With Her Last Breath

by Cait London

  He edged through the door sideways, carrying his box. “Heard Anthony had a renter with a dog. I’ll start leaving a good beef knuckle bone now and then. Looks like a good dog. Maggie is your name, right?”

  She nodded slowly. Apparently news traveled fast in Blanchefleur, and when he looked curious, she said, “Thanks. I’ll pay for the bones.”

  Inside the door now, he looked back at her through the mesh screen. “Nah.”

  His look was too intense. Maggie, adept at sliding away from conversations that might reveal too much about herself, nodded again and hooked Scout’s leash to her collar. While Scout stood, sniffing and locked dead center onto the smell of meat, Maggie did her usual warm-ups. She’d run as far as she could from bitter truths and a battle she couldn’t win, and now she had to start—today, she had to start creating a life for herself.

  If she needed anything it was a home with a kitchen and her parents’ old furniture around her, a little garden to plant and watch grow. She needed to drape it all around herself and heal, to fill the emptiness.

  By eight-thirty that morning Maggie had already taken Scout for her morning run. She braced herself and started making her rounds—first the small gym, Looking Good.

  Behind the dirty windows, the two-story nineteenth-century building had little equipment, a couple of ancient treadmills, a weight bench, and an assortment of yard-sale health-type gizmos and floor mats. Next to a set of workout tapes, a perky newscaster was busily chatting on the old black-and-white television set. A disinterested teenage male playing with an electronic game lounged behind the battered desk. His mottled complexion said he probably liked too many french fries and hamburgers.

  He glanced at her, then did a double take at her only presentable jogging suit. His eyes slid up her breasts to her face, and the electronic music said he’d just clicked off his hand-held game. His “Hi, there” held a warm, sensual invitation.

  “Hi. Where are your customers?”

  He shrugged and puffed up his angular tall body a bit. Head tilted to one side, eyes narrowed, his pose was all macho. He considered the arm muscle he was flexing. “The name is Jerry Russo. I just work here. Ole Longman owns the place. Some customers just left—the early-morning set. There’s usually a little break before it gets too busy.”

  “I see. Please tell Ole that I’m a personal trainer, just setting up business. If he has anyone who wants one-on-one, I’d appreciate them being sent my way. Just put a note in my mailbox at the Alessandros Restaurant back door. There’s a ten percent referral fee for you and Ole, and I’ll steer some work over here. How does that sound?”

  “Depends. Ole might just go for it. Better stop by and talk to him later.” He leaned over the desk to peer out of the window at the street. “Where’s your dog?”

  That jarred Maggie’s protective instincts. “How did you know I have one?”

  “New woman in town and not a tourist. Word gets around. Heard Nick gave you a coupon for a free dinner and steered you onto that upstairs room. Nick Alessandro is my cousin. We’re family,” he stated proudly.

  “Nick Alessandro? As in Alessandros’ Restaurant?”

  Maggie stood very still. Nick had said the apartment needed filling…it came with one meal a day…he’d felt sorry for her.

  He’d given her charity and everyone knew it. And just maybe he wanted something in return.

  Okay, she was suspicious. In the past few years, she’d been in enough situations to be wary of anything that looked too good—and Nick was exactly that.

  THREE

  Jerry flexed his biceps and studied them. “Yeah. He works at the restaurant when he can, but mostly he runs his vineyard and the winery. They just finished bottling, so he’s got some extra time, I guess. He and his brothers and some of the cousins help his parents a lot. It’s a family business with good food. Shoot, in the tourist season, the customers line up on the street, just waiting to get in. He must have liked you, or they wouldn’t have rented that room to you. It’s just for the summer help and when family visits.”

  While Maggie was running through what to say to Nick, Jerry spotted Scout sitting, tied to a street bench. Scout was listening attentively to whatever the elderly woman in a wheelchair was saying.

  “Is it a deal?” Maggie pushed, worried that Scout might try to play and jump, hurting the older woman.

  “Yeah. Hey, are you doing anything later, maybe tonight? I can show you around town.”

  “Some other time.”

  “Oh, yeah. You’re trying to get a business started. That personal training stuff. Tell you what, why don’t I advertise for you, and you can give me a little personal one-on-one training?”

  The boy not only had big ears, he had big ideas, Maggie decided as she smiled and hurried out to untie Scout’s leash.

  “Nice dog,” the elderly woman said. “We’re having quite the conversation about you, all fit and perky in the morning. You’re new around here, aren’t you? Come on down to the beauty shop and I’ll introduce you around the blue-hair set.”

  By five o’clock, Maggie’s sleepless night was telling on her, but she’d picked up an elderly customer interested in regular walking routines. She’d stopped by the Looking Good gym again and talked with Ole Longman, the owner. Once a champion weight lifter, seventy-five-year-old Ole was still spry and set on physical health. According to Ole, he’d hit a streak of bad luck—mostly due to ex-wives and managers on the take. The Looking Good and a few trophies were all he had left. “Have a soda,” he’d invited.

  “No, thanks.”

  “It gets real busy in here,” Ole had said, eyeing her as she unzipped her jacket. In her T-shirt, her upper arms were defined, her abdominals tight. Used to angling for tradeoffs, she’d sat on the weight bench and did a few arm curls with a ten-pounder, just to show Ole that she knew proper form. Ole nodded and took off his cotton shirt to reveal an undershirt over a nicely defined torso. He did a few weight lifter poses, flexing to show off. “Not so bad, huh?”

  After an hour of taking turns bench pressing and discussing technique with Maggie, Ole agreed to let her schedule six women’s fitness hours, three days a week, morning and afternoon, in his gym. Ole slyly let Maggie know that he would appreciate a Mrs. Dee Dee Hopper, an attractive widow, attending classes. Apparently Ole was ready now to settle down to a good woman and Dee Dee was a shy sixty-eight, but “one heck of a lalapalooza” with a fine, prime backside.

  So much for raging teenage hormones, Maggie had thought as she took Ole’s pulse and blood pressure with an old arm wrap monitor that had seen better days. She agreed to call Dee Dee’s number—quickly supplied by Ole—and invite her to classes.

  But angling on Ole’s needs, she had hinted that women liked cleanliness, washed windows, and a clean bathroom. When Ole blinked as in shock, Maggie had offered to help clean.

  One look in the ladies’ dressing room and bathroom, and Maggie had decided to wait until morning.

  After talking with Jerry, she had bigger things to do than clean bathrooms—namely setting Nick Alessandro straight. If one more person insinuated that she was under his protection, his girlfriend, or needed charity, she’d explode.

  Fifteen minutes later, Scout sat in the passenger seat as Maggie drove out of town. She drove northward, a distance away from but parallel to the lake. She passed a few houses, small and modern with well-trimmed yards, and a few roads leading from the blacktop. Signs for Jake’s Tulip Farm and Dutch Clogs R Us invited, and a small farm’s “Wagon Ponies” grazed in a fenced field. A distance down the road, a small camper sat in an overgrown yard, marked by a No Trespassing sign; a sprawling marsh of cattails lay behind the site.

  Following Ole’s directions, Maggie took the winding dirt road to Alessandro Vineyards and Winery. Just up and away from the shoreline, the vineyards sprawled out like patchwork, the bald vines evenly spaced between the posts. A sign marked the direction to the winery, a rough wood building. A tractor sat outside a large garage, and a b
attered station wagon was the only vehicle in the visitors’ parking lot. A small, bent, aged man wearing a vivid Hawaiian shirt struggled to unload grocery sacks and laundry baskets from the back of the station wagon.

  Maggie pulled to a stop and got out. “Let me help you with those.”

  His weathered face changed, wrinkles shifting into a big grin beneath his 1930s-style hat. “Any time a pretty lady wants to help, that’s fine with me. You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh.” Maggie reached for the grocery sacks and hefted them into her arms. “I’m looking for Nick Alessandro.”

  He lifted the laundry basket of neatly folded clothing. “He lives down the road, in the Frenchman’s lighthouse. It’s not really a lighthouse, more of a brick tower where the old Frenchie’s ghost is supposed to roam, looking for his sweetheart. I’m Eugene, by the way. I live and work here. We’ve got plenty of help, but we’re needing someone to work the showroom and to help with wine festivals later on, just part-time, during the real busy season. I can show you around if you want. Nick’s a good guy to work for…I got good insurance because of him…Nice dog. Did you come to apply for a job?”

  “No, thanks. I’m trying to get my own business started. I just need to talk with Nick.”

  At her side, Scout had that I-want-to-run look, staring at the rows of stark grape vines fingering up to grasp the wires between them. “No. Don’t you dare,” Maggie ordered quietly.

  Eugene’s grin widened, his eyes twinkling. “If I was a young woman, Nick would be first on my list, too.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Maybe not for you. Nick may still be wrapped up in losing his wife, but he’s not blind.”

  So Nick’s wife had left him and he was out to score, and Lorna wasn’t taking any play and so-longs.

  She followed Eugene into a side door of the weathered board building. The room was big and dark, lined with new shelving and a counter. “This is going to be our showroom for visitors and tastings. Lately, Nick has been working on some promotional brochures, in the office—it’s back there above those big tanks. He likes to separate his living space and work. I stay here year round and watch the place. There’s an intercom thingie hooked up to Nick’s house if I need anything. I live in here—”

  The apartment was small, neat, and cheery, and Scout immediately began sniffing the perimeter and everything in it. Maggie placed the grocery sacks on the red Formica and chrome table. “How do I get to Nick’s?”

  Eugene gave her directions and then winked. “Should I tell him you’re coming? Or do you want to surprise him?”

  “I think I’d rather surprise him.”

  She noted Eugene’s pained frown as he bent to place the laundry basket on a stool. “Is there something I can do to help?”

  His smile apologized. “I’m almost eighty and my pieces are worn. It’s my hip and back. I’ve got pain pills.”

  Maggie had already noticed his limp and the way he favored one side. “Let me see.”

  She placed her hands on Eugene’s shoulders and studied him. “I think you’ve got one leg shorter than the other. That means the other side has to compensate, the longer leg doing the work. You could get orthopedic insoles to correct that.”

  “The doc gives me pain pills,” Eugene said firmly.

  Maggie was used to resistance and mindsets. “Next time, ask him to check the length of your legs. It’s worth a try. If you need help in therapy, maybe strengthening the weaker side after you get an insole adjustment, contact me down at Ole’s Looking Good.”

  “Can’t. Won’t step foot in the place. Ole is trying to make the moves on Dee Dee. He called me a ‘raisin.’ You know, a shriveled, dried-up—” Eugene’s mulish look said he wasn’t budging.

  Maggie tried not to smile; unknowingly, she’d already given Ole the edge by inviting Dee Dee to his gym. “I think you’re good-looking, and a few wrinkles give a man not only attitude but an interesting look.”

  Eugene flashed his oversize false teeth. “I ain’t no beefcake like Ole.”

  “Women like other things. Concentrate on what you might have in common with Dee Dee.”

  “She loves soap operas. No self-respecting man would watch those things.”

  “Start,” Maggie advised, before taking the narrow winding road toward Nick’s house.

  She passed a huge garden spot, recently tilled, and a few small outbuildings, and stopped near an odd house. Just past the knoll where the house sat, the lake gleamed like a blue ribbon, and a few seagulls hovered white in the sky, making the most of the winds. Built square and laid with shingles, the weathered clapboard was topped by a jutting brick tower.

  If there was a ghost haunting the tower, he was likely to be disturbed, because Maggie wasn’t feeling peaceful—she wasn’t Nick’s rumored “new girl” and she didn’t take charity. She parked next to a well-kept old International pickup laden with brush and trimmings.

  Released from the pickup, Scout was already running around the house, through the yellow patch of daffodils. Just rounding the house, Maggie saw Nick, standing against an expanse of sky. In worn, dirty jeans, boots, a frayed sweatshirt, and standing in what must have been an herb bed ruled by tarragon and garlic, he stared at her. Nick leaned the shovel he’d been holding against the house. “Hello, Maggie.”

  His welcome was quiet, as if he’d been expecting her. But then Eugene had probably called to give him a heads-up.

  “I want to talk with you,” she said while Scout was busy leaping on him and he rough-played with her. Barking happily, Scout ignored Maggie’s order to sit; instead she ran like a puppy around Nick and then leaped at him. Nick chuckled and pushed Scout down, only to have her leap at him again with power that would have knocked Maggie to the ground. “I want to talk with you,” Maggie repeated more loudly as she tried to grab Scout’s collar. “Scout, stop.”

  But the dog had found a new playmate and lunged again, breaking free of Maggie’s grasp. In a heartbeat, the dog was racing along the slight path down through the dunes and grass from Nick’s home to the wide open sandy beaches.

  “Now, see what you’ve done. She’s excitable—” Maggie started after Scout, only to be brought short by Nick’s hand around her upper arm.

  “She’s a retriever. She sees water and she wants to play. It’s natural with her—”

  Maggie shook with fear for her dog and anger at the man challenging her. She tried to jerk her arm away, and Nick held firm. She stared up at him, furious now. Another man had held her like that, as he was telling her that her sister was beyond help. Ryan had wanted her to “cut her losses and let Glenda destroy herself,” but Maggie couldn’t; she’d kept trying and nothing had helped her sister’s decline. “Let me go.”

  “I saw how you acted on the beach yesterday, as if you were afraid for your dog, as if you were afraid of the water. Why?”

  This time, he did release her. How easy life was, she thought, for him, a man who had been safe within his family.

  There amid the clear blue sky and the hovering seagulls, she felt twelve years old again. She felt the sucking power of the waves on her life jacket, heard Glenda—just a bit younger and terrified, bobbing in her orange life jacket and reaching out to her for help. By habit, Maggie’s hand clasped Glenda’s locket, all that she had left of her sister. Now she had only Scout, who was racing happily across the sand. She had to save her….

  Nick watched Maggie tear down the slope of sand dunes and grass, falling and sliding in her panic to reach her dog. With her ponytail sticking from the back of her ball cap, her body in flight, she looked more like a boy than a woman.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. Oh, she was a woman, all right. One look at those dark green eyes and that bit of a nose and that generous mouth, and his nose was sniffing for female pheromones, his body tight.

  He picked up the shovel, put his foot on it to dig, and changed his mind; he couldn’t resist following Maggie. Since she was already furious with
him, he might as well go all out.

  On the wide expanse of brown sand, she looked small, crouching to hug her dog. Nick walked slowly to her, appreciated Scout’s welcoming bark, and ignored Maggie’s frosty look. “Go away.”

  Nick sat near her and scanned the white sails of a small ship headed for Blanchefleur’s harbor, putting in for the night. The ship was small and light, a classic wood frame, well tended, a fast-runner, just like the woman with fear written all over her face.

  “You’re on the run. Why?”

  Maggie’s quick, blank look, her ponytail feathered by the light wind as she whipped to stare at him with that flash of anger, said he’d struck truth. “You don’t know what you’re talking about and you ask too many questions. Now leave me alone.”

  Nick was already wading in deep, murky problems she didn’t want disturbed—and he wanted to help. “She can swim, you know. Probably better than you. The water is smooth. Let her go. She needs this, Maggie. She’s bred for water, and you’re holding her from what nature gave her.”

  She continued to hold Scout close, staring grimly at the water as if it were her personal devil. “Shut up.”

  Nick slid a cool look at her; Maggie wasn’t only furious, she was stark white, fighting panic. That quick swallow, her fingers digging into the dog’s coat told him everything—she loved the dog desperately, as if the animal were her only friend. “What did you come here to tell me?”

  “I came to tell you that you can butt out of my life. I’m not a charity case, and I could have paid for my meal and the room. Now everyone in town knows that—”

  “So you’re moving on, afraid to face a little gossip?”

  Those witch’s eyes cut at him and narrowed. “I’ve had worse.”

  He wanted to hold that hair in his fist, to feel the life and thick silk in his grasp, the sunlight catching the red highlights and coursing down the strands to flick fire at the ends.

  Her chin went out, those eyes dark emerald and gold now, striking at him. “I’ve got work. I’ll be around awhile, and you’re not in the picture. Half the town thinks I’m already your girlfriend and the other half—your relatives are telling me all about what a great guy you are, a real marriage prospect.”