25