Chapter Fifteen
From blocks away she could see there were curious observers milling around the desolation of the burned building. She wondered virulently what they were seeking, what they hoped to find in the midst of all that destruction. She imagined they all held copies of the new paper and that they were all looking to find pieces of her soul in the charred remains of the one thing that had been its living representation.
She walked slowly toward what was left of the building. For some reason, she had not considered that people in town would consider it some kind of spectacle that required an audience. But then, there were a lot of people who might have thought that, on the whole, it was a good thing for her to have been forced to shut down. The notion skirted around the edges of her mind. She had been burned out, and someone new had stepped into her place with a forum that was blatantly pro business. Pro railroad, she thought grimly. It wasn’t something that shouted out of the pages of the bifold paper; it was there between the lines. It was all Arch Warfield, all the things she had never let him say in the pages of the Morning Call.
The bastard.
She took a deep breath before the anger took hold of her again. It just all seemed too coincidental, almost like a conspiracy. She felt the net tightening around her, gently, gently, just to let her know she was trapped but she still had a chance to fight.
What chance, she wondered bitterly, when everything else was gone?
The wreckage, coming on the heels of the publication of what would have been her competition, seemed doubly horrendous. She didn’t have the strength to resurrect her paper, or herself.
“Hello, Maggie Colleran.”
She jumped at the sound of that voice, the ubiquitous Mr. Brown. How fortuitous he should turn up on the morning of her worst defeat and in full view of anyone who cared to misconstrue just why she might be talking with him.
“Mr. Brown,” she said coolly, without breaking stride. He immediately fell into step beside her.
“My deepest sympathy,” he said after a moment.
“On what?” she snapped.
He waved his hand. “Your loss.”
“Your gain,” she rapped out, not knowing why she felt that. It had bubbled up from somewhere. Maybe the notion had been simmering deep down inside her since she had met him, she didn’t know, but she was amazed to see she had shocked him.
“Mrs. Colleran! I have no idea what you mean.”
“From the ashes rises a fledgling gazette, editorially excited about the coming expansion of Colville because of the railroad. How fortuitous. How … simultaneous, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Brown?”
“I wouldn’t say, Mrs. Colleran. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“No, you don’t, of course. Did you want to speak with me, Mr. Brown?”
“No, Mrs. Colleran, I think you have said more than enough,” he said stiffly. “Excuse me.”
She wondered what he had wanted as she continued on her way toward the ravaged building. He had said he wasn’t making her any more offers on the ranch. He couldn’t possibly want the remnants of the Morning Call building. Or could he?
The thought arrested her and she stopped in her tracks. Another decision, another damned decision, if it were true. If …? Of course it was true. More, it made sense; it was like the piece of a puzzle she could not fit in its place. There was something about it that made sense.
She began walking again, and now, as she came into view of the passersby who were staring at the wreckage, she found herself accepting their sympathetic acknowledgement of her loss, consoling handshakes, solicitous nods.
“Oh, Maggie, I’m gonna miss the old place,” mourned Gus, one of her regulars. He was an old man, grizzled with years on the Colorado frontier, who had lived in Colville for twenty years at least. She had known him for a long time, and he had hung out at the Morning Call office ever since her father had been editor of the paper.
“I know, Gus,” she murmured. “Me too.”
It didn’t look any better up close. The night wind had blown through the charred timbers and alleviated some of the smoky smell. But nothing could diminish the stunning desolation that the fire had wrought.
And maybe there was nothing else to do other than hand it over on a platter to the rapacious Mr. Brown.
She stood staring at it for a long, long time, and nothing she saw gave her any clue as to what she wanted to do about it. She either had to find the money to begin again or she had to give it up, just as Dennis had made painstakingly clear to her. There was no middle ground.
But one thing seemed appallingly plain: whichever choice she made, she would probably wind up selling out to Denver North—if her supposition of Mr. Brown’s interest were valid.
She was absolutely sure it was.
She felt a jarring sense of having been manipulated, but she wasn’t quite certain how. The fire was an accident, except that the sheriff thought she had set it deliberately to destroy some amorphous evidence that even he didn’t know where to find. And Dennis thought it was an ideal opportunity to try to take over her life again. And Reese saw it as an opportunity to …
What would Logan see it as? she wondered. Or she, ultimately?
And then she turned away, and Logan was there, as if her mere thought of him magically gave him substance, a sweet, tentative smile hovering around his lips and his sky-blue eyes telling her all the things he could not say to her out loud in public.
But everything suddenly took second place to the sweet savage rush of desire that spurted through her veins. He had come as she had known he would, as he always did, and just when she needed him, at the moment of crisis. Nothing mattered but that he was with her, walking toward her, and that his face mirrored the dismay she felt when she had first seen the devastation yesterday morning.
“Let’s walk,” he said. She didn’t need to punish herself, he thought. He had watched her the whole time she stood staring at the destruction. It was Saturday, the day of publication. There was nothing for her here and he knew it, and even he felt the push to walk away from the scene of the devastation.
“There’s more,” she told him quietly.
“That’s enough, Maggie. I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
“Oh, but you knew; you came.”
He shook his head. “I’m not a mind reader, Maggie. I came in as usual, and I was on my way to see you. I heard about it before I got past the outskirts of town.”
“There’s another newspaper,” she said abruptly.
His reaction was instantaneous. “Hell. And what vulture came in and picked your carcass?”
“Arch Warfield. With Danforth’s money. It’s called the Colville Clarion, and it scooped us with the story of the fire right on the front page.”
“Jesus, Maggie …”
“I’m numb. I don’t even feel anything. I don’t know what to feel.”
“I know.” And he did know; it was like someone had murdered something precious. She was reacting just like she did when her baby died: calm, collected, almost apathetic. The pain went very deep, almost to a place where she could not allow herself to feel it.
And no one would let her forget it either. Every second person they passed made a comment, or waved to her, or grabbed her hand.
“Sorry, Maggie,” they said, or “Can we help?” or “Miss the paper today, Maggie,” which sounded to him almost like a kindness.
“I want to go to Bodey’s store,” she said suddenly.
“Oh Maggie, it will be the worst there.”
“I know. But I have to know.” She would have him with her, which would make all the difference to her.
Arwin was emphatic. “This rag! This piece of cow dung. Damn it, Maggie, it’s not fair.”
“And they’re giving it away, you say.”
“Got men on the street hawking it. Got bundles going out on the express to all them faraway places, Maggie. Stuffing it in anybody’s door who’ll open up just out of curiosity. And got the bigges
t news of all on their damned front page. It makes a sane man wonder.”
Maggie looked at Logan. He was leaning against the counter, his arms across his chest, his body in that peculiar stance of his when he was listening intently. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t volunteer an opinion. He listened, and he watched Maggie very carefully, and he wondered what to do.
He knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to carry her right off to the ranch and keep her there forever, but it was one of those ill-formulated things that would send her instantly in the opposite direction. He wanted to marry her, but how did he press his proposal on top of this disaster? He wanted to find someplace and just spend the next week holding her. He wanted luxurious privacy so that he could listen and encourage her to talk her heart out. He wanted …
God, he wanted. And Maggie didn’t have the faintest idea at the moment what she wanted. She got some sense of the outrage the town was feeling, but it wasn’t enough to shore her up to begin again. He could not see what she was going to do, and any of his wants would only add to the burden of any decision she had to make. God, she made it damned hard.
“You’re at the hotel, I assume?” he asked her when they finally left Bodey’s store.
She grimaced. “Yes, Reese kindly rented a suite of rooms where he and Mother Colleran can keep their eye on me constantly.”
Mother Colleran took one look at Logan as he walked in the door with Maggie and said, point blank, “Get out, you.” and to Maggie, “I won’t have that man in my house.”
“It’s my house,” Maggie said wearily. “Ignore her, Logan.”
“I want him out of here. Maggie, this man runs a ranch, with cows and horses and smells. He has nothing to offer you. You need to sit down with Reese and figure things out. You don’t need a roughneck cowboy who can’t do anything for you.”
Logan had had enough. The scent of the old bat’s fear was tangible in the room; she was the kind of witch who could scent something that was a detriment to her a mile away. She knew he was trouble even if she didn’t know why, could sense that if he walked into the picture she would be pushed out.
“Beg your pardon, ma’am,” he said in his politest drawl. “I reckon there is something I can do for Maggie. I can marry her.” He turned to Maggie, who looked utterly discomfitted, and he boldly asked her, “Will you marry me, Maggie?”
“That was rotten.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“I’m not going to either.”
“You were just going to let the old bat stand there and tell you how much you didn’t need me.”
“I would have handled her.”
“Hell, I handled her.”
“She almost had a heart attack.”
“She can lean on Reese, then. There’s no damned reason she needs to have you around except she likes to spend your money and then castigate you because Frank left it to you in the first place. Maggie, we need to talk.”
“We’re talking.”
“In whispers? Outside your expensive suite of rooms? That you’re paying for?”
“It’s a little inconvenient, I’ll admit.”
“Hell, Maggie, you’re dead tired and you are ready to collapse on top of that. I wish you would come back to the ranch with me.”
“How can I do that?”
“Get in the damned wagon. Who the hell would miss you? Who of those animals would care?”
“Mother Colleran would call in Sheriff Edson if I turned up missing, and damn it, Logan, I’ve got enough problems with him already. If I disappeared, he’d charge me with murder.”
“What?” He touched her lips. “Don’t tell me … yet. I have an idea.”
He pulled her after him and they went to the hotel lobby and the registration desk. “Hey, Logan,” the clerk hailed him.
“Miles. I need a room tonight. Something came up. Anything available.”
“Jeez, Logan … I … let me see here. Yeah. Room 306. Back room, though.”
“I’m not looking for scenery, Miles. Thanks.”
Miles tossed him a key and flashed a curious look over at Maggie. “Miz Colleran. Somethin’ I can do for you?”
She jumped. “No, everything is fine.”
Logan winked at her, tossed the key in the air, and left her standing in the lobby. She looked at Miles, he looked at her, and she thought for sure he knew that she was going to follow Logan up to the third floor.
It was hard doing it too, bold as brass, walking up the main staircase and hoping no one saw her. Everyone knew she was staying there with Reese, and she was absolutely sure that everyone knew their suite was on the second floor.
No one even questioned her presence on the third floor. Logan’s room was way down a long corridor on the opposite side of the building from hers.
She rapped briskly on the door and he let her in.
It wasn’t a large room. There was one big window that overlooked the back of the hotel, the carriage house, and stables. There was lots of wall space and it had been crammed with furniture, almost as if the room were a dumping place for that which was unserviceable or out of style. There was a bed that was spread with a quilt and heaped with pillows. There were two rocking chairs, a washstand with a basin and pitcher, a walnut bureau with three drawers and white rings decorating the top as if someone had often set a glass down there. There was a large, plain walnut wardrobe with panel doors and two drawers across the bottom. On the floor there was a hooked rug that was almost room-sized. And beside the bed there was a night stand with a kerosene lamp on it.
But now daylight streamed through the window and Maggie suddenly felt inordinately tired.
“Lie down,” Logan ordered her, and there was nothing sensuous in his command. She lay down and burrowed her head into the mountain of pillows and just let a moment’s peace seep into her bones.
“You’re so smart,” she murmured.
“Sometimes,” he growled.
“I miss you.”
“I went crazy thinking about you.”
“I know. There has to be some changes.”
“I suggested one, Maggie.”
“No.”
“No? Just outright no?”
“No, I don’t mean it that way, I don’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I can’t bear all this.”
“Tell me about all this,” Logan said gently, drawing up one of the rocking chairs to the side of the bed. “Tell me about the sheriff,” he added, because he saw she was about to protest there was too much to tell.
“He came the other day, asking questions about the morning A.J. died. He had a theory—it was to have been in Arch Warfield’s article in my paper last week but I cut it. He had this theory that it was possible that I had ducked out the back door, shot A.J., and then dashed back in and pretended to discover him. He asked me to reenact the scene; he timed it. He suggested it was the first and best explanation he had. And then after the fire, he was right on the spot to imply that I could have set the fire to destroy evidence, that his earlier visit and insinuation had scared me.”
“All right. What else?”
“The end result of the fire is that I have been put in a position where I have to sell if I want to raise money to start up again. Or I can sell the property if I don’t. And it’s beginning to look like the only offer I’m going to get for either property is from Denver North.”
“All right. Anything else?”
“I had a whiff of a feeling someone set the fire just to put me out of business to make way for the Clarion. And let’s not forget that Dennis proposed to me again, and Reese has been making noises about wanting to … take over where Frank left off.”
“And don’t forget me,” Logan reminded her grimly.
She didn’t say anything for a moment, and then she nodded. “Yes. And you. You did ask me to marry you.”
“Anything is possible,” Logan said stoically.
“All right. And then I had this notion t
hat A.J. might have been killed for one of two reasons: so somebody else could step into his place or so that I would be set up for murder. If I were convicted, someone else could move in and take control.”
“I had that thought myself,” Logan said.
“I remember.”
“Is that everything?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
He was quiet for a long time. “It’s a lot,” he said at last, but he didn’t say what he was really thinking, that it was Maggie herself who seemed to be the focus of all these incidents. It scared him. He didn’t want to ask if she were scared; he wasn’t sure she recognized the danger. He didn’t even know how to define it. “There is one easy answer.”
“I know what it is, too. You want me to marry you,” she said, and a faint note of resentment crept into her voice. She didn’t want him to pursue it. She didn’t want to think about it, because then she would have to make a decision about it, and she was in no fit state to decide anything.
“I was going to say you could walk away from the whole thing,” he said mildly. “You don’t have to marry anybody if you don’t want to.”
“You mean disappear?”
“More or less.”
“And leave Dennis with all Frank’s money sitting in limbo? Don’t be silly, Logan.”
“It was just a thought, Maggie.”
“I suppose your limbo would be to immure me at the ranch?”
“It could have been,” he said regretfully. “You do what you want to, Maggie. You always have.”
“You just want to force me to say yes to your proposal,” she accused him.
“Not hardly. I don’t want to force you into anything. But you will be forced to deal with these circumstances, including the fact I want you and I want to marry you, and the fact that our lovemaking may produce still another complication in your life. I don’t think I’m going to touch you again, Maggie. I think you have too much to handle now.”
She was shocked by his abrupt attack. “That’s fine,” she said coolly. “Then you know what my answer to your proposal would be.”
“I’ve always known it, Maggie. You never would back down. Or notice that I’m in town almost as often as if I lived here. You wouldn’t be ‘immured’ anywhere, Maggie, but if you admitted that, then you would have no reason not to make up your mind, and you know we can’t have that. I think we know where we both stand. Why don’t you rest before you go back to your mother-in-law and Reese? It’s probably the only peace you will get from now on.”
Thea Devine Page 25