Maggie raced upstairs to throw on some clothes. She had to get a horse, a wagon, she had to see; the bastards, the bastards! That was the unthinkable threat he had meant …
“I’ll take you,” Reese said urgently, and she agreed while Mother Colleran wailed at her stupidity in the background. “If only you had sold up, Maggie… if only … if only …”
A crowd of wagons raced them; everyone wanted to see. It was a glow on the horizon even before they cleared the edge of town, and as they came closer they could see it feeding with a white heat on everything in its path.
Everyone wanted to get closer. They edged in, murmuring, shouting over the roar of the fire as it consumed a tree, and spread outward, ever outward. Soon only Maggie and Reese were inching forward, and Arch Warfield with a malevolent smile, taking notes.
“God, Maggie…” Even Reese could not have envisioned the voracious power of the fire. It was like nothing he had ever seen, not even the night that the Morning Call building burned.
“It’ll keep going,” Maggie said tonelessly. “It will break at the road, and down by Gully Basin. It took the house, I’m sure, and probably the Mapes’ place too. If we’re lucky, it will burn itself out down at the forest. It was a good move, Reese. Now they don’t have to clear the land. They just have to get it away from me.”
From the opposite direction she saw someone coming by the light of the flames. She knew it was Logan, just as he knew she would be the one in the forefront of the spectators.
He dismounted immediately and jumped into the wagon. “I’m driving her, Reese. You take my horse. Go on. There’s nothing you can do here.”
Maggie sat like a statue, her eyes on the crackling flames. Logan pushed Reese, and he automatically responded even though he had fully intended to stay rooted just where he was. Damned cowdog, he thought viciously, as Logan climbed into the seat and whacked the reins down on the horses’ backs. They reared, scared by the smoke and the flames. Logan snapped the reins again, and they took off almost uncontrollably in the direction from which he had come.
Damn him to hell, Reese swore violently as his mount reared up and almost unseated him. Damn, damn; he had no choice but to follow them, and he had been thinking of another assignation with the luscious Melinda. Damn the fire, damn them, damn the cowdog.
He pushed his horse, and wheeled him around in the direction from which Logan had come.
“You’re not going back to Colville tonight,” Logan said forcefully, as if he had to emphasize every word to get through to her.
“You know, that bastard warned me, and I couldn’t think of a single thing he could threaten me with.”
“Have some coffee.” He shoved a cup in her hands.
“Logan …”
“Don’t worry, I won’t touch you. I just don’t think you ought to go back tonight.”
“Who would believe it?” she murmured, sipping the hot liquid. She felt it steam down inside her, nudging her to life.
“Who cares,” he said roughly.
“You don’t,” she answered simply. “You don’t think I’m going to fall into your arms now, do you?”
“Whose arms are you falling into these days, Maggie?”
“That is the most abominable thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“I beg your pardon. You live in such close quarters these days, for a woman who wants room and space and freedom, it does make a man wonder.”
“That is so unfair!”
“Isn’t it? Hell, I’m only the one who’s been waiting for you all these years. I shouldn’t give a damn in hell whether or not Reese Colleran is creeping around your room, should I? He’s a town man, Maggie, and so convenient when there’s a fire to race out and view.”
“Reese? That’s despicable.”
“No, it isn’t. They do say history repeats itself, Maggie. He’s so damned like Frank it hurts. Maybe he’s even better. Maybe you make a lot of noise to throw up smokescreens. How the hell do I know?”
“Logan, I can’t listen to this.”
“I know, you can’t, you can’t, you can’t. It’s a regular theme with you these days. I guess your mother-in-law has the right of it: a cowboy can’t do anything for you.”
His bitterness was scorching, and something she had never seen in him.
“But you know damned well my father sold me to Frank,” she lashed out, suddenly.
“Hell, you were drooling all over him, Maggie. He was God Almighty when he came to town. Everyone wanted him and you set your sights and twitched your hips and there he was. You were something when you were twenty, Maggie. You were just as innocent as the sky and you knew everything in the world.”
“Well I didn’t know Frank wanted the Morning Call, and I tell you, Logan, that was all he wanted.”
“Good story, Maggie. That’s why he handed it over to you on a platter and why you’re supporting his damned family. And maybe it’s why that damned Reese thinks he can take Frank’s place.”
There was no talking to him tonight, she thought tiredly. She had never seen this side of him, all this acrimony that had been bottled up for years. She had never given a thought to what he might be feeling or what he thought he had lost when he had given her the choice. But nobody was happy for the simple reason that she didn’t like the choices: marriage … or … ruination?
But she was ruined, and even now accepting his proposal was not a choice for her. Not yet.
“You know,” she said, “you never asked about Frank and me.”
“It wasn’t time.”
“Maybe it’s time.”
“You don’t have to explain anything, Maggie.”
“Frank wanted the control of the Morning Call and he married me to get it.”
“I like that, Maggie. As if he couldn’t have started up something on his own here.”
“Why should he have? He had nothing to lose and he was getting the possibility of an heir in the bargain. My bloodlines are very good, Logan. I’m sure he looked into it.”
The thought arrested her for a moment. Looked into it, she mused. Yes. There was something to that, she just didn’t know what.
“And he found you utterly enchanting anyway,” Logan said sarcastically. “Who wouldn’t?”
“He hated me,” she told him flatly. “After the first year, he hated me.”
“Why?” he asked carefully.
“Because I wanted to do things. We spent the first six months out at the ranch, and I wouldn’t stay in the house canning vegetables and baking bread. And then he gave up and took me to town. He hated it that I was always in the office and that I could sling type better than he could.”
She looked away from him for a moment, because the next was even harder to tell. “And he hated how willing I was when we made love. He … he thought it was unladylike. He called me his, his home whore, and after a while he used me like one. Then he went out and found someone he could pay to do the same things I wanted to do. But that was different, because then he had control. And he brought in his mother to make sure I wasn’t… I didn’t …”
She swallowed convulsively. “The baby was … he didn’t want a baby. We had a fight that night, a horrible fight; he was sure it wasn’t his, that I was the worst kind of bitch, slut, wanton, filth, and that his mother had missed something along the way. The fight got physical, but you know he was so much bigger than me. He pushed me. He struck me. He walked out on me before he knew what had happened, and he went to her and paid her for her services that night.”
“Maggie …” he said softly.
“No, you should know this,” she whispered, wiping the tears that were welling up in her eyes. “He was a bastard through and through. He didn’t even care, and I didn’t care after that. I was glad he had that piece of trash to go to. I didn’t want him any more. He didn’t deserve me. When he died, he was leaving her house. He was shot in the back, just like A.J.”
Yes, she had thought that before, she was sure. Just like A.J. He looked
into it. She focused on the thoughts and not on the pain she had just recreated so painstakingly for Logan.
“The son of a bitch,” he muttered.
She took another breath. “And then everything came to me. I didn’t understand it then, I don’t understand it now. I went over his papers the other day, and the only thing that read differently to me was the contract between my father and Frank. It literally said that my father would hand over his interest in the ownership of the paper for the sum of one thousand dollars when Frank married me. So he married me.”
“Jesus, Maggie.”
“I wish you had gotten there first,” she whispered.
“I wish I had too.”
He settled her down on the sofa in front of the fireplace, and he stoked the flames. “It’s a wonder I can look at a fire with equanimity,” she said.
He sat down on the floor with his knees drawn up against his chest. “I’m wondering about that. It can’t devalue the land for them. If anything it becomes a fortuitous accident.”
“I had that thought too. I don’t know.” She put her head back and stared at the fire. It was friendly and warm now, radiating a faint heat that would expand with the hours. It felt like she felt, contained and secure now that Logan understood the things he hadn’t known before.
She felt safe with him, not terrorized, not trapped. The net couldn’t swallow her here. There was sanity here, and a sense that all the swirling things she was thinking would coalesce into some kind of coherent whole.
She wanted him. The magic of Logan, she thought, was the fact that nothing else mattered when she was with him. He made her whole again and she knew in that moment it was the reason she had always needed him.
And she, not he, had almost thrown that enchantment away. She wanted to recapture it; she wanted him.
And she knew he wanted her.
They sat in deep silence for a very long time. She didn’t know what to do, but she knew she was the one who had to make the first move. It was just the way it was, and the way she wanted it.
She loved the long tense moments of trying to decide how she would approach him. In her mind she could say and do anything she wanted, everything she had imagined in her dreams.
In reality there was a barrier between them, as thick as her stubborn streak and twice as wide. It was tangible and it emanated from him, and as the heat grew between them it became something that could not be ignored.
What was it? She knew what it was. She would leave him tomorrow, like he was a man for hire, and he wanted her with him always.
We’ll come to that, she thought, stretching out her hand and touching his thick hair as he gazed pensively into the fireplace. I’m coming to that. I just need a little time. Just a little time.
Her hand told him that as she stroked his hair down to the edge of his collar. She inserted her fingers there and began sliding them around the base of his neck.
Her touch electrified him; he had loved her so long, how could he refuse her? He felt her deep breaths against his ear as her fingers inched their way downward to feel the play of muscle along his shoulders. He felt her lips as she grazed his ear and neck with kisses. And then he turned his head and he felt her tongue as she forced her way into his mouth.
And then his arms closed around her as she tumbled on top of him.
Outside, Reese Colleran watched. There was a window from the parlor that looked directly out onto the porch. It was pitch black. The only illumination was the fire within. He watched as the cowdog slowly undressed Maggie and felt every inch of her satiny flesh.
Never had he imagined her body so beautiful; never had he dreamed a woman could be so willing. He had never seen anything like the ferocity with which she enticed that man with her kisses and the way she wrapped herself around him with wanton abandon.
He couldn’t bear to watch it through this time. He needed desperately to slake his own rising desire, and he knew just where to go. The image of Maggie’s nakedness rode with him as he raced to town.
It was very late when he got there, but he pounded on Melinda Sable’s door violently. By the time she opened it, he had withdrawn a hundred-dollar bill and his aching member.
Her heated gaze ate it up, and he knew she was ready. She gave him a knowing little smile and closed the door behind him.
She awoke beside him, naked, on the floor. “Logan!” she shook him urgently, and he woke up with a start.
“What’s the matter, Maggie?”
“What if someone comes?”
“They’ll knock on the door.”
“This is nothing to laugh about.”
“I’m not laughing,” he said huskily, reaching for her. “Lie down with me, Maggie.”
She nestled against him, back to front, and his arms surrounded her. She felt utterly enfolded by his heat and his scent and the enticing male essence of him.
She reached back and grasped his hard muscular thigh. She felt an immediate reaction. He threw his leg over her and she felt him nudging her and hardening deliciously against her.
“I want you,” he whispered in her ear.
“I’m waiting,” she murmured, raising her arms behind his neck so that she could both command his kisses and arch herself against him. His tongue immediately possessed her willing mouth and one arm wrapped tightly around her hips, while the other hand covered her breast, just covered it, and held it, with the peak of her nipple pressing hard into the palm of his hand.
“Perfect,” she breathed against his lips.
“Almost perfect,” he whispered, taking her kisses. “Wrap your leg around me, Maggie.”
“Yes,” she murmured, and slid her bare leg over his thigh just as he wanted.
There, when she was open to him, he slid gently into her welcoming fold and held her there to feel the pulsating heart of his desire. She was home to him, beside him, open to him, possessing him as thoroughly as he possessed her. It was an ineffable moment of discovery, a pure bonding that connected them into a new whole. He had never wanted her more and he was content to lie embedded within her, full and whole and perfect.
He did not move for a very long time, and his languid kisses only incited them both. She began thrusting against him with tight little movements that begged him for the full measure of his driving manhood.
“Now, Maggie?”
“I want you desperately,” she whispered.
“Show me how much.”
“You show me.”
Even so, his movements were both limited and enhanced by the way he possessed her. She enfolded him totally and felt each short movement of him deep inside her. She loved how deeply he lay within her and how his hands had access to every inch of her body. She withheld nothing from him when he made love to her this way. Her kisses told him so. The luxurious writhing of her body against him excited him beyond anything he had felt before.
She was Eve, an innocent and temptress in one luscious body. She knew all the secrets of time, yet he found secrets to be discovered.
She gave him her breasts, and he discovered the mystery of her proud nipples. She gave him her feminine heat, and he found the source of her satiety. With each virile stroke of his towering manhood he took her toward completion.
This stunning tribute to her voluptuous femininity resonated deep within her. She rode with him, only him; her body shimmied against him, her leg thrust against him, almost as if she were trying to get away from the intensity of his possession. Her kiss-swollen lips begged him for more, and he gave it to her.
He drove into hot velvet, his tongue caressed hot velvet, she smoldered against him with her sinuous movements, seeking the thing he most wanted to give her.
Slowly it came, from a golden, hot center, elusive and powerfully there, golden molten, dissolving through her veins in a shimmering, sumptuous conclusion to the splendor of his love.
He felt it coming, rippling through her, twisting through him, propelling him like a rock-hard piston to thrust and thrust and thrust until h
e felt her soaring and breaking down onto him, into the force of his shattering climax.
“I have to see it,” she said, as he grimly prepared to take her back into Colville.
“You don’t want to see it, Maggie.”
“I do. I have to know.”
He looked at her sharply. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I don’t want to go. But I have to. I have to figure it out, Logan.”
He didn’t understand that cryptic statement, and he let it pass; the important thing was, she didn’t want to leave him.
They drove in silence toward the Colleran land. There was still a smokiness in the air, and as they passed by the Mapes’ they saw the heat of the devastation. The house was gone, the land was barren and naked. Charred trees, bushes, scorched grass were all the eye could see. There was nothing remaining of the cabin where Maggie had spent her first weeks of marriage to Frank. Everything was blackened, burned to the root.
She took a deep breath. “Maybe it’s better.”
“Don’t give in, Maggie.”
“Oh no. Not until I understand why Frank left it to me. I don’t know where to go to find that out.”
They were silent again as he guided the wagon toward town. She was deep in her thoughts and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to interrupt her, until suddenly she gave a short laugh.
“I was thinking about Mother Colleran. She said things would change when Reese arrived.” She turned her head back to look at the desolation one more time. “They did, didn’t they?”
“He never said why he came?”
“She sent for him, or at least that was what she said.”
He thought about that for a while. “After Reese came everything changed. How?”
“What we talked about: Denver North running that ad for construction workers in the readyprint supplement, gossip about my driving up the price of the land by refusing to sell. Dennis’s proposal—Dennis asked me to marry him, remember? He thought Frank would have wanted it.” She ignored his shudder. “A.J.’s death. The fire. Two fires. Is that enough? Haven’t we had this conversation before?”
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