“No. Sit still. I'll just put them in the dryer.”
Margaret went down the basement steps and lifted the lid on the washer. The wet clothes clung to the sides of the tub. She lifted them out to put them into the dryer, and her heart leapt into her throat. Big white splotches everywhere—all over the jeans! With trembling hands she looked at each pair, holding them at the waist and letting the long, slim legs hang down. The splotches were on the legs of some, on the front and back of others. What in the world had happened? What had she done wrong? More important than that, what was she going to do now?
“Maggie?” Beth called from the doorway at the top of the stairs. “Chip's back. He's tying up the boat.”
Margaret opened the dryer and shoved the jeans inside. She turned the dial as Chip had told her to do, and the drum began to turn, the zippers from the blasted jeans making small clicking sounds as they whirled. She'd have to decide later what to do about the jeans. She only knew that she didn't want that child upstairs to see the mess she'd made.
Margaret took big gulps of air into her lungs to calm herself, then straightened her glasses, smoothed her hair, and calmly mounted the steps.
Chip came in the back door as she reached the kitchen. Their eyes met and held. He smiled, a half-smile at first, beginning with his mouth, lifting it wide, then crinkling his eyes.
“Morning, sweetheart.”
“Morning.” It was the oddest feeling. She felt as if she were coming alive. She knew the endearment was for Beth's benefit, but it caused a warm feeling of belonging to course through her.
“Hi, Chip.”
“Hi, Beth.” He strode across the room and wrapped an arm around Margaret. A finger approached the tip of her nose and slid upward until it reached the crosspiece of her glasses and firmly pushed them into place. “Hi,” he said, just to her, his voice low, with a caress in its tone. The smiling blue eyes moved from her eyes to her lips, which were curved in a nervous smile.
She felt the soft brush of his mustache on her cheek, then his lips, firm and warm, against her mouth. It was a slow, unhurried kiss, and when he raised his head his eyes glinted into hers with devilish amusement. She was trembling, shaken to her roots, and she stared at him almost angrily.
“How're you doing, Beth?” he said to the girl who stood beside the door with a stricken look on her face.
“Fine. You?”
“Fine. What are you doing out and around so early? I thought schoolgirls liked to sleep in on Saturday mornings.”
“Well…I had to go to town. Thought I'd stop by and see…when Dolly's comin' home.”
Margaret noticed how Beth kept her gaze on the floor, and she could see herself when she first met Chip years ago in her father's study. Inner conflict was tearing the girl apart. Margaret rushed to say something to fill the silence.
“Beth and I had a nice visit. I'm glad she stopped by. Another time I'd like to go to town with you, Beth.”
“That'll be okay, I guess. I've only got that old pickup, but it gets me there.” Now she was looking from one to the other of them, her gaze watchful. “Guess I'd better get goin'.” She moved toward the kitchen door to go back out through the front of the house. Then turned, her eyes anxious. “Are you really goin' to marry her?”
“If I can talk her into it, I am. Don't you think I've made a good choice?” Chip's tone was even, his face serious. He tightened his arm to keep Margaret beside him.
“But you said the woman you married would want to spend her life here in Flathead. You said city girls don't know nothin' but primpin' and dressin' up like that old man's girl. You said she was useless as tits on a boar. You said—”
“I was wrong, Beth,” Chip interrupted. His voice was stern, but there was an undertone of gentleness. “City girls are like any other girls. If they want to adjust to this life, they can.”
“But—”
“Run along, Beth. Are you keeping your grades up like you promised?”
“And if I don't, I suppose you'll take the old pickup back!” Resentment flared on the young face.
“You're damn right I will! A bargain's a bargain.”
Margaret watched the emotions flicker across the girl's face, and she forcefully moved out from the circle of Chip's arm. “Like I said, Beth. Nothing has been decided.” She wanted to say, He's lying! I'm the useless one he told you about.
“Don't you love him?” Beth asked hopefully, her eyes dark with hurt.
“Of course she does. She told me so last night.” Chip shrugged out of his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. His glance at Margaret dared her to contradict him.
Beth's face tightened angrily. “You get her pregnant before she decides and I'll never speak to you again!” She shot Margaret a stricken look and bolted out of the room. The front door slammed as she left the house.
“Why did you tell her that? It was…unkind,” Margaret finished weakly.
“Unkind? You think it's better to let her hope?” His voice was brusque. “It's time she stopped hanging around here and got a boyfriend her own age.”
“You didn't have to be so brutal. You didn't have to lie about being…about me.”
“I had two reasons for saying what I did. She'll spread it up and down Flathead Range that you're here as my fiancée, and she'll get over her silly romantic notions about me.”
“You had no right to involve me. You should've talked to her father.”
He looked at her with irony in the twist of his lips. “She doesn't have one. Well, I guess she does have one…somewhere. The bastard left them about six weeks ago.”
The words were slow to sink in. When they did, Margaret was puzzled. “But she said her father was a foreman at one of the logging camps.”
Chip shrugged. “Beth makes things up. She'll never admit that he pulled out and left them. She always has a reason why he's away. He's in the hospital, or he joined the service and is in Germany, or some other lie.”
“Oh, the poor girl!” She frowned up at him. “All the more reason to show a little compassion.”
He took a deep breath, as if making some inner decision. “Don't tell me how to run my affairs, Maggie. You know nothing at all about the situation.”
“Maybe not. But I learned a little more about you—and your opinion of the old man's girl! I'm surprised you'd want someone so useless to even pretend to be your fiancée!” His smile only increased her irritation.
“I knew you'd pick up on that.” His grin deepened, and he reminded her of a tiger that had just been thrown a piece of raw meat.
She felt a hot wave wash over her body as he blatantly surveyed her slender figure. His eyes slowly lifted to her face. She might be technically inexperienced, but she interpreted his look to mean she wasn't entirely useless.
The sexual assessment in those blue eyes left her chilled but angry.
“Your jeans are in the dryer, you chauvinist…creep! I hope you enjoy wearing them!” She jerked her head toward the basement door, and her glasses slid down her nose. Chip reached out with a forefinger and pushed them up before she could jerk her head away.
“You look kind of cute in those glasses. Why do you wear the contacts?”
“Because I want to!” she snapped defiantly.
“Good enough reason, princess. Now, run along and get a jacket so we can go to town and buy you some decent clothes.”
She instantly hated him for speaking to her as if she were no older than Beth, and she retorted sharply. “My clothes are decent. They may not be suitable for this country, but they are decent.”
“Of course they are, honey,” he said placatingly. “Now run along. And, princess,” he drawled, “you'd better put your contacts in; I don't want to be pushing your glasses up all day.”
She had wanted to anger him. Instead she had amused him, and that annoyed her. She ground her teeth and went to her room, closing the door softly because she wanted so badly to slam it. The sweatshirt came off over her head and the glasses with it
. She grabbed up her cosmetics case and went to the bathroom, shooting the bolt into place, defying him to tell her she couldn't lock the bathroom door. Forest fires be damned! She had finished putting in her contact lenses and was carefully applying makeup when she heard the bellow from the kitchen.
“Maggie! What the hell did you do to my jeans?”
Instead of feeling frightened, as she had when she'd discovered the splotched jeans, she was almost pleased. Revenge was sweet!
“I only did what you told me to do,” she called innocently through the door.
“Damn it! You've ruined four pairs of my best jeans. They'd been washed just enough to be comfortable.”
“Sorreee! I'll call Fort Knox and get the money to buy you a truckload.” She held her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing.
“I told you to bleach the white things, damn it,” he yelled from the door to his room.
“Oh, is that what I did wrong? Well, I'm so useless, I can't remember things overnight.” She deliberately made her voice sound young and helpless.
The firm closing of a door was his response, and Margaret claimed a small victory. She fastened tiny diamond clips to her ears and slipped her diamond-studded watch onto her wrist. Back in her room she looped the jacket from her Jourdan suit over her arm, picked up her bag, and went out to the living room.
Chip stood with his back to the hearth, although there wasn't a fire burning. The blue eyes studied her, and she could tell her defiance had hit target. He wanted to present her as a dowdy girlfriend, and she was having no part of it. She kept her head erect, meeting his eyes unsmiling. A faint frown pleated his brow, but he remained silent until he shrugged into his mackinaw.
“The minute they find out who you are, you're leaving on the next plane.” He made the statement softly, but he might as well have shouted the words that accompanied his cool, cool look.
“I have as much right to be here as you do,” she answered, her voice sharp.
“No, you don't. I'm the trustee, remember? Even more than that, all I'd have to do is leak it to the papers that you're here, and the Anthony corporation would see to it you didn't leave the house without a couple of bodyguards. Is that what you want?”
“You know it isn't!” she protested.
“Then why the hell don't you behave yourself?” He couldn't keep the exasperation out of his voice. “Oh, hell! C'mon.” He opened the door and waited for her to pass through. “Wait here,” he said when they reached the porch. “I'll bring up the other car. I doubt if you'd care to ride to town in the Jeep.”
Margaret climbed into the dusty car and idly wondered if comfortable cars had been banned in this area. At least it was enclosed, which was an improvement over the one he'd driven yesterday, she thought ruefully.
She glanced at Chip's set profile as they drove on in silence. After ten minutes or so, Chip finally said, “Most of the timber you see off to the left is on land leased by Anthony/ Thorn.”
She made a pretense of looking in the direction he indicated. Somehow her sense of defiance had vanished in the face of his silence. It still rankled that he thought her useless and had announced that opinion to his friends. Suddenly she saw, as if in a scene unfolding, the complete emptiness, the barren waste, of her life. She had done nothing, worked at nothing, was responsible for nothing except speaking softly and seeing that she didn't upset her father. There had been Rachel to run the house, Edna to manage the meals, and Justin to see that the bills were paid. There had always been someone to see that life ran smoothly and comfortably. Chip hadn't been too far wrong about her, not that she'd ever admit it to him.
“How did you get the name Chip?” She longed to be friends with him again. It was too wearing to be at loggerheads. She smiled when the word came to mind; it was very appropriate.
He glanced at her. “Why are you smiling? It's logical a lumberman would nickname his son Chip. You know the old saying ‘a chip off the old block’? I used to follow my dad around the logging camps; the name came naturally.”
“I wasn't smiling because of your name. I'd about figured that out for myself. I was thinking it's much nicer to be friends than to be at loggerheads. I don't know where I got that word from unless I heard my father use it.”
“As you might have guessed, the term is a common one here for describing a disagreement. But it's also used in marine biology. A loggerhead is a very large carnivorous turtle.”
“Are you interested in marine biology?”
“Only mildly. I'm too wrapped up in the lumber business and a few other projects I have going to branch out with another interest.”
“It must be a very satisfying life,” she said quietly.
“It has its moments—and its drawbacks—just like everything else.” The road was steep and winding, and Chip concentrated on driving and didn't speak until it straightened out again. “What do you plan to do when you return to Chicago?”
“I haven't decided. I'm trying my wings, you know.” She hadn't meant the sad note to creep into her voice, but it had.
“Yes, I know. Just be careful and don't get your wings scorched, little butterfly.” His grin was so charming she could do nothing but smile back at him.
As they approached Aaronville she slipped the diamondstudded watch and the earrings into her handbag. There had been an imperceptible change in her thinking since she'd met this man.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE DUST-COVERED ROAD to Aaronville seemed infinitely shorter than it had the previous day when she'd driven over it with Tom MacMadden. Still, it was full of hills and curves, and Margaret was relieved when it finally began to flatten out into the valley and she could see the town stretched ahead. Houses were scattered at intervals on both sides of the road, each with its own neat garden displaying orange pumpkins amid the drying vines, huge stacks of firewood, and wood smoke curling from cobblestone chimneys.
Chip turned the car down a side street before they reached the business district, traveled down what appeared to be a little-used road, and swung into an alley behind a store. He parked the car in an area reserved for loading and cut the motor.
“We can go in the back door and get you fixed up with some clothes that won't make you look quite so conspicuous.” He looked at her as if expecting an argument, and his expression told her he was ready to overrule any protest she might make.
She acquiesced. “Okay. This is your territory, so we'll play it your way.”
“Good girl. C'mon.” He smiled with his eyes as well as his mouth. There was charm in his face again, and Margaret felt herself responding to it.
The back of the building was dark and piled from floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes. Chip reached for Margaret's hand and led her through the stack of merchandise. As they came in out of the direct sunlight the room seemed incredibly dark to Margaret, and she followed closely along behind Chip. She hooked her toe on a box and stumbled. His grip on her hand tightened.
“Hold it! Am I going too fast?” He turned and slipped his hand through her arm, gripping her waist.
“I'm as blind as a bat in the dark,” Margaret murmured.
“I'll have to remember that.” His soft laughter made her laugh back, although she wasn't quite sure what he'd meant.
Chip pushed open a swinging door, and they entered a store unlike anything Margaret had ever seen before. The counters and tables were piled high with work clothes of all kinds. The aisles were narrow, and Chip had to release her arm so they could walk single file to the front of the store.
“Hi, Roy.”
“Hi, Chip. How ya doin'?”
“Fine. Dottie around?”
“Sure I am. I'm hiding behind this stack of coveralls.” A small, plump woman with short curly hair and a bright smile emerged from behind a center table.
“Hello, Dottie. I want you to meet Maggie.” Was that pride in his voice? He put his arm around Margaret. “Darling, these are a couple of my best friends, Dottie and Roy Lemon.”
Ma
rgaret held out her hand. “It's nice to meet you,” she murmured.
“Same here. We were wondering when this devil was going to bring you in to meet us.” Dottie looked up at Chip fondly.
“Maggie needs some clothes, Dottie. She brought all the wrong things because I forgot to tell her to bring outdoor clothing. Fix her up with some jeans and shirts, boots, socks, and a warm mackinaw.” He still had his arm tightly about Margaret, as if he were reluctant to let her leave his side.
“Sure thing. Come on, Maggie. There's nothing I like better than to run up a bill on Chip.”
“Oh, no! I'll pay for my things.”
Chip took her purse from her hand. “They don't take credit cards here, sweetheart.”
“Yes, they do. The sign beside the cash register says so.”
“Not yours,” Chip said firmly. “Run along with Dottie. Or would you rather I helped you?” He grinned down at her, but his eyes were not smiling.
When Margaret came out of the cubbyhole of a dressing room she found Chip waiting with Dottie. She paused, uncertain, while he eyed her critically. The jeans were a little big at the waist, but otherwise they fit perfectly. The soft cotton shirt with the snap fasteners was tucked smoothly into the waistband.
“Now that's more like it.” Chip reached for her hand and fastened the cuffs of the shirt, then inserted his finger into the waistband of the jeans. “You need a belt. How do they feel?”
Margaret looked up at him. He seemed taller than ever because she had left her shoes in the dressing room, but his eyes were warm. “They're a little stiff,” she admitted; “I'm sure they'll be okay after they're washed a few times.” She tossed him a teasing glance.
He was standing very close, and he bent toward her and murmured in her ear, “Sure. I'll wash them for you like you did mine.”
It was the kind of patter that passed between people who had known each other a long time, Margaret reflected. She tilted her face up to his and felt more alive than she ever had before. This sweet, comfortable familiarity was like heady wine.
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