Maggie swallowed hard. "Of course I am. I love you, Brenda, and its wonderful here. But I'm such a lot of trouble…" Her voice trailed off.
"I know that you feel you are, but it's simply not true. And it's ridiculous to talk of leaving till you're out of the cast and can manage on your own—so let's stop talking nonsense, all right?"
Maggie said, miserably, "Even though Karr won't come back till I've gone?"
"Karr's an adult. I think if he wants to see his mother badly enough, he'll find a way." Brenda gave a baluster a last rub and folded her polishing cloth. "Now where are those things you want mailed?"
With her desk cleared, Maggie started to sketch out how the special section would look. But her mind wandered, and when she pulled herself back, she found Karr's name printed neatly across the center of her layout sheet.
She reached for the telephone before she could talk herself out of it. She'd just leave a message asking him to stop by, she decided, and if he came—well, she'd worry then about what she'd say.
But he was in the office, and before she even had a chance to gather her wits, the receptionist had transferred her call.
"Karr?" she said hesitantly. "It's Maggie. Can you stop by sometime? I'd really like to talk to you."
There was a long silence. "I'll see if I can fit it in."
"This afternoon would be good," she offered. "Your mother's gone for a while. But whenever you can come will be fine."
Her palm was damp when she put the telephone down. Now she just had to wait-and that would be the most difficult thing of all. She'd be on edge all the time, not knowing when he might come. And he hadn't promised, she realized, only said he'd try. She might have to wait days…
But at mid-afternoon, he rang the bell.
Maggie opened the door and studied him silently for a long moment. There was something about his eyes, darker than usual and fixed intently on her face, that made her tremble inside. And he was more formally dressed than she'd seen him before, too, in gray trousers and a navy sports coat, and a striped silk tie. She hadn't ever seen him wearing a tie.
Tripp gave a hoarse little bark and leaped as high in the air as he could, his tongue swiping madly at Karr's fingers. Karr stooped to pick up the animal and held him easily in one palm, absently stroking his fur with the other hand. "You said you wanted to talk to me," he reminded.
Maggie nodded and led the way into the living room. She sat on the couch and carefully set her crutches within reach. Karr took the wing-backed chair and arranged Tripp on his knee.
Seeing him here, and remembering the last time they'd been together in this room-when he had so tenderly rubbed the ache from her toes—made the lump in Maggie's throat grow even larger. The only things she could think of were how much she loved him and how much she wanted for him to love her in return.
Her voice was husky. "I told your mother a little while ago that I was looking for another place to go."
Karr's fingers stilled on Tripp's fur. The dog nudged his hand and yipped a little, and the mechanical stroking continued.
Was it relief he was feeling, Maggie wondered. It was impossible to tell; his face was impassive.
"The trouble is there just aren't any other options right now," Maggie went on quietly. "I'll keep looking, of course, and I'll move as soon as I can. But in the meantime, it isn't fair to your mother that I'm keeping you away. So I wanted you to know that you don't have to be afraid of me making a scene or anything. Whenever you come to see Brenda, I'll just go to my room. In fact if you want to call ahead of time, I'll stay out of sight altogether."
There was a long silence. "That's what you called me about," he said levelly.
Though it wasn't a question, Maggie nodded anyway. He sounded almost annoyed, she thought, as if she was wasting precious time with trivia. "That and Tripp. He's missed you so. This mess isn't his fault, and he doesn't understand why he's being cheated out of his exercise. So I wondered if you'd…" Her voice trailed off. "If you'd take him out once in a while, and gradually get him used to doing without you."
He was looking at her as if he thought she'd gone completely mad. "All right," he said finally. "I don't have time to take him for a run right now, but I'll come back later. Will five o'clock be convenient?"
She nodded. The chilly tone of his voice seemed to freeze her throat completely.
Karr put the dog down and stood up. Maggie followed him to the door, as a good hostess would, trying not to let the tears that stung her eyelids overflow. But her vision blurred just as Tripp danced under her crutch. The rubber tip slipped against the marble, and in a split second Karr was there to steady her, his arm as solid as a steel brace around her waist.
Maggie closed her eyes and tried not to breathe, knowing that the simple tangy scent of his cologne would be enough to dissolve her determination. If he kissed her…
The touch of his lips against her temple was so fleeting that she almost told herself she was imagining it. But his mouth was cold—as cold as the wind outside, as cold as his voice had been. A last and bittersweet kiss…
He was as good as his word. At the stroke of five, he was on the doorstep, casually dressed in khakis and a sweater. As soon as he and Tripp had crossed to the park, Maggie came out of her bedroom and took up a post at the window, taking care to stay behind the curtains. Her conscience tingled a bit at the idea of spying, but she smothered it; after all, she'd never promised that she wouldn't catch sight of him.
He came at least once every day after that, and Maggie kept her promise. But it didn't get easier to go to her room when she saw him coming up the walk or heard Tripp's hearty greeting. Seeing him from a distance only reminded her of how much more she wanted, and how far the remaining weeks stretched out before her cast came off and she would be free.
She started feverishly reading the listings of apartments for rent, hoping desperately to find something which would work. If she rented closer to downtown, she wouldn't have the cost of commuting—but that wasn't the real reason she concentrated on that section of the ads. If she was closer to the office, she would also be farther from Karr—and she wouldn't have to hold her breath every time she went to the supermarket or the office supply store or the train station… or all the other places in Eagleton which now held memories of him.
At mid-morning on Tuesday, Brenda was clearing flowerbeds in the back garden and Maggie was stretched on the living room couch with her computer balanced on her lap, doing the final edit on her lead story, when Tripp roused from a snooze in front of the empty fireplace and started barking frantically.
An instant later, she heard the click of a key in the front door, and she looked up in astonishment. She knew Karr had a key; he'd used it the night of their quarrel. But Brenda had said he seldom used it; raiding his mother's refrigerator was one thing, she'd told Maggie with a laugh, but he was absurdly sensitive about walking into Brenda's house without ringing the bell.
Hastily, Maggie punched the buttons that would copy her story into the computer's long-term memory and waited impatiently for the screen to clear so she could pick up her work and retreat to her bedroom. It took only a matter of seconds, but by the time she was finished, Karr was in the living room, striding across the deep-piled carpet to stand over her with his hands on his hips.
"Sorry," she said. "If you'll give me a minute, I'll get out of your way." She clicked the computer off and swung her cast down from the couch.
He bent over her and picked her up. The computer slid off her lap and landed with a thump on the carpet.
"Dammit, Karr," Maggie cried, "What do you think you're doing? If you're trying to destroy everything I've worked for—"
"No, I leave that sort of thing to you."
She was too stunned at the ferocity of his voice even to struggle in his arms, and before she realized his intention he'd carried her out to the Mercedes. "I don't want to go anywhere with you," she protested. "I have work to do."
"It'll wait."
"I've t
old you before I'm tired of all this caveman stuff."
He dumped her unceremoniously into the front seat. "Shut up or I'll find the nearest club and hit you over the head, too."
She struggled upright. "What's this all about?" she demanded.
"Don't tell me you haven't got a clue. You may be a damned good editor but you're a lousy actress." He yanked an envelope off the dashboard of the car and dropped it into her lap. "Here—take a look at this while I go after your crutches."
Maggie maneuvered herself into a more comfortable position. Short of crawling back to the house dragging her cast, she didn't have much choice but to sit there. What had gotten into the man, anyway? After nearly a week of speaking to her only when she'd forced him to, and avoiding her the rest of the time, for him to react like this to some kind of letter-
The envelope was addressed to her, and it had been torn open. That made Maggie's blood really start to boil; tampering with mail was a federal crime, and by the time she got through with him, Karr Elliot was going to be in such a pile of trouble he wouldn't be able to dig his way out with a bulldozer.
Then she saw the return address—of the historic preservation organization she'd contacted in her abortive effort to save Eagle's Landing, and she winced. She'd completely forgotten that the young man had said he'd send her the group's handbook.
The envelope wasn't very thick; it must be a very small handbook. Well, she thought, if a simple pamphlet about how to set up a neighborhood organization for preserving buildings was enough to make Karr blow his stack like this, maybe it was just as well this relationship hadn't gone any farther.
She slid the contents out of the envelope just as Karr tossed her crutches into the trunk and slammed it.
"Proud of yourself?" he said curtly as he slid under the wheel.
She ignored him. There was a pamphlet, folded up inside a letter. She unfolded it, and her eyes widened in shock as she read the first lines. "Thank you for bringing the house known as Eagle's Landing to our attention," the letter began. "While the present level of resources regrettably does not ensure the preservation of every threatened building, from your description Eagle's Landing appears to be a unique, early example of Tudor revival architecture and we will make every effort to investigate and prevent the destruction of—"
She dropped the letter and whispered, "It's my fault."
"It certainly is," Karr said grimly. He started the engine and pulled away from the curb with a squeal of tires that would have been enough, all by itself, to tell Maggie how angry he was. "Congratulations, Miss Rawlings. You win the prize for discretion. I don't know how you managed it, but I hadn't gotten even a whisper of this."
She took a deep breath. "I didn't manage to keep it quiet, Karr. I didn't know it was going on."
He laughed, harshly. "You expect me to believe that?"
"I admit I started it. I called the preservation people and told them about Eagle's Landing. But they said there are such a lot of threatened houses, and they can't all be saved—and they didn't seem interested in one more old brick house with an unknown architect and a not very exciting past. So I chalked the whole thing up to experience and put it out of my mind, because from what the man at the society said, nothing further was going to happen."
He didn't answer, and he didn't look at her.
Maggie thumped a finger against the letter. "Karr, I'm not an idiot. I know something like this can't be kept secret. When you told me that if there was a hint of opposition you'd knock the house down instead—" She licked her lips. "Oh, no. Please, Karr, don't do it!"
"But you didn't have to stay involved, did you? You'd set the wolves on me, and you could sit back quietly and enjoy the hunt. What's next? Your tame attorney hitting me with a lawsuit for every penny I'm worth, so I can't fight this?"
She shook her head. Her throat was so tight she couldn't speak. There wasn't any point in further protest, or even in announcing that she'd called Chad Buckley days ago and told him to forget the whole thing.
There would be no persuading Karr to change his mind now. He was taking her out to Eagle's Landing, and he was going to force her to watch as the wrecking ball reduced it to dust and rubble. He'd said he would, and he'd keep his promise…
But instead of turning down the country highway toward Eagle's Landing, the Mercedes sped on across town. Confused, Maggie stared out the window and bit on her thumbnail.
The car stopped in front of the townhouse sales office, and Karr slammed his door and came around to open Maggie's. "Has it occurred to you that I'd prefer to go in under my own power?" she asked coolly, but he ignored her and picked her up once more.
She could feel the anger still surging through him, but even so, she couldn't help savoring the sensation of being in his arms. She felt tiny and weightless and incredibly feminine as he whisked her up the steps to the small porch and through the door into the office.
The receptionist looked up with a professional smile, which died into shock as she saw them. Libby turned from the copy machine nearby, and her mouth dropped open.
"Maggie? What's going on?"
There was no answer; Karr took the stairs to the upper level two at a time, seemingly unconcerned with his burden. He pushed open a door with his shoulder and put Maggie down in a leather swivel chair at the side of a long table. "Stay put," he said. "I'll be right back."
"As if I could go anywhere," she muttered, but Karr was already gone.
She looked around. The conference room was obviously used for sales meetings; a chart on one wall listed names and figures. A framed set of blueprints hung across from the chart, and nearby on an easel was an architect's perspective drawing of the front of Eagle's Landing.
Before she could study it, Karr was back with a thick manila folder which he tossed onto the table in front of her. It landed with a thump, and photographs and papers spilled out onto the polished wood of the table top.
He leaned over her shoulder and seized a handful of photos. "Here's some of the slate on the roof," he said, thrusting the top picture at her. "Look at how it's crumbling in the valleys. The copper leading's decomposing underneath, too." He picked up a second photo. "Here's what we found when we took the cabinets out of the kitchen."
Maggie gasped at the picture. She recognized the corner, the one where the ceiling had been ripped away—but she hadn't gotten close enough to see the blackened, charred beams above. "That's been on fire!"
"One point for you. Heaven only knows when, but it wasn't fixed, just covered up."
He reached for another photograph. "This is what the supports under your bathtub looked like—that's wood rot, in case you don't recognize it. It's a wonder you and a bunch of bubbles hadn't fallen through the floor into a neighbor's apartment."
"Good thing I always took showers, right?"
Karr didn't seem to appreciate the feeble effort at humor. "That big oak tree you were so fond of had cracked the foundation, by the way. One of the basement walls started to collapse last week, and we had to shore it up before we could keep working."
With a careless hand, he spread the pictures out in a fan shape in front of her. "Pick a card, any card—you'll see the same sort of thing. On the surface, Eagle's Landing still looked pretty good, everything considered. But underneath—"
Maggie stared at the display. Slowly, she pushed the photographs into a pile, looking at each one in turn, while in the back of her mind a set of gears seemed to grind slowly into action.
This doesn't quite make sense, she thought.
"If it's so obviously not repairable—" she said, and didn't realize for a moment, until Karr seemed to freeze beside her, that she'd said the words aloud.
"Are you questioning my word?" he asked curtly.
"No, Karr, I'm not. These make it pretty obvious." She tapped the pile of pictures and turned her chair so she could look up at him. "You shouldn't have any trouble convincing the preservation people. They're not going to waste money on a hopeless cause—there are t
oo many wonderful buildings that still could be saved."
Karr shrugged. "Maybe”"
"So—if their interference isn't going to be anything more than a minor glitch in your plans anyway—why are you so terribly upset?" Maggie asked gently. "Why did that letter make you blow a gasket?"
For a long while she thought he wasn't going to answer. Then, without looking at her, he gathered up the photos and slid them back into the folder. "I thought you'd given it up," he said quietly. "I thought you understood I wasn't blatantly destroying a landmark just for the fun of it, I was making a business investment."
"I had," she whispered.
He had plunged on. "I thought we were past that sort of incredible blind misunderstanding. I thought we were learning to talk to each other, to trust each other-What did you say?"
"I had, Karr. I'd given up the idea of saving Eagle's Landing, because I respected your judgment, and your right to do what you saw fit. It was yours, after all."
He seemed to have turned to stone.
"I was telling you the truth, before," she went on. "If I'd known what the society was planning to do, why would they have written me that kind of letter, explaining it?"
He didn't answer.
Maggie sighed. He had talked of trust—but obviously that was out of reach now.
"That fact doesn't relieve me of responsibility, of course," she said quietly. "I caused this, and I'll do my best to get it sorted out. I'll call the preservation people right away—this afternoon—and tell them what I've seen. I imagine they'd like to look at those photos, at least, but I don't think it will be any problem." She held up a hand in a pledge; her fingers shook a little. "And then I swear, Karr, I will never interfere in your business again."
A deadly sort of quiet filled the room, interrupted only by the tick of an unseen clock.
Karr said quietly, "I'll take you home."
And that's it? She wanted to scream. You'll take me home and that's the end?
But of course it was. She'd been nothing but a nuisance to him all along; was it any wonder the only thing he seemed to want was to be rid of her as soon as possible? It was unrealistic even to hope for anything else.
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