by Nora Roberts
He sighed, recognizing defeat. “When I played it for the producers, they were ecstatic. It was suggested that you come out and supervise the recording.”
“Forget it.” She began to pace to the sink and back again.
“Damn it, we’d come to you, but there’s no studio in Hicksville.”
“Morganville,” she corrected mildly. “You don’t need me for the recording.”
“They want you to do the title song.”
“What?” Surprised, she stopped her restless pacing.
“Now listen to me before you say no.” C.J. straightened in his chair and put on his best negotiator’s voice. “I realize you’ve always refused to perform or record, and I’ve never pressed you. But this is something I really think you should consider. Maggie, that song’s dynamite, absolute dynamite, and nobody’s going to be able to put into it what you did. After I played the tape, everyone in the room needed a cold shower.”
Though she laughed, Maggie couldn’t quite put the idea aside. “I can think of a half-dozen artists who could deliver that number, C.J. You don’t need me.”
“I can think of a dozen who could deliver it,” he countered. “But not like you. The song needs you, Maggie. At least you could think about it.”
She told herself she’d already refused him enough for one day. “Okay, I’ll think about it.”
“You let me know in a week.”
“C.J.—”
“Okay, okay, two weeks.”
“All right. And I’m sorry about the phone.”
“You could at least get one of those hateful answering machines.”
“Maybe. Take care of yourself, C.J.”
“I always do. Just take your own advice.”
“I always do. Bye.” She hung up, heaving a long sigh. “I feel like I’ve just been taken to task by the school principal.”
Cliff watched her pick up a folded dish towel, crumple it, then set it down again. “You know how to handle him.”
“I’ve had plenty of practice.”
“What’s C.J. stand for?”
“Constant Jitters,” she murmured, then shook her head. “No, to tell you the truth, I haven’t any idea.”
“Does he always give you a hard time?”
“I suppose.” She picked up the dish towel again. “It seems the news hit the papers on the Coast. Then, when he couldn’t reach me …” She trailed off, frowning out the window.
“You’re tense.”
She dropped the cloth over the edge of the sink. “No.”
“Yes,” Cliff corrected. “I can see it.” Reaching out, he ran his hand down the side of her neck to the curve of her shoulder. “I can feel it.”
The brush of his fingers made her skin hum. Slowly, she turned her head. “I don’t want you to do that.”
Deliberately, he took his other hand on a like journey, so that he could knead at the tension in both of her shoulders. Was it her nerves he sought to soothe or his own? “To touch you?” he said quietly. “It’s difficult not to.”
Knowing she was already weakening, Maggie lifted her hands to his wrists. “Put some effort into it,” she advised as she tried to push him aside.
“I have for the past few days.” His fingers pressed into her skin and released, pressed and released, in a rhythm that caused her bones to liquefy. “I decided it was a misdirection of energy when I could put the same effort into making love to you.”
Her mind was starting to haze, her breath beginning to tremble. “We’ve nothing to give each other.”
“We both know better than that.” He lowered his head so that his lips could brush along the temple he’d seen her stroke while on the phone.
A sigh escaped before she stopped it. This wasn’t what she wanted—it was everything she wanted. “Sex is—”
“A necessary and enjoyable part of life,” Cliff finished before he moved his lips down to tease hers.
So this was seduction, Maggie thought as her mind began to float. This was arousal without will. She knew she wasn’t resisting, but yielding, melting, submitting, just as she knew that when surrender was complete, her bridges would be in flames behind her.
“We’ll only be two people sharing a bed,” she murmured. “There’s nothing else.”
Whether it was a question or a statement, Cliff tried to believe it was true. If there was more, it wouldn’t end, and he’d find himself tangled around a woman he barely understood for the rest of his life. If there were only needs, he could relinquish his control and race with them. If there was only desire, he could take whatever he wanted with no consequences. When she was softening and heating in his arms, what did he care for consequences?
“Let me feel you,” he murmured against her lips. “I want your skin under my hands, smooth and hot, your heart pounding.”
Anything, she thought dizzily. She’d give him anything, as long as he stayed close like this, as long as his mouth continued that dark, desperate, delirious seduction of her senses. He tugged her T-shirt over her head, then ran his hands down her sides, up again, so that the friction had her nearly mad for more. His shirt scraped against her taut nipples until his hands came between them to possess.
He could feel her heart beat now, and she could hear it pounding in her own head. Her thighs pressed against his with only two layers of thin, soft denim between. She could remember every slope and plane of his body, how it had felt warm and urgent and naked on hers.
He smelled of work and the outdoors, traces of sweat and turned earth. As the scent raced through her senses, she took her lips over his face and throat to draw in the taste.
Uncivilized, like the land that held them both. Alluring and not quite tamed, like the thick woods that surrounded them. If she thought at all, this is how she thought of the need that burned between them. There was danger in both, and pleasure and wonder. Throwing aside all reason, Maggie gave herself to it.
“Now,” she demanded huskily. “I want you now.”
With no sense of time or place, no hesitation, they lowered onto the floor. The struggle with clothes only added to the aura of desperation and unrelenting desire that sprang back whenever they touched. Warmth against warmth, they found each other.
When the phone shrilled on the wall beside them, neither heard. Whether it was by choice or the will of fate, there was nothing for either of them but each other.
A tremble, a moan, a rough caress, the scent and fury of passion; that was their world. Urgently and more urgently, they sought the taste and touch of each other, as if the hunger would never abate, as if neither would allow it to. The floor was hard and smooth beneath them. They rolled over it as if it were layered with feathers. Sunlight streamed in, falling over them. They explored all the secrets of the night.
Man for woman, woman for man—time had no place and place no meaning. Hot and open, his mouth found hers, and finding it, he burned with the need to possess her completely. His fingers dug into her hips as he shifted her on top of him so that her skin slid tantalizingly over his. He felt her throb, just as he felt the flood of passion beat against the weakened dam of his control. At the moment of joining, her body arched back in stunned pleasure. The pace was frenetic, leaving them both helpless and raging. On and on they drove each other, mercilessly, ruthlessly.
Through half-closed eyes, Cliff saw her shudder with the speed of the crest. Then he was swept up with her in the power of the ultimate heat dance.
Chapter Nine
Had hours passed, or was his sense of time still distorted? Cliff tried to gauge the hour by the slant of the sun through the window, but couldn’t be sure. He felt more than rested; he felt vitalized. Turning his head, he watched Maggie as she slept beside him. Though his own actions were vague in his mind, like a half dream that blurs on awakening, he could remember carrying her upstairs where they’d tumbled into bed. Wrapped around each other, they’d fallen into an exhausted sleep. Yes, that part was vague, he mused, but the rest—
On the ki
tchen floor. He ran a hand over his face, uncertain if he was pleased or astonished. Cliff discovered he was both.
He’d made love to her on the kitchen floor like a frantic teenager in the first spin of desire. By the time a man of experience had reached his thirties, he should be able to show a bit more control, use a bit more finesse. Yet he’d had neither both times he’d made love with her. Cliff wasn’t certain that would change if he’d loved her a hundred times. She had some power over him that went deep and triggered frenzy rather than style. And yet … Because she was asleep and unaware, he brushed the hair from her cheek so that he could see more of her face. Looking at her was becoming a habit he wasn’t sure could be easily broken. Yet when they lay quiet like this, he was overwhelmed by a sense of protective tenderness. As far as he could remember, no other woman had elicited either response from him before. The knowledge wasn’t comfortable.
Perhaps it was because when she slept as she did now, she looked frail, defenseless, small. He’d never been able to resist fragility. When she was in his arms, she was all fire and flare, with a power so potent she seemed indestructible. Challenges were something else he’d never been able to resist.
Just who was Maggie Fitzgerald? Cliff wondered while he traced the shape of her mouth with a fingertip. He wouldn’t have said she was beautiful, yet her face had the power to both stun and haunt a man. He hadn’t expected her to be kind or compassionate, yet he’d seen the qualities in her. He hadn’t expected her to be self-sufficient, yet she was proving to be just that under an uneasy set of circumstances.
He frowned and unconsciously drew her closer. Maggie murmured but slept on. Though he’d told her that she had no connection with what had happened there ten years before, Cliff didn’t like knowing she was alone in the big, remote house. Knowing Morganville was a quiet, settled town didn’t change that. Even the quiet, the settled, had undercurrents. That had been made plain in the past two weeks.
Whoever had killed William Morgan had gone unpunished for a decade. Whoever had murdered him had probably walked the streets of town, chatted outside the bank, cheered at Little League games. It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Nor was it pleasant to conclude that whoever had killed once might do anything necessary to go on living a quiet, settled life in a town where everyone knew your name and your history. It might be a cliché about the murderer returning to the scene of the crime, but—
She woke up alone, her mind still disoriented. Was it morning? she wondered groggily. When she shifted, lifting both hands to push back her hair, she felt the sweet heaviness in her limbs that came from lovemaking. Abruptly awake, she looked over to see the bed beside her empty.
Perhaps she’d been dreaming. But when she felt the sheets beside her, they were still warm, and when she turned her face into the pillow, his scent lingered on the case.
They’d made love on the kitchen floor, she remembered with a reaction that directly paralleled Cliff’s. But she also remembered quite clearly the sensation of being carried up the stairs, gently, as if she’d been something precious. It was a warm memory, different from the erotic scene that had preceded it. A memory like that was something she could hold on to during some long, restless night in the future.
But he’d left, saying nothing.
Grow up, Maggie, she ordered herself. Be sensible. From the beginning she’d known this wasn’t romance but desire.
The only thing she’d gain from dwelling on the first was pain. Romance was for the impractical, the vulnerable, the naive. Hadn’t she spent a great deal of her time training herself to be none of those things?
He didn’t love her; she didn’t love him. There was a twinge in her stomach at the second denial that had her biting her lip. No, she insisted, she didn’t love him. She couldn’t afford to.
He was a hard man, though she’d seen some softer aspects of him. He was intolerant, impatient and more often rude than not. A woman didn’t need to fix her heart on a man like that. In any case, he’d made it clear that he wanted her body, and her body only. Twice she’d made the decision to give it to him, so she had no right to regrets, even though he’d left without a word.
Maggie flung her arms over her eyes and refused to acknowledge the growing fear that she’d already given him more than her body, without either of them being aware of it.
Then she heard it, the soft creak directly overhead. Slowly, she lowered her arms, then lay still. When it came the second time, the panic fluttered in her throat. She was awake, it was midafternoon, and the sounds came from the attic, not her imagination.
Though she was shaking, she climbed quietly out of bed. This time she wouldn’t cower in her room while someone invaded her home. This time, she thought, moistening her lips as she slipped into her T-shirt, she’d find out who it was and what they wanted. Cold and clearheaded, she took the poker from the fireplace and slipped into the hallway.
The attic stairs were to her right. When she saw that the door at the top was open, fear sliced through her again. It hadn’t been opened since she’d moved in. Shaking, determined, she took a firmer grip on the poker and started up the stairs.
At the doorway, she paused, hearing the faint whisper of movement inside. She pressed her lips together, swallowed, then stepped inside.
“Damn it, Maggie, you could hurt someone with that thing.”
She jumped back, banging smartly into the doorjamb. “What are you doing up here?” she demanded as Cliff scowled back at her.
“Just checking. When’s the last time you were up here?”
She expelled a breath, releasing pent-up tension. “Never. It’s far down on my lists of priorities, so I haven’t been up since I moved in.”
He nodded, taking another glance around. “Someone has.”
For the first time, she looked into the room. As she’d suspected, it contained little more than dust and cobwebs. It was high enough that Cliff could stand upright with an inch or so to spare, though at the sides it sloped down with the pitch of the roof. There was an old rocker that might prove interesting after refinishing, a sofa that was hopeless, two lamps without shades and a large upright traveling chest.
“It doesn’t look as though anyone’s been up here for years.”
“More like a week,” Cliff corrected. “Take a look at this.”
He walked toward the chest, and making a face at the layer of dust on the floor, Maggie padded after him in her bare feet. “So?” she demanded. “Joyce mentioned that there were some things up here she didn’t have any use for. I told her not to bother with them, that I’d take care of hauling them out when I was ready.”
“I’d say someone already took something out.” Cliff crouched in front of the dust-covered chest, then pointed.
Annoyed, stifling the urge to sneeze, Maggie bent toward the dust-covered chest. Then she saw it. Just near the lock, and very faint, was the imprint of a hand. “But—”
Cliff grabbed her wrist before she could touch the imprint herself. “I wouldn’t.”
“Someone was here,” she murmured. “I didn’t imagine it.” Struggling for calm, she looked back at Cliff. “But what could anyone have wanted up here, in this thing?”
“Good question.” He straightened, but kept her hand in his.
She wanted to play it light. “How about a good answer?”
“I think we might see what the sheriff thinks.”
“You think it has something to do with—the other thing.”
Her voice was steady enough, but with his fingers on her wrist, he knew her pulse wasn’t. “I think it’s odd that everything’s happening at once. Coincidences are curious things. You wouldn’t be smart to let this one go.”
“No.” This wasn’t ten years ago, she thought. This was now. “I’ll call the sheriff.”
“I’ll do it.”
She stopped in the doorway, bristling. “It’s my house,” she began.
“It certainly is,” Cliff agreed mildly, then stunned her by running both hands up her naked
thighs to her hips. “I don’t mind looking at you half dressed, but it’s bound to distract Stan.”
“Very funny.”
“No, very beautiful.” While she stared, wide-eyed, he lowered his head and kissed her with the first true gentleness he’d shown. She didn’t move or speak when he lifted his head again. Her eyes were still open. “I’ll call the sheriff,” Cliff said roughly. “You get some pants on.”
Without waiting for her reply, he was heading down the steps, leaving her staring after him. Dazed, Maggie lifted a finger to trace over her own lips. That, she decided, had been as unexpected and as difficult to explain as anything else that had happened between them.
Utterly confused, Maggie left the poker tilted against the door and went back to her room. She couldn’t have known he could kiss like that—tenderly, exquisitely. If she couldn’t have known that, she couldn’t have known that her heart could stop beating and her lungs could choke up. The totally different kiss had brought on a totally different reaction. This reaction, she knew, had left her without any form of defense.
A passionate, aggressive demand she could meet with passion and aggression of her own. There they were equal, and if she had no
