But Prosper had heard enough of the bullshit excuses Maggie had made in defense of her husband. Prosper simply couldn’t take it anymore. “Because you don’t want to hear it, or because you don’t want to face it?”
“Jack meant—” Maggie reddened and stammered. Then her voice simply trailed off.
“Yeah, I know. Jack meant to fix it. Just like everything else he meant to do. Let me guess, fixing that door so his baby girl doesn’t get her fingers amputated, that was on his list, right?”
“That would never happen! I would never let that happen,” Maggie cried out. “You know sometimes things just get away from a person. He means well … he tries. He does.”
“He’s been gone three weeks, Maggie. Three goddamn weeks without a word. How often does this happen?” Prosper asked. The muscle in his jaw leapt and his biceps tightened as he crossed his arms over his chest.
Maggie gave Prosper a hard look, then let out a long sigh.
“Does it matter?”
“Hell yeah, it matters, Maggie.”
“He’ll be back. He always comes back …” she began to say as she looked at him helplessly to confirm.
“No, I don’t fucking know.” Prosper shook his head. “I don’t know how a man can leave his woman and baby to go on a damn joy ride.”
Maggie remained silent, but her brow furrowed while her hands twisted in her lap. “You want coffee? I can make a pot of coffee, and there’s some of that cake left from yesterday.” Maggie got up from the table, clearly wanting the conversation to be over.
Prosper stood up and barred her way because things had to be said.
And heard.
“Jack left his wife and his baby daughter in a rundown farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, with an empty refrigerator, a car with a bone-dry gas tank, and four bald tires. Nothing’s been done here since I left. And it’s serious shit that hasn’t been done, Maggie. Dangerous shit. Like that door, and that cracked window. We’re clear on that, right?”
“We’re clear,” Maggie said quietly.
Prosper wanted to shake her. “Then, if you know, why the hell would you put up with that kind of bullshit?”
“Jack is not as handy as you are, Prosper. I guess his priorities are different … I don’t know … A man needs his space sometimes.” She bit her lower lip and began to twist her hands again.
“Damn, Maggie, are you defending him?” Prosper knew he was upsetting her, but he was just as upset thinking that she would put up with Jack’s irresponsible bullshit. “What’s it gonna take for you to get your head out of your ass? Christ, all you have to do is open your goddamn eyes to see that—”
“My god! Will you stop? Will you just stop?” Maggie cried out in anguish. “When I realized it was you riding up that road, I was so happy! So damn happy! But all you’ve been doing since you got here is finding fault. With Jack … and with me too! What do you want me to do? To say? That I made a bet on the wrong horse? Struck a lousy deal? Played the wrong card? Because that’s what Jack was for me, that’s what this is for me, Prosper. One big giant gamble.”
“Jesus, Maggie.” He moved towards her, but she stepped back and waved him away with an angry hand.
“You saw. You saw my life back there.” Her voice was shaking now, and her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “So now I’m gonna ask you, just how many choices did you think I had? Either I lived and died on that reservation or I took a chance on a man who was willing to take a chance on me. And I took it. I took that chance. You were with us for months. Months, Prosper! And not once … not once … did you step up and give me any other choice. You left without giving me any other choice.”
Prosper looked at her, shocked. “You were in love with him.”
“Oh, you big, stupid, stupid jackass! I was in love with you too!” she shouted at him. Prosper stepped back as if she had struck him.
“Was?” His voice barely above a whisper, “Was?”
Maggie looked at Prosper knowing that this was the moment.
This was it.
It was the moment that could change everything.
It was the speak-now-or-forever-hold-your-peace kind of moment.
“Am,” she told him. “I am in love with you, Prosper. I was then and I am now. And I will always and forever wish you had stepped up when you could have, but you didn’t. And now you can’t … and I can’t. There’s a baby girl and this little house and a man who, despite what you might think, does his best to love us. I won’t—I can’t leave him. But I can’t stop loving you. I can’t stop looking down that road for you. I can’t stop wishing for you, Prosper. And having those feelings? I am doing the best, the very best I can to live without you. So, don’t you … don’t you dare ride in here after all this time and think you can talk about a broken screen door or a cracked window. You want to talk about men who leave? Look in the damn mirror. And until you do, don’t you dare say another word about Jack.”
They stood looking at each other in that kitchen for what seemed like forever. It was only when a loud clap of thunder sounded out and Raine began to cry did either one of them so much as blink. Then Maggie moved away from Prosper and walked with a straight back and a heavy heart down the hall to comfort her child.
Maggie sat in that rocking chair long after Raine had fallen asleep. She stayed in that room while the storm built up strength and began to flash its lightening and batter at the window with heavy drops of rain. After a long while, she heard the door slam, the rumble of a motorcycle turn over, and the sound of tires spitting up gravel as it rode away into the storm.
Well, that’s that. Maggie sighed and wondered how this could be … still be … her fate. How many times had she sat up on that tin rooftop and promised herself that she would do better, be better, choose better.
Every man she had ever known had disappointed her: her father, her brother, her husband, and now, Prosper. Maggie’s heart was heavy, and she was weary of it all. She was just so tired. The steady pounding of the rain against the window, the rhythmic rocking of the chair, and the even breathing of her baby’s breath all slowly began to lull her into an uneasy sleep.
“Don’t make the mistakes I did, my little love,” she whispered against Raine’s soft baby wisps of hair. “You find yourself a man who stays. Real men are the ones who go to sleep next to you at night, wake up next to you in the morning, and hold you in their hearts all the hours in between. You make sure when it’s your time to choose, you pick a man like that. You choose a man who stays.”
Then Maggie closed her eyes and fell asleep with her child held snugly in her arms.
Prosper hit the throttle and drove the bike into the barn to get it out of the rain. Maggie’s words played in his mind over and over again. He ran a shaking hand through his hair. Not much rattled him anymore, but this? He didn’t know what to do with this.
Prosper felt light in the head and weak in the knees. When his legs could no longer bear his weight, he slumped down to the floor and sat there with his back against a large bale of hay and just stared out into space for a long time. He tried like hell to collect his thoughts, but really, he was in a tailspin of emotion. Maggie’s words buzzed around his head like angry bumblebees. When Prosper finally reached for his smokes, his hand was shaking so bad he had difficulty lighting up.
Jesus. He needed to get his shit together.
I was. I am in love with you, Prosper. I loved you then and I love you now.
Had he known?
Of course, he had known.
It was there, exposed, in every little thing she did. It was in the way she watched him, in her smile, in the touch of her hand, in the way she had teased him about his serious demeanor, his unyielding pride, and his inexorable sense of justice.
Prosper had known that Magaskawee Whitefeather was in love with him before she had known it herself, and when he stood next to Jack Winston, Prosper also knew that he himself was the better man.
Still, Prosper had stepped aside. He had pushe
d his feelings for Maggie away and hoped to god that Jack would become the man that she needed him to be. He had let the woman he loved pledge herself to another man.
What the hell kind of an asshole would let that happen?
The kind with no damn balls.
The cowardly kind.
There was no other word for it. When Prosper first was faced with the feelings he’d had for Maggie, they had not sat well. In fact, they had been met with a sort of heart-stopping terror. For a man like Prosper, that was no small thing.
He had survived the death of his parents, a broken foster-care system, fighting in the treacherous jungles of Vietnam, and the violent, desperate world of an inner-city jail house. He had done it all, weathered it all, and come out a stronger man because of it.
But the way he felt about Maggie? The way he knew she felt about him? That singular, profound emotion—that kind of love—had brought him to his knees. He honestly, sincerely, and sadly could not handle the depth of feeling that loving Maggie brought with it. It was all just way too much. Too much to feel. Too much to lose. Too much to hope for.
So, Prosper had bailed on her, and in doing that, he had bailed on himself too. Now, he was about to do that again, but instead, he drank almost a fifth of Cuervo Gold, smoked a couple of bowls of premium hashish, and self-medicated himself until he passed out.
The next morning, Maggie was working in the vegetable garden when she looked up to see the barn door swing wide open and an unshaven, hung-over, hulk-of-a-man stagger out.
“Jesus. That sun is so damn bright.” Prosper put his hands up to shade his eyes. Maggie looked on in disbelief as he yelped out a host of expletives when he stubbed his toe against a log and almost lost his balance. Maggie stared at him dumbfounded until Prosper stumbled back into the barn. She watched as he swayed back out again a minute later, but this time he had what looked like a fresh pile of clothes in his hands. “I need a shower. Gonna need some coffee too. Hot, strong, and a whole pot of it,” he grumbled as he walked unsteadily past Maggie, whose mouth gaped open in unmitigated surprise.
So, Prosper hadn’t left her after all.
The minute the realization struck her was a moment in time that Magaskawee would remember for the rest of her life. It was as though the sweetest, most mouth-watering slice had been cut from the cake of time and handed to her on a sterling-silver platter.
“I thought you had left.” She sat across the table from Prosper and watched him sip his coffee. The eggs and ham she had fried up sat untouched on his plate, but the three pain relievers were gone and the big glass of ice cold, fresh orange juice she had poured for him was empty. Prosper’s eyes were red and blurry, and despite the shower, he still faintly smelled of booze.
“Almost did, Maggie. I almost left. Couldn’t make myself do it though, so instead, I got hammered.” Prosper lifted his cup to her and said with a wry grin that made him wince, “As the saying goes, ‘one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.’”
Maggie laughed nervously. She avoided his eyes except for a quick glance to try and read the barometer of his intentions.
“I’m not leaving,” Prosper told her. “But I’m not ready to talk about last night’s conversation either. The reason being—”
“No need to explain.” Maggie allowed herself to breathe again and interrupted him quickly. She had as little desire to talk about last night as he did.
“The reason being …” he continued, “is when we do have that conversation, it’s gonna come with a whole lot of decisions that I’m not sure you’re ready to make.”
It was that very night that Maggie heard from Jack for the first time since he had left. It was just after midnight, and he called her from what she guessed was a payphone inside some bar. Maggie could hear lots of loud conversation, raucous laughter, and music in the background. Jack was unapologetic, happy, and drunk out of his mind.
“How are my two favorite girls doing?” he slurred into the phone.
“We’re fine. Where are you, Jack?” Maggie frowned.
“Hey, Ruby … Where the hell am I?” he yelled out into the room. After a brief pause, he responded, “Ala-fuckin’-bama? How the hell did I get here?” Maggie could hear the room erupt into even louder laughter.
“Prosper’s here, Jack,” Maggie told him. “He’s been here a couple of weeks, and he’s been helping out while waiting for you to come home. When are you coming home, Jack?”
“What you say, Maggie? My man, Prosper? He there? Sonofabitch, put him on the goddamn phone. I’ve missed the big old bastard.” Jack belched into the receiver.
“He’s asleep. We’re all asleep, Jack,” Maggie told him. “When are you coming home?”
“Well, tell that motherfucker, Prosper, hello from his brother, Jack. Tell him I’m headed down to Mississippi. Gonna be camping in that place right off the Gulf Coast if he wants to meet up. Gonna stop and wire you some money first. Know how I got that? That’s a funny fucking story, but right now I gotta go, darlin’. I got no more damn change left for this piece-of-shit phone. Gonna wire the money to the Stop and Go Mart. I’ll see ya when I see ya, darlin’.”
“Jack, don’t hang up … Jack? Jack? Jack!” Maggie called out desperately, but he was gone.
She slammed the phone down on the receiver hard. Then she picked it up and slammed it again and again, over and over. She slammed it until a big, strong, and steady hand was laid over hers.
“Put down the phone, honey,” Prosper said gently. He waited until Maggie released the death grip she had on the receiver.
“That was Jack.”
“Yeah, I got that. Where is he?”
“According to Jack, he’s in ‘Ala-fuckin’-bama.’” She snorted.
“So he was lit when he called?’
“Oh yeah, drunk as a skunk, and apparently he’s into something ’cause he’s wiring me money. He’s never done that before.” Maggie chewed down on her lip in thought. “This can’t be good. I told him you were here. He said he’ll be in Mississippi in a few days … said you’d know the place. Campground on the Gulf or something? He said to tell you if you want to meet up with him, that’s where he’ll be.”
Prosper just shook his head. “Fucking guy,” he muttered.
And Maggie couldn’t have agreed more.
Maggie left early in the morning to do some errands and then spent the rest of the day inside cleaning. Prosper was under strict orders not to enter the house and intrude on her list of duties. Since it turned out that the rewiring job had been a bitch to work on, he was grateful when Maggie brought lunch to him instead of having him clean up and go sit at the table.
Now the sun was lowering in the sky and Maggie had called out from the porch steps to let him know dinner was ready. Prosper washed up quickly in the industrial sink and changed into the clean clothes he kept in the barn so he wouldn’t track oil into Maggie’s kitchen. The newly setting sun had left streaks of crimson in the sky and the air had cooled down nicely. Prosper was glad he was done for the day and looked forward to enjoying a cold beer and whatever Maggie had made for supper.
He lifted an eyebrow in surprise to find the kitchen transformed with candlelight, fresh flowers, and soft music floating from the ancient radio Maggie kept on the kitchen counter. The table itself was set with a veritable feast: pork chops filled thick with apple stuffing, fresh green beans tossed with slivered almonds, beefsteak tomato salad, mounds of fluffy white potatoes, and a round loaf of warm bread.
Maggie stood looking at him from across the room. She had on a white sundress and her long dark hair was free from the usual ponytail. Hammered silver earrings dangled from her delicate lobes, a thin chain circled her wrist. Her feet were bare, her eyes were shining, and her smile was huge.
She held a chocolate layer cake in her hands with too many candles to count and was singing that song to him … Prosper took a quick look over her shoulder at the calendar and whistled softly.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
<
br /> “Happy Birthday, Prosper,” Maggie said softly. Then with pride she waved at the table. “I made everything myself … well, except the bread. I even made the cake. I know it’s a little lopsided—”
“Lopsided?” Prosper cocked his head from extreme left to extreme right. “You mean ’cause one side is about a foot shorter than the other?”
She shook her head and laughed at him while she put the cake on the counter. “I hope you’re hungry.” She gestured again at the food on the table.
In answer, Prosper sat down and began to pile his dish high with the food Maggie had prepared. He was deeply touched that she had remembered his birthday and gone to so much trouble to make it memorable. Not that every moment with her wasn’t etched deep into his mind anyhow, but the extra care she had taken with her appearance blew him away. And the sick bastard that he was, when he looked at Maggie with that pretty, new dress on, all he could think of was taking it off her.
Prosper had been bottling up his feelings and his attraction towards her for too long now, and he knew he was coming real close to losing that battle. It was as if a long-locked door had suddenly been thrown wide open, releasing a flood gate of yearning. All of the feeling and the longing, and all of the holding back came crashing together in a rushing tide and threatened to blow Prosper away.
He barely made it through dinner with keeping his hands to himself, but when Maggie put that cake in front of him and bent down to kiss him on the cheek, he became undone. In one swift motion, he pulled her onto his lap and turned to catch her mouth. Then Prosper gave Maggie a long, sweet, slow kiss that was sure to make her toes curl, her head spin, and her heart beat out of her chest.
When he finally pulled his lips away from hers, Prosper talked low into Maggie’s ear and said, “Dance with me.”
“Dance?” She sighed out through fractured breath. “You can dance?”
“Ahh, darlin’,” he whispered against her hair, “I can do anything.”
Prosper (Hells Saints MC Book 7) Page 7