Twice Kissed

by Lisa Jackson

  “Besides her life in general?” Eve laughed. “No, don’t think so.” She wagged a finger at Maggie. “Now, before you start asking me if she was suicidal, the answer is an emphatic ‘no’ again. The police seem to think she might have gone off somewhere and done herself in, but I doubt it.” She looked directly into Maggie’s eyes. “That wouldn’t be Marquise’s style.”

  They talked for a while, and Maggie left feeling frustrated, learning little more than she had already known, sensing she was no closer to finding out what happened to her sister than she ever had been. The snow was melting under a bright southwestern sun, and the air was clear and fresh, but Maggie couldn’t help the sense of foreboding that clung to her like a shadow.

  “You’re sure?” Thane hugged the receiver to his ear and ignored the country-western music and loud conversation that emanated from the bar.

  “That’s right,” Roy said, his rough voice as clear as if he’d been in the next room rather than some tiny outpost in California. “It took a little diggin’ but I got lucky. Seems as if your ex-wife spent some time in a small private hospital called Our Lady of Sorrows, not far from the Mexican border. The nearest town is miles away. It’s for mental patients, and a lot of celebrity types go there on the q.t. to pull themselves together or dry out or to get off drugs. Mary Theresa checked herself in about six months after your divorce was final, pal.”

  Thane’s gut clenched, and if Mary Theresa had been anywhere near him, he would have grabbed her and throttled her for her deception. “Hell,” he ground out.

  “I guess congratulations are in order,” Roy said laughing without much mirth. “It’s not every day a man discovers he’s got a seventeen-year-old son.”

  Betrayal burned through Thane’s soul, and he remembered the way Mary Theresa had thrown it in his face just last week. She’d called him in Cheyenne and she’d been sobbing, swearing she was going to kill herself, out of her mind with her latest emotional trauma. She’d begged him to come to Denver. He’d pushed the speed limit and straightened corners the entire distance.

  When he’d arrived at her house, he’d found her in the kitchen, dressed in a black silky bathrobe and offering him a drink as she led him to the kitchen. He should never have followed. She’d been three sheets to the wind, and when he’d refused the bourbon, she’d gotten right to the point and asked to borrow money from him. He’d refused, and she’d fallen into a million pieces, first trying to seduce him and then crying.

  She’d tried all her tricks on him. First she’d kissed him, opening her mouth and licking his ear, telling him he was the only man who had ever satisfied her.

  “Give it up,” he’d told her, pushing her away. She’d stumbled, falling against the kitchen counters. Tears had sprung to her eyes, and she’d started sobbing again, as if she were brokenhearted.

  Of course it had been an act. Just one of the many masks of Marquise that she donned with such agility.

  “Don’t even think about it, Mary,” he’d told her when she’d wound her fingers in the lapels of his jacket and turned her face up to him. Her eyes had shone with tears. Her cheeks and nose had turned red from booze, tears, and effort. He hadn’t budged. “I’m not buyin’ it, lady.” Slowly, he’d pried her fingers from his coat.

  She’d flown into a rage. Her beautiful eyes had flared with green fire. “You have to help me.”

  “No, Mary Theresa, I don’t have to do anything.”

  “But you…we…”

  “We’re nothing. Ex-spouses who never loved each other.”

  “Bastard!”

  “Absolutely.”

  “God, you’re cold.”

  “Learned from the master.”

  “How can you be so heartless, so cruel?” she’d asked, pouring herself another screwdriver and swirling the vodka and orange juice in a tall glass. Her eyes glistened with tears, mascara ran down her cheeks, and she looked like hell. “You know, Thane, I gave you everything. I was only seventeen when you seduced me—”

  “This won’t work either,” he’d said. “I don’t feel guilty.”

  “But—”

  “And for the record, you seduced me. Pretended to be Maggie.”

  Her lips had curled into a sneer. She set her drink on the counter. “It was always Maggie with you. Even when I was pregnant with your child, you pretended I was her. You’re sick, Walker.”

  “Probably.”

  Sniffing loudly, she’d hung her head and taken on the pose of the wounded. Another mask. Staring at the floor, she’d whispered, “I need your help, Thane. You’re the only one I can count on, the only one who—” She caught herself, bit her lip, and a tear fell to the floor.

  He nearly buckled but held firm. “Forget it, Mary. I’m through with this—with you. It’s gone on long enough. No more.”

  “You can’t do this to me.” Her voice was but a whisper, and she ran a finger over the tile of the counter.

  “You’ve done it to yourself.”

  “So now you’re preachy.”

  “I’m outta here.”

  “Just listen, Thane. I’ll pay you back. Please. I owe back taxes, and God, the credit cards are immense, and there’s talk of canceling the show and…oh, shit, what am I gonna do? Thane—”

  “No way.”

  “But I need—”

  “You can’t keep coming to me. Every time there’s a problem, you call me. It’s time you stood on your own two feet or leaned on that pretty boy of a boyfriend of yours.”

  “Wade?” she said, wrinkling her pert little nose before taking a swallow. “He’s useless.”

  “Then find someone else, damn it, Mary Theresa. It’s what you’re good at. You and I—we’re through.”

  A bubble of laughter escaped her throat. “Silly boy,” she said, though tears were still drizzling from her eyes, and she stopped her runny nose with the cuff of her robe. Her eyelids lowered to the same seductive half-masts he’d always found so damned alluring. “We’ll never be through. Don’t you know that?”

  “What I know is that it’s finally over.” He opened the French door leading to the patio. Cold air, promising winter, raced into the room.

  “Don’t think so.” She lifted her glass and drained it of vodka and orange juice. Then slowly, her gaze never leaving his, she started crunching ice between her beautiful teeth.

  “As I said, I’m outta here.” He was through the back door and taking in deep gulps of air. Dry leaves scattered and scratched across the bricks, and the lake, with naked branched trees standing guard, was a cold dark mirror.

  “Don’t you wanna know why it’s not gonna be over? Why it never can be?” Following him outside, where the evening air was brisk and clear, the first few stars flung high in the purple sky, she hurried to catch up with him. The hem of her bathrobe dragged in the brittle yellowing grass, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “No.”

  “Sure you do—”

  He made it to the gate and unlatched it. Somewhere in a neighboring house, a door slammed. “Forget it, Mary.”

  “Can’t do it and neither should you.”

  He didn’t listen, made his way toward the front of the house, but she caught up with him, grabbed hold of his shirt. “I’ve got a secret,” she taunted, her face white in the thin moonlight.

  “More than one, I’ll bet.”

  “But this one’s a doozy. It’s about you.”

  “Not interested.”

  “Oh, I think you should be.” Her voice had taken on a singsong quality as he approached the edge of the garage and the front of the house. “You were the one who was so keen on being a daddy way back when.”

  “What does that have to do with—” He spun on a heel and took hold of her wrist. His heart slammed in his chest as he began to understand. “What are you saying?” he demanded, his voice low. From the corner of his eye he saw a cat slinking through the shadows.

  “Don’t you get it?” She laughed, the tinkling sound of victory. Somehow she thoug
ht she’d won.

  “Get what?”

  “We did have a baby, Thane. A boy.”

  “No way. You told me you miscarried.”

  “After the first one…I found out just about the time we split the sheets.”

  “It’s a lie.” His head hammered.

  “If you think so.”

  His short supply of patience fled. “I mean it, Mary.”

  “Oh, well, you’re not interested.”

  He slammed her up against the side of the garage. “Don’t mess with me.”

  “I’m not, Thane. It’s true. You’ve got a seventeen-year-old son.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Not drunk enough.”

  “I swear if this is another one of your bullshit lies, Mary Theresa, I’ll kill you!” His fingers tightened roughly over her shoulders, and he shoved his face so close to hers he smelled the perfume in her hair, the nearly odorless scent of vodka on her breath.

  “You don’t have the guts.” In a heartbeat he realized how easily he could crush her bones or…take her into his arms and make love to her until…Oh, Christ, no! He dropped his hands and stepped backward, nearly tripping on the damned cat. It yowled, then hissed, scrambling under the fence. “Where is he?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Nope. I gave him up.”

  “Where?” Thane demanded. “Where were you?”

  “Write me a check. Then we’ll talk.”

  “You miserable, self-serving bitch!”

  “There was a time when you didn’t think so.”

  “There was a time when I was trapped,” he’d said, but felt the noose that kept him tied to Marquise tightening. Anger churned through his blood. “But no more. No more!”

  “Then rot in hell, Thane Walker.”

  I am, he thought, driving away.

  Now, as he hung up the phone knowing that he’d missed seventeen years of his son’s life and that he’d never really fallen out of love with Maggie McCrae, the sister of his ex-wife, he knew more than he ever had that Marquise had cursed him as surely as if she’d cast a spell. She’d been right. He’d never be rid of her.

  Driving through the sun-washed, crowded streets of Denver, a city she’d visited only a few times, Maggie felt isolated and alone.

  A few years ago there had been so many people in her life; but her parents had died, her in-laws turned their backs on her when she’d decided to divorce Dean, her daughter didn’t trust her, and now her sister was missing. Glancing at a map on the front seat, she slowly maneuvered the rental car to the hotel, where a valet parked it, and she took the elevator to the suite she shared with Thane.

  “Home sweet home,” she said, dropping her purse into a chair. Kicking off her shoes, she checked Thane’s bedroom. It was empty, the bed freshly made. Sighing, she leaned against the French doors and thought a second too long about falling asleep with his arms around her. How safe it had seemed. “Get over it, Maggie,” she mumbled, remembering that what she and Thane shared was lust, not love.

  She placed a call to Marquise’s agent in Los Angeles but was snippily informed that “Mr. King is out of town for the rest of the week,” so she gave her name and was promised that Mr. King would call her “ASAP.”

  “Dream on,” she grumbled, dialing Michelle Kelly, Marquise’s psychiatrist. On the third ring a recorder answered, and Maggie left a message requesting an appointment.

  Frustrated, she looked at the clock and wondered when Thane would be back. Even if he was gone only for a few minutes, this might be her chance to try and find out more about him—the secrets she sensed he hid.

  It was Thane. He did this to me. Don’t let him get away with it.

  Did what, Maggie wondered. Ignoring the ridiculous sense that she was trespassing, she wandered into Thane’s bedroom and looked around for his bag. She found it in the closet, and, straining to hear if a key were inserted into the lock announcing Thane’s arrival, she rifled through the contents. Jeans, slacks, sweater, shirts, socks, and underwear. A small shaving kit. Nothing more. No papers, no address book, no clues as to what he was hiding.

  “So much for being a master detective,” she muttered, replacing his things and pushing aside the fear that she was spinning her wheels, that no matter what she did, she wouldn’t be able to help her sister or unlock the secrets surrounding Thane Walker.

  In the one day of walking in Mary Theresa’s shoes, she hadn’t gotten far—probably barely out the door. But what had she expected? To “crack the case” in twenty-four hours when the Denver police had been working for days? Rubbing the kinks from her neck, she walked into the bathroom and twisted on the gold faucets of the sunken tub.

  “You’re a ninny,” she chided, catching sight of her reflection in the full-length mirror as she stripped out of her clothes. It was strange seeing herself through eyes that compared her to Mary Theresa. Stark naked she walked to the mirror and lifted her hand, pretending the image staring back at her was Marquise, who, raising the opposing arm, was the very mirror-image twin she was labeled at birth.

  “Where are you?” Maggie asked, resting her head against the glass, forehead to forehead with her reflection. Marquise’s reflection. Mary Theresa’s reflection. Oh, Lord, it was all so confusing.

  She took a seat on the edge of the sunken tub and massaged her aching feet. She wasn’t used to wearing heels or pretending to be her sister. Steam rose, filling the room as she wound her hair into a knot that she clipped to the top of her head and again caught sight of her image in the mirror.

  How much did she really look like Marquise? Enough that Thane had been able to fantasize about her last night?

  Don’t do this, Maggie. It’s dangerous. Dark. Creepy.

  Settling into the tub, she let the hot water envelop her and replayed the night before in her mind. In retrospect, the lovemaking with Thane seemed almost surreal, and oh, so sinfully tantalizing. Her skin tingled at the thought of what Thane had done to her, how his touch had driven her to heights of ecstasy she hadn’t scaled in years. He’d been her first lover and was still the best.

  “Oh, sure,” she growled, snapping back to reality. The reason she was still interested in him was because he was forbidden fruit, the great taboo of her life. His secrets fascinated her; his bad-boy charm seduced the hell out of her and reduced her to the state of being just another foolish woman. Disgusted, she refused to think about how he could drive her crazy with desire, or how with one glance from those stormy eyes he caused her to fantasize about him. And him to fantasize about Marquise?

  What was it Eve had said, that Thane had never severed his ties to Mary Theresa? That she suspected that he still loved her—that they were still connected? Why? What was the link that kept them bound?

  A headache started to pound with the questions that haunted her. She washed herself, closed her eyes, and let the soothing water grow cool around her. She tried to concentrate on her sister’s whereabouts, attempted to piece together what little she knew, but thoughts of Thane and the magic of his hands and mouth kept getting in the way.

  She dozed for a second and woke up to cold water and shadows filling the room. She couldn’t forget she was here with a purpose, that Mary Theresa was the reason she was in Denver. She climbed out of the tub and was reaching for a robe when she heard the door to the suite open. Quickly she threw on the short robe and hurried to the living room.

  “Well?” she demanded, as Thane yanked off his gloves. He’d been striding into the room but stopped when he caught sight of her, and she was suddenly embarrassed, aware that she was barely dressed.

  He tossed his gloves and jacket onto a chair. “I didn’t learn much.” His gaze strayed to her throat, where the neckline of the robe overlapped. “The convenience store clerk was a bust. Not even sure if Marquise did stop by. Laslo seems on the up and up, and the gardener and housekeeper worship the ground she walks on. I stopped by Syd Gillette’s hotel, but he wasn’t in, and he an
d I never did get along.” Abruptly he met her eyes again. “How ’bout you?”

  “Not…not much better,” she admitted, and had to clear her throat. He brought with him the smell of the outdoors and his hair was ruffled, falling over his forehead in a boyish manner that reminded her of a summer long ago. “But I still want to talk with her agent and psychiatrist. The people at KRKY seem to care about what happened to her, but who knows?” She looked him squarely in the eye and couldn’t forget making love to him. “You know, I’ve been fooled before.”

  “Cheap shot, Mag,” he said, then walked to the bar, found a bottle of scotch, cracked it open, and poured himself a drink. “Want one?” he offered.

  She was tempted. The muscles in the back of her neck were tight, her head still ached a bit, and being around Thane made her edgy; but she’d never been one to rely on alcohol, had seen too much devastation in her own family to be much of a drinker. “Make it small.”

  One eyebrow lifted as he poured. “Whatever you want, darlin’.”

  “I thought I told you to stop calling me that.”

  He shook his head and grinned. “Testy today, aren’t you?” He crossed the room and handed her a glass. “To you, Maggie,” he said, touching the rim of his glass to hers.

  “To Mary Theresa,” she said automatically, and took a long swallow as one of his eyebrows inched upward. Smoky scotch seared a path to her belly.

  “Whatever.” Sipping his drink, he turned on the fire and glanced into the mirror over the fireplace. In the glass he stared at her for a long, uncomfortable heartbeat. Maggie took another quick drink. Being this close to Thane was a bad idea. He knew her too well, was too familiar, too damned irresistible. “I think I’d better move into another hotel,” she said, surprised that her voice had grown husky.

  “Why?”

  “You know why. This”—she shook her head—“this is crazy. Last night…”

  “What about last night?” Turning, he leaned a shoulder against the mantel and finished his drink in one long gulp.

  She tried not to stare at his throat as it worked or notice the crow’s-feet that fanned from the corners of his eyes when he looked at her or how long his legs seemed to be in the shadowy room. She didn’t want to think of his touch or how he smelled or the fact that no one had ever kissed her with the same intensity as Thane had. Not even Dean.