The Bride's Curse (27 page)

“I am so sorry!” His handsome face flushed with embarrassment as he grabbed a wad of paper napkins from a dispenser on the nearest table and began to mop at the spill. His touch on her upper breasts was electric — it sizzled all the way down to her toes, leaving her breathless. Brushing his hands away, she snapped: “You’re making it worse. My office is just across the road and I can clean up there.”

The man snatched back his hand as he realized the inappropriate intimacy of his touch. Blushing, he tossed the damp napkins onto a table and jammed the offending hands into his suit pants pockets. “I … at least let me pay for your dry cleaning,” he stammered, but Maggie was already halfway out the door.

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it,” she muttered, avoiding his gaze. A second later she was gone.

• • •

Josh Tyler blinked, staring after her as the door slammed behind her. He’d been intent on cleaning up the spilled coffee mess and had acted without thinking. Now his fingers telegraphed the sensation of her warm, soft femininity and his embarrassment deepened. He hadn’t felt this awkward since high school.

“Don’t pay any attention to her,” a plump teenager behind the counter said. “That’s Maggie Kendall. She’s from the city.” She made the words sound like an accusation rather than a statement, and Tyler bit back a smile.

“Now, Alicia, Ms. Kendall’s a nice enough woman, and she’s worked wonders with the
Gazette
since she bought out old Dan Warrington,” an older woman sitting by the electronic till said in a warning voice.

“Yes, but she’s strange. People say she sees things … like, a second sight.”

“Alicia! That’s enough. Now serve the gentleman and then get back into the kitchen and help Sam with the cleanup.”

Tyler wanted to ask more questions but was pretty sure the eagle-eyed cashier would slap him down, so he ordered coffee and a Danish to go, paid and left the store.

Outside on the broad sidewalk, his eye was caught by the large sign on one of the offices across the road: The
Woeful Creek Gazette
. Maggie Kendall was an attractive woman, if maybe a bit highly strung. But he had no wish to get close to any member of the press and certainly not to someone with a reputation for “seeing things”.

Reporters and psychics were, in his experience, about equal in the charlatan stakes.

• • •

“There was someone in here looking for you, Maggie,” Colleen McKie, Maggie’s secretary and sometimes reporter, told her as she entered the offices of the
Woeful Creek Gazette
. “City type, nearly killed herself on that patch of ice outside in her high heels.”

Maggie’s sleep had been disturbed by dark dreams the night before, and at Colleen’s words a prickle of unease skittered along her spine. “Did she leave a name?”

“Nope, and I didn’t ask. Told her you’d be in the office by nine and she should try you then. Probably wanting to sell you something.” Colleen grinned, taking the cardboard cup of Fried Heaven coffee that Maggie handed to her.

Her grin faded as she saw the damp, brown stain across Maggie’s shirtfront. “Whatever happened to you? Did you slip, too? I’ll throw some salt on that ice — it’s obviously dangerous.”

Maggie flushed. “Oh, no, some guy pushed the door open a bit sharpish as I was leaving the café — knocked my coffee all over me.”

“You’re blushing, Maggie Kendall! Was he good looking, then?”

Maggie was saved from answering by the sudden ringing of the telephone. “I’m off to change this shirt,” she said.

“
Woeful Creek Gazette
, Colleen McKie speaking.”

“Hi, there, Colleen, it’s Jeb Carraway.” Maggie could hear the booming voice ten feet away, and began to make frantic signs to Colleen that she was out.

“Hello there, Jeb. What can we do for you today?” Colleen made a cross-eyed grimace at Maggie. “Oh, you want to add some details to your report of the men’s golfing dinner? Uhmm, I have a feeling Maggie has already put that on a page. I know she wanted to be absolutely sure your piece was included this week — she’s not here right now; if there’s still time I’ll get back to you.”

Maggie stepped into her own office, welcoming a moment alone with her thoughts as she changed into a plain white, scoop-necked cotton T-shirt, one of several she kept in her office in case of emergencies just like this. Yes, even over the sting of hot coffee, she’d noticed the guy was good looking. And his touch, however inadvertent, had sent sparks of knowing all the way to her brain — and other parts.

“You’ve been too long without a man in your life, Maggie Kendall,” she whispered to herself.

From the outer office, she could hear Colleen finishing the phone call with a little flirtatious banter and sighed. Had she ever enjoyed such lighthearted banter? If she had, it was a dim and distant memory now. There was no chance she’d ever have a man in her life, or ever let anyone get close to her. It was too dangerous.

She sank into the old leather desk chair, relieved that Colleen had, with her usual diplomacy, saved her from a long and trivial discussion with Jeb. He’d been made redundant when the local paper mill closed and now thought journalism was an exciting new career. He was also long-winded, pedantic, and terrified of making a mistake. His report on the golf club dinner would have filled an entire page if Maggie hadn’t taken the time to tactfully edit it down to four paragraphs.

“You owe me, Maggie,” Colleen called from the other room. “I just slayed the first dragon of the day.”

“Slaying dragons is part of your job description,” Maggie hollered back, picking up the pile of mail Colleen had left on her desk. It was so good to start the day looking forward to your work.
I was so lucky to find Woeful Creek, and even luckier to find this little newspaper up for sale,
she thought. After the terrible turmoil of the last few years, her life was finally under control and sailing calm waters.

• • •

The little cow bells over the front door tinkled, indicating a customer had come into the office. Maggie, engrossed in sorting the mail and coordinating the office diary, ignored the murmur of voices in the outer office.

Between sips of coffee, she riffled through the selection of bills, letters to the editor, press releases, invitations, and notices of meetings that were the usual mail offering for any small-town newspaper editor — all the stuff that made rural life flow in its steady, unpressured way.

Her breath caught in her throat as she reached the bottom of the stack, snatching her hand away as if a snake lay there rather than an innocuous looking pink envelope with the word
Personal
messily printed in red crayon above her name. It was the kind of envelope Colleen wouldn’t open — the kind of envelope that might contain a personal greeting card or party invitation. Maggie swallowed hard to stem the panic already swelling in her chest.

Stop it,
she ordered herself.
STOP IT! It’s over, finished. I paid a high price, but it’s over and I won’t look back … You’ll see — it’s probably an invitation to the Historical Society’s annual tea or some such.
She determinedly picked up the envelope again and slid her thumbnail under the flap. A cheap party invitation with a cartoon clown fluttered out. Scrawled in multicolored, crayoned letters were the words:
So Happy to Have Found You! Watch Out For A Gift From Me!

Maggie shivered, hugging her arms around herself to try to ward off the sudden cold. But the chill was inside her heart, not the fault of the ancient radiator beside her desk.
She’d known this day would come. That he would find her was as inevitable as snow arriving in the Canadian deep winter.

Now that it had finally happened, a numbed calm settled over her. It was almost a relief that the axe had finally fallen on her life.

The only question in her mind was what would she do now?

Would she run — or would she kill him?

Barbaric as it might sound, the thought of ending a monster’s life gave Maggie a warm feeling of being in control. Empowered.

This time she wouldn’t back down, she promised herself. She’d hold onto everything that had become so dear to her — this funny little rural town and the newspaper that served it, the house by the lake, the warm people who’d welcomed her as a stranger and become her friends.

But in the pit of her stomach she recognized the vow for the bravado it was. There was no avoiding her fate except to keep running. Her stomach clenched. He was promising her a gift.

Somebody was going to die.

Maggie squashed down her fear and shuffled the damning envelope underneath the other papers as her secretary knocked on the office door. “There’s someone here to see you, Maggie,” Colleen said, her short, strawberry blonde curls bobbing as she peered through the door at her boss. “She doesn’t have an appointment, but says she has to see you.”

“Did she give a name?” Colleen’s answer was interrupted by the ringing of the front office phone. “Send her in, then, Colleen, and answer that — it might be a major advertiser.”

Colleen grinned at their shared joke and moments later the office door opened again to admit the visitor. Maggie looked up, an automatic welcoming smile dying on her lips as she recognized the woman who entered. A malevolent ghost from her buried past, dressed all in Prada. The room momentarily blurred and faded around her as her small office filled with her visitor’s expensive perfume.

She’d been wrong. Horribly wrong. Empowerment was short lived.

“You’re very hard to find, Laura Rose Andrews — or should I call you Maggie Kendall?” The tall, stylishly dressed young woman calmly settled uninvited into the straight-backed chair facing Maggie’s desk. She placed her laptop case on the floor and straightened an imaginary wrinkle in her business-like blue skirt, all the while looking as innocent as a lamb.

“What the hell are you doing here, Susan?” Maggie demanded. The words had to fight their way through the constriction in her throat.

“I’d like to be able to say I’m just looking up an old friend, but we were hardly that, were we?”

Maggie shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. If Susan noticed Maggie’s face had gone whiter than her cotton shirt, she didn’t comment. Instead, she leaned forward, the sharply molded planes of her face alight with a mean excitement.

“Quite a come-down, eh?” Susan cast a disparaging glance around the room. “How on earth did you wind up on this funky little small-town rag when you were such a high flier? I guess that’s what comes of lying and screwing around so many vulnerable people … ”

Looking around her, seeing for the first time the cluttered, old-fashioned office furnishings as they must look through the eyes of a top-flight national press reporter, Maggie wanted to close her eyes and wish her uninvited guest away. Anger flared as an idea crossed her mind.

“Did you send this?” she demanded, tossing the note from the pink envelope across the desk to land by Susan’s hand. The other woman glanced at it dismissively.

“God, no. I don’t think many of us would be throwing a party for you, Laura. It’s reporters like you who bring shame on the rest of us. You’re an embarrassment to your profession.”

Maggie stood but kept the broad expanse of her scarred and battered oak desk between her and the other woman. “If that’s what you’ve come to say, you’ve said it. Now leave.” The words scratched their way from her throat.

“Whoa, not so fast. I’m doing a piece on ‘Whatever happened to … ?’ And you were such a little celebrity for a while; you’d make a perfect addition to my rogues’ gallery.”

The anger Maggie had been holding in check suddenly sizzled like an electrical short in her brain. She knew her former colleagues held her in contempt, but did they really hate her enough to want to humiliate her all over again? Swallowing the rage and shame that threatened to choke her, Maggie retorted, “Never in a million years!”

Susan laughed, a menacing sound devoid of humor. “You don’t have much choice, really, do you? You can cooperate and maybe give the readership another abject apology, or I can write about how you’re still spreading your poison, only this time in the motherhood and apple pie context of a small town newspaper.”

“Why are you doing this? You know I meant no harm — ”

“Yeah, you said all that.” Susan stood suddenly, leaning across the cluttered surface of the desktop so her face was inches from Maggie’s. “You made us all look like fools and charlatans, Laura. Your lies rubbed off on the rest of us. If trotting you out for another drubbing helps show the public that the rest of us still have our integrity intact, then so be it!”

Susan moved toward the door and Maggie followed her, panic nipping at her heels. “I’m warning you, Susan — stay away from me!” she shouted, anger turning to fear.

Susan was at the main office door now. Maggie reached out and grabbed her arm, willing to beg — and then she felt it. That feeling that she’d tried so hard for so long to suppress. The everyday working office swam before her as if she were seeing it under water, and the present was fading fast. It took all her inner strength to refuse to let the vision take over. Barely knowing what she was doing, she stepped back to steady herself against the doorjamb of her office and spoke quietly in a voice she didn’t even recognize as her own.

“You’d better be careful, Susan. What you’re doing is dangerous.”

Susan turned, smiled cruelly, and flipped a rude finger at Maggie before striding away.

Too late, Maggie became aware that Colleen was staring at her with horror on her face. But Colleen didn’t look anywhere near as shocked as the customer who was with her. This little incident just had to happen when the town gossip was in the office. Cindy Lewis’s expression was already migrating from shock to bright anticipation of how she was going to spread the news of this confrontation between Maggie and the well-dressed stranger.

As Susan slammed the door behind her, Maggie fled to her private bathroom and retched into the toilet bowl. Her heart slammed in her chest as she fought off the dizziness that offered sanctuary from the past.

Please tell me why this is happening?
she asked her pale reflection in the mirror as she sloshed cold water over her face and swilled her mouth. Running on autopilot, she ran shaking fingers through her hair to smooth the curly, shoulder-length strands, then returned to her desk.