Heat Wave (Riders Up) (28 page)

Maggie nodded and
looked across at her daughter.

Carolyn frowned. “There’s
so much. All of what Johnny said, including the food.” She grinned. “Happiness.
I think I’m most thankful for everyone being so happy. Even when things go bad,
we seem to be able to find some happiness.”

“So that’s
different, huh?” Maggie pressed.

Shrugging as only
teenagers could, Carolyn responded, “I know you always wanted us to believe you
were happy, Mom. But you couldn’t fool me.” Glancing around the table, she
said, “This is good.”

“Yeah, you’re
right.” Maggie sighed. “This is good. May we always remember this moment.”

With his mouth half
stuffed with turkey, Johnny sputtered, “I’m not so sure everything is so great.”

“So what’s your
problem, son?” Ed asked.

Johnny turned
several shades of pink and shook his head.

“Well?” Ed
encouraged.

“Kimberly Johnson thinks
I’m too small,” the boy complained, his voice unsteady. “But she won’t leave me
alone. One day she hates me and the next day she wants me to be her best
friend. Go figure!”

“Sounds like you
got girl problems.”

Johnny bobbed his
head. “Yeah, big time.”

Ed stroked his chin
thoughtfully. Sending a knowing look at Maggie before returning his complete
attention to the troubled boy, Ed said, “You’ll have to learn to have a lot of
patience with girls, young man. They tend to be kind of flighty. Sometimes they
do one thing and you think it means this, but it really means that.”

Johnny nodded
rapidly. His eyes widened. Maggie wondered if he’d be more impressed if the
Wizard of Oz had just spoken.

“Sometimes they
want you to chase them,” Ed continued. “And sometimes they don’t. Seldom will
they ever tell you straight out what they want. You’ll have to use your powers
of observation.” Ed tapped his temple. “Patience is the word, son. Patience.”

Johnny thought a
moment. “Sounds like working with a skittish horse.”

Chuckling, Ed
replied, “You’re not far off on that, Johnny. Not far off at all.”

Maggie tried not to
laugh, but enough was enough. “Well, if you men are finished analyzing women as
if they are mere horses, perhaps you would like to help clear the table so we
can have desert.”

“Yes, Mom,” Johnny replied
meekly.

As they stood,
Maggie whispered in Ed’s ear, “Am I like a skittish horse, cowboy?”

“You better believe
it,” he whispered back. “Like a skittish, contrary broodmare. But you’re more
than worth the time and effort.”

“Look. There they
go again,” Johnny shouted. “Mom’s kissing Ed again.”

Not at all
embarrassed, Ed pointed to the mistletoe hanging over the oak door frame
between the dining room and the kitchen. “I hung the mistletoe myself. So you
better watch out before the women start kissing you.”

“Yuck!” Johnny
exclaimed, rushing through the doorway.

Maggie laughed. She
couldn’t shake the tingly feelings that peppered her chest; she didn’t even
want to try. Ed fit so well into her life, into her family’s life. Oh, there
would be difficulties, those were expected. But she was confident that no
matter what happened, their love was strong enough to carry them through the
darkest of times.

Counting her
blessings, Maggie suddenly felt old. Perhaps the weight of brooding about the
land, about the horses, about Ed, about her kids was finally catching up with
her. She knew, without looking, that her skin was not wrinkled and there were
no gray hairs.

Shouldn’t she be
feeling younger now because so much of that weight could be set aside? Maggie
closed her eyes briefly. Had she become so accustomed to worrying that she just
naturally worried? No, of course not—there was still somebody out there who
wanted to destroy all that was hers.

After she heard the
soft snoring of her children, Maggie slipped into her robe, padded down the
hallway and then down the stairs to Ed’s room. As she entered, his heavy
breathing greeted her. Maggie smiled—he’d been unable to stay awake for her. Must
have been all that turkey.

Sitting on the edge
of the bed, she leaned over to run her moist tongue across his upper lip. The
stubble of his mustache tickled. He stirred. Her fingers played in the thatch
of his chest hair. Moving to curl her tongue in and around his ear, Maggie
edged her fingers lower across his abdomen, which was as taut as a skin on a
kettle drum.

Aware of his
strained passiveness, she whispered, “Play possum as long as you want, cowboy. This
woman isn’t skittish around wild beasts, asleep or awake.”

Maggie traced his
neck muscles with her lips, then chewed gently on his pebbled nipples. Back and
forth between them she moved, leaving traces of wetness. Her fingers wrapped
securely around his erection, squeezing and tugging.

His muscles tensed.
His hips moved upward almost imperceptibly. Maggie grinned and moved her hand
deliberately but cautiously, not wanting to bring things to a premature
conclusion. His loins and hips tightened.

Becoming suddenly
still, she murmured, “Not yet, my love. Wait for me.”

She kept her eyes
open while swishing her tongue around his crown. He jerked. She caught him
between her lips and swallowed him into her mouth, then bobbed several times as
if dunking for apples. He strained for completion; she stopped.

His eyes slit open when
she abandoned him. Smiling dreamily, Maggie tugged her nightgown over her head
and canted her body to straddle him.

“Ah,” she mumbled
to the silence. For a small eternity, she sat there letting his pulse resonate
through her body from her center to her extremities.

Then she moved—at
first, simply swaying from side to side. Next, she rotated her lower body in
small, tight circles. Maggie rocked leisurely back and forth on her knees. “Delicious,”
she moaned, biting her lower lip. Her eyes remained closed.

Her body coiled around
his shaft. Her entire focus, her breathing, her movement centered on that
single, simple point of intersection. Pulling on her own aching nipples, she
rapidly levered up and down.

Ed’s eyes popped
wide open and his hips joined hers, propelling them toward completion.

“Now. Now,” Maggie
panted in rhythm with their movements.

A humming throb
burst within and Maggie felt first her release showering him and then his
quickening, pulsating response. Like a hot air balloon severed from its tether
lines, Maggie floated slowly out and above her body. A luscious light wrapped
her in warmth and security.

Collapsing to his
chest, she savored the heat of her lover’s skin and his strong arms encircling
her. “Hold me, please,” she whispered. “Don’t let me go.”

“Don’t worry about
that, lady. Not in this lifetime.”

Maggie’s lungs
filled as she savored his hoarsely spoken words. She drifted asleep atop of
him, still joined at their center.

- o -

Ed tenderly played
with strands of her wheat-straw hair. Every once in a while, he sensed the
sleeping woman stir. Was she trying to assure herself that he was still there? “Maggie,
Maggie,” he moaned. He knew she still possessed vestiges of fear that he would
yet run from her intimacy. He guessed she had every right to wonder.

But he knew running
was no longer possible. He had worked hard not to run. He’d learned much about
himself and his natural tendencies to escape when faced with risking too much
of himself. He’d already risked more than ever before.

If nothing else,
working the twelve steps taught him about his weaknesses while at the same time
providing him with a foundation upon which to hope. And with Maggie, there was
lots of room for hope.

Ed smiled. Christmas
was coming. It was about time to drive to Des Moines.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Twenty-four hours
later, at three in the morning, Maggie heard loud pounding at her porch door. She
wasn’t asleep. Nearly consumed by worry, she hurriedly put on a robe and raced
down the stairs and through the kitchen.

Dread laced her heart
like a myriad of heavy manacles. Ed had not come home since he’d left for Des
Moines that afternoon. He’d seemed nervous before leaving and had been very
vague about why he had to go into the city. And then he hadn’t returned.

The strained, blank
look on the deputy sheriff’s face through the storm door glass confirmed her
fears. Something terrible had happened.

Maggie shuttered
her eyes briefly, seeking strength. Breathing shallowly, she reluctantly opened
the door.

The deputy removed
his hat and stepped into the porch. “Sorry to have to tell you, Maggie,” he
began, “but your hired man’s pickup was found in the ditch off of Highway 47. Looks
like the vehicle went out of control on the dusting of snow we had early last
evening.”

Maggie’s body
stilled from shaking. “Is he…” She gagged. “Is he alive?”

“Don’t rightly
know, ma’am.” The officer shifted his considerable weight from foot to foot. He
was trying to focus on something just above her without being obvious. “We can’t
find him,” he said at last.

“What?” Digging her
fingernails into her shoulders, Maggie squeezed with all her might trying to
hold on, trying to concentrate on what the deputy was saying. Nothing made
sense.

“We can’t find him
anywhere. Tracks lead away from the accident and then disappear. Somebody must
have picked him up.”

“Then he’s okay,”
Maggie reasoned. “Or maybe someone took him to the hospital.”

The deputy shrugged
his shoulders. “He hasn’t been at any of the area hospitals. We checked. I’m
sure he’s actually not feeling much of anything right now.”

“What do you mean?”
Maggie asked. All her senses went on alert, knowing this story was only going
to get worse.

Scowling, the
officer said, “Maggie, there were lots of empty and broken beer and whiskey
bottles in the cab. The interior stinks to high heaven.”

“Oh, my God.”
Maggie felt herself falling and would have sunk to the floor if the deputy had
not reached out to grab her.

Had someone placed
a large anvil on her chest? Her teeth chattered. Thoughts whirled about her
brain without coherency. She allowed herself to be led to the kitchen table.

Maggie slouched
over the table an hour later with her head resting on her arms. She was alone. Completely
alone. There were no more tears to cry. That reservoir had been drained.

She remembered the
deputy sheriff handing her the keys to the pickup before he left. It would be
towed to the farm in the morning. That was all that was left of Ed Harrington. That,
and memories.

“He won’t come
back,” she murmured to the kitchen walls, which no longer held any comfort. Somehow
she’d scared him away again. Worse than that, she’d chased him back into the
bottle.

What had she done? Things
had seemed so right between them. How long had he been planning his escape? They
had just made such satisfying love the night before. Did he know then? Or was
it a spur of the moment thing? She shuddered. Ed Harrington was not a spur of
the moment kind of guy. How could he have given up on them after all they had
been through?

Maggie raised her
head, rubbed her eyes and stared at her hands wishing they could turn back
time. What should she have done differently? Had she been too determined, too
driven, too strong? Did he want to get back to Chicago, to his old life? Why
was he running from her?

Well, he’d better
just keep on running. She rose and kicked the chair across the room. She wouldn’t
let the louse back in the door if he came back all contrite and begging. He’d
betrayed her. He’d betrayed himself. He’d betrayed the children. Good God, how
was she going to tell them?

Maggie started
making a pot of coffee. She was up; there was no going back to bed now. As she
filled the coffee pot from the spigot, a horrific realization overtook her mind
like a tidal wave. Ed had been driving dead drunk. He could have run into an
innocent couple and killed them—just like her parents had been killed. Ed
Harrington was no better than the drunken animal who had mercilessly murdered
her own parents.

She jerked a hand
toward the spigot; she didn’t know how long the coffee pot had been overflowing.

Why had she been
such a stupid fool?

“I wish I never
knew him!” Johnny cried for the tenth time that morning. Then he stumbled off
the kitchen chair and raced out the door toward the stable. The slamming of the
door added one more exclamation point to the air.

Maggie had told her
children without holding anything back. She believed they deserved to know the
truth. The sooner each of them was able to forget the rugged horse trainer, the
better off they’d all be.

Her heart had
shriveled over the last several hours. Maggie sat at the table staring into a
cold cup of coffee.

Not surprisingly,
Johnny took the news of Ed’s desertion hardest. He had wanted a dad real bad. Ed
had seemed like the right man for him, but that was when the trainer was sober.

Perhaps more like
the teenager she was, Carolyn seemed more aloof about the whole thing. She’d
held back the tears, but was unable to hide her disappointment and anger. Maggie
shook her head sadly—her daughter had tried to explain everything away like
some kind of fairy godmother. When would her teenager learn that fantasies were
just that, fantasies.

Glancing warily at
her daughter still sitting across from her, Maggie felt Carolyn’s fury. Maybe
with Johnny outside, the girl was going to let her feelings out. Then Maggie
realized that Carolyn wasn’t angry at Ed; she was furious with her mother. Maggie
braced herself.

“Are you sure the
two of you didn’t have a fight or something?” Carolyn accused.

“How many times do
I have to tell you? No, we didn’t. He just left. I can’t tell you why. He never
told me.”

“It doesn’t make
sense that he would just up and disappear. He loves you, Mom. He loves us.” Carolyn
moved her shaking hands under the table. “I know he does.”

“Maybe there was
too much love for him,” Maggie ventured softly. “Some men can’t stand to be
loved.”

“Well, I don’t
think Ed Harrington was
some men
,” Carolyn claimed. “You must have done
something to send him away.”

Maggie lowered her
head slowly, shaking it back and forth. She had no clue what else to say or do.

“Or,” her daughter’s
eyes grew huge, “maybe somebody beat him up again and hid his body. Maybe
somebody tried to finish him off this time. But you don’t care anymore. Do you?

Maggie’s eyes
narrowed watching the backside of her daughter disappear rapidly up the stairs.
Maggie clenched her fingers. It had never occurred to her that Ed might again
be the victim of foul play. She’d simply assumed he’d run away from her.

Why had it taken
her daughter to raise that possibility? Why hadn’t the deputy mentioned that? Could
Carolyn be right? An icy chill spread through her bones. She didn’t know what
to think or feel. She’d been so angry, felt so abandoned, she had merely
accepted the obvious, that Ed Harrington did not love her enough. Could there
be truth in her daughter’s words?

Chewing on a
fingernail, Maggie tried not to panic. If Ed was in trouble, he would
eventually call. She wouldn’t know where to begin looking for him. And if he’d
gotten drunk and driven into the ditch, she didn’t want to see him again
anyway. About all she could do was wait and take care of the horses.

She still had the
farm. The stable was viable, at least for a while. Cassie would race the
horses, if need be. Maybe she should contact Clint; he would know how to find a
missing person. She desperately needed to talk with somebody, but she didn’t
want to tie up the phone or leave the house.

Unable to force
herself away from the table, Maggie didn’t know which was worse: believing that
Ed had fallen off the wagon, or that someone had threatened his life. Rubbing
swollen eyes, repressing a scream building deep within her lungs, she knew with
certain agony the answer to that question.

The phone rang. Maggie
glared at the noisy intruder debating whether to answer or not. There was a world
out there. She didn’t want to have to deal with that world. She wanted to roll
into a ball and stay hidden from sight and sound.

Reluctantly, she
picked up the receiver. “Hello.” She hardly identified the squeaky voice as her
own.

“Maggie, is that
you?”

Maggie slumped
against the kitchen counter. “Yeah, Flo, it’s me. Guess you heard.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, it’s over. That’s
the way it is. Sometimes you just lose.”

“Are you sure he’s
not coming back?”

“If he knows what’s
good for him he won’t.”

The ensuing silence
gnawed at Maggie. What was her friend not saying?

“Okay, Flo. Spit it
out. What’s really on your mind?”

“I just think you
need to know the first song I heard this morning.”

Maggie groaned. Why
did she have to have loony friends? Maybe they thought she was just as loony. “Well,
what was it? You’re not going to be able to go on with your day without telling
me.”

“Tammy was singing
Stand
by Your Man
.”

Maggie closed her
eyes and counted to three. “Then I guess you better go find a man and stand by
him.”

“Maggie!”

“Why don’t we talk
later, Flo? I’m tired and I’m grumpy. Thanks for calling. Love you.”

“Love you, Maggie. Take
care of yourself.”

Maggie didn’t know
whether to laugh or cry as she hung up her phone. Stand by your man, indeed. Kick
your man’s ass down the road would have been a better tune.

It was noon. Still
no word. She congratulated herself for surviving that long. Maggie pulled her
windbreaker tighter to ward off the early winter chill as she stepped of the
porch and walked across the driveway. Ed’s pickup had been towed into her yard
earlier that morning. From a distance, Mabel looked the same as always: worn,
but reliable. Up close she told an entirely different story.

The deputy was
right. Maggie could hardly breathe when she stuck her head in the cab. The
stench was beyond words.

For a couple hours
after her daughter’s tirade, Maggie had held onto the shred of hope that maybe
Carolyn was right. Maybe Ed had not left voluntarily. But once Maggie saw the
wreckage of liquor bottles in the pickup, there was no doubt left in her mind.

Ed Harrington
preferred the comfort of drink to any comfort she could provide. There were no
more tears. She just wished she could let him know she thought he was the most
despicable creature that ever stepped on the face of the earth. He was just
damn lucky he hadn’t killed anyone in his hurry to get away from her this time.

 She stood by the
truck trying to decide if it was best to clean the stuff up now or wait. The
easiest thing to do would be to drop a match in the gas tank and watch it burn.
Putting a match in the cab might be just as efficient.

Concentrating on
what to do, Maggie did not at first hear a car coming down the driveway. When
she did, she looked up quickly, only to want to run and hide. It was her
brother. He would no doubt gloat and have a grand time at her expense.

“Hi, sis,” Brad
said, getting out of the car. “I came as soon as Flo told me what was
happening. How are you? How are the kids?”

Maggie scrunched
her mouth. She hadn’t expected those questions. “The kids? Johnny is mad as
hell at Ed. Carolyn is just as mad at me. She thinks I chased him off. Or that
somebody beat him over the head again.”

Brad nodded. “How
do you know they didn’t? I understand he hasn’t been located yet.”

“Just get a whiff
of this cab,” Maggie replied, opening the pickup door.

Brad stuck his head
in and pulled it back quickly. “Whew. I’ve been in breweries that don’t smell
that ripe.”

“So, you see? He
fell off the wagon big time. Success must scare the guy. And he could’ve killed
anybody on that road that night.” Maggie placed a hand on her brow. “Just like Mom
and Dad were killed.”

Brad looked
curiously at his sister. “Maggie, I think you may be mixing a lot of different
things up here. Ed didn’t kill our parents. As far as I know, no one was hurt
the other night.”

“But that doesn’t
excuse him.”

“No it doesn’t. Not
if he was driving drunk.”

“Of course he was
driving drunk. Look at all of these broken bottles.”