Soft Target (15 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Maggie lay in bed staring at the crack in her ceiling. Had it gotten longer in the past few hours? Wider, maybe? The repairs had been put off too long.
Don’t I have plaster in the maintenance closet? I could get some at the hardware store. I could drive to Baxter and get a new paint color, or maybe to Hastings. I could make a day of it, maybe take Charlene and do some shopping. We could get pedicures. I can’t look at the one I have now without thinking of Vegas.

The back door closed and the alarm keys played a tune. Graham was here. Maggie put her hand over her eyes. What had she done?

Every recent event replayed in her head, colored by her new knowledge. Laughing with him, working with him, dancing, kissing, sightseeing. Their wedding. And he’d been paid to do it.

No wonder he’d run the minute they’d landed in Boise. He’d gotten a call and bolted. It had taken one look at his face, caught between what he thought he should do and what he wanted to do, to see that he was already regretting the decision.

Then he’d come ho—back reeking of perfume. Again. He was probably counting how many days he had left as her jailer.

It was time to face her sentence. With a sigh, she got out of bed, showered and dressed. Then she dawdled over making breakfast. Fighting the urge to hide up here for the next six months, she went downstairs carrying a smoothie as protection.

Graham was perched on a stool with the morning paper laid out in front of him and his elbows propped on the bar. The cream, sugar and chocolate syrup were waiting next to an empty mug. It’s how they’d started every morning before Vegas, but now the edges of the paper were wadded in his hands and his jaw muscles were in a tight knot beneath his ear.

She wanted to stay mad at him, but she had so many questions. And too many memories.

“Would you like part of my smoothie?” she began. “It’s blueberry and banana.”

His grimace was faint as he shook his head. “Thank you for the offer.”

“Is it the blueberries or the banana?”
Or is it that it’s mine?
She stared at the band circling his finger and ran her thumb along the back of the ring she couldn’t leave behind.

“The banana.” His grimace worsened with the word. “I’ve never been able to stand them.”

She took the seat facing him. “Where were you shot?”

He raised his bright blue gaze, and she saw the shadows under his eyes. “My left side, from ribs to shoulder.” His fingers pointed and his body parts shifted with each inventoried injury. “I have pins in my clavicle, a metal shoulder joint and my scapula is reinforced. Two of my ribs were broken, and there are more pins and brackets there. They punctured my lung.”

Her brain spun through the memories of all the times he’d favored that side of his body. Her imagination conjured scenes of him battered and bleeding, and then pale and bandaged in the hospital. “Dear God.”

“I’m better,” he reassured her.

When she refilled his coffee, he dropped the paper to the bar. She could see the thoughts gathering in his eyes as he drew a deep breath.

There was a knock at the door. By the time she could move, Graham was already there.

“Good morning!” Casey held an elegant arrangement of roses. “If you’ll just sign here.”

“No.” Graham ignored the clipboard aimed at his chest and left his hands on the door and its frame, barring entrance or exit. “We won’t accept this delivery.”

“What am I supposed to do with them?”

“I don’t care.”

He closed the door and shoved the bolt home. “It’s time to take control of this game.”

“Game?” Her shriek bounced from the walls. “This isn’t a game! And you have no
right
to speak for me and treat me like I’m in jail. You can’t just—”

“Am I the only person you yell at?” he thundered.

“You’re the only one who pisses me off.”

“Then we might as well get it all out of the way,” he muttered as he stretched out his hand. “Give me your phone. I need your contact list.”

“No.”

“Fine,” he snapped. “I’ll spend the day finding everyone and asking for their numbers.”

Knowing it was childish, she dropped the phone on the bar rather than handing it to him. Then she waited in silence while he transferred data.

“Is this your primary email address?”

“It’s my only address.”

“Don’t change it. And don’t get a new phone.” When she stayed quiet, he looked up from under his brows. “Promise me.”

“Fine.” She glared back at him in a standoff. “I promise.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Sarcasm dripped from her teeth.

He looked up, his eyes hard and his gaze narrow, and offered her the phone. When she refused to take it, he heaved a deep sigh and placed it on the surface between them. “I’ve moved my speed-dial number to one. Nate is now seven. There’s a Google calendar—”

“I thought you were kidding.”

“I was until yesterday. Load your schedule. I’m gray. You’re yellow. Don’t make me chase you down, because I will, and I have enough to do already.”

“Can’t I—”

“No. You can’t. No more negotiations. I’m done trying to keep up with you without you knowing. This is how I should have done it when I got here, but I let you have your own way.”

“My own way? If I had my own way, there wouldn’t be a damn bachelorette auction or Christmas carols in July. The library fund-raiser would be a carnival with a bouncy castle, the kennels at the shelter would be larger, and I sure as
hell
wouldn’t be married to
you
.”

“That makes two of us,” he snarled as he stopped at the office door. “Are you going to see Faye?”

“Yes, sir.”

His lips disappeared into a fine line, and his knuckles whitened around his coffee mug. “I’m leaving for the gravel quarry at noon. Max will be outside.” He swung into his office and slammed the door.

She sat, gargoyle-like, on her bar stool and let her coffee get cold while she listened to the clock tick away minutes of her sentence.

Finally, she worked up her courage and stepped into the hallway. His desk chair squeaked, and the door did little to muffle his heavy sigh. She hesitated.

No, dammit. This was not her fault. She hadn’t lied to him. She had no reason to apologize.

She stalked outside, pausing on the porch to exhale a long, shaky breath. Her keys bit into her fingers.
He was leaving,
she repeated with every inhale.
He married me knowing he was leaving. The promise he’d made was to Nathan, not to me. I’m a job. I’m something he has to do. He was pretending.

Her chin trembled, and she looked up into the sunshine.
My eyes aren’t stinging. My nose isn’t running. Those aren’t tears. Mathises don’t cry. Icicles, frozen margaritas, my husband’s cold blue eyes.
She imagined the icy numbness flowing through her with her blood until it reached her toes. Her next exhale didn’t shake.

She got all the way through town and even managed to accept congratulations from the nursing home staff without screaming. Tromping into Faye’s apartment, she slouched onto the sofa and displayed her hand as evidence to confirm the gossip.

“Of all the days to miss church!” Faye said as she traced the delicate ring. “Tell me everything.”

Maggie pasted a smile on her face and told the half-truth she and Graham had devised in Vegas. “There’s not much to tell. We knew it was the right thing to do, but it was so close on the heels of Nate’s wedding and...we just wanted a little privacy.”

Faye’s eyes narrowed. “You know there’s a rumor going around that you needed a husband?”

“I’ve heard it,” Maggie said as she retrieved the Scrabble board. “I’m sure there’s one now that I’m pregnant with an alien’s baby or some such shit. Are you ready to play?”

They’d played three rounds before Faye put the bag of tiles out of reach. “I know.”

Maggie brightened her smile. “Know what?”

“Don’t try that trick on me, girl. I know where you learned it,” Faye scolded gently. “Ollie promised me he’d fix that damn trust.”

“Well, he died before he got around to it.” Maggie sighed. “How could he do this?”

“It wasn’t him. Your grandmother did it.”

“Why?” Maggie knew she was whining, but she couldn’t be bothered to care. That old woman had loved her to the point of pain.

“You remember her as an older lady,” Faye began. “I remember her as someone younger than you, married to the most determined man I’d met. And at home with your great-grandmother, who was no picnic. Annie started doing committee work to get out of the house, then she saw how much impact the family could have. It took her a few years to get Ollie to see past the conveyor belt. But once he did—I think she was always surprised at how successful she’d been at creating the Mathis Monster.”

Maggie slumped in her chair. “What else?”

“She was so excited when Ron married Deanna. She thought she’d get some help, finally. But, Deanna, bless her heart, wasn’t cut out for it.”

“It’s a lot of work, Faye.”

“I know that, dear. But the sad thing is, Annie wanted someone to lessen her load, but she forgot that Deanna was supposed to lessen
Ron’s
load. Deanna had talents she brought to the table. You get your head for numbers from her. Ron was good with them, but not like her. If Annie had let her be, let her find her own way, Deanna might have stayed. And I’m not sure Ron ever forgave your grandmother for that. I know, by the time you were older, that Annie had wished she’d done things differently.”

Faye sniffed and wiped her eyes. “She and Ollie had been hardworking newlyweds. All their love had been based on that experience, so when times were good they could fall back on that. When they got overwhelmed, they had each other. Your dad and Deanna were fine until he brought her to Fiddler and she panicked over expectations. After she left, women pursued him just for his money. Annie didn’t want it to happen to you and Nate. She hoped you’d find someone like Ollie
before
you had the company. She never dreamed it would end up like this.”

“Well, it did,” Maggie muttered. “And that’s not the half of it.” Closing her eyes, she blurted the rest of the truth.

“I’ll be damned,” Faye said. “No wonder your granddad liked this boy.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Maggie asked.

“What do you want to do?”

Maggie blinked. No one had ever asked that.

Too exhausted to spell, Maggie stood and kissed Faye on the cheek. “I’ll be back later in the week.”

She drove home and walked through the back door, with
What do I want to do?
rattling around and around in her brain.

Down the hall was the bar with her list of Monday chores and responsibilities. Turning her back on them, she wandered upstairs and into the kitchen. Salad? Or pie?
What do I want?

Holding her pie, she stared between the shadowed kitchen table and the deck overlooking the street. She’d given up the sunshine when the flower notes had mentioned it, when she felt her skin crawl whenever she sat in the open. She was tired of being afraid.

Sitting on the front deck in the sunshine, she savored dessert and listened to what passed for traffic in Fiddler. When she’d plotted her trip to Vegas, she’d been excited about seeing a city she’d always dreamed of. And it had been fun to go. It had also been bright, crowded and noisy. She’d been relieved to come home.

Home.

Her phone beeped, and she checked the text message.

Calendar?—G

Sighing, she opened the link and stared at the little squares. So few of them were gray, but he’d filled in every appointment. She should do the same, if for no other reason than to imagine his panic over all the yellow boxes. First, though, she changed his ringtone to something more appropriate.

By the time she was finished with the calendar, she’d quit imagining Graham’s dread. The pie in her stomach turned to lead as she stared at column after column of bright yellow. She had work to do.

Downstairs, she perched on a bar stool and opened the files she’d ignored earlier, but her gaze drifted to Graham’s empty office. It hadn’t bothered her nearly as much when it had been
her
empty office. She’d never felt alone here—not until Graham.

She wouldn’t miss him. She wouldn’t get used to him. She abandoned her bar stool for her favorite chair, where she could bask in the sunshine and see up Broadway to the square and the mountains beyond, and went to work.

When the sun shifted behind her so that her shadow blocked the page, Maggie stretched her neck and smiled in satisfaction. It always surprised her how little it sometimes took to effect a change, even by her income standards. That’s what had driven her away from the blackjack tables in Vegas. She’d lost two hands and been eaten up with guilt thinking of what else she could’ve done with that money.

The whistles blew, and she cleared her work away and turned on the neon lights. The hum was deafening until the trucks barreled up the road in a white line. Maggie stood in the window and watched them, much like she’d done as a teenager when she’d
helped
Faye as a bar back. This had always been her favorite time of day.

At five fifteen, Graham walked in with the guys, laughing and joking as he threw his hat into his office, and her heart jumped in her chest. Heat coiled and swirled through her when he smiled from across the room. Despite her best efforts, she’d missed him. That was one of the things she
had
liked about Vegas—seeing him every day and spending time without working. They’d had a good time, but then again they’d spent most of their time off the strip and out of the city. In nature, fresh air and sunshine, they’d talked and spent time together much like they’d done before. Maybe they could close tonight, the way they’d used to do.

Then Nate clapped him on the shoulder and grabbed his attention, and all the warmth left her.
The way they’d used to do
was a lie. Pretend. His loyalty wasn’t with her. And he wasn’t permanent. He wouldn’t care what she’d learned today or what she’d done other than filling in her calendar.