Springwater Wedding

by Linda Lael Miller

  Maggie’s reactions to this latest development were mixed. Like sharks scenting blood in the water, the self-proclaimed journalists hounded poor Purvis for answers he couldn’t give and stirred up the already agitated populace with none too subtle hints that the marshal ought to step down and let J.T. Wainwright take over his job. On the other hand, all of Maggie’s rooms were filled—she’d had to hustle to open ahead of schedule—and the local merchants, usually forced to scramble for a living, were doing a brisk business as well.

  Late in the afternoon, the day after the tabloid people came to town, J.T.’s ex-wife arrived at the Station, with her young son in tow. She was slender and delicate-looking, with flyaway blonde hair and anxious green eyes. The dark-haired, dark-eyed boy at her side so resembled J.T. that Maggie’s heart did a slow somersault at the sight of him, and then tumbled into the pit of her stomach, bouncing there like a fallen acrobat in a net. Quinn, she thought, with a sense of bittersweet wonder. This was Quinn, the child who might have been her own—and wasn’t.

  “I’m Annie Wilcox,” Quinn’s mother said, putting out a hand. The dining room at the Station was noisy, packed with the overflow from the Stagecoach CafÈ down the street. Although Maggie still served only breakfast at the B & B—she was planning to expand to lunch and supper when profits justified hiring a cook—her guests kept the coffeemaker going nonstop. “This is the Springwater Station, isn’t it?”

  Maggie shook Annie’s hand. “Yes,” she said kindly, liking the other woman instantly, just as she’d always known she would. “I’m Maggie McCaffrey.”

  Annie smiled in response. “J.T.’s told me a lot about you,” she said. “I was wondering if we could—if we could talk?” In one quick, rather harried glance, she took in the reporters lining several of the trestle tables, some engaged in spirited conversations, some tapping steadily at laptop computers, others scribbling away on pads of paper.

  Maggie indicated the open doorway of her office with a nod. Quinn, meanwhile, had spotted Sadie, who was eyeing him from the seat of a rocking chair on the other side of the dining room, and he immediately headed in that direction. Seeing a shadow of worry fall across Annie’s face, she said quietly, “She’s friendly.”

  Annie braced her spine, then nodded. “Both J.T. and Brad say I’m too protective of Quinn,” she admitted. “It’s just that—well— he isn’t used to animals and neither am I.”

  “If you’d rather he joined us here in the office—”

  Annie shook her head resolutely. “I have to learn to let go, don’t I?” she asked, and Maggie assumed the question was rhetorical. “I mean, Brad and I will be in Venezuela for at least six weeks, and Quinn will be living on the ranch with J.T.”

  Maggie touched the other woman’s arm. “He’ll be fine,” she said, and then wondered if she was being presumptuous, offering blithe assurances. After all, someone had burned down J.T.’s barn and blown the Raynors’ trailer sky-high, and there had been a brutal murder as well. Springwater was no longer a picture-postcard town, idyllic and peaceful.

  Inside the office, Maggie offered Annie a chair, and the other woman accepted readily. She looked wan, even a little frantic, and Maggie felt her heart go out to her visitor. Perhaps Annie didn’t want to leave her son and travel to South America but felt, for some private reason, that she had no choice.

  Now you’re dramatizing, Maggie scolded herself. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some tea?” she asked.

  Annie’s smile was tentative, and she shook her head. “No, thanks,” she said.

  Maggie took a seat behind her desk, folded her hands on the blotter because she knew she’d fidget if she didn’t. “How can I help you?”

  Annie sighed. “What seemed like a good idea on the plane and on the drive here from Missoula seems sort of silly now,” she murmured. “I thought I wanted to tell you that there’s nothing between J.T. and me—that we’re friends, and that’s all—but now that I’m actually here, I realize my objective wasn’t quite that noble. I wanted to see the woman J.T. has been thinking about all these years.”

  Maggie didn’t know what to say, so she held her tongue.

  Annie squirmed a little and smiled again, effectively breaking the tension. “Now I really feel like a fool,” she said. “I should have stuck with my original story.”

  Maggie laughed. “Go on,” she said.

  Suddenly, though, there were tears in Annie’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, reaching for a tissue from the box Maggie automatically pushed toward her. “I’ve been under a lot of stress lately. It’s so hard to leave Quinn, even though I know J.T. loves him very much.”

  Maggie nodded. “I can understand why you’d feel that way,” she said.

  Annie sniffled, then chuckled. “Do you have to be so nice?” she asked.

  Maggie laughed again. “I can’t help it. I’m just an all-around decent kind of a gal.”

  After a few moments, Annie turned pensive once more. Although she spoke without rancor, her words struck Maggie to the soul. “You broke J.T.’s heart,” she said. “You knew that, didn’t you?”

  Being completely human, Maggie’s first impulse was to deny the charge, to point out that actually J.T. had been the one to initiate their breakup, but she knew that wasn’t the whole truth. She also felt that Annie deserved an honest answer. “Yes,” she said, though she knew that was an oversimplification of a very complex matter. “I suppose I did. Not on purpose, of course.”

  Annie drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Do any of us set out to break another person’s heart?” she reflected. “He never stopped loving you, you know.”

  Maggie thought of her last encounter with J.T., when he’d challenged her to sleep with him, but instead of anger, she felt sadness. It had been an outrageous thing for him to say, of course, but maybe he’d been at least partially right in calling her a coward. No one had the power to hurt her that he did. “I’m not sure J.T. knows how to love,” she murmured, and immediately wished she hadn’t made the observation aloud.

  Annie merely smiled, though she, like Maggie, was obviously sad. “I don’t agree,” she said. “He loves Quinn. He loved his father.”

  Maggie didn’t speak.

  “And I’m fairly certain he’s never loved any woman but you,” Annie finished.

  Maggie bit her upper lip. Tears smarted behind her eyes. She opened her mouth, closed it again.

  “It’s all right,” Annie insisted gently. “I adored J.T., once. We had a child together. But we were never meant to be, and I’m truly happy with Brad. I guess what I want now, more than just about anything else, is for J.T. to find what I’ve found. And I think that can only happen with you.”

  Maggie helped herself to a tissue and dabbed at her eyes, furious with herself for breaking down in front of a virtual stranger. “It seems impossible,” she said.

  Annie leaned forward, touched Maggie’s hand. “Don’t give up too quickly,” she replied. Before she could say more, a small voice spoke from the doorway.

  “Mom?” Quinn asked, Sadie wagging and panting at his side. Once more, his resemblance to J.T. struck Maggie with an almost physical impact, sending up another flare of bittersweet emotions. “When can I see my dad?”

  Annie glanced at her watch. “I guess we should call before we drive out there,” she said.

  “I’ve got his cell number,” Quinn announced importantly. “I can reach him twenty-four-seven. He said so.”

  Maggie and Annie exchanged slight smiles, then Annie nodded her O.K.

  “You can use my telephone if you’d like,” Maggie told the boy, indicating the one on her desk.

  “Thanks,” Quinn said. All business, he pulled a well-worn scrap of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it, smoothing the page carefully. Before he could dial the first digit, however, there was a mild stir in the public area of the Station, and then J.T. himself loomed in the doorway, as though conjured by the mere mention of his name.

  He had known Annie a
nd Quinn were on their way to Springwater, of course, but from the expression on his face Maggie concluded that he most certainly hadn’t expected to find them waiting in her office.

  He linked gazes with Maggie for a moment—again she felt the connection with poignant force, quite against her will and better judgment—then nodded to Annie. “Hello,” he said, and turned, beaming, to Quinn. “Hey, buddy,” he said, and his voice sounded a little husky to Maggie. She was touched by the expression in his eyes as he watched his son, even though she’d been sorely tempted to strangle the man just twenty-four hours before.

  Quinn gave a whoop of pure joy. “Dad!” he yelled, and hurled himself into J.T.’s arms. “I was going to call you on your cell phone just now.”

  J.T. ruffled the boy’s hair. “And here I am,” he said.

  “They’re quite a pair, aren’t they?” Annie asked quietly, her eyes shining with pride and affection as she watched J.T. and Quinn.

  Maggie nodded, blinked. “Yes,” she said, startled to realize that somehow the very landscape of her heart had been altered, in that short interval since J.T. had arrived, in ways she could never have anticipated, let alone defined. “Yes, they are.”

  The next few minutes passed in a happy, noisy blur; J.T. spoke to Maggie, said something about calling her later, but his exact words didn’t register. Annie thanked her for her hospitality and then left with Quinn and J.T., the three of them looking very much like a family.

  Maggie straightened her spine and lifted her chin as she stood in the doorway of the Station, watching them move down the walk toward the gate. Okay, so maybe she felt a little lonely and left out. No one had ever died from feelings like that—had they?

  J.T. had never brought Annie to Springwater, and the significance of that struck him as he drove up the long driveway toward his house, Quinn safely belted in the passenger seat while his mother followed in the rental car. J.T. had always thought his job was the main impediment to making his and Annie’s marriage work but, in retrospect, he had to admit, at least to himself, that Springwater itself, as well as the ranch, had been a factor, too. It was all sacred ground to him; Springwater meant home, and home meant—

  Maggie.

  He glanced up at the rearview mirror and silently apologized to his ex-wife for all the times he’d unwittingly hurt her.

  “Do you have horses?” Quinn asked, barely able to contain his excitement. If he hadn’t been confined by a seat belt, it seemed to J.T., the boy might have been floating in midair. “Do you have dogs? Chickens? Cows? I’d really like to get a dog—”

  J.T. chuckled. “There are a couple of horses,” he said, stemming the flow. “No chickens yet, but we could get some. That would be a good job for you, herding hens and roosters. No dogs, though. Sorry.”

  Quinn’s eyes widened when he sighted the ruins of the barn etched in stark strokes of charcoal against the broad blue Montana sky. “Wow!” he enthused. “What happened?”

  “There was a fire,” J.T. said.

  Quinn’s brow furrowed with concentration. “Was somebody smoking?”

  J.T. smiled a little grimly, and shook his head. “No, Q. It was arson. Do you know what that is?”

  The boy looked stricken. “It means that somebody did that on purpose,” he breathed.

  “Right,” J.T. said.

  “Why?”

  J.T. shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  “Are you going to find whoever did it and arrest them?”

  “If it’s the last thing I ever do,” J.T. vowed.

  “Wow,” Quinn repeated. Evidently, he found the idea of the bad guys being brought to justice reassuring, because he’d perked up again.

  J.T. brought the truck to a stop in the driveway, and Annie pulled up behind him, shut off the rental car, and got out. Her face was pale. “Good Lord,” she said, gesturing toward the blackened remains of the barn. “When did this happen?”

  J.T. let out a long breath, afraid that Annie would refuse to leave Quinn with him once she knew the truth. “It’s recent,” he said.

  “They did it on purpose,” Quinn put in. “Dad’s going to arrest them.”

  J.T. and Annie looked at each other for a long moment, over the boy’s head. “Oh, really?” Annie asked, in even tones. He hadn’t told her about the badge Judge Calloway had given him; after all, it was a temporary job.

  J.T. pulled the boy easily to his side, ruffled his hair again. “I’ll look after him, Annie,” he said.

  “You’d better,” she replied. She hesitated, as though thinking about snatching up their son, getting back into the car, and fleeing, but finally she nodded. “Okay,” she decided aloud. “Okay.” She fumbled with the keys, opened the trunk of the car, and surveyed the luggage as if at a loss. There was something fragile about her, and J.T. sympathized, even though he knew the problem, whatever it was, wasn’t his to solve.

  J.T. nudged her gently aside, took a suitcase in both hands. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you settled in.”

  Annie smiled and, in that instant, they moved out of their old and awkward estrangement and took a step toward genuine friend-ship. “This is a beautiful place,” she said, apparently seeing past all the years of neglect and tragedy that had left their mark on the people and the buildings, if not the land itself.

  J.T. nodded. “That it is,” he said.

  Inside, he showed Annie and Quinn to adjoining rooms, glad that Billy and Cindy were staying in town temporarily with Doris, so the place wouldn’t seem crowded. Then he and Quinn went downstairs to the kitchen to rustle up a light supper while Annie showered and changed.

  She looked a little less frazzled when she joined them half an hour later, having replaced her skirt and blouse with worn jeans and a lightweight sweater.

  “Hungry?” J.T. asked.

  “Ravenous,” she replied, smiling.

  “Sit down,” J.T. said, and left the table, where he’d been sitting with Quinn, to fire up the stove again and put another cheese sandwich on the grill. “Want some coffee?”

  She shook her head. “It’s getting late, and I’ll never sleep if I have caffeine now,” she said, scraping back a chair and sitting down. “I’ve got to get up early—my plane leaves Missoula around one.”

  “Mom’s going to South America,” Quinn put in, from his place at the table. He’d eaten a full sandwich on his own and gulped down a glass of milk in the bargain. J.T. figured the boy was running on nervous energy; the moment his head touched the pillow that night, he’d be zonked out.

  “I know,” J.T. said, glancing at Annie.

  She sighed. “I don’t leave for a few more days. I’m going back to Atlanta first, to tie up a few loose ends, then I’ll join Brad in Caracas.”

  J.T. simply nodded. He didn’t have an opinion on the matter; Annie’s business was Annie’s business. Quinn, on the other hand, was definitely his concern, as much as hers. He was about all they had in common, J.T. realized.

  “It’s a big promotion for Brad,” she said.

  J.T. nodded again. He’d gotten to know Annie’s husband in the process of picking Quinn up for visits back in New York and dropping him off again, and he liked the guy well enough. The job must be an important one, if Annie was willing to be separated from her child for six long weeks. “You don’t need to explain,” he told her.

  “Can I go out and look at the horses?” Quinn piped up.

  “They’re not here, Q.,” J.T. answered. “A neighbor is keeping them for me until I can get the barn rebuilt.”

  Quinn looked disappointed. “I wish you had a dog, at least.” Some ranch this is, he might have added.

  J.T. grinned. “Maybe we can do something about that. The dog shortage, I mean.”

  The boy’s face lit up. “You mean it? We can get a dog?”

  J.T. and Annie exchanged glances again.

  “Sure,” J.T. said, when Annie didn’t raise an immediate objection. She was afraid of animals, and in her desire to protect Quinn, she’d never
allowed him to have anything bigger than a hamster. Although it probably wasn’t easy for her, she kept her doubts to herself, respecting the fact that the rules were different at J.T.’s place. He appreciated that.

  Quinn erupted with cheers, and J.T. thought he saw tears glittering in Annie’s eyes. She was smiling.

  “Can I go outside and look around?” Quinn begged his mother, when he’d settled down a little. “Please, please, pleeeeeze?”

  Annie glanced at J.T., then sat up a bit straighter in her chair and looked Quinn in the eye,. “Yes,” she said. “Just use good sense.”

  J.T. threw in his own two bits, mussing the boy’s gleaming hair. “Stay clear of the barn,” he ordered. “I mean it, bud.”

  Quinn nodded in anxious, impatient agreement, and dashed out, banging the door shut behind him. It reminded J.T. of his own childhood, before his parents’ divorce, before Jack Wainwright’s death, when this ranch was the whole world to him, and a magical one at that.

  Annie shivered delicately, no doubt thinking of all the hazards that might befall her only child out there—rusty nails, spiders, snakes, people who set barns on fire for the hell of it.

  J.T. grinned at her. “That was pretty gutsy,” he said. He knew it had taken a lot for shy, city-bred Annie to set a flock of pet fears aside the way she had, and if there was one thing J.T. admired in another person, it was backbone.

  “Thanks,” she said, sounding a little surprised at his praise.

  He turned his chair around, next to the table, and sat astraddle of the seat, his arms resting across the high back. “You gonna be O.K.?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Yeah.”

  “Good,” he said.

  There was a short, benevolent silence, then Annie spoke again. “I like Maggie.”

  “Me, too,” he admitted.

  “A lot, I think.”

  He laughed. “What is this?”

  She shrugged. “What do you think?” she countered. “Don’t blow this, J.T. If you have an opportunity to be happy, for God’s sake, grab it. Second chances don’t come along all that often.”

  He rested his chin on one forearm, regarding her seriously. “No,” he agreed quietly. “I guess they don’t.” There didn’t seem to be any point in explaining that he and McCaffrey were on the outs. He had nobody to blame for that but himself, he thought. He’d deliberately baited Maggie, right there in that kitchen, saying the words he knew would drive her away, at least temporarily. He meant to apologize, because that was the right thing to do, but he had no illusions that saying he was sorry would change anything between them.