Thea Devine Read online

  “And I still have to live with that, don’t I?” she asked nastily. She couldn’t leave herself open to him, she couldn’t. And yet there was no defense; he started walking toward her and she felt like running, running from the lies and the truth both.

  “No, Maggie. I had to live with that. I had five years of living with that and anything my imagination could conjure up, five years of hell imagining you with Frank, five years of hell fantasizing what it could have been like for you and me.”

  “That’s absurd. There was no you and me.”

  “There would have been.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “I know it now.”

  “I don’t. I don’t want to know it. I don’t want it, not now, not ever.”

  That stopped him cold. For one terrifying instant she saw the dark underside of his soul. She saw that he could not seriously consider the possibility. She wondered if his certainty had become an obsession, and the thought scared her.

  “You do want it, Maggie,” he said gently, turning away. “You just don’t know it.”

  This abrupt release of tension confused her. She watched him walk slowly back into the printing room and she didn’t understand. She had expected an adamant pursuit that could be just as adamantly rejected. It would have been so much easier.

  But she couldn’t let herself become afraid of him just because of the things he was saying. He was not in control of her desire, she was, and she wanted no entanglements, in spite of her shocking response to him.

  She followed Logan slowly into the printing room. “Why don’t you go home?”

  “It’s cold and lonely in my home, Maggie. I’d much rather be here with you.”

  “Fine. There’s a nice leather desk chair in there that used to belong to Frank. Make yourself comfortable on it.”

  “Maggie…”

  “Logan …” She brushed by him in exasperation and began pumping up some water into the sink. She felt like crying and she hated his persistence. He was the last person in the world she would have expected to say such things, to want such things.

  And the irony was, she needed him. She needed him to be what he had always been, but his perception of what he had always been was far different from hers.

  For one telling moment she felt overwhelmed with a sadness and frustration that vented itself in an emphatic thump of the pump handle, which sent water spraying all over her. She reached blindly for the soap and touched a warm intrusive hand.

  “Let me,” Logan said softly, catching her hands tightly in his own. “Let me.”

  “I don’t want you to do anything.”

  “Of course you don’t,” he said soothingly, as he doused her hands with cold water. “You never did.”

  She wrenched her hands away and he pulled them right back. “Surely you weren’t that oblivious, Maggie.”

  “I must have been,” she said, unable to keep the surly note out of her voice.

  “Or I was too subtle.” He reached for the soap and began rubbing it on her wet hands until they were coated with lather. He massaged the soap into her skin with slow mesmerizing motions that immobilized her with panic.

  His hands on hers were warm, hypnotic, compelling—the last thing she wanted to feel, his fingers moving slowly and sensitively up and down the backs of her hands, her knuckles, her long slender fingers. Turning her hands palm side up, he felt, yes, felt, the tender skin of her palms, and caressed each finger with the slick soapiness of his hands.

  She couldn’t move. The slippery wet seduction of his expert massage was as stunning to her as his kiss. He did not look at her; he didn’t need to. The bend of her body told him all he needed to know. He had all he could do to stop himself from telling her how he had dreamed of her hands touching him in just the way he touched her now.

  But words weren’t necessary now; he had said all he needed to say, and as he held her hands captive and captivated, he didn’t let up his sensual exploration of them. He knew she felt it as deeply as if he were exploring the secrets of her body.

  Not subtle now, she was thinking, as she watched with blinding intensity the movement of his fingers over her hands. She felt disembodied and connected at the same time. He was doing it to her and she was feeling it down to her toes. At the same time, she was watching and commenting on it in some nether region of her mind, wanting desperately to resist the sensual movement of his fingers.

  She thought that if he moved his fingers up just a little, right to the veins at the base of her wrist—yes—and then suddenly found the hollow directly below her thumb—yes— and so gently around to her wristbone…. But how could it be that his fingers sliding the satiny wet soap all over her hands could arouse her to such a fever pitch that she felt wild to invite his kiss and to feel his hands on her body?

  He sensed it. He felt the shift of tension in her. Then and only then did he lift his head and look into her eyes.

  Her face was still, as if she were holding in all the emotion she was feeling and could only reveal it in the hunger of her eyes. It was all there, and it was all for him.

  He pulled her toward him so that only the grip of his hands on hers separated them. Very gently his lips grazed hers, and then his mouth settled on hers insistently, tugging, demanding, his tongue licking her lips, tasting their texture.

  “You knew,” he murmured. “Every time you came out with me, every time you challenged me, every time you talked to me, Maggie, you knew….”

  “I didn’t know,” she whispered. “Don’t tell me now.”

  “You have to know.”

  “Not now.”

  “When, Maggie?”

  His question hung on the breath of air between them. If only she could tell him: she wanted everything and nothing. If he could possess her without conquering her; if he could love her without needing her always; if he could let her give rein to her wanton feelings without giving her a child; if only he would just kiss her.…

  He didn’t even need an answer from her. His mouth found hers unerringly and this time his own greed overcame his patience. This was Maggie, for whom he had yearned for so many years, butter in his hands, fluid against him with a reluctant need that she did not yet know he could assuage. No, she knew. She knew because she trusted him and no one else, and as he began his erotic exploration of her mouth she wound her arms around him and answered him as completely as if she had spoken the words.

  She sought him with the same hot wet eagerness with which he wanted her, without fear of what he would think or the carnality of her nature. She held him for the moment, demanded his kiss just for the moment, and savored him as if she were going to die tomorrow. It was only Logan. She felt safe in his arms and secure in the notion he would never go beyond the boundaries that she set.

  And yet she could not get enough of the voluptuous feelings he evoked. He knew just how to kiss her, just when to ease up and when to pursue her, when to tantalize her and how to arouse her. Her blood turned molten at the way he played with her, and she had to grasp him tightly, to pull him closer where she could feel the tumultuous desire in him that could fill the empty place in her.

  She felt as though they were in a cocoon, alone together, joined, tense with the expectation of what was to come, what, above and beyond sanity, she wanted to come.

  “Oh, Maggie …” She heard his voice, hoarse with feeling as his hands cupped her face and he rained neat little kisses all over her mouth. “Oh, God, Maggie …” His tongue dipped into her mouth and out again, leaving her bereft. Her fingers grasped his hair and pulled his mouth down on hers again.

  She knew how to ask for what she wanted, and yet, just for a moment, she hesitated. What would he think, what would he do? How could she make him do her desire without telling, without showing? A sensual excitement possessed her at the thought of his response to her volatile emotions.

  “Maggie …” His voice was a mere breath hanging over her.

  “What?” She licked her lips and waited.
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  “Is it me, or is it memories?”

  Oh my God, she thought; he understood, he understood everything. “Both,” she whispered, her body flexing against him, just the faintest movement, an invitation to discover what she really meant.

  He held her now, not her memories; he could wipe them away or he could alienate her forever. He felt violent again with the knowledge that her memories were with Frank and not with him. His mouth closed over hers again, to make new memories and evoke fresh desire, to awaken those voluptuous feelings that came solely from his touch, his mouth.

  He never thought he would feel such anger when he finally had her in his arms. What she needed she had discovered with Frank. He knew her repressed need drove her, not any desire for him. Not yet. Not yet.

  How odd that he resented this undreamed of sensuality in her that wanted to use him the way he would seek out a woman for hire if he were possessed by the same unslaked desire.

  He had to build on that and not toss it away out of a jealous rage that had nothing to vent itself upon. Whatever Frank Colleran had taken that had been precious to him was unredeemable now. Maybe Frank’s influence had made her what she was: a ferocious tigress devouring him with an irresistible voluptuous heat that was oh so tempting and yet that might shut the door to all of his dreams.

  She felt the explosive tightness in him that signified his readiness for completion—any kind of the completion—the kind of completion that would leave her helpless and possibly with a child.

  No! She twisted away from him abruptly. Oh no, no! Somehow, a shred of sanity got the upper hand over her desire. Immersed as she was in a sensual fog, she nonetheless knew the next step was not the one she wanted to take. She would live with the void and count her blessings; even he could understand that. But she couldn’t look at him and she couldn’t stop shaking with the force of her need.

  But then, what were his luscious kisses but the foreshadow of the thing she now sought so desperately to avoid.

  She couldn’t avoid him. He still held her, and the tautness in him was every bit as galvanic as hers: release was one turbulent moment away, and he had to clamp down on his need and submerge himself in hers.

  With every ounce of self control he possessed, he let her go.

  She didn’t move. Her body fought the same war as his, she wanted him the same way he wanted her, with the force of the moment and the burgeoning allure between them, born of something old and something disturbingly new, the thing that would disrupt her life and put her in a place she did not want to be.

  She couldn’t give in to it. Her whole posture told him clearly that she was fighting it but that her common sense and her memories would win.

  He had to find the thing that might bind her to him again. He didn’t care how or why or whose reasons were pure and whose were not. He needed her any way he could have her, and her indecision gave him a blessed respite to seduce her need.

  “There are other ways, Maggie,” he said softly, so gently, so … urgently… that her head snapped up.

  “No, there is only one way, and that way will allow you to walk away and me to become dependent forever. I can’t allow that. I apologize for losing control and letting you …” She couldn’t finish beyond that; she felt close to tears with the knowledge that she had to send him away altogether and that she would never again experience the things he made her feel, the things she had denied and buried when Frank had finally abandoned her for a woman more submissive and less imaginative. No, those were old wounds she had no right resurrecting, particularly with someone like Logan. He would want so much and she could give so little.

  “There are other ways,” he reiterated insistently. “Maggie, let me show you.” He reached out and touched her cheek.

  “No.”

  His hand slid downward, from her jaw to her neck and she shuddered. “Let me love you, Maggie.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” His fingers slipped around the prim neckline of her dress, beneath her hair to the base of her neck where they rubbed her aching flesh gently, reassuringly, and in a way that was so arousing that she wondered whether he could touch her anywhere that would not electrify her whole body.

  “Logan …” She stopped as his fingers began playing with her hair and he drew closer to her and closer. He was going to kiss her again and she drowned in the feeling.

  “Yes?” He was winning and he knew it. The least little pressure of his fingers pushed her to yield. He felt her body give in to her feelings even as she warred with her ambivalence over her need.

  “Don’t kiss me.”

  “I won’t.” His lips touched hers again and he heard the faint moan at the back of her throat. “I won’t make love to you. I won’t show you anything you don’t want me to. I won’t….” Oh, and now, as his whispered words penetrated and he positioned her mouth exactingly beneath his, she sighed, “Don’t,” and opened her mouth willingly to receive his kiss. He murmured, “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t,” against the softness of her lips, her tongue, the sweetness of her taste. “Trust me, Maggie,” he whispered to the willingness of her body as he held her now; he felt her fingers dig into his shoulders ferociously.

  His tongue seduced her all over again, and this time she let no reservations about the course she would take deter her from feeling the ineffable desire that he aroused in her.

  Other ways intrigued her. She knew nothing of other ways, and yet he was willing to contain his ardor to ensure hers with other ways….

  She felt as though she were steaming out of control, and yet she didn’t care. What would he do? What “other ways?” What could subdue the fierce hunger in her that wouldn’t leave her feeling fragile and exploited?

  When he set her away from him she felt as though she had fallen off a cliff. But he still held her close, and his expression as he looked at her was soft and beguiling. She had known him forever, but this expression she had seen on his face in a time and a circumstance she could not recall.

  She touched his mouth wonderingly and felt his sweet smile.

  “You knew, Maggie.”

  His words were soft, noncensuring, and still she felt stupid that she hadn’t known, hadn’t been perceptive enough to realize, not before and surely not after. But then Frank had become a part of her past and she didn’t want to know anything of any other men.

  The thought of Frank cooled her fervor. There would always be Frank, she thought. Not even Logan could make him go away. Not even death could wipe his memory from her soul.

  She knew that the fire in her was damped down for tonight. It was enough that she had allowed herself to feel this much, to give this much. She needed time to examine what she felt and how he aroused her. She needed to come to terms with it, to allow herself to let him show her “other ways” and to discover somehow a way to allay the guilt that would surely follow if she used him this way.

  Logan let her go as he sensed her moving away from him in her mind and in her heart. He had time now, and her own nature and her overriding curiosity on his side. No one else had touched her in quite the same way. He had this in his favor as well.

  He tilted her face up to his and marveled at how lovely she was, and how sensual. “Tomorrow,” he murmured, not even sure if he wanted to give her that much time.

  “Yes.”

  She watched him go. It was late by then, and she wiped her hands and thought about the way he had touched her. She wondered how she would ever get through the day until tomorrow.

  Chapter Six

  She slept. It was as if something had been released within her, some tentative decision made. She had thought she wouldn’t sleep at all. The next day was Sunday, a day when she had plenty of leisure time to consider things she did not want to think about at all.

  Sunday the office was closed. The town went to church and then those who had spare time afterward congregated at Arwin Bodey’s store. Sometimes Maggie walked over, sometimes she stayed in the office.

  This
morning she was torn. Mother Colleran, whose expression was suspiciously benign, pronounced herself pleased with Frank’s memorial service, so much so she was thinking of going to church this Sunday. Reese looked bemused as she added, “Of course, you will accompany me. Maggie hasn’t been to church, apart from this week, since she and Frank were married. You would think she would feel she could use some heavenly guidance. By the way,” she added with malice as she rose from the breakfast table, “what was that Logan Ramsey doing here so late last night?”

  Maggie froze. “Visiting,” she said shortly, pushing back her chair. “I will clean up, Mother Colleran, if you and Reese are ready to go.”

  Her mother-in-law nodded and went to get a hat and Reese sent her a helpless look. “I’m damn well not ready to go sit in church all morning,” he hissed as Maggie removed his plate.

  “Neither am I,” Maggie said calmly. “I suggest you find someone to bring her home and escape as early as you can.”

  “I thought churchgoing was women’s work.”

  “Not this woman,” Maggie corrected, removing herself to the kitchen as Mother Colleran appeared duly swatched in black and impatient to leave.

  “Will you be here, if I can get back?” he whispered as he passed her on the way out.

  She shrugged. “Probably.” But she truthfully did not know what she wanted to do with her freedom this day. She watched them emerge from the apartment door at the back of the building, where a horse and buggy awaited them on Mother Colleran’s instructions. She saw Reese look up at the windows, almost as if he could see her there and knew she would be watching.

  She let the curtain drop. Reese couldn’t possibly see her. She didn’t want to be seen. She wanted to be alone today to think about Logan and the evening before.

  Her body reacted instantly as she remembered his kisses and his words, and the things he wanted—the things she wanted. No, impossible things. How could she even have let him kiss her when she could offer nothing in return? All that could happen was that he would find out exactly what kind of woman she was. What kind of woman Frank had thought she was.