Thea Devine (16 page)

The minute she entered the door, Annie Mapes launched herself at her. “Maggie, Maggie, how awful, how can you stand it? Is everyone being perfectly horrible?
We
don’t care, Sean and I, we …” She
grabbed Maggie, and waltzed her down the main aisle of the store and almost smack into Arwin’s stove.

“Hi, Maggie.” This was Sean, in his usual measured tone, with his usual care and concern. She didn’t need to see them every day or even once a month to know they loved her. She always knew they were there, unwavering in their loyalty to her, as she was to them.

“Hi, Sean, Arwin.”

“How you feeling, Maggie?”

“Wrung out. How are you doing, Arwin? Getting a lot of business around the stove these two days?”

“I’d say, I’d say.”

“Well, we don’t care what anybody says, do we, Sean? We know Maggie’s got everybody’s best interests at heart and she always has.”

Artless Annie, Maggie thought, feeling a hundred years older than her childhood friend. “Thanks, Annie. What about you two? Everything going all right? Any rumbles about buying you out? Did you hear about my debacle with the Denver North lawyer?”

Sean answered her this time and Annie looked faintly abashed. “We’re doing all right, Maggie, but in our usual straits. I can’t say that money wouldn’t look attractive to us right now….”

“Sean—” Annie protested.

“There are days,” he said slowly, “when I do wish that someone would make it easy for us to walk away.”

“I don’t want to hear that,” Annie protested. “I don’t. He won’t do it, Maggie. I don’t want to leave Colville and neither does he.”

She was so earnest, just on the point of tears almost, and she was the sweetest thing, with her silken yellow hair and pale complexion that no amount of outdoor work ever turned brown. Sean was her counterpart in looks if not temperament, with the same flawless
features and skin. They were often taken for twins, or for husband and wife.

She wondered whether to tell them the dollar figure of her offer, but she knew they would hear soon enough. “They offered me twenty thousand dollars, Sean.”

He was astounded, and so was Arwin.

“I was so sure you had heard,” she said to Arwin.

“Maggie …” he growled at her, shaking her head. He didn’t know what to think.

“My God,” Sean said finally. “I wouldn’t turn that kind of money down, Maggie, really I wouldn’t.”

“I understand,” she said, because she knew how tightly against the line of utter poverty they lived.

“We, I, would go to Denver … in fact, I was even thinking about taking one of those jobs they’re offering.”

Annie looked stricken, as if this were the first time she had heard such a thing. “No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.”

“He would be crazy not to,” Maggie said. She didn’t know why none of this surprised her.

Sean smiled at her wanly. “Thanks, Maggie.”

“No disloyalty to you,” Annie said caustically. “Everyone knows we’re such good friends.”

“It’s all right, Annie.”

“That damned railroad is tearing everything apart, just as you’ve been saying, Maggie. How soon before it comes between us, too?”

“It won’t.”

“But Sean …”

“That’s your business, not mine,” Maggie said, and she felt very strongly she had better leave right then before Annie’s distress escalated and something was said that could never be retracted later.

She hugged Annie tightly, and Sean with just a bit more reserve, and left the store. Still and all, she thought, the Mapes could be bought by Denver North. She
wondered how much less their price might be.

She felt like a character in a play, walking in and out of scenes with people, all of whom were telling her things she did not want to hear.

Soon it would be Logan’s turn, and she was rather grateful that her malaise over the insert and her articles had preoccupied her to the point where thoughts of him could not intrude. She was in no mood for reliving their lovemaking. She could only remember the mechanics of it, and the compelling need. Anything else she did not want to recall, because it would lead to the extravagant yearning that had propelled her into his arms in the first place.

Perfectly right. Last Sunday was it, that he had possessed her in that erotic way? No more of that. He needed a proper mate who would put no boundaries and conditions on his feelings and her own. She even had a candidate, she thought, as the idea flashed into her mind. Just as she had told him: a farm woman, someone accustomed to his way of life, willing to bear all the children he could give her with all the ecstasy his heat could generate. And who would be so perfect for him but Annie Mapes?

It would solve all her problems. Sean could go off and seek some life he thought might be better, and Annie’s loyalties would remain intact, while Logan would acquire the kind of wife he deserved.

Logan and Annie. They had known each other forever. It made such perfect sense. As she thought about it, she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t perceived Annie’s perfect qualities and sought her out himself. But there was an answer for that. He had had an impossible dream about an imperfect Maggie whom he glorified all out of proportion to reality. She thought it would be easy to
point out the truth, especially when it was so blindingly clear to her.

Logan and Annie. Yes. Annie would work with him side by side, just as he had a right to expect, and just as she would never be able to do. Annie would want children. Annie hardly ever wanted to come to town.

And she never wanted to be anywhere else but
in
town.

But it would never work that way.

Sunday again, with blessed peace in the morning and Mother Colleran’s voice ringing in her ears as she left for church, “I’ll pray for you, Maggie.”

I hope they crucify you
, Maggie thought hostilely, and watched from the window as Reese solicitously helped his mother into her carriage and climbed into the driver’s seat to take her to church like a dutiful son.

She could not understand Reese. Reese had become a visitor who had somehow removed himself from his mother and Maggie except when he was home to tend to necessities. They did not know what he did during the day, except when he volunteered to drive Maggie where she might want to go or took Mother Colleran to church. They knew he spent every evening at the hotel, but for what purpose other than to drink, they could not conjecture. It wasn’t as if there were contacts to be made in the elegant confines of the hotel.

Nor could Maggie understand why he insisted on staying. He struck her as a man who was restless and got bored easily, yet he endured evenings in his mother’s company, telling the same stories with different embellishments, and had somehow found congenial company in a farm and ranching town a hundred miles from nowhere.

It didn’t seem to be an ideal situation for a man like Reese Colleran, and he didn’t seem to be on his way anywhere with any great hurry.

He even sat through church services.

And when he was in her presence, she reflected, he hardly ever took his eyes off of her. She had the lurking feeling that he was always looking at her breasts, always remembering that one revealing evening when he could see them as clearly as if she had been naked.

She just didn’t understand the reason he had come and the reason he remained. She wished she could kick him out of the apartment and straight over to the hotel where he spent most of his time anyway.

She would suggest it to him.

Maybe she would go live there herself.

Imagine what might be possible if she lived there.

Privacy.

Visitors.

Overnight visitors, visitors who would not have to slink out into the middle of the night like criminals, because no one would ever ever interrupt her in her own room.

Lovely.

But not a solution. She knew what she was doing: she was looking for a way to continue with Logan, and yet she knew that even if she were alone and in complete privacy, there was still no way to avoid their union with all its tempestuous consequences.

Even the thought of it was arousing. She knew, she knew, and she could not let herself keep thinking about it, about what it would mean. There was such a temptation to discount the aftermath for the sake of those moments of pure, glistening pleasure.

She did not want to be lost in a sensual reverie on a Sunday afternoon. It was deliciously quiet, a time she did not have to do anything, feel anything, go anywhere, see anyone.

And yet she was consumed with a reckless restlessness because nothing was settled, nothing.

She wandered down to the office. The emptiness of it
was not peaceful to her.
She
felt empty, and she swiped at the papers on her worktable futilely. The papers fluttered and scattered and several fell to the floor. She stooped and picked them up, cursorily glancing at each. At one. Logan’s firm handwriting: Come to
me
.

Her breath caught in her throat. Come to him? Come to
him?
Just hitch up a buckboard and drive out to him bold as brass, as if no one would be watching, as if his hands wouldn’t be around to see?

To him?

She could go to him, and she could tell him the conclusion she had come to; that was a reasonable excuse for a visit. Damn, who would see her or question her anyway?

There was no one in her house, no one to whom she had to answer anyway … she wanted to go to him. She was overwhelmed by how urgent the feeling was.

A half hour later, as she barreled down the track toward his spread, she was shaking with perturbation. She wasn’t sure things would go exactly the way she planned. Perhaps he would take her appearance as sending a totally different message than the one she intended.

Another fifteen minutes and she had driven her team into his dooryard. She saw him waiting for her on the porch.

She hadn’t been there in years. She remembered a rough-hewn building there, the equivalent of what Frank had built on his ranchland, and here she saw a fully completed ranch house that looked large and commodious.

He came out to meet her without a word, unhitched the team, and sent them out to the pasture. After he had pulled the wagon to the side, near the barn, she thought: it looked like any other wagon. It looked like something he might have in his barn.

She felt his hand at her elbow and a firm push toward the house.

“You’ve never been here.”

“Never.”

They stepped up onto the porch and she turned, momentarily, to look at the view. It faced the long drive that separated verdant grazing fields. Towering trees in the distance marked the boundary of the property. To the right was the barn and more grassland, to her left, a garden, and beyond that outbuildings concealed by a giant hedge.

He opened the door and she preceded him inside, into a large square room with a fireplace and a sofa and some chairs. The walls were covered with hand-loomed rugs and animal skins, as was the floor. At the far end there were several doors leading from the room, and a narrow staircase winding upward.

There was a curious silence in the air. She looked back to see him leaning against the door, watching her, his eyes scorching her with his need that she knew was reflected in her own eyes.

And now she knew the lie. She had not come to assuage her conscience, she had come for him, and she had to struggle against it as hard as possible.

When she didn’t move toward him, he walked slowly into the room. “Let’s see the rest of the house.” His voice was flat, even-toned. Whatever she was feeling, he was sure she still wanted him and he was willing to wait.

He showed her the separate kitchen, with its immense cooking fireplace, iron stove, and oven. He showed her his bedroom on the first floor, off of the parlor. It too had its own fireplace, and a large comfortable looking bed, a dresser, and a hooked rug on the floor. He led her upstairs to show her the two bedrooms in the eaves of the house, and then down to the root cellar, where wooden
boxes contained neatly labeled jars of fruit and vegetables.

“The wife of one of the men cooks for me,” he said, although she had not asked for explanations. She was thinking how very self-sufficient he was. Such a comfortable home, built, she was sure, over the last five or six years since his parents had died. He needed nothing more than someone to keep house and make sure there were stores and that he was well fed, that and occasional surcease for his desires. And that, she thought acidly, was easily found in town. For a price.

He hardly needed her.

In a corner of the parlor, close by the kitchen door, there was a plain oak table and chairs. She chose to draw one of these out and sit in it rather than make herself at home on the sofa. His expression wavered between amusement and gravity as he joined her.

“You definitely have something on your mind, Maggie, and I get the feeling it is not our mutual enjoyment.”

“You’re a perceptive man, Logan.”

“Was it an easy trip here?”

“Forty-five minutes from town, as you well know.”

He nodded. “A pleasant trip, Maggie.”

“Except perhaps in the winter,” she retorted as his direction became evident.

“Winter days and nights can be very pleasant in front of a fireplace—with the right company.”

She swallowed hard and plunged ahead. “I don’t doubt it. But not this company, Logan.”

“Oh no? How so?”

“For all the reasons you know, and for some that have become evident just in the brief time since …”

“Is there something you want that we haven’t explored yet, Maggie?”

Crystal clear images of his explorations drifted into her mind, behind her eyes, insistent, as real as real. “
We
were almost caught the last time,” she reminded him tartly.

“We don’t have to put ourselves in that position, Maggie. You know that.”

“No, I thought about it, Logan. There is no way possible to keep up what we’re doing that is sane and makes sense to both of us.”

“You came to tell me that?”

“Face to face.”

“Brave Maggie. There is a very sane way and you know it.”

“I live in town. I work in town. I am not ready for a family. I’m surely not ready to consider marriage again. What sane way, Logan? Mother Colleran snoops, and Reese thinks I arranged myself downstairs that night just for him. He keeps waiting for some concrete invitation and I feel like a fraud.”