Twice Kissed (44 page)

Maggie felt sick inside. Mary Theresa’s eyes were round, her skin white. “Don’t listen to her, Mag,” she insisted.

“Forming that company afterwards, MER, was just to salve your guilty conscience,” Eve said. “You know, I think I’ve got an idea how to end all this.”

“What?” Mary Theresa asked nervously.

“A way to clean up the mess that you and Renee made.”

“No—”
Maggie, we’ve got to do something. She’s gonna kill us both. Grab the knives!
“Eve, this is foolish. We’ve got to work something out. Come on—” As Marquise tried to reason with her, Eve glanced her way. The rack of knives was only a short distance away. Heart drumming, Maggie edged closer to the counter.

But the wheels were turning in Eve’s mind. “It’s gonna work out, all right. My way.”

She raised the pistol.

Stop her! Now!

Maggie lunged forward.

Eve twisted the gun, pointing it at her own left arm. Crack! The little gun went off. Eve screamed in agony.

“You stay here,” Thane commanded Becca as he stood on the brakes in front of Marquise’s house.

“No way.” Becca wasn’t going to be pushed around.

“Don’t argue; it could be dangerous.”

“So?” She didn’t seem the least bit intimidated but he understood her reasoning. This was a kid who had lied, stolen, and hitchhiked to get to her mother from California. Thane’s paranoia wasn’t going to hold her back.

“I don’t know what’s in the house. Stay put. I’ll be back for you.”

“Liar.”

“Do it, Becca,” he ordered as he climbed out of the truck, wishing there was a way to lock her safely inside. Obviously his lecture about being mature, responsible and doing what your elders say had had no effect on her whatsoever.

He started up the walk, turned on his heel and pointed at the truck with one authoritative finger.

A pistol cracked.

A woman screamed in agony.

Maggie!

He burst through the door and ran blindly through the hall. His head pounded with fear. He’d lost her. Come all this way only to lose her. Dread and rage thundered in his heart. “Maggie! For the love of Christ! Maggie!” His voice was raw, his heart pumping, hell-raising fury and blind-ass fear driving him on.

“Thane—stay back!” Maggie’s terrified voice.

She was alive.

“Get the hell out.” Another voice, one he didn’t recognize. He kept running.

He heard footsteps behind him. Sirens screaming outside.

“Mom?” A small voice.

“Becca? Oh, God, no!” Maggie yelled. “Stay back! For the love of God—Thane, get her out of here!
NOW!”

“Shut up!” The woman’s voice again. Boots thundering, he rounded the corner and saw a woman with blood running down her arm and a gun in her hand. She turned, her face ashen, and leveled the weapon at him.

“No!”

“Mom!” Becca ran into the room and started to push Thane, but he grabbed her.

“Becca, get away!” Maggie screamed, vaulting toward the bloody woman, who rounded, her hand wobbling. As Maggie reached her, the barrel was pointed at Becca and Thane.

“Oh, God, no!” Mary Theresa threw herself between Thane and Eve, just as the gun spat fire.

Bam!

With an agonizing scream, Mary Theresa hit the floor. Thane pushed Becca into a chair.

The shooter took aim again.

Thane sprang through the air.

Crack!
The pistol exploded with a burst of fire.

Pain, white hot, burned through his gut. He wrestled the woman to the ground, fighting a blackness pressing against his brain.

“Thane! No! No!” Maggie cried.

The world swam before his eyes but he held onto the woman who was clawing at him, trying to aim her damned gun again. He blinked, hearing footsteps, sharp male voices. Orders.

“Stop! Police!”

He was being pried from the woman, but she managed to turn the gun on herself.
Bang!
Becca screamed. Maggie vaulted to the couch where Becca sat, white-faced and shaking and crying. “It’s okay, baby, it’s gonna be okay.” She held her tight, rocked with her child and saw Detective Henderson’s face through a haze. Her head was pounding; the air smelled of blood and hot metal.

“Shit, it’s a goddamned war zone in here,” Henderson said. “Call the paramedics!” he ordered a uniformed man.

“They’re here.”

What seemed like dozens of uniformed men and women, weapons drawn, burst into the room. Immediately they set about helping the injured, and Maggie was torn between holding her child, her lover, or her sister. Tears ran down her face and she trembled inside.
Please God, let them live. Let them all live.

“I need oxygen over here.”

“This one is still alive—who the hell is it?”

“Eve Lawrence,” Maggie said woodenly, seeing Eve’s body oozing blood, her eyes behind broken glasses staring up at the fluorescent lights. “She…she was the one behind it all. She even shot herself…so that you’d think we did it, I suppose.” Was that possible? Had Eve been so desperate that she would wound herself then try and kill both Marquise and her?

“She saved my life,” Becca said, looking at Marquise, who lay, blood pumping from her chest. The floor was sticky and purple with a spreading stain as a paramedic worked feverishly over her, trying to staunch the blood, applying an oxygen mask. Policemen and women were everywhere. Maggie, holding Becca, inched toward Thane.

“Get the kid out of here,” Henderson barked.

“I’ve got her,” Henderson’s partner said, offering a tentative smile as she embraced Becca. “I’m Hannah. You must be Becca.”

“Mom—”

“It’s all right, honey.”

“Let’s go into the other room.” Hannah helped Becca out of the crime scene and toward the front of the house.

“I’ll be right there,” Maggie promised.

Maggie! I love you. You know that, don’t you?

They were placing Mary Theresa on a stretcher. “Christ, it’s that television woman!”

“I need to talk to her,” Maggie demanded.

“She can’t hear ya. Get her into an ambulance!”

Goodbye, Maggie…

“No!”

I’m so tired…I…

“We’re losin’ her,” one of the paramedics said.

“NO! NO!” Maggie wailed, throwing herself at the stretcher, feeling strong arms pull her back. “You’re going to be fine. Mary Theresa, can you hear me? Hang in there!” She was sobbing, choking with the knowledge that Mary Theresa was dying. Pain tore through her and she felt a rending in her soul, as if part of her had been ripped away. “Oh, God, no!”

“Shit, she’s going.” Running, two men carried Mary Theresa on the stretcher out of the room and to the waiting ambulance, but Maggie knew in her heart that she’d lost her sister forever.

“Get her out of here,” Henderson said. “Have her checked at the hospital for injuries and shock.” They were talking about her!

“I’m not going anywhere!”

“Lady, please—”

“Just wait. Thane?” She dropped to her knees where Thane was being worked on by a paramedic.

“He’s lost consciousness.”

“Get him to the ambulance.”

Fear, as cold as death, scraped over her heart with steely nails. “I have to be with him.”

“He won’t know it.”

“Don’t care. Let me ride with him. Thane, can you hear me, love? Thane…I love you…” She thought she saw a twitch of his lips, but she couldn’t be sure…he was pale and bleeding and…

She felt someone place a blanket over her shoulders, found a way to connect with Becca again, and started praying like she’d never prayed before in her life.

She couldn’t lose Thane now. Not ever again.

But it was out of her hands.

Somewhere deep in the void he heard her voice. “Thane, can you hear me? Love?”

Love?
Was that Maggie’s voice? Pain screamed through his body and as he opened one eye, light, white and blinding, flooded his senses.

“Thane? He’s trying to open his eyes! Becca, look. Oh, God, Thane, we thought, I mean…” she was crying, her voice cracking. “Mary Theresa is dead…but you…oh, please.”

He forced his eye open again and her face, a blurry image, came into his line of vision. She was smiling and crying, her tears raining down on him. “You scared me to death,” she said, sniffing and laughing and sobbing. “I thought I’d lost you. Again. I couldn’t bear it.”

He felt her hand, warm as opposed to the cold steel of the hospital bed rail. He tried to speak and his voice failed him. “Maggie—” he croaked out.

“Yes, love.”

“Would…would you…”

“Would I what?”

“Stop…crying…”

“I can’t.”

“Long…long enough to tell…tell me you’ll…marry me.”

“What?” She gasped, then started crying harder. “Marry you? Are you nuts? I’m not leaving this hospital until I do.” She let out a half-laugh and a sniff. “The way I figure it, you can’t very well run away from me.”

“Wouldn’t do it. Love you,” he said, and as he drifted off again, he heard her swearing her undying love for him as well.

“I love you too, cowboy, so don’t you do anything as stupid as dying on me, y’hear. I love you!”

Christmas Eve

Settler’s Ridge, Idaho

“…let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…”

The radio played softly while Maggie tucked a special present under the tree. She smiled as she saw the reflection of Christmas lights on her wedding band. Who would have thought? She’d never expected to marry again, never thought she and Thane would become a family, but she’d been wrong.

She walked to the window and spied Becca and Thane trudging through the snow. They’d fed the horses and were returning, with Barkley yapping and bounding behind them.

Mary Theresa was dead; Eve had made sure of that. Now Eve Lawrence was behind bars, awaiting trial for not only Marquise’s death, but Renee Warner Nielsen’s as well. Maggie’s publisher was screaming for her to write the book of Marquise’s life and death, but Maggie couldn’t bring herself to do it. It was sad, she thought, how her sister had found in death the fame that had eluded her in life. Now her picture was flung across the tabloids; speculation as to her private life ran high. The American public and press couldn’t get enough of her.

As for her, Maggie was happy to be back in Idaho, away from Dean’s family. Jim and Connie had given up their quest to become Becca’s guardians and Becca was finally settling into school here. She even had her first boyfriend, a cute quiet boy named Austin Peters.

The door opened and Barkley flew into the room, only to shake the snow from his coat and dampen the presents that were piled beneath the boughs of the little pine tree.

“We could be celebrating in Cheyenne,” Thane had teased.

“Or Rio Verde,” Maggie had reminded him.

But they decided to live here while Thane, still recovering from the shot that had cracked two ribs and destroyed his spleen, healed. In the spring, they would decide whether or not they would move.

A lot depended on his son. Ryan, whom he’d met once. The boy’s adoptive parents, Vera and Bill Brown, realizing that Thane had no intention of stealing him away from them, had allowed their son to meet his biological father. There were plans for the summer. Fishing trips and back packing.

Yes, life had settled down. Even Becca and Thane were getting used to each other, though they still clashed. “Both bullheaded,” Maggie had informed them on many an occasion.

Becca headed off to her room to call Austin, and Thane, seeing they were alone, dragged Maggie into his willing arms. “What say we do it tonight under the tree?” he suggested in her ear.

“You—the cripple? On the floor?” she teased, looking into the eyes of the man she loved and feeling just a moment’s sadness, for she missed Mary Theresa, would never feel that special bond between herself and her sister again.

“Try me?”

“Should I?”

“Definitely.” He kissed her long and hard, stealing her breath, heating her blood, and she wondered if she’d ever grow tired of this man—or even just satisfied and content.

Not a chance.
He was and always would be too exciting. From the bedroom she heard Becca’s happy laughter. Obviously she’d connected with her new boyfriend. “I have something for you, Mr. Walker,” she said, reaching under the tree and retrieving the tiny box. “Open it.”

“Now?”

“Umm.”

With a lift of one eyebrow, he watched her as he untied the ribbon and removed the lid. Inside were a small pair of red and green bootees. He didn’t move. Didn’t say a word.

“We’ll need those next year.”

His smile was wide. He glanced down at his own bare feet. “Don’t think they’ll fit.”

“No?” she teased. “Well, you don’t know until you try, cowboy.”

“He placed a hand over her flat abdomen. “You tryin’ to tell me something, darlin’?”

“Only good things.” His arms wrapped around her waist, and he kissed her again. “Merry Christmas.”

“To you, too,” he said with a positively wicked grin. “Now…about you and me under the tree…you’re not gettin’ out of that one.”

“In your dreams, cowboy.”

“Most definitely.” He winked down at her. “And in yours as well.”