by A. J. Goode
In a bedroom.
“Um.” Well, he had suddenly become quite the conversationalist. He was going to have to do better than that.
“Well.” Fortunately, she didn’t seem to be any better at this than he was.
The silence stretched between then.
“I should go.”
“Right. You said you had to get to work,” she said, sounding a little bit too relieved as she tried to step around him to open the door.
Work. “Oh, man, I am so late for work!” He turned to go and found himself face-to-face with her. Slowly, almost without thinking, he reached up to brush her hair back from the bruised spot on her forehead. He heard her catch her breath as he ran his fingers softly down her cheek and to her lips.
She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch. His fingertips burned from the touch of her lips. They were so close that he could have dipped his head just a little to claim a kiss, but at the last possible moment she gasped and stepped back away from him.
“Work,” he said, stunned by what had almost happened. “I have to go to work.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “You have to go.”
Chapter Five
"Forget where you work, Son?"
"Sorry, Ma." Sean jogged into Jackson Auto Repair and bent to plant a kiss on his mother's cheek.
Suzanne Jackson frowned up at him. She was a large, imposing woman who had a long record of intimidating anyone who crossed her. And at this particular moment, her only child had crossed her by showing up three hours late for his job at the family business.
"Don't you 'Sorry, Ma' me," she snapped. "We have been crazy busy this morning. I know you've been busy with the fire department, but a phone call—"
"I got in really late and was just too tired to call. I am sorry, Ma."
"Mm-hmm. Too tired to call, but not too tired to pick up a pretty young girl at Ronda's this morning."
Sean flinched, mentally vowing not to tip Ronda the next time he stopped at her restaurant for breakfast. "It's complicated," he told his mother. "I'll explain, I promise. But shouldn't I get to work for now, since we're so crazy busy?"
She snorted, but shuffled through a stack of invoices and work orders on the desk in front of her. "Here," she said, shoving a work order and a key ring at him. "Tara Davis is expecting her Taurus to be finished by two o'clock."
Sean winced guiltily and took the keys. Tara Davis was his best friend’s new wife, and she had already been more than patient with all of the delays in getting her car back on the road. It was a simple transmission job that should have taken no more than a few days, but he’d really been falling behind since this latest outbreak of grass fires. Besides, arguing with his mother was not a good idea on the best of days, and this was obviously not a good day. Probably just as well, he decided as he got to work on the bright red car. He wasn't really sure just how to explain Maggie to his mother. Hell, he wasn't sure how to explain her to himself.
As the day wore on, he tried to keep his mind off Maggie and on his work. He knew he would have been smarter to call one of his friends on the police department to help her out, especially since she was so obviously in need of more help than he could give her. She was hiding from someone, that was easy to see. Was that “someone” also responsible for the injury that marred her face? He scowled at the thought of anyone hurting her, even though he had hardly known her long enough to feel so protective of her.
Just doing what was right, he told himself. Anybody would have helped her find a place to stay. Okay, most of them wouldn’t have taken advantage of her vulnerability by trying to steal a kiss. He felt his face burn at the memory of the horrified look on her face.
He tried to focus his attention on the motor of the little car in front of him, but his mind kept wandering to the mysterious blonde and picturing her in the cozy upstairs room of Carrington Manor. He wondered if she was sleeping, or if she was thinking about him as much as he was thinking about her. He kept picturing her in the luxurious four-poster; in his mental picture, the rumpled t-shirt was gone, and his imagination was showing him all kinds of delightful images that made it awfully difficult to focus on the task at hand.
Sean tried to tell himself that the matter was closed. He had been a Good Samaritan, helped a stranger find a place to stay, and he was done. She was tourist who would be gone in a matter of days, just like all of the other tourists who passed through Beach Haven every summer, and that was all there was to it. If she wanted to tell him what –or who—she was hiding from, she would have told him already.
Unfortunately, every time he managed to drag his thoughts away from Maggie, they landed back on the events of the previous night. He hated to admit it to himself, but he was still seriously spooked by the disappearing woman in his headlights. It had been easy enough to dismiss her as a hallucination in the wee hours of the morning when he was at near-collapse with exhaustion. Now, in the bright light of the day, he just couldn’t be certain. He needed to prove to himself that she hadn’t been real.
He swore at Tara Davis’ car. Then he swore at himself for not thinking of Tara and her husband, Ethan, earlier. He’d known Ethan since childhood, and thought of him more as a brother than a friend. Surely Ethan would be willing to help him as soon as they both got off work; all he had to do was find a way to ask without sounding as though he’d completely lost his mind.
# # #
Maggie felt more like herself after a few hours of sleep and a long hot shower. She slipped into a yellow cotton sundress from her backpack and reassured herself that Maeve Renault wouldn't be caught dead in something so simple. Definitely not in something so wrinkled and faded.
She wondered briefly if Sean would prefer Maeve or Maggie, but dismissed the thought almost immediately. The firefighter didn't seem the type to watch Battle of the Brides.
Then again, she didn't seem like the type to participate in Battle of the Brides.
Maggie shuddered and helped herself to a bottle of sparkling water from the mini-fridge. She didn't want to think about it. Any of it. Not the reality show or the fact that she had been minutes away from marrying Devon Rock less than twenty-four hours ago. She'd made a real mess of things since bolting from the church, but there was no doubt in her mind that marrying him would have made an even bigger mess of her life.
She turned on the TV and did a double-take when she saw her former fiancée looking out at her from what appeared to be a press conference of some sort.
"I just want my Maeve back," Devon Rock was saying, in a voice that cracked with emotion.
Maggie rolled her eyes. The man was a terrible actor. No wonder his publicist had signed him up for the reality show to boost his career. Of course, she and the other eleven "contestants" had been naïve enough to believe that he was really looking for a bride; she only wished she had been smart enough to see the truth before she "won" the chance to stand beside him and say her vows in front of millions of viewers.
"Why do you think she ran away?" a reporter shouted out to him now.
Devon cleared his throat theatrically and swiped at his eyes with the back of a well-manicured hand. He seemed to be having trouble speaking.
At that moment, Maggie recognized Lindsay Newman stepping up to the microphones next to the actor. "We are investigating all possible reasons for Ms. Renault's disappearance," the publicist said smoothly. "To those of us who knew her so well, it seems unlikely that she would simply run away and make no attempt at contacting anyone. In light of certain evidence found at the church, Mr. Rock and I are asking that the police look into Maeve Renault's disappearance as a possible kidnapping."
Uh-oh.
The scene faded out, replaced by a middle-aged news anchor wearing a serious expression. Behind him was a large publicity photo of Maggie as Maeve Renault, resplendent in wedding gown and veil. "Police are asking that anyone with any information please call the number on the bottom of the screen," the man said solemnly, as Maeve's picture was replaced by one of Devon's
car. He read off the license number and reminded viewers to watch for that as well.
"As the search intensifies," he intoned, "we must ask ourselves if this is the next step in the evolution of Reality TV, or if a young woman's life is truly at stake. Stay tuned to this channel as we bring you further updates—"
Maggie turned the TV off.
Crap.
Oh, crap.
She lunged across the four-poster bed for the phone and punched in Lindsay's number from memory.
"What the hell are you doing?" she demanded as soon as the other woman answered.
"Don't call this number. The police will be checking my phone to see if 'the kidnappers' have called me."
"Lindsay, it's against the law to file false police reports. I don't want any part of this."
"It'll all work out, Maeve. I need you to trust me."
"But—"
"Look, I can't buy this kind of publicity. You stay where you are for three or four days, let me spin this out for all it's worth, and then we'll all come forward and explain that it was just a big misunderstanding. You do that for me, and we won't sue you for Breach of Contract. We'll let you keep every penny you've been promised. Hell, we won't even press charges for stealing Devon's car."
Maggie was silent. It was, after all, a lot of money.
"Where are you, by the way?"
"Some tourist town in Michigan. Something Haven. Beach Haven, I think. I—I don't like this, Lindsay. I'm afraid it's all going to blow up in our faces." Maggie heard the desperation in her own voice.
"Trust me, Maeve. I've got it all under control. Don’t call me again."
Click.
Chapter Six
“Tell me exactly what you saw,” Ethan Davis said. He was nearly as tall as Sean, and as blond as his friend was dark. The two men had been friends since childhood, and it was common knowledge in Beach Haven that if one of them was in any kind of trouble, the other wasn’t far behind.
Sean had convinced his old friend to meet him near the curve on County Road 388 when they both finished work that evening. Ethan taught math at the local high school, so he was always happy for an opportunity to do anything that involved being outdoors in the fresh air after a long day of being closed up inside the school. He knelt now and peered into the woods while waiting for Sean to answer.
“I came around this curve, just about ready to pull over and take a rest—“ Sean began.
“Were you driving too fast?”
“Of course not. Why would you ask me that?”
“Because you always drive too fast.”
“Shut up. No, I wasn’t driving too fast. I was just really, really tired and was afraid of falling asleep at the wheel, so I was going to pull over as soon as I got around the curve. And then BAM! There she was.”
“’BAM’?” Ethan echoed. “I thought you said you didn’t hit her.”
“I didn’t. I meant that she just popped in out of nowhere. BAM, she was just . . . there. In the middle of my lane, crossing the road from right to left.”
“What did she look like?”
Sean shrugged. “I really didn’t have time to see much. She was wearing something white and . . . flowy, I guess you’d say. Like a nightgown or a long dress or something. And she was looking up at me. I could see her eyes, but I didn’t notice much else about her face. It happened so fast.”
“So, what you’re saying is that you saw a ghostly woman in a white nightgown pop up out of nowhere and then disappear on a deserted stretch of road in the middle of a rainstorm. Sean . . .” Ethan’s voice trailed off.
“I know. It sounds even crazier to me now that I’ve said it out loud. I’d rather not admit to seeing ghosts, but I’ve got to make sure there’s no chance that she was a real woman who needed help. Just help me look, okay? Any kind of footprints or anything that shows I wasn’t alone out here last night.”
They searched alongside the road and into the woods on both sides, but heavy rain the previous night had washed away any possible sign that another human being had ever been there. They couldn’t even find the spot where Sean had skidded down the muddy incline the night before.
“She had to be a hallucination,” Sean finally declared. He sighed and leaned back against his truck.
“So, what are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure.” Shrug. “If I tell Chief Griswold that I’ve been seeing things, he’s going to take me off active duty. He has to. But if I don’t tell him and I start hallucinating again, somebody could get hurt. I don’t know what to do, Ethan.”
His friend patted his shoulder awkwardly.
“Don’t make any decisions until you’ve gotten some rest,” Ethan advised. “Go home and sleep for a while and then see what you think.”
Sean nodded. He almost told him that he wasn’t going to go home right away because he needed to stop off at Carrington Manor and visit the mysterious woman he had only met that morning, but decided to keep that little bit of information to himself. On top of everything else he had told his friend, that part just seemed a little too crazy to share. Lifelong friend or not, Ethan was likely to have him locked up if he started babbling about how much he wanted to kiss Maggie Reynolds.
Instead, he thanked Ethan for his help and drove away, doubling back to hide his true destination.
* * *
Maggie wasn’t in her room when he went to see her after work that evening. “I think she went for a walk on the beach,” Angie Carrington told him with an exaggerated wink. “You should probably go after her, just in case she got lost or something. You wouldn’t want her to be all alone on a romantic beach at sunset.”
He shook his head and headed down the wooden steps to the private beach, which was deserted this early in the season. Later in the summer, the tall beach grass would obscure most of the view, but for now he could see the entire secluded area. He spotted Maggie right away, silhouetted against the setting sun and throwing rocks into the water. She was muttering to herself.
She seemed agitated as she paced back and forth, stopping every so often to pick up a stone and then hurl it into the water. She gestured with both hands from time to time as though having an argument with some unseen person. Then she would shake her head and pick up another stone to begin the whole process all over again.
"Nice arm," he commented after witnessing one particularly vicious throw.
She let out a little shriek and spun around, poised to launch a rock in his direction.
"I come in peace," he said.
"You startled me."
“Sorry, didn’t mean to.” He crouched and ran his fingers through the still-warm sand, searching until he found a flat stone. "See this? Your problem is that you're using stones that are too round. You need some that are flat like this one. "
"Really."
"Really." He turned his left side to the water, bent low, and flicked his wrist. The stone hit the water and skipped four times before sinking below the surface.
"Impressive." She bent and retrieved a flat stone, but he stepped up behind her and stopped her before she could throw it.
"Better let the expert show you how," he murmured. He stood behind her and wrapped his arm around her waist, clasping the fingers of his other hand around hers and gently pulling her arm back to mimic his movements. He liked the way she fit against him; she was taller than most of the women he dated, and there was something especially nice about the way her rounded backside brushed against him when they bent slightly to throw the stone together.
Sean took a deep breath, taking in the flowery scent of her perfume. The gentle breeze off the Lake picked up soft tendrils of her hair, tickling his face. For just a second, he closed his eyes and fought back an urge to pull her even closer against him.
He hardly noticed that the stone they threw together only skipped three times. He was much more interested in the delightful things that were going on under her short yellow sundress when she trotted a few steps away and bent to get another ston
e.
"Let me try this one alone," she said breathlessly, and launched it.
He counted seven skips and realized he’d been played.
"Any more lessons, 'expert'?" she asked, turning to grin at him.
"You already knew how to skip stones." It was a statement, not a question.
"We have flat stones on the other side of the Lake, too."
"And now you're mocking me."
"Yes, sir, I am." She had deep dimples when she smiled. "Does that whole stone-skipping lesson usually work well for you with the tourist ladies?"
"Most of the time," he admitted. "But I didn't come here just to be humiliated at stone-skipping. I wondered if you might be interested in dinner. There's a restaurant just up the road that serves a Whitefish special that will make you forget any other fish dinner you've ever had."
Maggie's smile faded. "I. . . I can't," she stammered. "I really should stay here, where it's private.”
“Best whitefish in the state.”
“I can’t, Sean.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t.”
"Who are you hiding from, Maggie?"
He hadn't meant to blurt the question out like that, but there was something about the guarded look in her deep brown eyes that tugged at his heart. He wanted to take that fear away from her and pull her close so he could feel the warmth of her body pressed against his again.
"Let me help you," he murmured, brushing his fingertips against her cheek.
She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch.
"Maggie. . . " he whispered her name. He leaned closer, his lips nearly touching hers. She didn't back away this time; instead, she reached for him and pulled him closer, pressing the length of her body against his.
She tasted of strawberry lip gloss and fresh air, and her kiss was as eager as his. He pulled her even closer, overwhelmed by a sudden need to taste and touch every part of her, right here on the sand. Her lips parted; her tongue met his and he probed deeper, nearly dizzy with the rush of desire for this woman he had known for less than a day. Her round, full breasts pressed against his chest as he reached under the short hem of her dress to half-lift her against him.
