Twice Kissed (16 page)

Maggie thought the dress looked fine. “Maybe you should wear a bra under it,” she offered, as Mary Theresa’s breasts and nipples were visible through the sheer fabric.

“I will, stupid, when I go out, but a bra won’t affect how the back hangs.”

“Sure it will.” Maggie couldn’t help egging her sister on and felt more than a little satisfaction when Mary Theresa, rolling her eyes, let the dress drop, struggled into a bra, and zipped up again. “See.” She glanced at the clock. She was really going to be late, if M.T. didn’t get a move on. “It’s fine now. Let’s go.”

“Okay, okay,” Mary Theresa said sighing. “So you were right. It looks better.”

“It looks great.” No reason to lie.

Mary sent her a sly glance. “You know, you could do something a little more feminine sometimes.”

Maggie lifted a shoulder and thumbed through the magazine. “I suppose.”

“It wouldn’t hurt.” She adjusted the neckline again and smiled at her reflection. “Especially if you’re trying to impress some boy.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh, sure, and you’re hanging out at the stables just because you’re so into horses.”

“I like to ride,” Maggie said without a trace of enthusiasm.

“Uh-huh.” Sighing, Mary Theresa undressed and, wearing only her panties and bra, hung the pink dress on a hanger. “I think you’ve got a boyfriend out there.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Maggie paused to look at a slick, black-and-white picture of Princess Anne astride a thoroughbred sailing over a hedge.

“Just tell me it’s not that cowboy who delivered you here the other day.”

“It’s no one,” Maggie lied, and hoped her expression didn’t give her away. She couldn’t tell Mary Theresa about Thane, about how she couldn’t stop thinking about him, about the way her heartbeat elevated each time she saw him. No. Instinctively she realized that if Mary Theresa had a hint that she was attracted to him, there would be a price to pay. A dear one. She tossed the magazine aside and found her boots.

“Oh, right.” M.T. slid into a pair of black shorts and a red tank top. As she was stuffing the hem of her shirt into the waistband of the shorts, she said, “You never asked me any more about Mitch.”

Oh, God.
“Mitch isn’t one of my favorite topics.”

“Good. Because there’s nothing going on, you know.” Mary avoided Maggie’s eyes as she found a rubber band and a couple of clips. With one clip in her mouth, she deftly wound her hair into a French braid that she snapped off with the rubber band and pinned to her head.

“I didn’t think there was.” Maggie forced her feet into her boots.

Mary flashed her thousand-watt smile as she sprayed her hair and shoulders with perfume. “Okay, end of subject.”

Amen,
Maggie thought, and wished she believed it. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

Mary twisted off the radio and they headed outside.

The ride to the stables was thankfully short and silent. Mary Theresa, ten miles above the speed limit, had the radio blaring and drove with one hand; the other, casually holding her cigarette, hung out the driver’s side window. She was careful to turn her head and exhale out the window as well.

“Mom knows you smoke,” Maggie observed as they turned off on the lane to the ranch. The BMW bucked and bounced down the gravel lane, its underbelly scraped by weeds growing in the center strip between the twin ruts made by hundreds of tires over the years.

“So?”

“I don’t know why you try so hard to hide it.”

Mary Theresa slowed and tossed her sister a look that silently called her an idiot. “There are lots of things Mom and Dad don’t know about me. That’s the way I like it.”

“Fine. I was just saying—”

“Okay, I’ve heard the lecture before.” Angrily, Mary Theresa stood on the brakes, and the car slid to a stop near Flora’s garage. “I don’t need to hear it again.”

“I didn’t mean that—”

“Forget it.”

“No—”

“Just get out, okay?” Mary Theresa was really ticked off. “You know, Maggie, I’m sick and tired of your holier-than-thou attitude.”

“Get real.”

“You know, I’ll bet you’re out here doing it with some lowlife cowboy!”

“What!” Maggie’s jaw dropped open. She gaped at her twin in disbelief. “I’m not—”

“Well, if you’re not, then quit hanging out here. Find a boyfriend and grow up, will ya?”

Maggie’s blood started to boil. She held her tongue. No reason to get into it. She reached for the door.

“You could do better,” Mary Theresa said, “than some piss-poor hired hand who—”

“Who isn’t related to me?” Maggie cut in, her temper boiling. “Sorry. But I think our cousin or brother or what-ever-you-want-to-call-him is taken.” She said it without thinking, and Mary Theresa’s face drained of color. She gasped and could barely speak.

“I’m not…I mean I—”

Maggie climbed out of the car. She was already regretting her sharp tongue even though Mary Theresa had asked for it. “I’ll find a ride home.”

“Oh, God, Maggie, please, it’s not—” A tear started to drip from beneath the edge of Mary Theresa’s sunglasses. But Maggie wouldn’t listen. She slammed the door shut and stormed down the short hill to the paddock near the stables. Why had she let Mary Theresa draw her into an argument? Why? Why hadn’t she kept her damned mouth shut?

Thane sauntered out of the stables. A half smile was tacked onto his face, softening the contours of his square jaw. “Bad day?”

“Don’t ask.”

He whistled under his breath. “Okay, I won’t. From where I stand, you’ve got a pretty good life, princess.”

“You don’t know anything,” she retorted, then saw a light of amusement fire in his cool gray eyes. That damned self-satisfied smile didn’t move an inch. “And I’m
not
a princess.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You’re a saint.”

“Enough!”

He chuckled. “Whatever you say.” He shoved his hands into the front pockets of grimy, nearly threadbare jeans. “You’re the boss.”

Her head snapped up, and she started to argue. “I’m nothing of the sort—” But she stopped short when she noticed the twitch of his lip, the crinkling of the corners of his eyes. What was it today? Something in the air that convinced people to pick a fight with her? “You ready?”

“Always.” His voice had lowered a bit, and she felt a prickle of anticipation run across her skin, like the breath of the wind touching her intimately, but there wasn’t the slightest breeze moving the leaves of the trees.

Thane’s gaze shifted just as she heard the crunch of sandals on gravel. His eyebrows lifted a fraction as he stared over Maggie’s shoulder and his interest shifted from her. She felt it. As she had a hundred times before. She didn’t have to turn around to sense that Mary Theresa was approaching. “Thought you might need this,” she said, as Maggie looked over her shoulder.

Swinging saucily down the hill, she held out Maggie’s oversized suede bag, the one with long fringe and a shoulder strap.

“Thanks.” Maggie swiped it from her sister’s outstretched hand.

Mary Theresa smiled as she looked past Maggie to Thane. “Hi, I’m Maggie’s sister, Mary Theresa.”

“Thane Walker.”

“The horse trainer?” she asked as if she’d listened raptly to everything about him.

“Sometimes.”

She laughed gaily. “And other times?”

“I do a little of everything.” He lifted a broad shoulder and Maggie wished for once that he didn’t look so damned sexy, that his tanned arms weren’t visible, that his eyes weren’t such an intense shade of gray blue, that he didn’t appear so raw and masculine and…interested in her sister. Maggie felt, as she had all of her life, as if she had suddenly disappeared.

“So you’re giving Maggie a lesson today?”

One of Thane’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s the plan.”

“Think you could teach me how to ride?”

Maggie nearly fainted. Mary Theresa wanted to ride a horse, the same animal that she had called “stinky, obnoxious, and just plain boring?”

“You wanna learn?”

“I might.” A dimple creased Mary Theresa’s cheek.

“Then I ‘might’ be able to teach you.”

“Good.”

“Set it up with Flora.” Thane’s interested gaze swung back to Maggie. “Right now, I think you and I should get to it.”

“Right,” she said dully.

“Bye!” Mary Theresa lifted a hand and wiggled her fingers, then turned and swung up the hill. Thane glanced briefly at her, then back to Maggie.

“You didn’t tell me you had a twin.”

“Didn’t see a reason to.”

“She’s pretty.”

Maggie’s heart sank, and she wondered what she was doing here.

“Almost as pretty as you.”

Her head snapped up. “Sure,” she said automatically before she saw that he was being serious, no smile curved his lips, no flicker of amusement danced in his eyes.

“You don’t think so.”

“I don’t worry about it one way or the other,” she lied, though she felt a warm glow inside that she would, under no circumstances, let him see. She’d gotten compliments before, plenty of them, but this was different; she sensed Thane Walker didn’t hand them out casually. He didn’t seem the kind of man to say a kind word just to see her reaction or because he wanted something more from her.

“Just thought you should know.”

“Why?” She couldn’t help asking.

Appearing skeptical, he hitched his chin toward the parking lot, where Mary Theresa was climbing behind the wheel of the BMW. She tore out of the lot. “Because I get the feeling that she might run roughshod over you.”

“No way,” Maggie said, the backs of her ears burning.

He didn’t say anything else, just got down to the business of teaching her how to command the horse. Riding bareback, she tried to listen to his instructions as he explained about holding the reins in gentle hands that not only told the horse what she expected but also felt her mount’s hesitation or determination. She went through the motions of turning Ink Spot in several different gaits, but her mind wandered, and she was more aware of the back of Thane’s neck as he looked downward, how the cords supporting his head stood out, or the way his hair fell over his eyes, only to be pushed aside by an impatient hand, or the sensations he caused when he touched her briefly, fleetingly, when he adjusted the position of her fingers as she held the leather straps. Rough, callused, dirty hands guided hers.

“Just hold like this—no, a little more tightly,” he said, his voice low and commanding as his hands covered hers.

The back of Maggie’s throat turned to cotton. “Like this?”

“Yeah, but don’t squeeze the hell out of ’em. Remember, this is how you’re communicating with Ink Spot. She has to feel that you mean business without scaring her. Intimidation that earns her respect. Here.” He patted the animal’s thick neck and in one swift move swung up behind Maggie.

She nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Let me show you.” Strong arms surrounded her, big hands clasped over hers, and the wall of his chest was pressed firmly to her spine. She couldn’t move and tried not to notice that his legs were formed intimately to hers, the fronts of his longer jeans-clad thighs hot against the backs of her bare legs and knees. His booted feet dangled longer than hers, but the hard pressure of his fly rode steady against her buttocks.

New sensations stole through her blood, turning it hot, causing sweat to dampen her skin. Images that had nothing to do with guiding horses galloped through her mind, and she thought as she held her breath that she might pass out.

“Here.” Holding her hands over the reins, he clucked to the horse.

Ink Spot resisted at first, but Thane urged her forward by moving his legs. His breath was hot against the back of Maggie’s neck. She swallowed hard as the mare broke into a gallop, and Thane’s free arm encircled her waist, holding her close, keeping them both astride and riding in unison. She sucked in her stomach, felt a tingling in the deepest part of her, and tried like crazy to keep her mind on anything but the hardness pressed against the base of her spine and the dizzying images that teased her mind.

“Like this,” he said, leaning forward so that his chin bridged her shoulder and his head was next to hers. His hands moved subtly with the reins, and the horse responded, turning in a smooth arc to the left, dark ears flicking as if searching for more clues from the two riders. “You try.”

She nearly dropped the reins, but forced her hands to take control, to mimic his commands as he held tightly to her, and the buildings of the ranch, the stables, barn, garage swept by in a dizzying blur. Her heart and head pounded, her blood pumped through her veins wildly, and she wondered what it would be like to kiss him, to feel his hands on her body…Oh, God, she was hot.

“There ya go, now ease up a bit.”

Automatically she relaxed and let the reins slip through her fingers.

“Whoa—not so much. That gives her too much head, and you’ll have no control.” Again he grabbed hold of Maggie’s hands. “Firm but not hard, see? Show her what you want.”