by Alicia Scott
“All right. Give it some gas.”
Inside the relative warmth and shelter of the car, Maggie obediently pressed on the pedal. Behind her, Cain pushed against the tiny vehicle, his face contorted with fierce effort. The tires spun in the rich red mud. Cain pushed harder, his broad shoulder pressed against the muddy bumper, and Maggie could feel the vehicle rock and buck as if even it felt tired, wet, filthy and ready to get on with it.
But the greedy mud didn’t release its grasping, sucking grip.
“Stop,” Cain called out at last, his voice frustrated. Maggie’s foot obediently slipped away. She studied him in the rearview mirror as she sat quietly, waiting for the next command. He was soaked to the bone now, his clothes molded to his solid frame and liberally streaked with mud. Rain dripped steadily off the black rim of his baseball cap, hammering against his cold white cheeks and running down his strong, corded neck. He didn’t seem to notice the discomfort or chill. He simply stood there, his green eyes narrowed as he contemplated his options.
He looked strong and enduring against the dark night sky, calm and steady. The Rock of Gibraltar, Maggie thought. He spoke like that, too. He looked her in the eye and, even under the worst circumstances, maintained a low, rumbling baritone that soothed.
It was her fault they were in this mess, so to speak. But he hadn’t yelled at her—as her mother would have. He hadn’t turned away from her stonily—as her father would have. He didn’t try to protect her from the consequences or tell her it wasn’t really her fault—as Lydia, C.J., and Brandon would have.
He had simply looked at her levelly and said, “I guess we have a new vehicle now. Let’s get it on the road.”
Now, he crossed his arms over his chest, still analyzing the car speculatively, as if it were some riddle that would be easily solved if he could just deduce the key. Then abruptly, he scowled and raised his foot to kick the car, in the universal gesture of “logic be damned—let’s kill the beast.” Safely ensconced in the front seat, Maggie placed a hand over her mouth to hide her smile.
Finally, she popped open the door. He looked up immediately.
“I’ll help push,” she said, planting her first foot outside the car. The wind had picked up, and it slapped the rain against her bare calf like an angry, hissing woman.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said immediately. “Honestly, Maggie, I don’t think it will make a difference.”
“I’m stronger than I look,” she said haughtily, bringing up her chin as she got out of the car anyway. The rain hit her hard, instantly molding her silk blouse against her arms and torso and chilling her to the bone. Despite her best intentions, she shivered, then crossed her arms across her chest for warmth.
Though he didn’t say anything further, Cain still looked skeptical, which aggravated her bruised pride. “I will have you know,” she said as she took her first step into the squishy, sucking mud, “that I could build hay forts with the best of them, tossing and stacking straw bales into rebel hideaways just as well as C.J. and Brandon. They, of course, thought I should play Princess Leia to their Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. Princess Leia be damned. I always opted to be Chewbacca.” Her foot disappeared completely into the mud, and with it, her favorite sling-back pumps. She stared down at the red ooze in shock while the rain raked over her back.
“Hay forts? What’s a tiny rich girl doing building hay forts and playing Star Wars?”
“Having fun,” she said impatiently and experimented with raising her foot. The mud clung tight, pulling her foot down deeper like a gaping, gulping mouth. With a slight shiver, she pulled earnestly and was finally rewarded by the mud giving up with a popping, squishy gasp. Her foot came flying back to her, just in time for a next step. She proceeded with pigheaded determination and shivering fear. “We—C.J., Brandon and myself,” she supplied, continuing to talk so she wouldn’t have to think of the mud, or the rain, or the chill, “spent our summers on my grandmother’s dairy farm in Tillamook. Have you ever been to Tillamook?”
Cain shook his head. “I’ve just eaten the cheese. It’s very good cheese.”
“The cheese, certainly. But, Cain, you haven’t lived until you’ve eaten the fudge. Oh my, that fudge …” She sighed wistfully, already tasting the white fudge with caramel strips melting creamy and rich on her tongue. She forced herself back to attention.
Cain still stood patiently behind the right rear wheel of the car, waiting for her to get around the vehicle. Once she’d made her intention clear, he hadn’t tried to stop her but simply accepted her decision. She liked that about him. She liked that about him immensely. He respected her decisions, and for the first time in her life that made her feel strong.
“Well,” she forced herself to continue briskly as she braved another cautious step and promptly watched her second Italian leather shoe sink into the red ooze, “you should go to Tillamook. It’s nestled between the mountains and the coast like this tiny green emerald, shrouded in mist and filled with rolling green hills dotted with black-and-white heifers. You can hear the cows chewing their cud in rhythm with the crashing waves. My grandmother came to Tillamook in 1928, the year the Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawed war, Mickey Mouse was born and President Coolidge refused to aid our farmers mired in the agricultural depression. Her parents had set out from New Mexico to Oregon. My grandmother’s youngest sister, Vivian, died during the first week from a scorpion sting. Her oldest brother, Joseph, died in Utah from an overdose of penicillin, given to him by an ignorant doctor. But they finally made it to Oregon and to Tillamook.” Maggie arrived to the corner of the vehicle and stopped walking long enough to look at Cain proudly as she finished the story she’d been told more times than she could count. “My grandmother said she took one look at the tall, mist-shrouded mountains and lush, fertile fields, and knew she’d found home. And I will tell you there is no place on earth as beautiful as Tillamook, and you’ve never smelled sweetness until you stand in the middle of an alfalfa field in August as they bale the grass, and you’ve never seen stars until you sit on a patio and look up at the Tillamook night. Those were the best summers of my life. The … the best …”
Her voice trailed off with a longing she hadn’t realized she’d felt. The summers of her youth, running around with Brandon and C.J. in a place where no one yelled or threw things and where she knew Brandon and C.J. would always help her. They had been magic moments. And then they’d grown up and gone their separate ways, and for the first time she was thinking how long it had been since the three of them were together. How long it had been since she’d felt happy and carefree and loved.
Belatedly, she realized both her feet had sunk deep into the mud, miring her into place. With a shake of her head, she planted her hands on the wet, slippery slant of the hatchback and worked on freeing her feet. Enough. Back to the matter at hand.
She made it the last two feet and looked at the small rear of the pathetic automobile with blatant determination. “All right,” she said and squatted down, curling her hands beneath the bumper. “I’m ready.”
“Lift with your legs, not your back.”
She slanted him a narrow look. “I know that. Have you hefted a bale of straw lately? They’re not that light. And the alfalfa—we didn’t build with alfalfa much. Even C.J. could barely lift it.”
“Of course,” Cain murmured. “On the count of three.”
“Right.”
“One-two-three.” With a mighty grunt, he heaved forward. She gritted her own teeth and lifted and pushed for all she was worth. The car groaned. The mud emitted a giant sucking sound.
“A little bit more,” Cain gritted out.
“Right,” she gasped back, and threw her entire 103 pounds behind it.
More sucking. More groaning. Then a slight tearing sound that might have been her muscles ripping or Cain’s.
“Damn,” he said weakly and abruptly let go. She released her grip as well, looking at him with genuine concern. Sure enough, his face was still contorted an
d his hand went to his back. “This really isn’t my day.”
“You’ve hurt yourself!”
“It’s nothing serious.”
“Of course it’s nothing serious!” she snapped with genuine exasperation. “All men say that—it’s instinctive and brutish. A bone could be protruding from the skin and you guys would still chirp, ‘It’s nothing serious.’ The first caveman who got stepped on by a dinosaur probably unpeeled himself from the ground and grunted, ‘Nothing … ugh, ugh … serious,’ right before dropping dead.”
She was already walking behind him, her ruined shoes making squishy, sucking sounds in the mud. Without hesitation, she placed her hands on his rain-soaked back. He stiffened immediately.
“Upper or lower back?” she said in a brisk tone she thought her grandmother would be proud of. His back felt lean and strong, muscled and warm. She had a ridiculous urge to press her cheek against it and wrap her arms around his lean waist.
“Lower,” he said in a strangely strangled voice.
“Okay.” She prodded it gently with her fingers, secretly delighted by the feel of his lower back. The flesh was firm and toned, muscular and well-defined. Nothing squishy or soft here. No extra rolls of flesh or the classic doughnut rings she was used to seeing on men. Cain felt … powerful, raw, like stroking the flanks of a wild stallion. If she moved too fast, he might bolt, but if she stroked him just right, maybe the beast would stay, flesh quivering beneath her touch.
“Ah!” He winced, and she knew she’d found the spot. She remained standing there, her fingers pressed against soaked cotton, her belly lined up with his denim-molded buttocks. She wanted to start over again, stroking her fingers down from his broad shoulders to his tight butt over and over again, as if she were gentling a pawing mustang.
“Maggie?” he inquired. Was it just her, or was his voice breathless, too?
Maybe it was the pain. Her body, her touch, didn’t inspire much in men. She was a scrawny thing, she knew, definitely not cover model material. She could pump weights and eat her Wheaties forever and still not achieve the primal perfection of this man. This body … this was the kind of body Rodin had sculpted.
She wanted it.
Very carefully, she dug her fingers into the spot, slowly and surely rubbing tiny, tight circles. He stiffened. She could feel the apprehension and pain roll off him in waves. She held her breath unconsciously, continuing to rub the spot, wanting with every fiber of her being to feel him relax, to feel him respond to her. Maybe she would never inspire grand passion, but she could give comfort. She hoped, she wished, to do at least that much.
Slowly, bit by bit, his body relaxed beneath her ministrations. The muscle went from stiff to pliant; his shoulders abandoned their rigid stance and came down, rolling as the breath left him as a reluctant sigh nearly lost in the rain.
His body eased into her fingers, surrendered to her, and her blue eyes began to glow like magnificent, feral sapphires. It was a heady feeling, intoxicating and exhilarating. That she could affect him so, that her fingers could give him such a gift, make him sigh, make him relax against her. She wanted to touch more. She wanted to strip off his soaked clothes until he stood as naked and pale as marble in the night. Then she would lay him down in the rich red mud and stroke his entire body, learning every inch of him while gazing into his eyes so she could measure the impact of every touch and learn every nuance of his desire.
She’d never had a man. Never really gotten to touch one, never had one belong to her, sigh for her, want her. She’d watched her friends fall in love instead, listening to their stories about the new man, watching their gazes glaze over as they whispered of the first kiss, or the time he whispered in their ear. They never really talked about sex with her, though she didn’t think any of her friends was a virgin. They just didn’t associate her with sex or passion or desire.
She was a sexless woman, the kind, benevolent friend more akin to a dead saint than a flesh-and-blood woman. They talked to her of emotions and feelings, and when the time came, invited her to their weddings where they introduced her as “dear, sweet Maggie.” So she bought wedding presents and attended the ceremonies solo. These days she was buying baby shower gifts, watching other people’s radiance and wondering if it would ever be hers.
Maybe it wasn’t inside her. Maybe she was too weak, too timid for a grand passion. Brandon had found it, but he was strong and fierce, even though he pretended not to be. C.J. fell in love every week, going through women like wine with an easy, beguiling charm.
Maggie couldn’t seem to manage either method. She didn’t have Brandon’s strength, or C.J.’s gift at flirtation. Men spoke to her in bars and she simply stared at them with shell-shocked eyes, wondering why they were speaking to her. Or worse, after ten minutes of casual conversation, they abruptly poured out their entire life’s story and adopted her as their new little sister.
She now had more “brothers” than any woman deserved, needed or desired. Not that she ever told any of these men that. She would never hurt them that way, and every one needed someone with whom to speak. If they were so comfortable talking to her about all their troubles with other women, maybe she should be satisfied that she could help them and bring them a degree of consolation.
But she was twenty-seven now. Twenty-seven and wondering if there was something wrong with her. She wanted marriage and children, white picket fences and that special, secret code of “us, our, we.” She wanted a daughter to tell all the stories Lydia had told her. She wanted children to carry on Hathaway traditions, as she would carry on Lydia’s, and invent new ones.
She wanted so much more than Friday nights with two cats, rented movies and low-fat microwave popcorn.
“Maggie. My … my back feels better now. Thank you.”
His voice was so low it took her a minute to hear it. Then she stared at his back, where her small, pale fingers were still rubbing tiny little circles. I don’t want to stop, she thought blankly. I don’t want to.
“Maggie …”
Her fingers fell to her sides. Her eyes burned abruptly, but she figured it was all right if she cried because she was already so soaked by the rain, who would notice? She could cry and cry and cry and he’d never even know because the tears would just mix with the raindrops and it would all be the same. When she was younger, she’d thought that rain meant God was weeping. If so, God wept for Oregon an awful lot.
“We’re not going to be able to get the car out,” Cain said. His back was still to her, his arms braced on the hatchback. His voice didn’t sound so steady anymore. “I … uh … I think we’ll just have to wait for someone to come along.”
“Do you think that couple will come back?”
He shook his head, his voice dry. “I don’t think they’re quite that stupid,” he said.
“Not like me,” she whispered.
He turned for the first time, his face curiously compassionate. “You’re not stupid, Maggie. But you do have a generous heart, and in this day and age that’s not easy.” She wasn’t comforted by that thought, which he seemed to understand. He added softly, “If you saw another stranded couple, would you stop?”
“Of course!” she exclaimed, bewildered by the question. “Those people might actually need help.”
His lips curved. His green eyes softened for a moment, and she could only describe his look as gentle. “Exactly.”
She looked away, not able to stand that expression on his face and all the turmoil it sparked inside her. Half of her was insanely pleased by the simple glance, the small, needy half of her that was no better than an insecure puppy granted a loving pat by her master. The other half, the half of her that longed to be something more, that didn’t even completely understand why she hadn’t become something more already, was irreconcilably hurt. She didn’t want gentleness; she didn’t want another adopted brother—not even an escaped-murderer adopted brother.
She wanted Cain to look at her and see a woman. A flesh-and-blood, desirable,
passionate woman. And she was probably stupid to want such a thing from a man such as him She did not know much about hostage protocol, but desiring a captor was probably self-defeating and sick.
She wanted him anyway. She wanted him, for her. Man to woman. Sparks, Fourth of July fireworks, the whole nine yards.
Cain turned and walked away from her. “Let’s look inside the car and see what we have to work with.”
He popped open the door, leaning inside. Maggie stood obediently in the rain, too soaked through to notice the raindrops anymore. Besides, she’d lived in Oregon on and off for twenty years now; this wasn’t the first time she’d gotten wet.
“Nothing,” Cain declared at last, beginning to look tired now. “Three unpaid parking tickets on the floor, umpteen gum wrappers and one empty can. Guess those guys traveled light.”
“Do you think they were escaped felons, too?”
He stood and shrugged. “I don’t know. They seemed too nervous to have much experience in this sort of thing. My guess is that they’re just starting down the road of crime, but I don’t know why. Maybe they’re after the thrill, maybe just too lazy to work for things. Maybe they just robbed a liquor store and needed a getaway vehicle after theirs got stuck. I don’t know.”
Maggie looked down the empty stretch of road for a minute. She couldn’t see much of it, the pavement disappearing quickly into an inky night. “I guess we just wait for the mud to dry out.”
“Or someone else to come along.”
She looked at him abruptly. “You’re not going to hurt anyone, are you?”
He was silent for a minute, as if he were unwilling to commit either way. Finally, he said, “I don’t want to cause any more trouble than I have to, Maggie. In chess, there is something called a quiet move. It’s a move that neither checks nor captures. It doesn’t contain any direct threats, just helps improve your positioning for the final, last thrust of direct, decisive action. That’s how I would like to pursue this game and locate Ham—quietly. If such a thing is possible with half the state after us.”