Man of Her Dreams (20 page)

He came to her out of the mist. Tall, rugged, his face lined with strain, his smoky green eyes filled with regret and longing. She stood on the veranda, waiting for him, as she had waited for him all her life. She leaned against a pillar, her hands pressed to the smooth cool surface. The wind rose, swirling the mists around them both and tugging at the hem of her long gown.

Halting his horse at the foot of the steps, he said, “Maggie, I love you. I need you. I need your love.”

“Do you believe in me, Ry? Do you believe I could love you?”

“Yes. I'll believe in your love always. I'll love you forever.”

She stepped away from the pillar and reached out to him. Then she was on the horse with him, in front of him with his strong arms around her and his heart beating beneath her ear. He bent his head and kissed her. Then he turned the horse toward the hills, and the mists swallowed them up.

Maggie jerked awake, then lay still in bed listening to the wind howl outside the old plantation house. It was raining. The colorless light falling in through her window was testimony to that, as was the sound of water splattering against the mullioned panes. Slowly she sat up, tucking her knees and the covers under her chin. She looked across the room to the corner Randy the bear had been relegated to.

“Another day, another
hic
headache, huh, Randy?”

The enormous stuffed brown bear stared back at her.

She rubbed two fingers over the dull throb in each temple. She had lost track of the number of nights she had fallen asleep with tears on her cheeks, then awakened from the same dream with her head pounding. The cycle was taking its toll on her, physically and emotionally. Her usually sunny disposition had become as gloomy and blustery as the late fall weather. A glance in the mirror as she forced herself to get out of bed confirmed her suspicions that she looked like hell.

If the bags under her eyes drooped any farther, they were going to be on her chest. The lines of strain she had seen on Ry's face in her dream were, in reality, drawn on her own face. On the up side, those ten extra pounds she had been unable to shed since adolescence had melted away. Too bad she didn't care enough to be happy about that.

Wrapping her black kimono around her, Maggie stared out the window and sighed. This had to end. She had to accept the fact that her dream would never come true. She loved Ry, but he wasn't able or willing to believe in that love. Her struggle to free him from his past had been in vain. In the end he had managed to stay behind those walls he had built to protect himself. He might live the rest of his life behind them, safe but alone, while she was free to pick up the pieces of her heart and try again, or at least go on with her life.

A month had passed since their last encounter. There had been no phone call. He hadn't come to see her. She hadn't run into him on the street in Briarwood. The only place she saw him was in her dreams, but that man wasn't real. He had never been real. It was time to let the dream die.

Despite the unpleasant weather, a fair number of tourists made their way out to Poplar Grove in the afternoon. The rain abated, leaving behind a thin fog that seemed to seep into everything. For once Maggie was glad of the layers of petticoats she wore under her costume. The low-scooping décolletage was another matter, one she solved by wrapping a soft blue woolen shawl around her shoulders.

A two-hundred-year-old plantation house shrouded in mist on a windy November day was really quite romantic, Maggie thought. Not that she appreciated that sort of thing these days. Inside, fires burned in all the working fireplaces, creating a wonderful ambiance for the visitors. Ladies in colonial garb led guests through the shadowed house and told them romantic tales of days gone by. It wasn't such a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

She thought of all the Sunday afternoons that stretched out before her and felt a wave of melancholy coming on.
No, no, you don't, McSwain,
she told herself.
You're through pining over Rylan Quaid.

But what was he doing today? Was he lonely? Did he miss her? Was he sitting in his study with the lights off, staring out at the mountains, thinking about her? If the phone rang, would he hope it might be she?

She shook herself out of her trance, a blush heating her cheeks more than the dining room fireplace did. The entire tour group was staring at her. “I'm sorry,” she said, “I seem to be a bit distracted today.”

At the end of the tour, she thanked her guests and directed them to the old kitchen across the forecourt, where they were to help themselves to hot apple cider. Her duties completed, she stepped out onto the porch and began contemplating the nerve-soothing aspect of losing touch with reality.

She pulled her shawl close around her, leaned against a pillar, and stared out through the fog that was as sheer as gauze.

Suddenly a dot appeared between the trees at the end of the driveway, a dark brown dot that became a blob in the fog as it drew closer. Then it was a blob with legs. Then it was blob with legs and foot-long ears.

“Oh, my Lord, it's a mule!” Maggie said, as if a mule was the most horrible thing she had ever seen.

Curious tourists filed out of the house and outbuildings as the creature let loose a bray loud enough to wake the dead in the next county. It was a mule, all right, and it wasn't alone. Maggie's jaw dropped as the animal emerged from another layer of fog. The mule's rider held a bouquet of dilapidated roses and wore a scowl that was blacker than a moonless night.

“Rylan!” Maggie exclaimed, pushing herself away from the pillar. She rushed to the top of the porch steps and stared, aghast.

He was splattered with mud from head to toe. There was a rip in the knee of his jeans. He glared at the mule as he slid from its back. It brayed again, the sound echoing all around the grounds. Ry stomped to the foot of the stairs and thrust the roses at Maggie.

“Here. The mule thought they were for him.”

Maggie accepted the bouquet, tears flooding her eyes. Ry had brought her flowers! So what if half the buds and leaves had been chewed off by a mule? This was the most romantic thing Rylan Quaid had ever done. Maybe there was hope for him after all.

“Oh, Rylan, I'm sure they were lovely…before the mule ate them. By the way, why are you riding a mule?”

He snorted in disgust and planted his hands on his hips. “Jeepers cripes, I was on my way over here and had a blowout on the pickup, and the blasted spare was flatter than my Aunt Martha. So I walked about eighty-five miles to Rueben's, and the best he could do was loan me that jackass.”

“Mr. Quaid, your language!” Mrs. Claiborne sniffed from behind Maggie.

“I would have called Christian and had him come and get me, but Reuben doesn't have a phone,” he went on sarcastically. “He thinks phones are the instruments of Satan. That's why I'm riding a mule, Mary Margaret. Do you want to make something of it?”

Maggie frowned at him. “No. I think it's very appropriate for you to go around on a jackass. Like minds should travel together.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Very amusing. Aren't you just a little curious as to what I'm doing here?”

Curious wasn't the word. There wasn't a word in any known language to describe what she was feeling. She hadn't seen or heard from him in weeks. When they'd parted, she had told him not to come near her until he was ready to accept the fact that she loved him no matter what he was, rich or poor, charming or irascible. And here he was. It was like a bizarre variation of her dream. He had ridden in on a lop-eared mule instead of a beautiful horse, and he was scowling instead of pledging his love. But he had brought her flowers.

Her heart was in her throat as she raised her eyes from the roses to meet Rylan's gaze. All her sassy bravado vanished. Beneath her long skirts, her legs were shaking like a pair of jackhammers. She could almost hear the tourists and the Darlington sisters holding their breath as she asked softly, “Why are you here, Rylan?”

“I need you, Maggie.”

Holding his gaze, she shook her head ever so slightly, like a pitcher shaking off the catcher's signals in a baseball game. “I need you” wasn't what she had to hear.

Ry shuffled his feet, his boots crunching on the gravel path. “I love you, Maggie. I need you in my life,” he said quietly.

When she only stared at him, her expression unchanged, his anger flared up. His dark brows lowered ominously over his glittering eyes, making him look like a dangerous predatory animal as he took an aggressive step toward the porch. “Dammit, Mary Margaret, I'm miserable without you. I love you, I want you. Now I'm gonna ask you one last time, will you marry me or not?”

She held back her smile as she looked at him scowling up at her. “Maybe,” she said.

He looked ready to slug somebody. “What the Sam Hill kind of an answer is that? Maybe?”

Setting her roses aside, she descended the steps and stood in front of him, only inches away, gazing up into his rugged face. “Do you believe in me, Ry? Do you believe I love you, that I've loved you forever? Do you believe I'll love you no matter what happens with the farm?”

He swallowed hard, his shield of orneriness deserting him, leaving the vulnerability naked in his eyes. He felt as if his whole life were riding on his answer. As he looked down at her, he thought of all they had been through in the last few months—all he had put her through. And she had stuck with him. Katie said that was what love was all about.

“I believe you love me, Maggie,” he said, putting his big hands on her shoulders. “Marry me and prove you'll love me forever. Honest to God, I don't think I can live without you.”

She reached up and brushed a streak of mud from his cheek. How dear he was to her, big, rough Rylan Quaid. He didn't write her love sonnets. He'd never kissed the back of her hand. The only flowers he'd ever given her had been chomped on by a mule. But she'd been right about one thing all along. Inside that tough, ornery hide of his was a man who needed love, a man who had love to give. He might not have been down on bended knee, but he was offering that love to her with his heart in his eyes.

She could have walked away about as easily as she could have stopped breathing.

“Yes, I'll marry you,” she whispered.

Ry breathed a sigh of relief that left him feeling dizzy. He threw his arms around Maggie and pulled her against him, nearly crushing her in his embrace. He buried his face in her dark copper hair and breathed in the scent of her shampoo and a whiff of Passion's Promise. “Gosh almighty, Mary Margaret, it took you long enough to answer!”

Polite applause sounded around them.

Maggie peeked out at the tourists, then glanced sheepishly up at Ry, tears twinkling in her eyes. “They think we're part of the tour.”

He chuckled and grinned at her. “Maybe we should pass the hat for tips. We could use the money.”

“Oh, pooh, sugar.” Maggie tilted her head and batted her lashes at him. Winding her arms around his neck, she raised up on tiptoe and hugged him. “What do I need with money when I've got the man of my dreams?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bestselling author Tami Hoag's novels have appeared regularly on national bestseller lists since the publication of her first book in 1988. She lives in Los Angeles. Her website is
www.tamihoag.com
.

         

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THE ALIBI MAN

         

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SHE FLOATED ON the face of the pool like an exotic water lily. Her hair fanned out around her head, undulating, a silken lily pad to drift on. The sheer, ephemeral layers of fabric that made up her dress skimmed the surface, backlit by the pool lights, purple and fuchsia, the shimmering skin of a rare sea creature that only came out at night in the depths along a coral reef.

She was a vision, a mythical goddess dancing on the water, her slender arms stretched wide to beckon him.

She was a siren, tempting him closer and closer to the water. Her dark eyes stared at him, her full, sensuous lips parted slightly inviting his kiss.

He had tasted her kiss. He had held her close, felt the heat of her skin against his.

She was a dream.

She was a nightmare.

She was dead.

He opened his cell phone and punched a number. The phone on the other end rang…and rang…and rang. Then a gruff and groggy voice answered.

“What the hell?”

“I need an alibi.”

Then he closed the phone and went back into the house to wait.

         

I AM NOT a cop. I am not a private investigator, despite all rumors to the contrary. I ride horses for a living, but don't make a nickel doing it. I am an outcast from my chosen profession and I don't want another.

Unfortunately, our fates have little to do with what we want or don't want. I know that all too well.

That February morning I walked out of the guest cottage I had called home for the past couple of years just as the sun was beginning to break. The eastern horizon was color-saturated in stripes of hot orange, hot pink, and bright yellow. I like that hour before most of the world wakes. The world seems still and silent, and I feel like I'm the only person in it.

The broad-leaved St. Augustine grass was heavy with dew, and thin layers of fog hovered over the fields, waiting for the Florida sun to vaporize them. The smell of green plants, dirty canal water, and horses hung in the air, a pungent organic perfume.

It was Monday, which meant I had the peace and quiet of absolute privacy. My old friend and savior, Sean Avadon, who owned the small horse farm on the outskirts of Wellington, had taken his latest amour to South Beach, where they would oil themselves and roast in the sun with a few thousand other beautiful people. Irina, our groom, had the day off.

All my life I have preferred the company of horses to people. Horses are honest, straightforward creatures without guile or ulterior motive. You always know where you stand with a horse. In my experience, I can't say the same for human beings.

I went about the morning routine of feeding the eight beautiful creatures that lived in Sean's barn. All of them had been imported from Europe, each costing more than the average middle-class American family home. The stable had been designed by a renowned Palm Beach architect in the Caribbean-plantation style. The high ceiling was lined with teak, and huge art deco chandeliers salvaged from a Miami hotel hung above the center aisle.

That morning I didn't settle in with my usual first cup of coffee to listen to the soft sounds of the horses eating. I hadn't slept well—not that I ever did. Worse than usual, I should say. Twenty minutes here, ten minutes there. The argument had played over and over in my mind, banging off the walls of my skull and leaving me with a dull, throbbing headache.

I was selfish. I was a coward. I was a bitch.

Some of it was true. Maybe all of it. I didn't care. I had never pretended to be anything other than what I was. I had never pretended I wanted to change.

More upsetting to me than the argument itself was the fact that it was haunting me. I didn't want that. All I wanted to do was get away from it.

I had lost time thinking about it. The horses had finished their breakfast and were on to other things—hanging their heads out their windows or over their stall doors. One had grabbed a thick cotton lead rope left hanging beside his door and was swinging it by his teeth, around and around his head like a trick roper, amusing himself.

“All right, Goose,” I muttered. “You're it.”

I pulled the big gray gelding out of his stall, saddled him, and rode off the property.

The development where Sean's farm was located was called Palm Beach Point—which was neither a point nor anywhere near Palm Beach. All horse properties: it was common to see riders on or along the road, or on the sandy trails that ran along the canals. Polo ponies were often jogged along the road three and four abreast on either side of an exercise rider. But it was Monday, the one day in seven horse people take off.

I was alone, and the horse beneath me didn't like it. Clearly, I was up to no good—or so he thought. He was a nervous sort, high-strung, and spooky on the trail. I had chosen him specifically for that reason. My attention couldn't wander on this one or I would find myself in the air, then on the ground, then walking home. Nothing could be in my head except his every step, every twitch of an ear, every tensing of a muscle.

The trail ran straight with the road on my right and a dark, dirty, narrow canal on my left. I sat, bumped the gelding with a leg, and he jumped into a canter, pulling against the reins, wanting to run. A small group of white ibis browsing along the bank startled and took wing. Goose bolted at the explosion of bright white feathers, leaped in the air, squealed, bucked, and took off, his long legs reaching for as much ground as he could cover.

A saner person would have been choking on terror, hauling back on the reins, praying to survive. I let the horse run out of control. Adrenaline rushed through my veins like a narcotic.

He ran as if hell was closing in behind us. I stuck to him like a tick, sitting low over my center of gravity. Ahead, the road made a hard turn right.

I didn't touch the reins. Goose ran straight, leaving the road, staying with the canal. Without hesitation, he bounded across a small ditch and kept running, past the dead end of another dirt road.

He could have broken a leg, fallen on me, thrown me, paralyzed me. He could have stumbled hard enough to unseat me and dragged me by one foot caught in the stirrup. But it wasn't the horse that frightened me, or the potential for injury or death. What frightened me was the excitement I felt, my euphoric disregard for my own life.

It was that feeling that finally made me wrestle for control—of the horse, and of myself. He came back to me a little at a time from a dead run to a gallop to a canter to a huge prancing trot. When he finally came more or less to a halt, his head was up in the air, and he blew loudly through flared nostrils. Steam rose from his body and mine, both of us drenched in sweat. My heart was racing. I pressed a trembling hand against his neck. He snorted, shook his head, jumped sideways.

I didn't know how far we had run. The fields were long behind us. Woods stood on both sides of the dirt road. Tall, spindly pine trees thrust themselves toward the sky like spears. Dense scrub choked the far bank of the canal.

Goose danced beneath me, nervous, skittish, ready to bolt. He ducked his big head and tried to tug the reins out of my hands. I could feel his muscles quivering beneath me, and it dawned on me that this was not excitement he was feeling. This was fear.

He snorted and shook his head violently. I scanned the banks of the canal, the edge of the woods on either side. Wild boar roamed through this scrub. Wild dogs—pit bulls set loose by rednecks who had beat them into meanness, then didn't want them around. People had reported sighting the occasional panther in the area. Rumors always abounded that something or another had escaped from Lion Country Safari. Alligators hunted in the canals.

My body tensed before I could even process what caught my eye.

A human arm reached up out of the black water of the canal, as if stretching out for help that was far too late in coming. Something—a bobcat perhaps, or a very ambitious fox—had tried to pull the arm out of the water, but not for any benevolent reason. The hand and wrist had been mangled, the flesh torn, some bone exposed. Black flies hovered and crawled over the limb like a living lacy glove.

There were no obvious tire tracks leading over the bank and into the water. That happened all the time—too much to drink, asleep at the wheel, no common sense. People plunged to their deaths in south Florida's canals every day of the week, it seemed. But there was no sign of a car here.

I took a hard grip on the reins with one hand, pulled my cell phone from my belt with the other, and punched a number.

The phone on the other end of the line rang twice.

“Landry.” The voice was curt.

“You're going to want to come out here,” I said.

“Why? So you can kick me in the teeth again?”

“I've found a body,” I said without emotion. “An arm, to be precise. Come, don't come. Do what you want.”

I snapped the phone shut, ignored it when it rang, and turned my horse for home.

This was going to be one hell of a day.

         

A PAIR OF deputies in a white-and-green Palm Beach County cruiser rolled through the gate behind Landry. I had ridden back to the farm to eliminate the complication of a horse at a crime scene, but I hadn't had time to shower or change clothes.

Even if I'd had time, I wouldn't have gone to the trouble. I wanted to show James Landry I didn't care what he thought of me. I wasn't interested in impressing him. Or maybe I wanted to impress him with my indifference.

I stood beside my car with my arms crossed over my chest, one leg cocked to the side, the portrait of pissy impatience. Landry got out of his car and came toward me, but didn't look at me. He surveyed his surroundings through a pair of black wraparounds. He had a profile that belonged on the face of a Roman coin. The sleeves of his shirt were neatly rolled halfway up his forearms, but he had yet to jerk his tie loose at his throat. The day was young.

As he finally drew breath to speak, I said, “Follow me,” got in my car and drove past him out the gate, leaving him standing there on the drive.

A short gallop on a fast horse, the location of my gruesome find was more difficult to find by car. It was easier to lead the way than try to give directions to a man who wouldn't listen anyway. The road bent around, came to a T. I took a left and another left, passing a driveway with a busted-out motorcycle turned into a mailbox holder. Debris from the last hurricane—three months past—was still piled high along the road, waiting for a truck to come haul it away.

Dust billowed up behind my car even as I stopped the vehicle and got out. Landry got out of the county sedan he had pulled for the day, swatting at the dust in his face. He still refused to look at me.

“Why didn't you stay with the body?” he snapped. “You were a cop. You know better.”

“Oh, screw you, Landry,” I shot back. “I'm a private citizen. I didn't even have to call you.”

“Then why did you?”

“There's your victim, Ace,” I said, pointing across the canal. “Or part of. Go knock yourself out.”

He looked across the brackish water to the branch the human limb had snagged on. The flies raised up like a handkerchief in the breeze as a snowy egret poked its long beak at the hand.

“Fucking nature,” Landry muttered. He picked up a stone and flung it at the bird. The egret squawked in outrage and walked away on yellow stilt legs.

“Detective Landry?” one of the deputies called. The two of them stood at the hood of the cruiser, waiting. “You want us to call CSI?”

“No,” he barked.

He walked away fifty yards down the bank where a culvert allowed a narrow land bridge to connect one side of the canal to another. I shouldn't have, but I followed him. He pretended to ignore me.

The hand belonged to a woman. Up close, through the veil of flies, I could see the manicure on the broken nail of the pinky finger. Deep red polish. A night on the town had ended very badly.

Blond hair floated on the surface of the water. There was more of her down there.

Landry looked up and down the bank, scanning the ground for shoe prints or tire tracks or any sign of how the body had come to be in this place. I did the same.

“There.” I pointed to a partial print pressed into the soft dirt just at the very edge of the bank, maybe ten feet away from the victim.

Landry squatted down, scowled at it, then called to the deputies. “Bring me some markers!”

“You're welcome,” I said.

Finally he looked at me. For the first time I noticed that his face was drawn, as if he hadn't slept well. The set of his mouth was sour. “Is there a reason for you to be here?”