by Cindy Gerard
“In your dreams,” Casey bantered back, then squealed in delight when J.D. jumped to the dock, caught her in a growling bear hug, then threatened to throw her in the drink.
“You big bully,” she groused on a giggle when he set her down. Then she slugged him in the arm for good measure and giggled again when he clutched his injured limb and staggered in pretended pain.
“You’re a cruel woman, Casey Morgan,” he muttered darkly.
She made a great show of ignoring him and turned to Hershey. “Now here’s my kind of guy.” Kneeling, she wrapped her arms around an adoring Hershey, whose tail was batting the wooden planks like a pile driver. “Hey, big fella. How’s my favorite chocolate dog in the whole wide world?”
“I brought a friend, Case,” Blue said as he helped Maggie out of the plane. “Casey, meet Maggie. Maggie… Casey, the heartbreak queen of Crimson Falls.”
Suddenly shy when faced with a new woman whose importance to J.D. was as yet undetermined, Casey stood and smiled cautiously. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself.” Maggie returned her smile. “And may I say I truly appreciate a woman who knows how to push all the right buttons on the wrong kind of man.”
“All right, all right,” Blue muttered, doing a pretty good job of playing the wronged male. “Enough with your feminine festival of Hazzard bashing. Take us to your mother, Casey. Deflecting all this bad-mouthing has given me an appetite.”
With that auspicious speech behind them, he draped a companionable arm over each of their shoulders. Amid more digs and laughs and inquiries, the three of them, with Hershey trotting happily in and out of the woods, trooped the mile-long path to what Maggie was soon to discover was the Crimson Falls Hotel.
Built at the turn of the century to accommodate loggers and fur traders of the era, the old two-story hotel was a beautiful relic of a past full of history. Though the original grandeur shone through the sagging floors and cracked plaster, Casey’s mother, Scarlett Morgan, was obviously struggling to run the hotel as a wilderness retreat on a shoestring budget, a fervent wish and a much-repeated prayer.
“So, how’s your burger?” Scarlett asked as she wiped her hands on an apron and joined J.D. and Maggie at one of a dozen old claw-foot oak tables gracing a dining room half full of people.
“It’s wonderful,” Maggie answered sincerely as she covertly studied the pretty strawberry blonde whose daughter so resembled her in appearance and action. “It’s been so long since I’ve eaten anything but fish, I’d forgotten how satisfying a hamburger could be. I’d also forgotten the wonderful decadence of french fries. Real french fries,” she added with a blissful sigh.
Scarlett smiled and sat back, openly studying Blue. “So, how’s life been treating you, J.D.?”
Maggie ducked her head, pretending to be engrossed in her meal. She had not only liked Scarlett Morgan instantly, she admired the grit it must take to tackle a business as demanding as the northwoods hotel and restaurant in a spot so isolated that the only way to reach it in fair weather was by plane or by water, and in the winter, by plane or snowmobile. To tackle it as a single parent with a healthy, vivacious teenager daughter, who, as sweet as she seemed, was nonetheless a teenager, only increased Maggie’s admiration.
And here she was, taking on Blue Hazzard to boot. Scarlett didn’t pull any punches. Her calmly asked, “So, how’s life been treating you, J.D.?” was loaded with enough unpretentious curiosity to launch a satellite.
Undaunted, J.D. dug into his own burger. “My life is just swell, Scarlett. In fact, my life has never been better.”
Scarlett gave him a considering look, then cast a redfaced Maggie a knowing smile. “Well, I’m real glad to hear that.”
“I’m sure knowing it will make you sleep better,” J.D. put in, waiting a beat and adding, “Mother.”
Maggie lifted a brow.
“Old joke,” Blue clarified. “Scarlett thinks she can mother everyone she meets into happiness. Some people call it meddling. But not me,” he added hastily when Scarlett’s eyes narrowed. “Not to change the subject, but how’s business?”
Scarlett shrugged. “Picking up. It’s been a pretty good summer and I’ve got bookings into September that should make a dent in the overhead.”
“I hear a ‘but’ in there somewhere,” Blue added when Scarlett’s voice trailed off.
“No buts,” she said, in what Maggie recognized as forced brightness. “Everything’s fine. Everything’s great.”
Scarlett rose, effectively closing the door on any more inquiries about business. “Duty calls. I’ve got to run. It’s been really nice meeting you, Maggie. Make sure you talk this sky jockey into bringing you back again sometime. Casey’s quite taken with you. And I’d love your company again, too.”
“It’s been my pleasure,” Maggie insisted, meaning it.
“Take care, J.D.” Scarlett turned to go but stopped abruptly. “Almost forgot. Have you made any progress on the poachers?”
Maggie watched as Blue’s expression darkened. “Nothing. They’re strictly hit-and-run. Slippery as oil and just as crude.”
“Well, keep at it. Something’ll turn up.”
“She’s charming,” Maggie said as she watched Scarlett walk away.
“And gutsy as hell. I worry about her though. She’s running this business on a nonexistent profit margin.”
“She’s a good friend?”
He nodded. “And she’s had a rough road. Casey’s father was—” he paused and worked a muscle in his jaw. “Let’s just say he was a fool and Scarlett and Casey have paid the price.”
“Something tells me that if anyone can handle tough times, it’s those two.”
He grinned. “You’ve got that right. When you’re finished,” he added, turning his full attention back to her, “there’s something I want to show you before we head back.”
What he wanted to show her was the miracle of nature that gave Crimson Falls its name. The falls was a wild and foamy watershed dropping a hundred feet over a rock cliff that reflected sunlight and sparkling spray against iron-rich ore. The result created an optical illusion of crimson ribbons cascading in spectacular, tumbling glory to the depths of the rapids below.
“It’s incredible.” She had to shout to be heard above the water’s roar.
“So are you,” he said, turning her in his arms. He brushed a strand of wind-teased hair from the corner of her mouth. “So are you.”
His kiss was as warm as the sun, yet as full of power as the falls rumbling the ground beneath their feet.
“I like your friends,” she said against his chest when he pulled her companionably against him. “Especially in light of the fact that they recognized me—I saw Casey showing her mother an old copy of Glamour—and didn’t make a fuss.”
“That’s because in addition to being wowed by you, they liked you, too. I like you,” he added.
“Well that works out real nice, because I like you too,” she said after the long moment it took to work up her courage.
It was a first for her. The first time she’d tested the waters and let herself respond in kind.
Everything had been so perfect between them these past few weeks. She knew he cared about her. And while he’d made noises about believing in love at first sight, he hadn’t forced the issue again. For that she was thankful. Until today, she hadn’t wanted to chance ruining what they had with words neither could own up to.
Today was different. Chalk it up to the adrenaline high of her death-defying flight in Blue’s beloved plane. Until today, she hadn’t been brave enough to let herself sort through her feelings when it came to Blue. Feelings, she was beginning to suspect, that would lead her straight into a relationship where she’d grow to depend on and love him.
That was the scary part. She’d been there She’d done that. She was feeling the residual pain and humiliation of it to this day. That’s why it was so hard to get to this point, to thinking in terms of giving herself over to Blue. Anyone she’d eve
r loved had let her down. If it happened again, if it happened with Blue, she wasn’t sure she had it in her to recover another time.
“It’s time we head back,” he said, his words breaking into thoughts she was more than happy to shake off.
“Unless you want to get a room,” he suggested with a wiggle of his brows and a suggestive leer. “I think we could talk Scarlett into renting one by the hour. Especially in light of the fact that the hotel used to be a brothel.”
His playful suggestion and the mention of the brothel surprised her out of her melancholy. “No kidding?”
“So the story goes.”
“I think I want to hear this story.”
On the way back to the Cessna he filled her in on a history as rich and rowdy as the trappers and loggers who had stopped at the hotel in the late 1800s and early 1900s to slake their thirst in the hotel’s bar, curb their hunger in the welcoming dining room and satisfy other, more carnal appetites in the rooms upstairs.
“Crimson Falls is even rumored to have a ghost,” he added with a grin that was as suspicious as it was disarming.
“Ghost?”
“A soiled dove who was jilted at the altar. The story is that she’s roamed the halls of the hotel for almost a hundred years looking for her runaway bridegroom.”
“No man is worth that kind of vigil,” she commented with a sniff of conviction.
“Not even a man who…” His voice trailed off as he tucked her under his-arm and whispered in vivid, shocking detail what he had planned for her tonight when he got her alone in her bed.
“Well,” she said, feeling herself redden with both the heat of embarrassment and the thrill of unmentionable pleasures, “I may have been a little hasty. Any man who can…” She stopped, swallowed, then tilted a wide-eyed skeptical frown up at him. “You can really do that?”
He nodded smugly and her knees went as wobbly as her heartbeat.
“Then I’ve got one thing to say to you, Hazzard.”
“And that is?”
“Prove it.”
That night, in the dark, in her bed, in a silence suspended only by sultry sighs, the rustle of sheets and her soft, shuddering moans of pleasure, he proved he was a man of his word…and that she just might be a woman capable of holding a vigil.
“Are you ready, Stretch?”
“Are you sure this is such a good idea?”
“Chickening out on me?”
She sucked in a deep, determined breath and gave him a look. “Just offering you one last out.”
“She’s all yours, Amelia.”
Maggie reached forward and grasped the yoke in front of her. The minute Blue let go of his and gave over control of the plane to her, she experienced a moment of stark, unadulterated horror that took everything in her to fight off.
“‘At a girl.” Blue’s voice purred across the cockpit, offering assurances, turning over his trust. “You’re a natural.”
She didn’t feel like a natural. She felt like a tense mass of nerves who had finally tipped over the far side. She was eight hundred feet in the air, in control—loosely speaking—of an airplane that barely looked like it could float, let alone fly.
It was her third flight in as many days. And unlike the first time, when Blue had done the badgering, she was the one who had wheedled him into taking her up today.
Like her affinity for the lake, the thrill of riding the wind currents in the small aircraft had gotten in her blood, too. She wanted to experience it all—the tummy-tumbling exhilaration of the takeoff, the sweet freedom of flight, the risky bump and glide of a rough water landing. And when, on impulse, Blue had offered to let her pilot the plane, she hadn’t had it in her to say no.
“You’re doing fine,” he crooned in her ear. “If you want to increase altitude, just pull the yoke toward you. That’s it. Good. Not too fast. Better. Much better. See? I told you you could do it.”
The Cessna tipped suddenly to the right.
“What’s happening?” she demanded with wild-eyed urgency.
“Stay cool. You’re fine. We just hit an air pocket. See that little bubble on the instrument panel? Try to keep it in the middle. Just turn the yoke to the left a bit…a little more. Hold it. All better, see? It’s just that simple.”
There was nothing simple about it and she knew it. But she thanked him with a quick glance, telling him how special she thought he was for letting her think she was in control. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, not an obstacle in view, and any damage she could do, he could rectify with little fuss.
“Bank left for me, Stretch. That’s it. Nice and wide. I saw something down there I want to get a better look at.”
The Cessna responded prettily to her maneuvering and she realized, with something that rivaled the excitement of making love with Blue, why he was in love with flying.
“Your turn,” she offered gravely, deciding she’d tested her wings long enough for her first trip out.
“You’re sure you’ve had enough?”
She nodded.
He gave her a quick kiss of congratulations then took over the controls. “You did great—for a rookie.”
She felt great, too.
“How would you feel about an unscheduled stop?”
They’d already flown to Crane Cove, where she’d met some of his friends and fueled up the plane. Now they were on their way back to Blue Heron Bay and home.
“What’d you have in mind?”
“See that bay down there?”
She recognized it immediately. “That’s my bay.”
“Now look over the other wing. There’s a log cabin on the far shore.”
She strained and just barely made out the roofline of the structure he was referring to.
“I see it.”
“That’s your friend Greene’s place.”
“Really?” She looked the spot over with more interest. “I didn’t realize he lived that far from me.”
“It’s not really that far. Not by water. Want to pay him a visit?”
She frowned, hesitating. Abel was an extremely private man. She didn’t feel comfortable dropping in unannounced.
“It’s probably not a good idea. He hasn’t exactly made himself visible the last few weeks.”
He gave her a knowing smile. “That’s because he knows I’ve been taking up your time.”
“How could he know that?”
His smile turned brooding. “He knows. Trust me. He knows.”
Despite the fact that she voiced her reservations again, Blue took the Cessna in for a smooth water landing. As they settled down, Maggie told herself there was no reason for the taste of unease that had begun to rise in her throat like sour milk. Blue’s only reason for stopping was to give her the opportunity to see Abel. He was not using her to provide himself with an opportunity to do a little impromptu investigating that might implicate Abel in the poaching crimes.
Unease was replaced by guilt. How could she even think it? She knew Blue better than that. He deserved better from her. This man, whom she had trusted with her body, with her life, and was dangerously close to trusting with her heart, was not about to put that trust at risk and disappoint her.
Nine
Maggie sat tensely as Blue taxied the plane into a shallow bay. A narrow dock harbored a small fishing boat and a canoe on one side. The float plane just fit on the other.
“It doesn’t look like he’s home,” she said with a wary look toward the shore when Blue cut the motor.
But for the water sounds and the bird song and the July breeze whispering through the trees, all was quiet. As quiet as a church during a funeral. As still as the eye of a storm.
She wasn’t sure why those particular analogies came to mind. Neither was she sure why she’d made such a rapid emotional descent from the exhilarating high of her first piloting experience to this sick feeling of deepening dread.
“Coming here was a mistake,” she said, in a last-ditch effort to persuade Blue she wanted to leave.
“We’re here, Maggie.” His smile relayed confusion over her hesitance. “It’s a little too late to leave without announcing ourselves, don’t you think?”
“Maybe he’s not home.”
“I thought you’d like to see him,” Blue said, looking genuinely puzzled.
“His boat’s here,” he added, when her silence was her only response. Easing out of the cockpit, he tied up to the dock. “He can’t be far away.”
Slowly, she joined him on the dock, shading her eyes against the late-afternoon sun as she searched the lakeshore for signs of Abel.
No Trespassing signs were posted in multiple and conspicuous spots—at the end of the dock, again at the point where dock met shore, on the birch and aspen lining the bank.
“I don’t think he wants to be bothered,” she whispered, as if she were in a library and afraid to bring down the wrath of a temperamental librarian.
“I don’t think the warnings were meant to discourage friends.” His staged whisper mimicked hers. He gnnned when she scowled at him. “The trouble with owning property on this lake is that vacationing fishermen have a tendency to make themselves at home if they see a welcoming dock and an absentee owner. The signs are just a form of protection from unwanted visitors. Now come on.”
He took her hand and led her up the narrow planks toward shore, her unease thickening. Even Hershey, whose usual exuberance would have had him barreling toward the woods in search of a chippy to chase, tiptoed ahead of them, slow and wary.
Her reservations multiplied with each step. A question she didn’t want to entertain kept crashing her thoughts like a battering ram. Why had Blue decided to stop? He’d told her once that in all his travels of the lake, he’d never paid Abel a visit. Why today? A niggling and relentless voice— the voice of experience that reminded her how she’d been used in her life—kept warning her it was because she was his admission ticket.
By the time they reached the steps of stone that led up the sloping path to his log cabin, however, her hesitancy gave way to a curious fascination as she took in Abel Greene’s private domain.