“Passionate?”
“Her word. She said it looked like you might do him bodily harm, and not in a good way. He giving you trouble?”
Maggie crossed her arms. “I wouldn’t call it trouble, exactly.”
“What would you call it?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Maggie—”
“If I need help, George, you know you’re the first person I’ll call.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“I didn’t know that was my job.”
George scrubbed a hand over his face.
“I’m sorry, George, you know how I am…” She broke off, feeling as discouraged as he looked. “My history.”
“Yeah,” he said on a heavy sigh.
He understood, Maggie knew, but he didn’t like being lumped in with her father, even if it was just a chromosomal similarity. She didn’t much like it herself, but she’d likely always have a hard time relinquishing control to a man—any man.
“So altogether that accounts for about ten hours of his time,” she said casually. Even if her latest… interaction with Dex Keegan had gone unwitnessed, it would be nice to know what else he’d been up to, besides whipping the female population into a sexual frenzy. “What about the other couple hundred?”
“Nothing remarkable,” George said. “He’s been to just about every business in town, asks different questions every time. Can’t make heads or tails out of what he’s up to.
“He said anything to you?”
She only shook her head because the lie stuck in her throat.
“Well, he seems to have a special interest in you, so if you find out what he’s after, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me know.”
Maggie nodded, too grateful that he was dropping the whole matter, including any questions that might lead to her involvement, to wonder why he wasn’t pushing harder for answers.
Chapter Twelve
If he’d had every style of house in the world to choose from, Dex would have picked the Arts and Crafts bungalow sitting behind the airport’s office and hangar. Painted in muted shades of green and brown, the lines of the house were spare, simple, utilitarian. No-nonsense, like its owner. The lawn was neat; the landscaping tended toward shrubs and flowering bushes that didn’t need much care, and were low enough so they didn’t obscure her view of the rocky, tree-lined curve of Temptation Bay.
Even the wider backdrop of the ocean spoke to its owner’s temperament, Dex mused; Maggie Solomon was the kind of woman who’d walk face-first into Hell if the devil issued a challenge. And the Atlantic, its deceptively placid surface hiding such dark moods and dangerous depths, suited her.
Dex climbed the wide steps to the deep, roofed front porch. He knocked on the carved front door, with its stained glass window in squares of color. No answer. So, first rule of PIs everywhere, he tried the knob. And found it unlocked.
In all fairness to himself, he thought about it before he just walked in, but the chance to see how Maggie lived was irresistible. He’d expected the inside to be as neat, beautiful and as practical as the woman who lived there, and it was. The floor plan was open and unhindered. One room flowed into the next through wide doorways. The floors were wood, the ceilings were high, and the windows were uncurtained, making the space feel even airier and more expansive.
But whatever else Dex expected to find, it wasn’t Maggie at the dining room table, her head pillowed on her arms, asleep in a sea of papers.
He felt a tug, something that might have been tenderness if he’d dared to name it. And then he got a better look at the papers. Even from the doorway he could tell they were copies of handwritten documents. In the space of a heartbeat he forgot everything else.
Before he could get farther than the doorway, his footsteps woke Maggie. She blinked groggily, then jumped to her feet and moved between him and table.
Dex crossed his arms, battling anger now instead of attraction. “Trying to beat my time?”
Maggie mirrored his stance. “Do you always walk uninvited into other people’s houses?”
“The door wasn’t locked.”
“Because I live in a place where privacy is respected.”
“But not promises?”
“What promise have I broken?”
Dex held her gaze for a moment, but he had to admit he’d only assumed she’d hand over the journals as soon as she obtained them from Meeker. He knew how personally she was taking the matter of Windfall Island’s possible involvement in Eugenia Stanhope’s kidnapping. Now he realized that in telling her about the journals he’d handed her an irresistible opportunity to find the truth on her own. Even if it cut him out.
“I thought you were too straightforward to go behind my back.”
“Your mistake,” she said, but her gaze dropped, then narrowed in on his sweat pants before lifting again as far as his sweat-soaked t-shirt. She drew the obvious conclusion, that he’d run all the way from the village. “Didn’t want anyone to know where you were going?”
“I figured you’d appreciate not being the talk of the town.”
She nodded once, grudgingly.
He indicated the papers. “You don’t trust me.”
Maggie braced her backside on the table, crossed her booted feet. “This is my place, these are my people.”
“But you didn’t grow up here.”
“Doesn’t make it any less true.”
And Dex thought he knew why. Maggie was every bit as rabid about her privacy as the rest of the islanders. And even more suspicious of outsiders.
“Why should I trust you?” she continued. “You haven’t told me the whole truth. In my book that gives me the right—hell—that means I have an obligation to make sure nobody gets hurt while you’re doing your job.”
Dex counted to ten, then counted again, trying to see past the hard wall of anger inside him, the betrayal he knew he had no right to feel. Maggie and he certainly weren’t friends, and they had no other relationship, by his choice as much as hers. True, she’d agreed to get the journals for him, but he understood why she hadn’t handed them over right away. If his family had been threatened, he’d do more than go behind her back. “I told you exactly why I’m here.”
“Not until I left you no choice.”
He blew out a breath. It didn’t help. The heat still rose in him, high and hot and fast. He didn’t know if he wanted to kiss Maggie or throttle her, but either way he knew putting his hands on her would be a mistake.
“You know, I understood that finding Eugenia Stanhope would be a hell of a long shot. If I’d known I’d need your help to solve this case, I would have turned it down flat.”
Maggie smiled slightly, ignoring the insult. “You don’t think she survived the kidnapping, either.”
“I think there’s a high probability this is a waste of time.”
“But you came anyway. Why?”
“The family deserves to know the truth. It’s been more than eighty years. They could have had her declared dead, and moved on, but they’ve been holding out hope.”
“And you want to give them an answer. And the friend who asked you to take the case?”
He gave her one of the one-shouldered shrugs she used as a pillar of her conversational style.
“Putting your life on hold for a wild goose chase is a pretty big favor.”
“He’s a pretty good friend.”
“With a connection to the Stanhope family?”
It was Dex’s turn to smile. “He’s their lawyer.”
Maggie studied on that for half a minute, the way she did when she was turning a puzzle over in her mind. “What does he know that he didn’t tell you?”
That stopped Dex. He’d never considered the possibility that Alec hadn’t told him everything.
“It’s no fun when the shoe is on the other foot, is it?”
“He told me everything I need to know,” Dex said. “The rest is up to me.” He looked past her, at t
he papers stacked and scattered on the table.
Maggie stepped aside. “Be my guest.”
He thought about taking the journals and going off on his own, but without the assistance of a local, he’d be lost. Like it or not, Maggie was the only one he could confide in. “What do you want, Maggie?”
“The truth.”
“I won’t lie to you again unless I have to. I can’t promise I won’t have to.”
She looked away, then back. “Thank you.”
He smiled. “You’re welcome. What else?”
“Your friend, the one who convinced you to take a job you didn’t want—”
“I already called him.”
She straightened, tucked her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “Then let’s get started.”
I won’t lie to you again unless I have to.
Maggie sent Dex upstairs to take a shower—not because she found his scent objectionable. Because she didn’t, and she needed to focus on something other than Dex. Something other than having sex with Dex. Because that would be bad. Right? Their relationship already had more wrinkles than she could hope to iron out if they spent a lifetime together. Not that she would spend a lifetime with a man who couldn’t be honest with her.
I won’t lie to you again unless I have to. She wanted to believe him—foolish when he’d qualified that promise in a way that all but left the door wide open for him to dish up whatever bullshit he chose.
She took a seat at the head of the table again, and turned her attention to the task at hand. It did her no good to second-guess a choice she’d already made, a choice she knew was right. Even if it meant working with Dex Keegan. She couldn’t protect Windfall Island if she wasn’t on the front line.
Dex walked in, hair wet and tousled, wearing a t-shirt that was baggy on Mort, but stretched tight across Dex’s chest. Same with the work pants, which he’d had to leave unbuttoned.
When her mouth went dry, she forced a laugh. “Mort has the height, anyway.”
“He doesn’t have the height, either.” He grimaced a little, shifted his hips, and Maggie’s gaze arrowed down.
She lost her breath as the heat rose in her, from her toes all the way up to the crown of her head, settling in her belly and breasts on the way. She closed her eyes and turned forward, trying to think of anything but Dex, how much she wanted him, and how hard it would be to work with him just a few feet away, day after day, without losing control and taking him up on the offer that was hot in his eyes nearly all the time.
Somehow she needed to stop this… this assault of need whenever Dex was around, this yearning for something she’d never known. And had never wanted, she reminded herself. Letting him in—letting any man in—would be a mistake.
She knew what it was to love—not the romantic kind of love, sure, but wasn’t a father the first man every little girl loved? And when that first love went wrong, when that love was thrown back in her face, how could she help but end up scarred? She wouldn’t survive that kind of rejection a second time.
“Earth to Maggie.”
“I threw your clothes in the washer when the shower stopped running, then the dryer.” She slanted him a look, managed a slight, sarcastic smile to go with it. “You were in the bathroom a long time.”
Dex eased into the chair closest to her, his face twisting into another of those grimaces she thought, at least in part, was meant to defuse the tension in the air. “I was trying to figure out a way to protect my manhood without losing my life.”
She arched a brow.
“Coming down here naked wasn’t an option, was it?”
“Only if you wanted to keep walking right out the front door.”
“Weather’s taken a turn toward winter, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Oh, I noticed.”
“There, you see? Freeze my, uh, body parts off, or…” He shifted again.
“I get the picture.”
He leaned toward her, grinned. “The real thing is right here.”
And there she went again. She couldn’t even meet his eyes for fear he’d see what he did to her with his big, fit body and his easy good humor. As if he didn’t already know, she amended, lifting her gaze to his, letting the frustration she felt show. “You came here to work.”
“The work will still be there in, say, an hour.”
“There’s that ego again.”
“Maybe I’ve earned it.”
The way he delivered that line irritated her just enough to take it as a challenge, and call him on it. “Put your money where your mouth is.”
“I—Huh?”
She shoved her chair back, fisted her hand in his t-shirt, and when they both came to their feet, dragged him against her. “You heard me,” she said, crushing her mouth to his.
He froze for a second, then he kissed her back, his mouth hot and amazing as it moved over hers, and then his hands were on her, too, one settling at her waist, the other continuing down to her backside, both pressing her against him. Her head spun as the heat rose in her blood, became an inferno raging through her with every beat of her heart. She arched against him, twisting slowly to feel the friction of her body moving against his.
She wanted the burn, the slide, the scent, the feel of him inside her. Taking her.
When his hands fumbled at the snap on her jeans, she undid them herself, shoved them off, then dealt with his pants and boxers, measuring the hard length of him with her hand. A groan rumbled from the back of his throat, and the need inside her turned up another impossible degree.
“Now,” she said as the hunger inside her took on a life of its own.
His hands rushed over her, heating her skin, igniting her nerve endings. He trailed his mouth down her neck, stopping to flip her hoodie up by the hem and straight over her head. “You wear too damn much,” he grumbled when he saw the tank beneath.
Hands shaking, Maggie sent the tank after the hoodie and reached for the hooks on her bra.
Dex stopped her, reaching out to run a finger across the top edge of the plain white cotton cup over her left breast. “Wings?”
She didn’t look down at the pale gold tattoo that dusted the skin over her heart. Instead, she held Dex’s eyes. “My one true love.”
“Neither of us is interested in love,” he said, putting his mouth where his hand had been.
It was like falling into an active volcano, a long descent into heat while nerves twisted and muscles tightened, and then the world erupted, fire and pleasure so intense it rivaled pain. She went blind and deaf, lost to the feel of his mouth sucking hard at her nipple, to his fingers slipping beneath the elastic of her panties and inside to stroke her mindless. Her body bowed back, the orgasm ripping through her, wave after wave of pleasure that tore the breath from her and left her wrung out, weak with pleasure.
Before she could even hope to recover, Dex took her by the hand, and when she stumbled on legs gone to rubber, he boosted her up, urged her to wrap her trembling legs around his waist, and bore them both up the stairs.
He hesitated at the top, and she said, “there,” pointing to her bedroom before she sucked his earlobe into her mouth, nipping it then soothing with her tongue. He ran them both into the wall.
Maggie barely noticed because finally, finally he was lowering her to the bed, and she could appreciate the clean scent of his skin, take her time discovering the ridges of muscle along his back, enjoy the way his muscles quivered when she ran her fingers down his belly.
“Let me,” she said in the voice of a stranger, thick with need, unsteady from the power of what he was doing to her. What they were together. She took the condom he’d found in her bedside drawer, ripped it open and smoothed it over him. Slowly, breathless at the way he watched her, his eyes black with desire and narrowed with promise.
“Bring it on,” she dared him.
He caught her wrists and staked them to the bed, driving himself into her in a single powerful thrust that jerked her back to the edge of that shatte
ring precipice. He kept his eyes on hers as he began to move. She met him, stroke for stroke, and when he released her hands, she reared up to run her tongue over his chest, tasting the salt of his skin before he lifted her knees and drove even deeper.
She cried out, then gasped “don’t stop,” when he almost did.
Dex hooked her knee again, planted his other hand on the mattress, and stroked into her, again and again. All Maggie could do was brace herself and take it, heat and hardness and friction, pressure and need coiling inside her, tighter and tighter until she twisted beneath him, straining and begging wordlessly until she broke, coming in a rush as Dex thrust into her one last time.
He locked himself inside her, his breath tearing in and out as she felt his climax shudder through him. “I think I’m dead,” he said, collapsing beside her.
But when he would have gathered her against him, Maggie sat up instead. She refused to interpret the emotion that flashed across his face as hurt. But her heart felt like lead in her chest.
“If you’re getting water,” he began, then his voice, scrupulously even, turned into a whip, “No, fuck that, Maggie. Why are we here, in your bed?”
“Because I wanted to be here. Because I thought…” She settled back against the headboard. She did not, much as she wanted to, fist her hands in her hair. It was too telling a gesture, too evocative of the nerves crawling like caterpillars under her skin. Too indicative of the emotional connection she didn’t want to make with Dex. Couldn’t make, even if it hurt them both. Better to be hurt now than when he left, especially if she was foolish enough to let her feelings get away from her.
She made herself face him, kept her eyes on his in the dim afternoon light, though it was harder than she’d ever have believed possible. “We needed to get it out of our systems,” she said, and when her voice tried to waver, she steadied it, ruthlessly. “We’ll be working together, very closely together.”
He grinned, infuriatingly. “And you don’t think I can keep my hands to myself?”
“You seem to have some trouble in that area, yes.”
“You attacked me.”
Temptation Bay (A Windfall Island Novel) Page 14
