Thea Devine

by Relentless Passion

  “I’ve thought about it; it appeals to me enormously.”

  “Even if you could have Reese,” demanded her mother-in-law.

  “Especially if that were possible.”

  “Well, I won’t stand for it, Maggie, I just won’t. That cowboy, that roughshod farmer, that …” She flounced into her room, and slammed the door, and still her voice came out at Maggie, muffled, writhing with imprecations.

  Maggie sighed. Madame Mother certainly hated Logan. She wondered why.

  So now he was a boarder at Melinda Sable’s, and though it cost him a premium price, Reese was glad to pay the freight to be able to pretend to seduce Melinda Sable’s luscious body every night. She wasn’t Maggie, but her attitude was exactly right; playful, reluctant, bold, and submissive all at once. In his wildest fantasy, he saw Maggie living in this very house and begging him to visit her in her room in that same tantalizing tone of voice.

  Her naked body was a constant image in his mind, and he ached with a rock-hard determination to possess her. He wanted her at his feet, totally beneath him, at his mercy, vanquished. He wanted to hear her ripe lips murmur sweet compliments of his mastery.

  She was primed for the taking. She swore she didn’t want him, but she wanted no one else. She only wanted to rut in every conceivable place with the cowdog, but he knew his eventual domination of her would wipe the memory from her brain.

  She needed only one night with him. He was not Frank, a man who had not appreciated the temptress he had had in his very own bed. No, he adored the audacious sensuality he had seen the cowdog incite, adored the brazen need that compelled her to demand to be taken whenever her desire kindled.

  To have a woman like that, wanton, ripe, willing, without having to approach her with a hundred dollars in his hand … He invariably stiffened with anticipation every time he thought about it. Maggie in the hands of the cowdog; what did he know about satisfying such lust as Reese had seen in her?

  He knew nothing about Maggie’s profligate sensuality.

  Only Reese Colleran could replace the husband who had abandoned her. It was the one thing he had come to Colville for, a decision he had made long before he had ever seen Maggie’s voluptuous body. And now he could have that and Maggie’s hot receptivity too. He kept remembering the first time he had seen her, from the hill above the church. And invariably when he thought about Maggie, he saw in his mind’s eye the first time he had unwittingly spied on her.

  The memory always aroused him unbearably. At those times it was good he had Melinda Sable’s body to bury himself within. Even now, as his quiescent member spurted to life, he was halfway out the door, seeking surcease from his ravenous need.

  But Melinda was busy this day. Melinda was sweet; she patted him gently on his face and stroked his throbbing erection. “You know there’s a sweet little girl in the room down the hall, Reese. Brand new; you might want to try her. I’ve been waiting to give her a really powerful man. She’s a friend of Maggie Colleran’s, Reese. Her name is Annie Mapes.”

  “I know what I’m going to do.”

  Logan turned at Maggie’s statement and sent her a long considering look from across the room. He was all muscular cowhand today, so much so that Mother Colleran had bolted from the suite when he arrived, fresh from riding with his herd to pasture upland.

  They hadn’t said more than a couple of words to each other after her departure. It was almost as if they felt shy with each other.

  He smiled at her gently. “I knew you’d figure it out, Maggie.”

  She shook her head. “I figured some of it out. Not everything. And do you know what it’s really about? I think it’s about Frank. Isn’t that unbelievable? After all these years. The man won’t stay buried.”

  “Colville keeps him alive,” Logan said. Much to his detriment, he thought. He knew she was reminded of Frank in one way or another every day, whether it was by her courtesy address or by something Frank had done. He didn’t see the townspeople calling her “Mrs. Logan.” Not at all.

  “No. Listen, Logan. He looked into it. Frank looked into it. Remember, I said my bloodlines are very good. I said I was sure Frank looked into it. Didn’t anybody think it was odd that someone like him wound up in Colville? Do you see? I said the same thing to Reese. He wound up in Colville, too.”

  “They looked into Colville?” he said, puzzled. “They … Frank …” he searched for the connection, “Frank ….knew about Denver North.”

  She let out a breath. She wasn’t imagining it; it was a possible, even logical conclusion. “And the first thing he did was buy that tract of land—how many thousand acres?—right on a direct line north to Cheyenne. He came to buy land and sell it.”

  “Well, fine. And he stayed.”

  “No. No. That’s the part I’m still working out. I still don’t understand why he willed it to me. Do you see? He never expected he wouldn’t realize an enormous profit on it. But even so, there was his brother and his mother and even Dennis. Why me?”

  “Maybe Dennis knows why.”

  “Dennis would never tell me… now. Every time I think about what has happened since A.J.’s death I have this mad feeling that it is all deliberate.”

  He didn’t protest her statement.

  “Don’t you?” she demanded.

  “But you say it’s connected to Frank. How? Where?”

  “It’s crazy. Reese comes to Colville. He wants to see his mother, he wants to be my friend. To help with the paper. And that happens right after Harold Danforth and I tangle about the railroad. Right? And then Arwin is telling me that people are saying I’m antirailroad because I want to get more money for the land I have. Then the for-hire notices appear in a place over which I have no control. The paper. More suspicion. Then Reese practically proposes to me. A.J. is mysteriously killed and Reese immediately steps in. Mr. Brown comes on the scene and begins making offers few can refuse. I refuse him. The sheriff then as good as accuses me of murdering A.J., except he can’t find any proof and he only has a theory. I run a story about the miserable worker accommodations up at the track site, and two days later, the office burns down. Suddenly I have two pieces of property to sell and the only bidder is Denver North. And that is on top of Dennis proposing to me at least twice, and Mother Colleran urging me to sell. I had a feeling that A.J. had been killed so someone pro-Denver North could take his place, and I could be framed for murder so that I could be gotten rid of, clearing the way for the sale of the Colleran ranch. You’re right, it sounds crazy.”

  “Or,” he said soberly, “it sounds like a conspiracy.”

  A conspiracy. At his words the tension in her diminished. She wasn’t quite demented then. She had an ally who thought the things that had happened were not exaggerations of her imagination. She felt a sweet gratitude for his discernment. He had handed her a possibility, something solid to work with, to work backward from, because the first words that leapt into her mind as he said it were “Who? How?”

  “Everybody. Nobody. People you don’t even know, if Frank and Denver North are the focus of all of this.”

  “But the end result has been this enormous pressure for me to sell, and circumstances have made it imperative that I consider selling.”

  “But who stands to gain the most, Maggie?”

  “That’s just it,” she said unhappily. “Me. And only me.”

  And then she didn’t know what she was going to do. The very idea of a conspiracy was both potent and frightening. It meant she had more than one enemy; it meant she couldn’t attack lest she were gunned down from behind.

  Like Frank. Like A.J.

  God, how she kept coming back to that, too.

  Had the same person murdered them both?

  Another connection. Five years apart … how was it possible? How could those two deaths be linked?

  The net tightened still more.

  She felt a jangling fear that nothing she did would be enough to save her, that she would be sacrificed to the maw of somebod
y’s greed.

  Whose greed, when she was the only one who would benefit?

  She was consumed with a racing need to take some kind of action.

  “Nothing to your mother-in-law?”

  Logan’s voice pulled her back from her scattershot thoughts.

  “Nothing. Nothing to Reese. Nothing to Dennis, although only he is empowered to act for me when I do sell.” Only he, she thought. He hadn’t been in Colville then. He had come on Frank’s summons from San Francisco.

  Her mind raced ahead. If Frank had brought him to Colville, he must have written to him. What if he had written letters about Denver North? He bought up the land with no intention of ranching whatsoever, she could see now in retrospect. What would she find in a letter that she didn’t know already?

  She didn’t even care what she might find. The thought was she could do something, she could move, she could take action.

  “Logan I want to break into Dennis’s office.”

  He didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t try to dissuade her. He smiled his slow, gentle smile. “Any time you like.”

  They watched Dennis’s office all day from the front window of Bodey’s store.

  “You two ain’t no decoration, hanging out there like that,” Arwin said.

  “She’s at loose ends,” Logan explained. “This gives her something to do with her time.”

  “I know a hundred things she could do better with her time,” Arwin said tartly, thumping his hand down on a stack of Colville Clarions. “Like this rag, for instance. You just lookit this. And you tell me, Maggie Colleran, that this town don’t need the clear eye of the Morning Call.”

  “The Morning Call is in mourning,” Maggie retorted. “This town has gotten exactly what it wanted: a positive picture of the beneficent Denver North.” She turned her head to peer out the window again. “That man must be chained to his desk,” she whispered to Logan.

  “He always struck me as being extremely dedicated to his work,” Logan said. “And you,” he added without expression.

  She jumped. “I suppose he is. After all, two proposals. Oh, there he is …”

  “Hell, heading straight for here. Damn, duck Maggie. Arwin, get that back door open, and hold him here.”

  “Whatever for?” Arwin protested, bewildered by their sudden unorthodox departure, but they were gone by then, sliding along the side of the store and racing across the street to the building where Dennis had his offices.

  “There’s a back entrance,” Maggie whispered, pushing at Logan until they were out of view of the front windows of Bodey’s store.

  The rear staircase was narrow and dank. “Second floor,” Maggie directed, “in the front.”

  They pulled up in front of a frosted paned door with Dennis’s name lettered across it in gilt.

  “This looks like it,” Logan said, grasping the knob.

  “You didn’t expect it to be open?” Maggie said in disbelief.

  He grinned at her. “Maybe I did. So now we break in.”

  “What with?”

  He smiled again and reached into his pants to unsheathe a small knife he wore strapped to his belt.

  “I never noticed that,” she said, awed by his cleverness.

  “You were too busy noticing other things, Maggie. All right, let’s see if I can spring the lock.” He inserted the blade between the door and the molding and moved it upward until it hit something solid. Then he removed it and reinserted it so that just the tip of the blade pressed against the lock catch, and pushed against it gently. “It’s giving, just a little. Another … You have to coax it sometimes …”

  “And you’re so good at that.”

  “You noticed. There!” He swung the door in. “Check the window, Maggie. The last thing we need is him climbing back up the stairs now.”

  “I don’t see him. Damn, he could have gone to Arwin’s to get some supplies or something. No, wait, he’s going on down to the hotel. Good.”

  “All right. I’ll keep watch. You look.”

  She rubbed her hand over her face. “I wish I knew what I thought I was looking for,” she said plaintively, as she tackled his filing drawers.

  Nothing was locked. And nothing was coherent.

  “You would think he could have made things easy for us,” Maggie said ungraciously, as she raced through the drawers trying to find one piece of paper that related to her or to Frank.

  “I don’t understand this,” she whispered finally. “There’s a mountain of paper and nothing that makes sense. Nothing pertaining to the estate.”

  Logan came and looked over her shoulder as she sifted through a pile of papers, scanning each in grim comprehension. “It’s a smokescreen, Maggie.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I mean, this is supposed to look like he has a closetful of clients, but look … the dates, the descriptions. Not Colville cases, Maggie. Look. How is that kind of legal action possible here?”

  “Damn.” She shoved the drawer closed. “Where else?”

  “The closet,” Logan said from his post back at the window.

  “He has a strongbox,” she said suddenly, as she rooted through the closet. There were a couple of boxes of papers there, too, but nothing relating to Frank, nothing about her. “He must have stored everything at the bank.” She shoved the boxes back into the closet, with a sinking feeling of defeat.

  “Damn, we learned absolutely nothing.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Logan whispered, cautioning her to silence as they crept out of the office and closed the door carefully behind them.

  “I would,” Maggie said gloomily as they exited onto the street.

  “Maggie, you just didn’t put everything together the right way. What we learned was that Dennis doesn’t have any other client but you, and it makes an awfully strong case against him that he’s asked you to marry him and he’s urging you to sell.”

  She would be wise to cooperate occasionally, Dennis had said. An implicit threat, she had thought. Dennis had never been her friend, her confidant, or her advisor.

  What had Dennis been? A man reaching to control a great deal of money through her, but a man so desperate for it that he would stoop to killing and arson?

  A conspiracy?

  What did she have to offer him that Frank could not have given him upon the sale of the property once the railroad had arrived? Dennis would have shared in the profit, surely.

  “Maybe,” Logan said thoughtfully, “Dennis wanted you and the money and the hell with Frank.”

  Her heart sank. “He must have been damned disappointed at how independent I am. He could never persuade me to do anything he wanted me to do. How did he think he would convince me to marry him and give him management of Frank’s estate and the proceeds of that sale?”

  “You’ll have to ask him, Maggie.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be … frank,” she said satirically. “It still doesn’t quite piece together.”

  “No, it doesn’t. It’s one possible explanation.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “It’s a start.”

  “I think I have to do something drastic.”

  “And I know something drastic you can do, too, Maggie.”

  Her eyes softened. “I’d love to say yes.”

  “So say yes.”

  Wasn’t it tempting? She would marry him to smoke out the conspirators and have his luxurious lovemaking for the rest of her life.

  “Yes to perpetrate a plot?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Yes because you can’t live without what we have together,” Logan said firmly.

  “Without working out any details?”

  “Details take care of themselves, Maggie.”

  “I couldn’t do that, Logan; it wouldn’t be fair.”

  “To who? You? You can’t presume to say what would be fair to me. You know what that is already, without my telling you.”

  “But I have to …”

  “I know, I know. I’m wa
iting, Maggie,” he added, flicking her cheek. “Maybe that’s all you have to know.”

  She had her own plan, her own plot; she didn’t need him to carry it out. She didn’t need anything but her own courage, because this was the thing she had told Logan she had decided to do.

  She went to Dennis’s office first thing in the morning. He was there, busily turning papers, absorbed in work, or so it seemed.

  But now things were different, Maggie thought. Now she had an inkling of how things were really. Dennis was a potential adversary, and she was wary of him now as she sat across from him.

  But he didn’t sense anything different. “I’m happy to see you here, Maggie. What can I do for you?”

  “I believe it’s time to make a decision about the Colleran property.”

  He nodded. “That is a wise decision. I recollect that Mr. Brown offered you twenty thousand and said he would neither dicker nor make you another offer. Are you ready to take that offer?”

  “Actually, I’m not,” Maggie said boldly.

  “Oh? Then you have nothing to discuss with me, Maggie. The fire has made the price a debatable issue.”

  “My very thought,” Maggie agreed cheerfully.

  “And you do understand my fee for negotiating the sale will be fifty percent of the proceeds?” Dennis added flatly, intending to shock her.

  He did. “I didn’t understand that at all,” she said slowly. “That does throw a different light on things. It really does. All right, Dennis, consider this. My offer to you is the equivalent percent of the dollar amount that you can get for the acreage. In other words, if you can get fifteen dollars an acre, I will pay you fifteen percent of the profit. Or thirteen. Or twenty if you’re wily enough to negotiate that. I will tell you that I won’t pay you half on any terms whatsoever, and you would do well to settle for my offer rather than not have me sell that land at all.”

  She saw she had caught him totally off guard. He had sincerely believed that he could coerce her into his exorbitant terms.

  “Even if I am the only one who can negotiate for you?”

  “You can’t negotiate if I don’t want to sell, Dennis. Think about it. You know my terms now, and you can’t bamboozle me into thinking the land’s worthless just because someone burned it down. Nor will I allow you to accept what is ostensibly Mr. Brown’s offer, and then pocket the difference between that and what you really asked. Are we clear?”