Playing with Fire (16 page)

He’d seen both sides of Maggie because he’d caught her off guard. Once that guard was down, it was almost impossible to put back up. He knew from experience.

Beau stared at the house for a moment, half expecting the front curtain to move. When it didn’t, he got out of his car and walked to the Mustang, which was shielded from the worst of the afternoon sun by the house shadows. He placed his hand on the hood to check the temperature. Completely cool, although that didn’t mean much. Enough time had passed since Bennett’s fire that the engine would have cooled down. His gut told him Maggie hadn’t set that fire, but while he was here, he might as well rule a few things out.

When she didn’t come to the door, he stepped up on the porch to ring the bell. When that didn’t work, he knocked. His only reward was a single woof. Backing off the porch he searched the second-floor windows for signs of life. Nothing. Not even the flutter of a curtain.

“Maggie, I know you’re home.” He didn’t yell, but had no doubt she heard him. He felt a little foolish standing in the middle of the yard with the sun beating down on him. He imagined he looked like Stanley Kowalski in
A Streetcar Named Desire.
Of course Stanley wasn’t strapped into a shoulder holster and armed with a Desert Eagle auto mag. Other than that, the comparison stood.

“Maggie! Open the door and let’s get this over with.”

Seconds passed, piling up on one another and feeding the silence. At the very least he’d expected Maggie to crack the door long enough to tell him to go to hell. With each passing second, uneasiness crept into his gut, setting up a base camp for dread.

Purposefully, he veered toward the magnolias to
check the field. All he found was the silent corpse of the barn and a startled quail. When the stillness returned, Carolyn’s soft plea came like a whisper on the wind.
I just want to know she’s all right.

Beau whirled, his stride lengthening with every step as he moved toward the side porch. He could see the screen in place, but the wooden door was open. Reflex took over, and Beau pulled the magnum from his holster. Something was definitely wrong. Even if she’d left the door open because of the broken air-conditioning, she’d have closed it the moment she heard his voice in the front yard. Probably would have smiled as she flipped the bolt and locked him out.

If she was hiding from the world, why leave the door open? The question nagged him. Déjà vu struck as his own personal experience provided an answer.

Unless you wanted someone to he able to get in when they came looking for you.

His heart pumped a jolt of old fear; his throat closed as he thought of his mother. Then the past cleared, and he pumped a round into the chamber. He had no doubts about Maggie. Whatever was wrong here, it wasn’t suicide. Maggie might need to be rescued, but she didn’t need to be discovered.

Maggie and his mother were two very different women, from different times. Maggie would be a fighter to the bitter end. As much as he had loved his mother, she’d never had the strength to fight or to dream. She didn’t read about sailing trips around the world or do-it-yourself safaris. But Maggie fought and Maggie dreamed. The sheer number of travel books testified to Maggie’s
belief that somewhere, someplace would be worth the risk. She didn’t give up.

He took the side porch steps in one leap. Another stride put him at the screen. Beau lifted his hand to the handle, but a growl warned him just in time. To get to Maggie he was going to have to go through a hundred and fifty pounds of canine muscle and teeth.

“Easy, girl.” Carefully he lowered his hand and holstered his gun.

He didn’t waste time trying to charm his way in. Gwen had never really appreciated his charm. What he needed was food. Lots of food. If he was lucky, he might have an old vending machine package of peanut butter crackers in his glove compartment.

Every couple of months he’d forget that he didn’t really like the peanut butter kind. He’d buy a pack, eat one, and shove the rest out of sight. After sprinting to his car, he ripped open the compartment and found a two-pack bonanza. He grabbed them both. They were probably way past the expiration date and stale as month-old cake, but Gwen couldn’t read and he wasn’t going to tell her.

The hard soles of his shoes struck the boards of the wraparound porch like a courtroom gavel. Gwen heard him coming as he turned the corner. The screen bulged outward as she poked it with her nose, trying to see sideways down the porch. The door bounced open from the pressure, then he heard the snap of the hook-and-eye latch as the door reached its limit and stopped.

If the dog wanted to, she could rip right through that flimsy screen. Beau had already seen those teeth at close range. He wasn’t eager to repeat the experience. As he
approached, he was reminded of how protective Gwen was. Gwen wouldn’t be challenging him if there was a stranger in the house. The dog would be glued to Maggie’s side. Unless that person was known to Gwen. Unless that person was already gone, out the front door before he ever arrived.

The growl came, each time he moved.

“Easy, girl. I’ve got a bribe right here.” He shoved one pack in his shirt pocket and fished a cracker out the other. Carefully he slid it through the opening, keeping his fingers as far back as possible. Gwen stopped snarling long enough to snatch the treat and swallow it whole.

“Didn’t your mama teach you to chew your food first?” Beau had been counting on the fact that a dog with peanut butter stuck to the roof of its mouth had better things to do than eat intruders. As much as he wanted to hurry, he knew he had to take it slow.

Two more crackers followed the first one into the maw. She wasn’t growling anymore, but neither was she wagging. Beau fished the fourth cracker out, dropped the cellophane, and grabbed the door handle. When she snatched, so did he. The frame splintered, and the latch popped loose.

Beau braced himself, but Gwen did nothing more aggressive than begin to growl again. Carefully he pulled out the second cracker package. By the time he was down to his last stale cracker, he had managed to work his way across the threshold. With his last bribe, he scratched her behind the ears and walked past her. “Stay here.”

An old newspaper clipping lying on the kitchen table caught his eye.
LOCAL TEEN DIES IN ACCIDENTAL BLAZE.
The date was identical to the one on the charred corner
he’d fished from the grate. Why would Maggie keep two copies of the same article? More important, why would she burn only one?

“Maggie!” He pulled his gun as he called her name, but didn’t wait for a response. In rapid succession he checked each of the downstairs rooms and then started up the stairs. “Maggie?”

Her bedroom was empty and so were the bathroom and what looked like a TV room with big comfortable chairs. He made no effort to soften his footsteps as he reversed directions to the other end of the hallway. The runner beneath his feet was so thin, it was worthless at deadening noise.

Stopping at the door to a closed room, Beau felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. He’d trusted his instincts for too many years to question them now, so he braced himself and twisted the doorknob. The door swung quietly open, adding some light to the drape-darkened room. Beau was reminded of the first time he’d seen Maggie.

Same turquoise scrubs, same sense of loneliness that he wanted to erase. She was sitting cross-legged against the headboard, bent over slightly and hugging a pillow to her chest like a rag doll. When the door bumped the wall, she started and looked toward the noise. Beau flipped on the ceiling light, and then wished he hadn’t. He wasn’t prepared for the wealth of emotion Maggie could convey with her eyes. Or maybe he wasn’t prepared for his reaction to the woman.

If the eyes were the windows of the soul, then he didn’t like the view. Maggie looked as if she’d been to hell and back. Her eyes were swollen and red. Tear tracks
were obvious. Despair was there, too, dulling her eyes and haunting her soul. But the most devastating to Beau was the way her expression changed as she recognized him.

The public mask didn’t go up. Instead, relief and longing softened the despair with a flicker of hope. Slowly Beau realized that Maggie wanted him here. For whatever reason, she’d let him inside the walls. And that put him on dangerous ground. He wanted Maggie’s trust. He wanted a part of her the rest of the world would never have.

Selfishly he wanted all of Maggie. Her loyalty, her reckless passion, and the softness that she hoarded. Something about her filled a void within that he hadn’t even recognized in his life. His job made him think, but she made him feel, dragged him off the sidelines and back into the game. Back onto dangerous ground.

Beau knew he’d screwed up. He’d allowed himself to want someone complicated, and now it was too late to walk away. He holstered his gun and waited. When she spoke, her words were so soft, he almost missed them, and they were so honest, they sealed his fate.

“You’re really here.” Maggie still had a death grip on the pillow. “I thought … I thought I’d conjured you up in my mind.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want to be alone.” The truth slipped out before Maggie could stop it.

She realized she’d just stripped herself bare emotionally, and she couldn’t manage to care. That “somebody” she’d wanted all her life suddenly had a name and face and voice. And he kept walking into her life when she
needed him. Although he lingered in the doorway, there wasn’t anything uncertain about him. There never was. His confidence was as much a part of him as his gun and the badge.

He could read her better than she read herself. He had a sixth sense about her, which meant he probably knew too much. More than she wanted anyone to know.

Where’s your pride, Maggie? she asked herself as Beau stared at her. Trying to recover some of her backbone, she pulled herself together. With a shaky voice she quipped, “As usual, your timing’s impeccable, Chief Grayson. You must have taken a home study course.”

“Don’t.” The command was harsh and angry, startling her.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t pretend you aren’t afraid of something. Not with me. You have to deal with it, Maggie. Whatever
it
is. Or it’s only going to get worse.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Denying her problem had become such a habit, the lie was easy. “Haven’t you ever heard of PMS? It was just a little crying jag. Nothing serious.”

“Like hell.” He breached the threshold, arrowing straight for her.

In one fluid action, he ripped the pillow from her hands and flung it as he pulled her to her knees, dragging her off the bed and onto her feet. “You’re holed up in a dark room like a fox gone to ground. Baby, you’re not dealing with the problem and you’re going to have to or it’ll destroy you.”

“Careful, Beau, you said that like you cared. I might get the wrong idea and think you had a heart.”

“Do you want me to care, Maggie? When you were conjuring, were you conjuring
me
? Or would any warm body have done?”

When she didn’t answer he pushed her away, but changed his mind and hauled her back. Closer this time. Maggie steeled herself against the rush of awareness that lit up her senses when his hard body pressed the length of hers. Not that it did any good. She felt like a pinball machine, and Beau knew exactly how and when to tap the flippers to score the most points.

Dropping her gaze to his holster, she concentrated on the gun’s grip. Funny how a weapon seemed less dangerous than Beau at the moment. She couldn’t think when he aimed all that intensity at her.

“Who were you conjuring, Maggie?” Beau asked again, refusing to let it drop. He wanted an answer. He wanted the words.

He moved his hands to her neck and used his thumbs to guide her chin up. Her skin was so soft. The tip of her nose was still pink, her lashes spiky from the tears. He felt her pulse jump beneath his fingers as he forced her to meet his gaze. Every moment since he’d met her had been leading to this one. Right or wrong, he wanted to be inside Maggie.

“Truth time, Maggie May. Are you ready for this? Do you understand what I’m asking? Was it me?”

Suddenly Maggie was back on the edge of that crumbling cliff, pitching forward into space. The decision was made without her ever having considered the options. Her mind had no choice but to follow where her body led. “I knew exactly who I wanted to come through that door. And he did.”

“Careful what you wish for because then you have to deal with me, with what I want.” He gave her one last chance to change her mind, one last chance to stop what was going to happen. “We’re going to end up in that bed, Maggie.”

“Would that be so terrible?”

Beau showed her by taking her mouth with his. There was no finesse, no softness, only need. Without breaking the kiss he curled his fingers in the straps of his holster and peeled it off. Something on the bedside table fell as he shoved the gun onto it. Beau didn’t care, couldn’t care about anything but the feel of Maggie’s body as she rose to meet his kiss and the heat of her mouth.

As he threaded his fingers in her hair, Beau let his tongue slide in, let himself imagine slipping into her, making love to her in long, slow strokes that gradually shifted to a hard, deep rhythm. His hands dropped to her hips, rolling her gently against him, letting her feel how much he wanted her. When he pulled his mouth away, she moaned in disappointment.

Beau shushed her, promising her satisfaction without words as his tongue brushed against her bottom lip. He dropped a kiss on her chin and tasted the skin of her neck, the hollow of her throat. Her fingers worked at the buttons of his shirt as his mouth reclaimed hers.

One good tug and his shirttail slid out of his jeans. His T-shirt would have followed, but Beau grabbed her hands and flattened them on his chest, moving them away from temptation. Not yet. Desire pulsed, and he felt so heavy, so hard. A small tremor of pleasure raced through him as he stroked against her.

Maggie felt him tense against her palms, against her belly. When she realized he was holding himself still, waiting for the pleasure to pass, a surge of power rushed through her. Beau was as affected by her as she was by him. This wasn’t seduction by the numbers; this was raw and real and uncontrollable.