Twice Kissed (21 page)

For an instant she couldn’t move, then gave herself a hard mental shake. This was Thane she was dealing with. Thane. The man who had taken her heart and trampled it with the worn-down heels of his damned shit-kicking cowboy boots, the man who didn’t seem to have a past, the man who had married her sister and now was a suspect in Mary Theresa’s disappearance. “I said I’d call.” He hung up and surveyed her with an intensity she found unsettling.

“Trouble in paradise?”

One side of his mouth lifted, though the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Let’s just leave it at trouble. You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Just let me connect with Howard. Then we’ll take off. There’s fresh coffee in the maker.” He turned back to the phone, and she left him alone. In the kitchen, she poured coffee and stood at the window. The snow had stopped, at least for the moment, but already the tire tracks that they’d left only hours before were nearly filled by drifts. Overhead, the first few patches of blue sky were visible.

She shivered as she thought about the hours ahead. What would she find in Denver and where, oh, where was her sister?

She heard the sound of Thane’s boots and turned as, shoving an unruly lock of his hair from his eyes, he appeared from the hallway.

“Okay. Howard’s on for a few more days.”

“So we can leave?”

“Yes.”

She took a last swallow from her cup, then tossed the dregs down the sink. “I think you promised me some answers.”

“That I did.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Let’s load up. On the way to Denver I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

“Everything?” she asked, wondering if she really wanted the truth.

“Whatever your little heart desires, Mag Pie.”

If you only knew, Thane,
she thought, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat.
If you only knew.
But this wasn’t the time for sentimentality. Too much was at stake.

“Okay, Walker,” Maggie said, once they were inside Thane’s cold pickup. “Let’s start with Mary Theresa. What did you have to do with her disappearance?”

“I thought we’d already settled that one.” Thane guided his truck onto the main road. The tires slipped, spun, then held as sunlight pierced through the clouds. “I don’t know anything about what happened to her. Period. The cops seem to think otherwise.”

Maggie wasn’t convinced he was telling the truth and if the police were questioning him, there had to be a reason. A good one. The police weren’t stupid. They were used to dealing with kidnappings, murders, abductions, rapes, and every crime under the sun. “When was the last time you saw her?”

He hesitated. “The night before she disappeared.”

“Oh, God.” She felt as if someone had kicked her in the gut. “The night before?” she repeated, trying to register this information. According to Mary Theresa she and Thane hadn’t had much contact after they were divorced. They had gone their separate ways. “I don’t understand.”

His lips pursed, and she felt that same old invisible wall, a shield, rise between them. A muscle worked in his jaw and his eyes narrowed on the horizon as if he were carefully weighing his words. “We had some unsettled issues.”

“What issues?” Maggie leaned closer to the passenger door and stared hard at this man she’d loved, the one to whom she’d willingly given her virginity and heart, the one who had betrayed her so brutally that she never thought she’d love again. She wasn’t immune to him, couldn’t ignore his rugged male allure. Chiseled features, harsh as the Wyoming countryside that had spawned him, stretched tight.

“I think we’d better start at the beginning,” he said slowly.

“Always a good idea.”

“I mean at the very beginning.”

She felt a jab of apprehension, a frisson of foreboding slide down her spine, but she wasn’t one to back down. “Okay.”

“I never did explain to you what happened between Mary Theresa and me, did I?” He sent her a glance that warned her that the conversation was going to travel in painful territory.

“I don’t think I wanted an explanation.”

“Sorry, Maggie. You’re gonna get one anyway.” He shifted down for a corner, then snagged his sunglasses from the dash. “I’m afraid you’re not going to like what I have to say.”

“That’s pretty much guaranteed.” Steeling herself, she decided she could face anything. She’d spent the last eighteen years second-guessing everyone involved; now it was time to hear Thane’s side of the story.

“You and I were pretty involved, remember?”

How could she forget? Rather than show any emotion, she nodded. “I’d say so.”

“Then Mitch drowns, and all hell breaks loose.”

She couldn’t disagree. The pain that existed in her family; the fingers pointed in accusation; the disbelief that Mitchell Xavier Reilly, captain of the Rio Verde High School swim team, could have drowned; the suspicion that he’d taken his own life had infiltrated the house like a disease that gnawed at all of them, eroding the family. There was darkness then, and depression. Their mother drank more heavily, didn’t bother to hide her alcoholism; their father took up smoking again and avoided going to the office, which had always been his sanctuary—his bastion of self-esteem. Mary Theresa pretended nothing was wrong, smiling, laughing a little too loudly, wearing more makeup than usual, and avoiding the house, while Maggie turned inward, lying on her bed for hours, staring at the ceiling and fighting the insidious but oh, so real suspicion that her brother’s death had somehow been her fault. “I remember,” she said, her voice husky with the agony of the past. Those days were shadowed, emotions raw and bleeding, the house a bleak, dark tomb.

“And do you remember that you avoided me?”

Sighing, she nodded, not wanting to think about her part in the unraveling of all that she’d once held as good. “I couldn’t face you.”

“Because you threw me to the wolves.”

She nodded and ground her teeth together. She wasn’t going to take the blame for more than her fair share of what had happened. “If you’re talking about telling Mom and Dad the truth about seeing you, yeah, that’s what I did. But I didn’t know at the time that Mitch had…had drowned.” After all these years she still had trouble thinking that her adopted brother had somehow taken his own life, couldn’t believe it.

He flipped down the visor as the sun began chasing away the clouds in earnest, bright rays dancing on the pristine countryside. The road had been plowed, but the truck’s tires still spun once in a while, the truck sliding where patches of ice were hidden beneath the drifting snow. “Your dad came at me like a hound from hell.”

“He was upset.”

“Oh, no.” Thane’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, his knuckles showing white. “He was beyond upset. Way beyond. Showed up at Flora’s ranch, called me every name in the book and swore that if I ever so much as looked at you again, he’d kill me. It’s a wonder I wasn’t fired.” His mouth compressed in a silent rage that spanned the years and pulsed in the cab. “I was lucky that Flora took my side.”

Maggie picked at a hangnail. “What’s this have to do with Mary Theresa?”

“That’s just it. It didn’t start out as anything to do with Mary Theresa. But I figured you and I were through.”

Her heart squeezed at the memory.

“So, imagine my surprise when you called and told me you wanted to meet me, that you didn’t care what your folks said, that you missed me.”

She forced her hands into her pockets so she’d quit fidgeting and stared out the windshield. “I meant it,” she conceded. At least she thought she had. She remembered stealing into the den, making the call. She’d been so nervous she nearly knocked over a desk lamp, her heart pounding loud enough that she was certain her sister, sleeping down the hall, could hear its wild beat. But she hadn’t been able to stop herself from dialing him—hadn’t been able to believe that it was truly over. “Can you pick me up?” she’d asked, scared spitless at the thought that she was openly defying her parents.

Less than two weeks earlier, Frank Reilly, his upper lip quivering in rage, had specifically forbidden her ever to see “that two-bit rodeo punk” again. “If I ever catch him near you, I swear, Margaret Elizabeth, I’ll break his goddamned neck!” her father had promised her, his gaze steady, his lips compressed into a razor-thin line beneath his stiff, unyielding mustache.

For the first few days, Maggie had accepted her father’s edict—she’d never been one to defy him openly—but the week after the funeral, when the oppression in the house felt like a smothering cloak and the air-conditioning unit had given out, creating a heat that mingled with the general desperation and malaise within the thick walls, Maggie had needed to get away.

She’d been consumed by memories of making love to Thane that first time, had recalled the smell of rainwater slickening his body as he’d entered her and broken the thin veil of her virginity. She’d remembered looking up into blue eyes that seemed to mirror her own soul as he’d spilled himself within her.

Finally, Maggie couldn’t stand another second in the dark gloom of her parents’ grief, nor could she bear her sister’s fake upbeat attitude. Mary Theresa was forever shopping, buying new clothes, trying out new hairstyles, and painting her fingernails outrageous colors. Her laughter rang down the tile hallways and sounded as phony and out of place as a foghorn in the desert. But she refused to slow down, to face what had happened, and had kept herself in constant motion so that she wouldn’t feel the pain that shrouded Maggie as she’d lain on her bed, pinned by the burden of her grief.

“You’ve got to get out,” Mary Theresa insisted one day as she breezed past the pool where Maggie was listlessly swimming laps. M.T. had lost weight, and there was no vibrance to her skin, no luster in her eyes.

“I will.” Maggie dragged herself from the water and dabbed at her face with a towel.

“I mean it, Maggie, this place is like a mortuary.” Then she heard herself and let out a brittle laugh that was followed by tears falling from her eyes. “Oh, God, I didn’t mean—”

“I know.” They looked at each other and Mary Theresa’s facade of happiness cracked. Her perfectly made-up face crumpled like a empty, crushed can.

“Oh, shit, Maggie, I…I…” Her voice broke, and all at once Maggie was on her feet, feeling the hot cement under her soles as Mary Theresa fell into her arms. They clung together, crying, sobbing, holding each other up under the tonnage of anguish, the desperate heartache and guilt they each bore. “I think I killed him.”

“You didn’t.” Maggie held on tighter as Mary Theresa, her gauzy dress wet, her phony energy zapped, sagged against her.

She convulsed, her body wracked with horrible sobs. “I should never have—”

“Shh. It’s over. Let’s not talk about it.” Maggie couldn’t bear listening to any confessions now. Whatever had happened between her cousin and sister was now dead, buried with Mitch.

They rocked gently, their heads nestled in each other’s shoulders, their bodies shaking until their tears had run dry, their painful moans of grief finally silenced.

Mary Theresa lifted her head and, spying her image in the reflection of the patio door, cleared her throat and stepped out of her sister’s embrace. Swiping her eyes, brushing away tears from her red cheeks, she seemed suddenly embarrassed at her display of emotion. She sniffed and, biting her lip, looked away, as if afraid to see the pain in her sister’s eyes. “Sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”

“It’s okay.” Maggie blinked and lifted a shoulder. “It came over me, too.”

Mary Theresa managed a false, wobbly smile as they walked inside and through the house to Maggie’s room. “Let’s just forget about all this,” she suggested, clearing her throat and running anxious fingers through her hair. “It’s just…too…too depressing.”

“Of course it is. Mitch is dead.”

“But we’re not.” Desperation and fear flashed in her eyes. All the anguish, compassion, and tenderness they’d shared on the patio vanished. Swallowing hard, she hooked a thumb, jerking it toward her chest. “
I’m
not.” She picked up a brush from the top of Maggie’s nightstand and ran it through her hair so fiercely it crackled as if in protest. In the reflection, her eyes found her sister’s and for a split second Maggie thought she saw a glimmer of hatred, a dark glimpse of guile that made Maggie’s blood turn to ice, but it disappeared in a flash, and she thought she’d imagined it.

“I don’t know about you, Maggie,” Mary Theresa continued, “but I can’t stand all this…this wallowing in pain and self-pity and grief. It’s not that I don’t miss Mitch, but…but I’ve got a life to live.” With that she dropped the brush, turned on her heel, and walked briskly out of the room. End of subject. End of grief. End of memories.

Maggie hadn’t been able to believe it. She’d sunk onto a corner of the bed, feeling broken and bleeding. If only she could pull herself together as easily as M.T. apparently had. Instead she’d sat motionless for nearly half an hour, the minutes ticking by as she’d reined in her pain, the bottom of her wet bathing suit dampening her quilt.

Two nights later she worked up the nerve to call Thane. She and her sister were alone in the house. Mary Theresa was asleep, their parents were out, but still Maggie perspired at the thought of getting caught. If Frank Reilly guessed his daughter was intent on crossing him, he’d ground her for the rest of her life, take away all her privileges. But Maggie didn’t care. Crossing her fingers, she prayed she would connect with Thane as she punched out his number. The phone rang four times before he answered, and her heart was going crazy, her pulse pounding in her eardrums.

”’Lo?”

At the sound of his voice, still muffled as if he’d been sleeping, her heart skipped a beat or two. She was desperate to see him again.

Since her parents had decided the ranch was off-limits for a while and she couldn’t go anywhere where she might have contact with him, she suggested that they meet after she was finished working the late shift at Roberto’s the following night. If she worked things right, they might be able to sneak away for an hour or two.

Her silly heart had soared when Thane, after listening to her plan, had said, “You’re on, Mag Pie. I’ll see ya then.”

On cloud nine for the first time since the funeral, she tiptoed to her sister’s room and shook Mary Theresa on the shoulder. She had to let her in on the scheme, as M.T. was supposed to pick her up from Roberto’s around ten. Yawning, a little grouchy from being aroused, Mary Theresa had agreed to being an accomplice before pulling her pillow over her head and falling back to sleep.

Maggie hadn’t slept a wink. The thought of seeing Thane again had been too exhilarating. She’d been up at the crack of dawn, swum laps, and even cleaned her room to keep busy; but still the day had dragged by until she arrived at the restaurant.

Everything was as it should be. Roberto’s was busier than usual for a Saturday night; families and couples crowded into the waiting area until tables were available. Maggie flew through her shift, clearing tables, carrying tubs of dishes into the kitchen, replacing silverware, filling water glasses as the hours rolled onward.

Around nine-thirty business began to slow. Nervously, she watched the entrance and at about a quarter to ten, Thane swung through the front door. Dressed in clean jeans and a wheat-colored polo shirt, he sauntered through the vestibule and scanned the connecting rooms until his gaze landed full force on Maggie. She nearly dropped the plastic tub of clean silverware wrapped in napkins she was carrying to the servers’ station. He winked, her heart soared, and, cheeks burning, she managed a ghost of a smile.