by JoAnn Ross
Compassion stirred as he looked down at her. Her hair was wet from the rain, clinging in damp strands to her forehead, cheeks and neck. Having neglected to put on a raincoat, her jeans and cotton sweater had gotten soaked on her dash from her red Cherokee parked on the street, to his front door. She looked small and frail and distressingly vulnerable.
Trace opened the door wider, inviting her into his house. And his heart.
"What's wrong?" he asked as he closed the door behind her. And you call yourself a detective, Callahan, he blasted himself, remembering how she'd looked the last time he'd seen her. "Hell, I'm sorry, that was a stupid question."
"Try asking what's right," she suggested grimly. "The answer will be shorter."
"But there's no emergency?" His first thought, considering how she'd looked when leaving his office, was that something had happened to Maggie. His second, and more unpalatable thought was of Mariah taking justice into her own hands.
"No." She cursed and shook her head. "Things just piled up on me tonight." She drew in a deep shuddering breath. "I just wanted to shoot someone."
"Which you didn't do."
Her eyes cleared and she gave him a wry look. "No, Sheriff. I did not put a .44 caliber bullet through my brother-in-law's cheating heart."
Trace hadn't realized how worried he'd been about just that until he felt the cooling relief flood over him. "I'm glad to hear that. The jailhouse roof leaks and you're already wet enough."
When, on cue, she began shivering from the cold, he said, "We'd better get you out of those wet clothes."
"Nice line, Callahan." He watched the defensive parapets going up again and realized Mariah was at her most flippant whenever she felt the most vulnerable. "You wouldn't stand a chance with it at any singles bar in L.A., but I guess women are easier out here in the boondocks."
"I wouldn't know," he said mildly. "Actually, I was merely trying to keep you from coming down with pneumonia."
"Ah, yes. To protect and to serve, right?"
"Got it on the first try."
She'd been right to come here, Mariah thought as his slow, easy smile managed to warm her all the way to the bone. Things had been rough for Trace Callahan. Even if she hadn't had access to his departmental jacket, she would have not been able to miss the ghostly shadows in his dark eyes.
But somehow he'd found the strength to keep on living. Mariah wondered if he could pass his secret on to her.
"It takes time," he said, surprising her once again with the uncanny ability to read her mind. His tone and his gaze were gentle and reassuring.
She knew he wasn't talking about the investigation. "How long?"
He shrugged, deciding for discretion's sake, not to tell her that until her sister's murder had given him a reason to get up in the morning, he'd been brooding, feeling sorry for himself.
Neither did he reveal that he'd been getting sick and tired of all the self-pity that had kept him in the grips of what he'd come to think of as his own personal depression monster.
"I suspect it's an individual thing. But I do know you can't rush things. And that it does get better. Day by day."
She gave him a long considering look. "I guess I'll have to take your word for that."
"Do that." His gaze skimmed over her again. "Now we'd better get you out of those clothes."
"If you want me to take off my clothes, Sheriff, all you have to do is ask."
"That's reassuring," he managed to say in a dry tone. "But the fact is that you're dripping all over the oak floor and if it ends up with water stains, Fredericka Palmer won't give me back my security deposit."
"I wouldn't worry about that, Sheriff. Since I have a feeling that Freddi would probably give you just about anything you wanted. Of course you'd have to move pretty fast afterward."
"Oh?"
"She's always reminded me of a black widow. And you know what they do to their mates."
Trace decided Mariah had the Realtor pegged pretty closely. He also decided that there wasn't exactly any love lost between the two women. "I'll keep that in mind."
She nodded. "You do that." She shivered again. "Did you say something about dry clothes?"
"I've got a sweat suit you can put on," he said, heading toward the stairs. "Feel free to take a hot shower, if you'd like to warm up."
Mariah followed. "A shower sounds heavenly."
"Fine." He moved aside, allowing her to go in front of him. As they climbed to the bedrooms on the second floor, Trace couldn't help noticing, once again, that Mariah Swann had a very nice ass.
"The bath is right through there," he said, gesturing toward the master bedroom. "I'll leave the sweat suit on the bed. When you're done, bring your wet clothes downstairs and we'll stick them in the dryer. I was planning to heat up some Chinese leftovers for dinner, if that's okay with you."
"I love Chinese."
"Good." His eyes met hers again and held. "Then we can talk."
Mariah had never been one to share her thoughts or emotions. All those private feelings she saved for her writing, exorcising ancient demons by bringing them to life in her scripts. But for some reason she would think about later, when her head didn't feel surrounded by cotton batting and her heart wasn't breaking, she found herself drawn to share confidences with this man.
Trace heard the sound of water running in the ancient pipes and envisioned Mariah standing beneath the shower, her nude body slippery with soap. Remembering the soft sweet taste of her mouth and the way she had clung so invitingly against him, remembering how her eyes had widened when he took her over the edge, his mutinous mind spun up a picture of himself stepping into the glassed-in stall, taking that green bar from her hands and running it over her body, across her shoulders, down the crests of her breasts, her stomach, spreading a billowy cloud of lather that would be washed away by the hot water streaming over them.
He imagined his lips following that slick, fragrant trail; he could hear the soft, ragged moans escape from between her ravished lips when he dipped his tongue into her moist, feminine heat. With no difficulty at all, Trace could picture her hot and hungry, her long legs wrapped around his waist as he pressed her back against the tile and…
Dangerous thinking, Callahan, he warned himself even as he felt his body responding to the erotic fantasy. The part of him that wanted to do the right thing tried to remember that the lady was in an emotionally vulnerable state.
But hell, it wasn't as if they hadn't been good together. And although he was not the kind of rogue alley cat his mother was always dragging home, neither would Trace ever profess to be a candidate for sainthood.
From her soft knowing smile, when he opened the sliding glass shower door, Trace knew Mariah had been expecting him. He took her in his arms, she lifted her face to his and they held each other so tight the cascading water couldn't come between them.
Lips clung. Greedy hands roamed over hot wet flesh. They became lost in a fragrant cloud of steam. Time faded. Yesterday spun away. Tomorrow was far away, out of sight, out of mind. There were no questions to be asked, no answers to be sought. There was only this suspended moment of sweet, sensual pleasure as they took each other into the mists.
Much, much later, they went downstairs and warmed up the Kung Pao shrimp, pork fried rice and Sesame chicken in the microwave, which they ate at the card table he was using as a kitchen table.
Since his sweatshirt had fallen to her thighs, Mariah had foregone putting on the oversize pants. Though she'd rolled up the sleeves, her slender body was engulfed. With her still damp hair hanging loose over her shoulders and a pair of fuzzy, too large ski socks on her feet, Trace thought she appeared guileless and unsophisticated.
Mariah found Trace's surroundings more than a little dreary. "Doesn't it depress you?" she asked, glancing around the barren room, mentally adding a few copper pans hanging from the wrought iron ceiling rack, a hutch filled with colorful earthenware pottery against the far wall, and some undyed muslin curtains at the window.
"What?" He followed her gaze to the window. "The rain?"
"This house."
"I haven't given it a lot of thought." He shrugged and took a pull on his beer bottle. "It's cheap. Which is all I care about."
He frowned and glanced around again in a way that made Mariah think it was the first time he'd actually looked at the room. "What's wrong with it?"
"Actually, it's a lovely house. It's just that it looks as if it's inhabited by hoboes."
A frustrated Jessica had told him much the same thing when he'd turned down her invitation to go shopping for furniture. "I've been busy since coming to town."
"I can certainly understand that. Whiskey River is infamous for its crime sprees."
"Surely you didn't drive all the way over here in the rain to insult my housekeeping skills."
"No." She sighed. "I came over here because I needed company tonight. And you're the only person in town I know anymore." That wasn't exactly true. There was her father. And Alan. And Freddi Palmer.
"What about your mother?" Trace asked carefully.
The last time he'd seen Maggie, she'd looked dangerously shell-shocked. Given what he knew about alcoholics, he'd have guessed that she'd been on the verge of a bender. He'd have also thought that Mariah would have wanted to stand guard to try to prevent that from happening.
Not that she could. Trace knew all too well the futility of keeping a drunk away from a bottle.
"Interested in comforting your first crush, Sheriff?"
He arched a brow at her sharp tone. What was it? Jealousy? Anger? "Would it bother you if I were?"
"Not at all. It would also be none of my business." She angled her chin.
"As appealing as your mother still is, I'm more attracted to her daughter," Trace said mildly. "I was only suggesting that given how she looked when she left my office, she probably shouldn't be alone tonight, either."
"Maggie's not alone." Remembering, she closed her eyes and turned away.
Wondering if the anger that had simmered between Mariah's parents could have actually flared into something else, Trace said, "Everyone has to deal with pain in his or her own way."
"I know that!" Her head spun back toward him, her eyes hot and hurt. "But that doesn't make it any easier. Seeing your mother in bed with some hunk nearly a quarter of a century younger than her."
His mind spun through a mental Rolodex. "Your mother was in bed with the chauffeur?"
"Not yet. But she was drunk and her blouse was unbuttoned, and the guy—who just happens, coincidentally, to be a would-be actor—was hanging all over her, so it doesn't take a Hollywood writer to create a final scene to that particular script."
From what Matthew Swann had implied about his wife's behavior while she'd lived in Whiskey River, along with the mention of her picking up cowboys at Denim and Diamonds, Trace concluded that the scene was undoubtedly one both Laura and Mariah had witnessed before.
"I'm sorry," he said, meaning it. Trace remembered all too well the first time he'd understood what his mother was doing with all those men behind the curtain in their rented room. At least Maggie was giving it away, he considered.
Mariah sighed. Then cursed. Then managed a wobbly smile. "I should be used to it," she said quietly, confirming his earlier suspicions. "It's just that she's been doing so well lately…"
She didn't finish. There was no need. Proof again, Trace considered, that wealth couldn't buy freedom from pain.
Mariah braced her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her linked fingers. "At least I finally found out why she never returned to Whiskey River for the custody hearing." Another sigh. "Maggie's version, anyway."
Trace waited.
Mariah realized that her need to share the story with someone was one of the reasons she'd come running over here in the rain. She could count on one hand the people she trusted unconditionally. Trace Callahan was, she'd realized on the drive from the lodge, at the top of that very short list.
"She was out drinking one night with the ranch's very married foreman. They were driving home from Denim and Diamonds when the car hit a patch of ice and spun out of control. My mother was driving the car. The man died. My father used his influence to keep her from being arrested in exchange for her agreeing to give him sole custody of Laura and me. And never returning to Whiskey River again."
Mariah closed her eyes and drew in a deep shuddering breath, remembering how her mother's story—told haltingly between bouts of copious weeping—had made her feel so conflicted. On the one hand, it had been a relief to learn that Maggie hadn't abandoned her daughters because of any lack of maternal love.
On the other hand—and there was always another hand, Mariah thought sadly—the thought of her mother's drinking being responsible for a man's death was horribly depressing.
"There's more. The foreman's name was Cole Garvey."
"Clint's father."
Immersed in her own pain, Mariah didn't notice that Trace failed to sound surprised. "One and the same." She dragged her hands through her hair. "I knew Clint's father died when he was twelve. I just never knew how."
They both fell silent, lost in their own thoughts. Trace finally understood why Matthew Swarm's animosity toward Clint ran so deep.
"So," Mariah said on a soft, rippling sigh, "it seems Maggie and Laura had more in common than either one of them ever would have believed." Her eyes filled. "Maggie told me that she'd been planning to leave my father for Cole. And take Laura and me with her."
How their lives would have been different, Mariah mused sadly. Perhaps not better. But for Laura, anyway, she doubt if things could have been any worse.
"Anyway, I had to be alone," she told Trace. "Just for a little while, so I could try to sort things out."
"That's understandable."
When she opened her eyes and looked at him again, he viewed pain in the turquoise depths. "When I went back to Maggie's suite, to tell her that it was okay, that I understood the pressure she'd been under, I found her with her driver."
Frustration. Anger. Loss. She'd felt them all in that single blinding moment. Her shoulders, engulfed in Trace's gray Dallas Police Department sweatshirt, slumped.
"So I came here."
He ran his palm down her damp hair. "I'm glad you did." And not just for the great shower sex.
When he took her hand, she let her fingers curl into his and felt warm and safe. "So am I."
"There's something you should know. About Maggie."
. She shook her head. She couldn't think about her mother anymore tonight. Or, for that matter, Laura. For this one stolen night, she wanted to be selfish. She wanted to let Trace comfort her, she wanted him to help her forget all the painful problems she'd be forced to face along with the morning sun.
"I don't want to hear—"
"She wasn't driving."
"Please, Trace, I really don't… What?" Her eyes widened as his words belatedly sunk in. "What did you say?"
"Maggie wasn't driving her car that night."
Chapter Eighteen
Mariah stared at Trace.
"How can you possibly know that? Maggie told me the records were sealed. It was part of the deal my father cut with the prosecutor." A man who later, after a hefty campaign contribution from the Swann ranch, had been elected to the state legislature.
"The records were sealed. But I happen to have friends in high places." He lifted their joined hands, brushed his lips against her knuckles and said, "They're in the other room."
She walked with him, hand in hand, into his office, settling in a corner of the couch while he crossed to the desk and retrieved the manila file, which he handed to her.
"You got this from Jessica Ingersoll, didn't you?"
"I can't tell you that. But it does make interesting reading. Would you like an after-dinner drink?"
She stared down at the folder on her lap as if it were a diamondback rattler, poised to strike. "With the risk of sounding nice Maggie, I have a feelin
g I might need one."
She watched him pour the liquor into the glasses, ob-serving the way the crystal appeared even more delicate when held in his large hands.
He sat down beside her, shoulders and thighs touching. Mariah did not move away. Neither did he.
Stalling while she worked up her nerve to read the accident report, Mariah took a sip. The amber liquor flowed through her veins, warming her blood.
"This is good." And expensive, she knew.
"It was a housewarming gift."
"Ah." That made sense, she decided. It also explained the Waterford, which she could not imagine Trace buying for himself. Another gift from Ms. Ingersoll. She wondered if they were still lovers, wondered if what she and Trace had shared gave her the right to ask.
Trace could guess what Mariah was thinking, but was unwilling to get into a discussion about his complicated, yet easy relationship with Jess. "Your mother deserves knowing the truth," he said, tipping his head toward the folder. "After all these years."
The accident report was written in curt, unimaginative police legalese. It had been snowing the night of the accident, a week before Christmas. The steep, curving road to the ranch, treacherous in the best of weather, had been icy.
Patrons of Denim and Diamonds, most of them none too sober themselves, disagreed on exactly when Maggie and Cole Garvey had arrived at the honky-tonk. The one thing they all agreed on was that the couple had been drinking for several hours before going out into that snowstorm. Two customers, who'd been arriving as the pair left, had also reported seeing Garvey climb into the driver's seat of Maggie's Mercedes sedan.
An assertion corroborated by the report written up by the DPS officer on the scene, who'd found the foreman's body lying in a snowbank a few feet away from the wreck-age. From what the investigating officer could determine the car had hit a patch of ice, the driver had overcorrected, sending it skidding off the road into the ditch, causing it to overturn.
Garvey, who hadn't been wearing his seat belt, had been thrown from the car and had broken his neck when his head had hit the unyielding trunk of a ponderosa pine tree. Death, the coroner had later ruled, had come instantly.
