by Lisa Jackson
Mitch looked guilty as hell, wouldn’t meet Frank’s gaze, Maggie stared down at her plate and tried to swallow the ball of potato salad that seemed wedged in the back of her throat. In desperation she reached for her glass of water. Only Mary Theresa was able to smile. “A party?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Oh, come on, Dad. Mitch had a couple of friends over.” She glanced across the table at Mitch, who was white as a sheet. “It was no big deal.”
“If alcohol was served and someone was sick enough to throw up, it is a big deal, Mary. A very big deal. Everyone’s underage, and that doesn’t even touch the fact that you were stealing from us—your mother and me. We don’t want to have to put a lock on the liquor cabinet, do we?”
“No.” Bernice picked up her glass and took a sip. “Never. We want to trust our children.” She looked pointedly at Mitch. “All of them. You know, Mitch, we consider you as much our son as the twins are our daughters.” Mitch swallowed hard. Didn’t speak.
“So who was here?” Frank asked, slowly looking from one face to the next. Maggie wanted to squirm. Sweat broke out on her palms. “Some of Mitch’s friends, you said.” He paused at Mary Theresa before skewering Mitch with his favorite don’t-try-to-con-me glare. “Who?”
“Just some of the guys,” Mitch mumbled.
“They have names.”
“You know, the guys. Look, Dad, I’m not going to rat them out so you can call their parents.”
“I’m not calling anyone, but this is my house, your mother’s and mine, and we have certain rules. Rules you should understand. Rules that you must abide by.”
“I do. We all do.” Color was returning to Mitch’s face, and his pitiful, scared expression was changing into a slow, hard burn. Maggie had seen it before, at every athletic competition Mitch had entered, and whenever he was ready for a fight. The cords in the back of his neck tightened, his muscles tensed.
“But you chose to disobey them.”
“It wasn’t a big deal.”
“No?” Frank’s eyes sharpened.
“I messed up.” Mitch stole a glance at Mary Theresa, and Maggie wilted inside. He looked like he was ready to kill someone. Anyone. “I’m sorry,” he said through lips that barely moved. “It won’t happen again.”
“I’ll say it won’t—”
“Frank.” Bernice held up a hand. “He said he was sorry, okay? Now, let’s let it drop. Everyone here knows what’s expected of him or her.”
Maggie’s stomach was in knots. She couldn’t wait to escape from the table, the house, go anywhere. She thought of the ranch, of Thane Walker, and riding Ink Spot far into the hills…
“Is that the way it was?” Frank Reilly demanded, and Maggie snapped back to the present, realized that all eyes were turned on her.
“I…I wasn’t here most of the time,” she hedged.
“But you came home.”
“Yeah.”
“Yes,” her mother corrected.
“Yes. I came home and Mitch had a couple of guys over, I didn’t really pay much attention, just went to my room.” Oh, they had to know she was lying, she was so poor at it. Her stomach rumbled, and her intestines felt like they were suddenly filled with water. “Can…I…be excused?”
“May I,” Bernice said automatically.
“Please. I don’t feel so hot.” She didn’t wait for an answer, just scraped her chair back and dashed down the hallway.
“Now, what’s gotten into her?” Bernice asked loud enough so that the question rang in Maggie’s ears.
Everything, Mom, everything! This whole family. It’s sick. It used to be normal and fun and secure, and now it’s just sick, sick, sick! Maggie ran to her bedroom, slammed the door shut, and nearly collapsed on the tile counter of the bathroom she shared with Mary Theresa. She couldn’t stand the undercurrents running through the air, didn’t want to think that her family, the one she’d depended on for as long as she could remember, was falling apart. Slowly she lifted her head to stare at her reflection in the mirror mounted over one of the twin sinks. The eyes that stared back at her were dark, haunted, and confused. Her skin was pale—no tinge of color in her cheeks. God, she was a horrible liar. Horrible.
She stripped off her clothes frantically, as if in so doing she could tear away all the lies and deceit, then she relieved herself and stepped into the shower. Cool, clear water ran over her, through her hair, down her neck and body, washing away the sweat and the worries, the fear that everything she’d trusted as true in her life had been a lie. She leaned against the tile and refused to cry, tried to tell herself that things would get better.
But she knew in her heart that it wasn’t over. Not yet. As much as she hated to think it, she was certain the worst was yet to come.
For the next few days Maggie spent as little time as possible at the house, with its invisible waves of tension. She worked bussing tables at Roberto’s, a local Italian restaurant, four nights a week, part of her father’s plan to make his kids learn the “value of a dollar.” Mitch earned his keep as a lifeguard at the city’s one swimming pool, and, as the summer progressed, had gotten more tan by the day. Mary Theresa spent most of her time at the local theater, an old brick elementary school that had been converted into a community center and housed Rio Verde’s only performing-arts center.
Mitch had his own car, the girls shared with their mother, and whenever she could get away, Maggie found a ride out to the stable to ride Ink Spot and learn a little more about Enrique’s replacement. Like it or not, Thane Walker intrigued her.
He seemed a regular jack-of-all-trades and did everything from giving lessons to novice riders to helping shoe the horses when the farrier visited. He groomed the stock, shored up the sagging overhangs of the stable, straightened the tack room, and mended the fences. She’d heard from Flora that he had grown up in Wyoming on a cattle ranch, spent a few years riding bucking broncos and Brahman bulls in rodeo competitions, and had even done some stunt work for a movie production company.
“Yep. Thane’s been a godsend,” Flora had confided to Maggie as she’d sprinkled feed pellets into the rabbit hutches, then added a mixture of carrots, lettuce, and greens that looked suspiciously like the beginnings of the salads Roberto’s sold for over three dollars a plate. “I don’t even miss Enrique, and he was with me for six years.” Flora knocked the dust from the bottom of the pellet can and squinted into the lowering sun to the barn where Thane, without his shirt, was fixing the spigot on the water trough. His tanned muscles gleamed, flexing in the lowering sun as he strained with the wrench. His upper teeth bit into his lower lip as he yanked on the tool.
Maggie’s gaze was fastened to his bronzed chest, bare save for a few brown hairs that sprang between his flat nipples. Sweat ran down from his neck and hairline, and his faded, dusty jeans, with only a battered leather belt keeping them on his hips, slid low enough to display a slice of white skin just above his buttocks when he leaned too far forward.
“Yeah,” Flora said, her voice a little huskier than it had been as he straightened and her eyes followed the curve of his spine. “I’m lucky that Thane showed up when he did.” She thought for a moment, her lips pursing a bit. “You know, he’s the first man I ever hired without bothering with references. Probably because I was desperate, and he knocked on my door.” She scratched her head at her own folly. “Don’t know anything about him, but what he told me.” With a lift of her shoulder, she added, “Good thing he wasn’t wanted by the law or something.”
Flora went back to feeding the animals as Maggie headed toward the stable. Feeling the weight of Thane’s gaze upon her as she passed, she managed to lift her hand in a small wave while hoping against hope that the heat she felt climb up the back of her neck was hidden by her ponytail as it swung behind her. No reason for him to know that her thoughts were starting to be crowded with him, that each night after swimming her laps before bed, his face was her last vision before dropping off to sleep.
&nbs
p; It was crazy, really. Aside from that first day, she’d only had a few conversations with him—short and one-sided, usually about Ink Spot. He teased her mercilessly, wouldn’t give up calling her “Joan” whenever she got a little high-handed, and was a general pain in the backside. Nonetheless, she thought about him constantly. Way more than she should have. At night when she lay in her bed, looking through the open window to the starry sky, she often wondered where he was and with whom.
She remembered how fluidly his muscles slid over each other, the way his hands held a shovel so firmly, his single-sighted intensity as he went about any job. His jaw was always set, his eyes narrowed against the harsh light of the sun, his determination evident in the lines of his face. She’d spent a few nights even fantasizing about touching him, about the feel of his work-roughened hands against her skin, about the pressure of his lips as he kissed her.
Now as she reached the north paddock, she located Ink Spot, standing head to tail with the palomino and switching flies in the shade of a solitary oak tree. Nostrils quivering, Ink Spot lifted her head, spied Maggie, and snorted. With a toss of her head, she took off, and Maggie gave slow, quiet chase. After a few minutes of the game, Ink Spot trotted up to her and pressed her forehead into Maggie’s chest.
“I love you, too,” Maggie said, rubbing the hard spot between the mare’s ears and slipping on the halter. “Let’s go for a ride.” She led the mare to the stable, and while Ink Spot shifted restlessly in a stall, snorting into the empty manger and generally seeming ill at ease, Maggie collected her favorite saddle and bridle. The horse gave out an irritated neigh.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” she said, carrying the tack with her. The light wasn’t all that great, just shafts of sunlight piercing through open windows and doorways to an interior where dust and straw covered the floor and the scents of old urine and fresh manure mixed with the warm odor of horses. Cobwebs and the empty, brittle carcasses of dead insects littered the windowsills, and barrels of oats and mixed grain were stacked in a corner.
Ink Spot, true to her nature, flattened her ears and cocked a hoof she would never kick, but always used as a threat to Maggie as she cinched the saddle. A pale blue eye watched her nervously.
“Boy, you’re ornery today,” Maggie said to the white-faced horse. “We’re going for a ride. Whether you like it or not.”
“Bossy thing, aren’t you?” Thane’s voice startled Maggie, and she jumped. She hadn’t heard him enter through the open door, hadn’t picked up on the sound of a worn leather boot scraping against the concrete flooring.
She threw him a glance over her shoulder. “When I have to be.”
“Is that often?” He reached for a shovel that was hung on a nail near the door.
“Depends.” Buckling the cinch, she wrapped the end through a loop she’d made in the extra length of strap.
“On?”
Was he baiting her? This time when she looked over her shoulder she met his steady gaze with her own. Blue-gray eyes, the color of the sky at dawn, observed her without flinching. She swallowed hard and felt years younger than seventeen. “On…the situation.”
“I thought maybe it was just your nature, Mag Pie.”
She bit back an instant sharp retort. “Did you?”
“Mmm.” His gaze moved slowly down her body, hesitating a second in silent appraisal. Past neck, shoulders, breasts, waist, hips, and legs to her feet where her tired-looking boots were half-buried in the straw spread upon the floor of the stall. “Sometimes you seem angry.”
“Angry?” she repeated, feeling a fool. “How would you know?”
“The way you ride.” He leaned on his shovel now, lifting his gaze quickly to meet hers.
“And how is that?”
“Hell-bent-for-leather. Like you’re runnin’ from something.”
“You can tell all that just by the way I sit in the saddle?”
“Nope.”
Uncomfortable with the conversation, she opened the stall’s gate and led Ink Spot past Thane and through the door. She thought the discussion was over, but she was wrong. He sauntered through the doorway and leaned a shoulder on the weathered siding.
“It’s that you’re always in a hurry. Faster, faster, faster.”
“Maybe I just like to ride that way.” She stuck a foot in the stirrup and hoisted herself onto Ink Spot’s back. It was still hot outside, the afternoon heat intense.
“Most people who do smile once in a while.”
“I smile.”
He shook his head, the blond streaks visible in the afternoon light. “You should though.” This time when he looked up at her, squinting as the sun was to her back, his face seemed a bit more boyish, his expression less harsh. “Yours is a knockout.” With that he hitched himself upright and carried the shovel to a wheelbarrow. Without giving Maggie so much as a second glance, he pushed the wheelbarrow to a huge pile of gravel. Effortlessly he began shoveling the pea-sized bits of rock. The gravel showered into the metal cart, raining from his shovel like hailstones.
Heart in her throat, Maggie yanked on the reins, and Ink Spot wheeled. “Hiya!” With a slap of the reins, Maggie urged the mare forward and the once-stubborn horse took off, gathering speed and tearing through the open gates of the paddocks surrounding the stable, nose to the wind, bit in her teeth, heading toward the dry hills surrounding the ranch.
Wind streamed through Maggie’s hair and pressed in hot waves against her cheeks. Thane’s words chased after her, but she kept her eyes on the horizon and clamped her mouth shut firmly. She’d be damned if she’d smile.
“So what is it with you and the ranch all the time?” Mary Theresa asked a few days later. She was standing with her back to the bathroom, her head twisted so that she could see the reflection of her backside in the full-length mirror. Elton John was singing in the background, his voice muffled. Clothes were thrown everywhere, including over the speakers of Mary Theresa’s stereo.
Maggie, lazing on the small of her back in a director’s chair with Mary Theresa’s name scripted across the back, propped the heel of one bare foot on the corner of her sister’s bed. While waiting for Mary Theresa, she thumbed through the latest edition of People magazine. They were sharing their mother’s BMW today, which meant that Mary Theresa, because she had “tons of errands,” would drop Maggie off at the ranch.
Maggie made a point of looking at the clock on Mary Theresa’s cluttered night table, then swung her gaze in her sister’s direction. From her vantage point she saw Mary Theresa’s face reflected in the mirror. “I like the ranch. I’m supposed to be there in twenty minutes for a riding lesson.”
“I know, I know, we’ll make it.”
“I could just take the car.”
“Forget it. Besides, there’s more to you running out there all the time than just because you take lessons and seem to like the smell of horses.” Mary Theresa’s eyebrows were drawn together, and deep little creases marred the skin between them. “This hangs all wrong. Doesn’t drape,” she said, disgusted with the gauzy pink dress that fell from her shoulders to her knees. “The designer must be a moron.”
Maggie thought the dress looked fine. “Maybe you should wear a bra under it,” she offered, as Mary Theresa’s breasts and nipples were visible through the sheer fabric.
“I will, stupid, when I go out, but a bra won’t affect how the back hangs.”
“Sure it will.” Maggie couldn’t help egging her sister on and felt more than a little satisfaction when Mary Theresa, rolling her eyes, let the dress drop, struggled into a bra, and zipped up again. “See.” She glanced at the clock. She was really going to be late, if M.T. didn’t get a move on. “It’s fine now. Let’s go.”
“Okay, okay,” Mary Theresa said sighing. “So you were right. It looks better.”
“It looks great.” No reason to lie.
Mary sent her a sly glance. “You know, you could do something a little more feminine sometimes.”
Maggie lifted a sh
oulder and thumbed through the magazine. “I suppose.”
“It wouldn’t hurt.” She adjusted the neckline again and smiled at her reflection. “Especially if you’re trying to impress some boy.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh, sure, and you’re hanging out at the stables just because you’re so into horses.”
“I like to ride,” Maggie said without a trace of enthusiasm.
“Uh-huh.” Sighing, Mary Theresa undressed and, wearing only her panties and bra, hung the pink dress on a hanger. “I think you’ve got a boyfriend out there.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Maggie paused to look at a slick, black-and-white picture of Princess Anne astride a thoroughbred sailing over a hedge.
“Just tell me it’s not that cowboy who delivered you here the other day.”
“It’s no one,” Maggie lied, and hoped her expression didn’t give her away. She couldn’t tell Mary Theresa about Thane, about how she couldn’t stop thinking about him, about the way her heartbeat elevated each time she saw him. No. Instinctively she realized that if Mary Theresa had a hint that she was attracted to him, there would be a price to pay. A dear one. She tossed the magazine aside and found her boots.
“Oh, right.” M.T. slid into a pair of black shorts and a red tank top. As she was stuffing the hem of her shirt into the waistband of the shorts, she said, “You never asked me any more about Mitch.”
Oh, God. “Mitch isn’t one of my favorite topics.”
“Good. Because there’s nothing going on, you know.” Mary avoided Maggie’s eyes as she found a rubber band and a couple of clips. With one clip in her mouth, she deftly wound her hair into a French braid that she snapped off with the rubber band and pinned to her head.
“I didn’t think there was.” Maggie forced her feet into her boots.
Mary flashed her thousand-watt smile as she sprayed her hair and shoulders with perfume. “Okay, end of subject.”
Amen, Maggie thought, and wished she believed it. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah.”