Summer's Freedom (19 page)

“I stopped and saw her this afternoon.”

“Good.” She stripped another banana of its skin. “You can use the phone upstairs, if you like.”

Galen nodded. “I’ll do that right now.”

As he dashed upstairs, Sharon asked, “How’s Sam doing?”

“Other than languishing for David,” Maggie said with a grin, “she’s fine. Her dad’s given her the run of the darkroom, and she’s had a blast.”

“We can use her this fall as an intern.”

“I agree. But you’ll have to be her boss. I’m not objective enough.” The sound of a truck distracted Maggie. “There’s Joel.” Wiping her hands on a towel, she dashed toward the door. As adolescent as it made her feel, she was hungry for the sight of him. One of her favorite times of day was the moment when she stood at the door, watching him come up the walk to her.

And today was no different. His gray shirt highlighted the leaping blue of his eyes and the deep tan of his skin. Sun flashed on his dark hair. As he saw Maggie, his face broke into a teasing smile and he strode easily, the powerful muscles of thighs and shoulders and arms meshing visibly to move him forward. As always, Maggie felt a thrill of delighted surprise that this man, this beautiful man, was focusing that gentle smile upon her.

He leaped up the steps and met her in the doorway with a playful growl, gathering her up in a hug. He kissed her deeply. “Hi.”

Maggie grinned up at him. “Hi.”

The glitter in her eyes added an exclamation point to his day, Joel thought with a grin, and grabbed one more quick kiss to last him through dinner.

At the sound of footsteps on the stairs, Joel glanced up, thinking Samantha had come home—and froze. The ice-blue eyes bore into him, and through a roar of white noise, Joel heard Maggie say, “I want you to meet my brother, Galen.”

She tugged his hand and Joel moved forward one step, feeling the floor of his world give way.

G
alen continued down the stairs, pausing at the foot. “You must be—“he lifted a finger “—Joel.”

Joel took the offered hand. “Hi, Galen.”

For a long, pregnant moment, their eyes met. Each took the other’s measure without speaking. Maggie, standing alongside, felt a prickle of unease. Would they dislike each other? All at once, her stomach twisted, a sensation completely out of proportion to the situation.

The quiet measuring of the men suddenly broke into ordinary conversation, and Maggie blew out a sigh. “I’ve got beer in here, Joel, or some coffee if you prefer.”

“Coffee would be great, thanks.”

“Okay.” She shoved her hands into her pockets, glad for something constructive to do to stop the silly fluttering. “Dinner will be ready shortly.”

Although she tried to divine the odd atmosphere in her kitchen during the meal, Maggie couldn’t decide what was wrong. Joel and Galen seemed to get along fine, swapping tales of work and lifestyles. When they moved to the subject of the blues, they eagerly discussed the merits of various recordings of favorite songs.

Sharon and Maggie talked both with them and around them, listening and questioning and throwing in asides of their own. If a bystander had viewed the tableau through the windows, he would have seen a gathering of laughing friends over a meal of some merit.

But it was what she sensed below the surface that disturbed Maggie. Joel and Galen seemed on some level to be having a completely separate conversation, using shorthand and double meanings to give and receive information unrelated to the topic at hand.

Not only that, Joel held her hand or touched her thigh throughout the meal. He was a naturally affectionate man, one of his most endearing qualities as far as Maggie was concerned, but she felt a difference in his touch tonight. It reminded her of the way Samantha and David had constantly held hands the week before Sam’s departure.

Since there was nothing wrong to which she could quite give a name, Maggie finally decided she really was getting paranoid.

Then, as she passed the bread, Sharon shot Maggie a quizzical glance. The food Maggie had eaten turned to a lump of clay in her stomach. She wasn’t imagining it—something really was wrong.

After the plates had been cleared, the little group wandered into the living room. A breeze through the screen door blew the smoke from Galen’s cigarette into eddies of pale blue, and Maggie watched them musingly. What now? she thought.

Next to Maggie, Joel fidgeted with a rubber band, twisting it between his thumb and forefinger, over and over. His voice broke the difficult pause building in the room. “What’s the plan for the concert tomorrow night?” he asked.

“David is going to meet us at the gate, and we’ll just play it by ear.” The burning in Maggie’s stomach intensified, and she felt Joel’s fingers land on the back of her neck, where they massaged gently at the taut muscles there. She flashed him a grateful look over her shoulder—and caught the most acute expression of sorrow in his eyes that she’d yet seen. It disappeared almost immediately.

“What concert?” Galen asked.

“Proud Fox, but we’re not going for pleasure. Sharon and I are going to cover it for the paper.”

“It’s been a mess everywhere they’ve gone this summer,” Galen said, stubbing out his cigarette. “Wear some pointed boots in case you have to kick your way out,” he said with a smile, then stood up. “Sharon, let’s go scare up some fun, shall we?”

“Thought you’d never ask, buddy. These two make you lonely, don’t they?”

* * *

Joel awakened the next morning to a chorus of bird song outside the open windows of his bedroom. Beside him, gilded with the diffused light of the morning sun, Maggie slept deeply, one long leg thrown over his knees. Her skin glowed like honeyed fruit, and her full, pouty mouth was barely parted to let breath pass. Pressed softly into his side and hip were the curves of breast and belly he’d grown to know so intimately the past few weeks.

The past few weeks. Stolen time, now gone. He gave his eyes their last feast, letting them wash from her temple to her toes. When his eyes had finished, he stretched out a hand and followed the length of her back all the way down her spine, gently. Her flesh was velvety and supple.

When she stirred sleepily, reaching for him even as she dreamed, he bent to taste the column of her throat and the peach-soft cheeks. With one hand, he cupped a breast for the last time and felt a piercing, bittersweet pleasure at the eager pearling of the tip against his palm. He let his hands span her rib cage and fondle her bottom, and when she opened for him in the sweet, sleepy morning, he took sanctuary once more. He moved slowly, as if all their time were not gone, moved slowly to remember each brush of her breath on his chin, each nearly inaudible whimper in her throat.

Afterward, he didn’t move because he couldn’t bear to leave her. Her eyes, fawn brown and clear, opened to him at last. “I love you, Joel Summer,” she said.

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Maggie. You changed my life.” He kissed her one last time. “Don’t ever forget that.”

The gravity in his face frightened her. When he pulled away, she asked quickly, “Where are you going?”

“To make us some coffee. You can have the shower first.” His voice sounded utterly normal as he stepped into a pair of jeans, normal enough that Maggie gave him a lazy grin. In the dust-moted light filtering through his curtains, he looked like a television jeans commercial—his dark hair tousled, powerful chest naked and feet bare. As he slipped out of the room, she wondered with a smile why his bare white feet made him seem sexy. A barefoot man isn’t going anywhere, she thought, and headed for the shower with a wry twist of her lips.

A few minutes later, wrapped in a big terry-cloth robe, Maggie met Joel in the bedroom. He’d carried up two steaming mugs of coffee, but there was no food to go along with it. Joel ate a lot, and morning bread was not something he ever missed. “Where’s the food?”

He paused, his hand in a drawer. “I’m sorry.” His attitude was distracted. “Are you hungry? I didn’t think about it.”

Maggie frowned, her elbows and knees suddenly going a little wobbly. “I’m not in any hurry,” she said.

Taking her cup, she sat on the edge of the bed. “Joel, what’s wrong?”

The dark head moved once, side to side, as if to shake away a bad dream. Maggie saw his chest rise with a deep, long breath. He looked at her. “There’s no easy way to do this,” he said, and swallowed.

“Do what? You’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry.” He took a shoe box out of the drawer. For one more moment, he paused, then carried it to Maggie and gave it to her.

“What’s this?” she asked. The terrible foreboding that had been building in her belly now spilled into her veins, raced to her heart and sent it thudding like the cannons at an army base.

“Open it,” he said grimly. His hands were curled into fists. As she let her fingers edge along the lid, he suddenly turned away, then back again. “Just do it,” he said harshly.

“I don’t want to,” she said. “I don’t want to know. I don’t care about the past. If I don’t know about it…” She trailed off, unsure of what she meant.

He stared at her, his face set. “Open it.”

Maggie tore off the lid—and her breath left her. Inside were dozens and dozens of letters, letters addressed to Mitchell Gray, care of the Colorado penal system. In Maggie’s hand.

For a long time, she stared at them, her mind echoing. Of course. Of course the dinner last night had been so strange—Galen had known Joel instantly, for they’d been in prison together. Of course she’d felt as if she’d known Joel—she’d been writing to him seven years. Of course the photos in his living room, those bare, lonely photos, had triggered recognition—they were just like the drawings Mitchell used to decorate his envelopes.

In a voice hard and distant, one she hardly recognized as her own, Maggie asked, “So what’s your real name?”

“Mitchell Joel Gray,” he said. “Summer is my mother’s name.”

“You deliberately changed it so that I wouldn’t know who you were.”

“Yes.” He made no effort to deny it, and Maggie realized she had expected an explanation.

“Why?”

He drew a breath. “I wanted to see if we would like each other in person.”

“That’s not it,” she said, looking at him for the first time. “You didn’t trust me to take you at face value.”

“You’re right.” His blue eyes were cold. “I thought it was the right thing to do.”

“How is a lie the right thing? Ever?”

“Maggie, I could tell from your letters, even if we didn’t allow anything personal, that you wouldn’t be able to handle the knowledge of my background. You’d have been artificially polite and scared to death.”

“How do you know? I don’t even know. You didn’t give me a chance.”

A note of impatience crept into his voice. “Come on, Maggie, this is no time to try and fool ourselves. You wouldn’t have given me the time of day.”

She jumped up, trembling. “So, you cooked up this elaborate plan to sucker me in—moving in next door like a stranger!”

“That wasn’t the plan. My last place had cockroaches the size of dragons. I had to find something new.” He shook his head. “When I looked in the paper, this place was open. I just took it.” His posture eased a bit, and he held out a hand of entreaty. “Maggie, I’m sorry.”

At the sight of the flat, wide palm, Maggie felt a redoubled sense of betrayal. “Don’t touch me.” The words were hard and cold. He pulled back.

Maggie flipped through the letters. The one on top was the last one she’d written, not three weeks before. “How did you manage to keep up the masquerade after you got out?”

“A guard helped me. He was my friend.”

A whirl of violent emotion swelled up within her. Overcome with a fury she’d never known she possessed, she hurled the box across the room. It hit the wall with a thud, and rectangles of white exploded out of it, scattering all over the floor.

Joel grabbed her hands. “Take it easy, Maggie.”

She stared at him, the mass of her insides so confused and torn she could barely breathe. “What did you do?” she asked, an edge of despair in her voice. “Did you kill your wife?”

“No.” His eyes flared with emotion, and his jaw went hard. “I killed her lover.”

“Oh, my God,” Maggie said, reeling away from him.

Passion, she thought, her mind flooded with memories of her childhood, her father slapping her mother in a fit of fury; Galen screaming as his hair was chopped away viciously; Maggie cringing before him as he raged, spittle dotting her face as he screamed. Now her imagination chimed in: she saw Joel discovering his wife with her lover, saw the huge body and power aimed with fury at a man and saw that man fall. “I can’t do this,” she choked out, backing away from him. “I can’t.”

She turned and fled the room.

Joel wanted to throw back his head and howl, to somehow release the pain she was causing him by leaving. Instead, he grabbed his keys and headed for the only solace he knew. His birds and the open sky.

* * *

At first, Maggie couldn’t decide what to do. She paced around her bedroom restlessly, wishing that she could tear out her heart the way animals chewed off a leg caught in a trap.

For a time she considered going to her grandmother, who would provide a shoulder to cry on. The problem was, Maggie couldn’t imagine allowing her emotions to flow in the manner that would be necessary to cry. If she began, she thought she would never stop. Confession might be good for the soul, but it wasn’t Maggie’s style. Just as she’d felt uncomfortable discussing her attraction to Joel with anyone, she couldn’t discuss his betrayal.

Finally, tired of roaming her room, she headed for the newspaper and the job awaiting her there.

The day passed in a blur. She couldn’t decide whether to be grateful or disappointed when she found that Sharon wasn’t at the paper. A note she’d left for Maggie explained she was following up a lead on Cory she’d gotten from a cop at a bar the night before. Turning on the radio for company, Maggie threw herself into planning the traditional Fourth of July issue on books.

But as she typed reviews, Mitchell’s sharp analysis of books haunted her. Or rather, Joel’s.