by Lyn Gardner
“Thought I’d clean up some,” Alex replied, looking over her shoulder at the sleepy-eyed woman. “I’ve been a bit lax in the housekeeping duties for the past few days. It seems as if someone wouldn’t let me leave the bedroom.”
Maggie’s cheeks reddened instantly. Turning on her heel, she went to get dressed, her blush getting another shade darker when she walked in and saw the state of the bedroom. Socks and shirts were thrown about the room, empty mugs balanced precariously on night stands, and the quilt and pillows were everywhere except on the bed.
Giggling at the mess, Maggie quickly straightened the room and got dressed. Grabbing all the empty cups, she went back to the kitchen and plopped them in the soapy water. “You forgot some,” she said, flashing Alex a smile.
“Yeah, well, I knew they were there, but I feared if I returned, you’d accost me again,” Alex said, rinsing another dish and stacking it on the counter.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t hear any argument a few hours ago,” Maggie said as she grabbed a towel and began drying the dishes piled by the sink.
“What can I say, you give great head.”
Unbreakable dinnerware comes in handy when you have children, clumsy partners or when words are spoken that you’re not expecting. Slipping from Maggie’s fingers, the plate fell to the floor and then, as if trying to escape, rolled out of the room. Coming to a stop in the lounge, it wound down on its rim until still.
Snickering at the embarrassment burning Maggie’s cheeks, Alex glanced at the dish now several feet away. “I suppose you’re going to want me to wash that one again – eh?”
Pursing her lips, Maggie glared back at Alex, but the merriment in Alex’s eyes was Maggie’s undoing. Shaking her head at the woman’s playfulness, Maggie retrieved the plate and dropped it in the sink.
“Let’s try this again, shall we?” she said, snatching another plate to dry. “And no more comments from you.”
Working in silence, casting only winks, grins and the occasional peck on the cheek, before too long, the kitchen was clean. As Alex was putting the remaining dishes in the cabinet, Maggie leaned against the counter, twirling the wet towel in her hands and playfully flicking it in the direction of Alex’s ass.
“You’d best not do that,” Alex warned, glancing over her shoulder at the woman threatening her bum with a rat tail.
“No worries, sweetheart, I’ve never mastered the technique.”
When Alex turned back to finish, Maggie twirled the towel tight, and one last time, flicked it hard in the air. When she heard the loud, wet crack, Maggie’s eyes went wide and in an instant, the only sound that could be heard were the remaining bubbles in the sink, fizzing as they disappeared. The few seconds that passed seemed like an eternity to Maggie, but when Alex finally spun around, the look on her face said it all. Maggie was in big trouble.
“Shit!” Maggie shrieked, running from the room.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Alex called out. Grabbing the wet towel, she chased Maggie down the hall with a smile in her eyes. “You are so mine right now!”
Laughing, Maggie fell on the bed, quickly followed by Alex, who decided that her punishment would come in the form of tickling. The days and nights of lovemaking had given Alex the opportunity to discover quite a few places on Maggie that were ticklish, so undaunted by Maggie’s giggles and squeals, Alex began attacking each and every one.
“No…no…Alex…please stop,” Maggie sputtered between fits of laughter. “Sweetheart, I will not be held responsible for my actions if you keep this up!”
“You started it,” Alex said, mercilessly allowing her fingers to dance lightly over Maggie’s sides, belly and the backs of her knees. “This’ll teach you to flick me with a wet towel!”
Laughing so hard that she thought her bladder was going to release any minute, Maggie fought against the tickle barrage until she couldn’t take anymore. Using all the strength she had left, she brought her knee up to fend off the attack and met Alex’s face straight on.
“Fuck!” Alex yelled as the force knocked her to the side. Holding her hand to her face, Alex rolled over without thinking and promptly fell off the bed, landing with a thud against the hard wooden floor.
“Shit!” Maggie exclaimed, scrambling off the bed. Running to the other side, she found Alex curled up in a ball with her hand firmly pressed over her eye, moaning softly.
“Oh, Christ, are you okay,” Maggie said with a snicker, believing that Alex was playing on her sympathies. “I did tell you I wouldn’t be held responsible if you kept tickling me.”
“I didn’t think you’d try to knock my bloody head off!”
Amused, Maggie reached over, urging Alex to roll onto her back. “Come on, let me see.”
Refusing to remove her hand from the pounding in her cheek and eye, Alex moved from her fetal position to her back and instantly heard Maggie gasp.
“Oh shit,” Maggie said, seeing the blood covering Alex’s face. “I’ll be right back.”
As Maggie ran from the room, Alex tasted something metallic in her mouth, and tentatively opening her eyes, she saw the blood now covering her hand. “Oh, crap. I think you broke my bloody nose!”
Returning with some wet towels, Maggie fell to her knees and tried to stop the blood from flowing from Alex’s nose. “Sweetheart, I’m so, so sorry,” she said, still unable to hide a small grin from appearing. “But I did tell you—”
“Well, I didn’t think you’d try to fucking kill me!”
Laughing, Maggie said, “Move your hand, sweetheart. Let me see.”
“Why? So you can laugh some more?”
“I promise if you let me see, I’ll kiss it and make it all better. Now come on, move your hand.”
Slowly, Alex did as asked, blinking several times before her eye finally focused. “Well?”
Noticing that the bleeding had already stopped, Maggie ran her finger down the bridge of Alex’s nose. “It doesn’t feel broken, but your cheek is bruised. It must have been a glancing blow.”
“Trust me, there was nothing glancing about it!”
Frowning at the damage she had inflicted, Maggie lightly touched Alex’s bruised cheek.
“Oi!” Alex exclaimed. “What? You want to make sure it hurts or something?”
With a giggle, Maggie shook her head. Leaning forward, she placed a feathery kiss on Alex’s lips. “Say you forgive me.”
“I’m not sure I should.”
“It was an accident.”
“You could have killed me.”
“But I didn’t, so that’s a plus,” Maggie said with a smile.
Sitting up, Alex said, “Yeah, I suppose it is.”
“So, do you forgive me?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“On whether you’re lying to me about my nose still being straight.”
Placing the softest of kisses on Alex’s cheek, Maggie whispered, “It’s straight, and as soon as you’re feeling better, I promise to take very good care of you, in a very non-straight way. How’s that?”
Waggling her eyebrows at Maggie’s offer, Alex got to her feet. “I’m feeling better already.”
“Why don’t we get some breakfast first? I have a feeling that we’re both going to need our strength for what I have in store.”
Alex’s body pulsed at the possibilities. Letting out a groan, she nodded her head. “Fine, food first, but after that, you have a lot of apologizing to do.”
Beaming, Maggie took Alex’s hand and they walked from the bedroom. Halfway up the hallway, their progress stopped when the door to the cabin swung open with such force that it crashed against the wall.
Hands held in love turned into those gripped in fear, and frozen in the hallway, Maggie and Alex suddenly became afraid. While they had talked endlessly about being found, as the imposing figures blocked the sunlight coming into the cabin, it was impossible not to feel terror.
Wearing identical bulky white parkas and their face
s hidden behind black ski masks, the two men were absolutely menacing, and both women quickly glanced around the room for something to protect themselves with. There was nothing.
Stomping their feet on the porch, the strangers walked inside. Seconds ticked by before one of the intruders pushed back the fur-lined hood of his jacket and pulled the mask from his face.
Seeing the bruise on Alex’s face, John Harper said with a scowl, “Well, it looks like we got here just in time.”
Chapter Sixteen
His conversations with their fathers had echoed in his head for days, and he had read the women’s files a dozen times, studying them like criminals even though they weren’t. John Harper knew that Campbell followed rules and Blake bent them. He knew that both, regardless of their methods, were good police officers, and he knew that one night, three years earlier, they had to come to blows. Assuming that the bruise on Alex’s cheek was the result of another heated argument between the two Detective Inspectors, John Harper did the only thing he could. He looked the other way. The two women had been through enough. Neither deserved a mark on their record, so instead of questioning them about who or what had caused the injury, he decided to give them a few degrees of separation.
With another winter storm on its way, within minutes of his arrival, Maggie and Alex were ushered from the cabin and placed on the back of separate snowmobiles parked at the edge of the forest. Taken to an awaiting helicopter near where their plane had crashed, they were given seats on the opposite sides of the chopper and whisked to an airport where a small jet was waiting to take them back to England.
Upon boarding the plane, Harper instructed the onboard medic to take care of Alex’s swollen cheek, and for the rest of their journey, he monopolized Maggie’s time with endless questions about their adventure, never once bringing up her partner’s bruised face. Both women had stolen glances at each other when they could, and a few times Alex had managed to send a flirtatious wink in Maggie’s direction, causing her to blush, but other than a few words spoken during the noisy helicopter ride, the women hadn’t been able to talk for hours.
Their arrival in London was as secretive as their departure. The damp English weather filled the air with misty rain, and the lights streaming from the many hangars cast an eerie glow across the tarmac. When the plane finally taxied to its destination, it was near a hangar far from prying eyes.
Harper, running interference as he had done the entire trip, escorted Maggie from the plane with Alex following closely behind. Stopping for a moment on the stairs, Alex breathed in the crisp English air. She was home.
Smiling, she trotted down the steps and the minute her feet landed on English soil, the quiet of the night was split by the sound of Paige Harrison’s squeals of delight. Chuckling at the loud whoops and hollers traveling across the tarmac, Alex quickly glanced in Maggie’s direction to let her know that she’d be right back, but Maggie wasn’t paying attention, at least not to Alex.
Two men with outstretched arms ran from the hangar in Maggie’s direction, and even though she had never met them, Alex knew who they were. The quicker of the two, sprinting as if for position, was Glenn Shaw, the ex-boyfriend. He was taller than Alex had imagined, and as he galloped across the airstrip, he reminded her of a newborn colt, all legs and wobbly. His floppy hair bouncing with every step he took, Alex rolled her eyes at his comical appearance and focused on the other man.
At a slow jog that comes from age, Douglas Campbell was of medium height, but broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, he still looked like a force to be reckoned with. Even in the shadows, Alex could see his wide smile, and she smiled too. A father’s prayers had been answered, and his daughter had come home.
Unfortunately, Alex’s smile didn’t last long for when she looked in Maggie’s direction and saw her in the arms of Glenn Shaw, her shoulders fell. Watching as the man covered Maggie’s face with an endless amount of sloppy kisses, Alex pulled the collar up on her coat and shook her head. So much for returning to civilization and telling the truth, she thought. Old habits die hard.
Out of the darkness her name was called, and instantly she grinned. Running to the people standing under an overhang to stay out of the rain, Alex fell into the arms of her parents and her best friend. Tears were shed, and kisses were exchanged. Hugs were bear-like and smiles were wide, and for a few moments, Alex’s disappointment was gone.
***
“What the hell is this?” Maggie exclaimed as she walked into her house to find it overflowing with empty take-away containers, soda cans and long forgotten tea cups.
“I guess I should have cleaned up a bit,” Glenn whimpered. “But Mags, I’ve been so worried about you. I couldn’t focus on anything else.”
“Glenn, unless I’m mistaken, I asked you to move out two weeks ago!”
“Yeah, but the next day your boss called and told me that your plane went missing. I didn’t know if you were dead or alive, so I thought—”
“What?” Maggie said. “Did you think you’d just squat here until they pulled my corpse from the bloody lake!”
“Of course not, darling.”
Maggie’s eyes filled with fury. Marching up the stairs, she entered her bedroom like a tornado on steroids. Seeing dirty clothing draped over almost every piece of furniture, as well as partially covering the floor, her anger increased tenfold.
Snatching it all up, she emptied drawers and hangers and stomped to the stairs, tossing the lot over the railing without giving it a second thought, and then returned to the bedroom for round two. Stripping a pillow of its case, she filled it with anything even remotely hinting that it belonged to Glenn and carried it down the stairs. With her Scottish temper now hotter than the fever that almost killed her, she shoved the bundle so hard against Glenn’s chest that he stumbled back a step.
“I’m going upstairs to take a shower,” Maggie said through gritted teeth. “Don’t be here when I get out, and if there is one thing left in this house that belongs to you, consider it gone!”
“Maggie—”
“This isn’t up for debate!”
It had worked many times before, so inwardly grinning as he assumed the outcome, Glenn played his sympathy trump card. “Maggie, you know that I’ve had a stretch of bad luck—”
“Well, it’s about to get worse!” she shouted. “Glenn, I don’t love you. Hell, I don’t even bloody like you anymore.”
“Mags, you don’t mean that.”
“Oh, but I do!” she said defiantly. “Glenn, let me make this crystal clear, shall I? I don’t want you in my house. I don’t want you in my bed, and I don’t want you in my bloody life!”
***
“Thanks for driving me home,” Alex said flatly. “My folks looked wiped out.”
“What do you expect? We were all told you were dead.”
When Alex didn’t respond, Paige looked over and saw her staring aimlessly out the window, tracing a drop of rain as it made its way down the glass.
While the reunion at the airport was filled with laughter and smiles, Paige had sensed that something was wrong. Alex’s answers to their questions had been clipped, and when everyone asked about the bruise on her cheek, she had shrugged it off and changed the subject. The last time Paige had seen her friend this withdrawn, a woman named Debra had been the cause. Debating for only a moment, Paige pulled off the road and parked in front of a small coffee shop with a green neon ‘Open’ sign flickering in the window.
Brought back to now by the car’s lack of movement, Alex looked around. “What’s wrong? Why’d you stop here?”
“Because I need a cup of coffee, and you need to talk to me.”
“Paige, I’m tired and I just want to go home.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, so please, can we just go?”
“And there’s nothing bothering you? Nothing on your mind?”
“No, I told you, I’m tired!”
“Bollocks!”
“Paige—”
&n
bsp; “Alex, just who the hell do you think you’re talking to? I may be blonde, but I’m not stupid!”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Alex grumbled, slumping in her seat.
“No?” Paige asked as she stepped out of the sedan.
“No!”
Leaning back into the car, Paige grinned at her friend. “Well, then riddle me this, Alex. How can a woman who claims that nothing is wrong, explain the fact that she’s been back in London for almost two hours and not once has she asked about her beloved dog?”
Seeing the mortified look on Alex’s face, brought a smile to Paige’s face. “I love it when I’m right,” she said with a chuckle. “And I’ll be inside when you’re ready to talk.”
***
There are those that only appreciate the finer things in life. Without fancy cars, expensive jewelry, the newest technology or a house larger than their neighbors, they simply aren’t happy. Maggie Campbell was not one of those people. She didn’t need towels embroidered with her initials, or a marble-lined shower large enough to fit six to put a smile on her face. All she needed was hot water…lots and lots of hot water.
Forty minutes after arriving home, Maggie stepped out of her shower with her skin rosy, her fingers pruned and her smile wide. Pulling on a pair of track pants and a blue vest, she jogged down the stairs with purpose. She had a house to clean, a pantry to stock and a woman to call.
Stepping around empty soda cans and paper plates holding remnants of pizza crust, Maggie made her way to the phone, but as she started to dial the number, she stopped.
“Shit!” she groused, shaking her head. “I don’t have her bloody number!”
Pausing for only a moment, Maggie called work, and a few minutes later, she was punching in Alex’s mobile number. Sighing when it went to voice mail, she left a quick, perky message telling Alex that she was home, Glenn was gone, and the house would take hours to clean. Rattling off both her home and mobile numbers, Maggie smiled wide as she said, “I love you” and then hung up the phone.
Although she had every intention of telling her father and stepmother about Alex, the airport hadn’t been the place. It was late, everyone was tired, and Glenn had attached himself to her like a leech. So instead, Maggie invited her family to brunch, where they could talk in private. Unfortunately, she didn’t know at the time that Glenn had turned her house into a dorm room.
