This Perfect Stranger
Tonight, he found himself tempted again, not just by the siren of oblivion, but by a woman he hardly knew who had already made him forget the curve of Annie’s lips.
Cain turned the bottle over in his hands, smoothing the cool glass with his fingers. It would be easy, he thought. One twist, one sip or two and the noise would stop.
But he wouldn’t stop at two or three, or even four. Not until he reached the bottom of the bottle and the darkness it promised. And slow suicide, as appealing as it had once been, wasn’t his style anymore. If it was going to end, it wouldn’t be slow and it wouldn’t come in a liquid form.
So with its paper honor code still intact, he slid the bottle back inside the leather knapsack and reached instead for his wallet, resting on the table beneath the lamp.
He pulled out the dog-eared photo, soft from years of handling. Annie smiled up at him from the picture and Cain stared at her hollowly. He rubbed his thumb over the image. How many times had he wished he’d gone that night instead of her? Maggie had said she didn’t believe in luck, good or bad. He figured a man was only born with so much of it and he’d used all his up when he’d met Annie and stolen those few short years with her. Their luck had run out simultaneously that night even though they’d been miles apart. And a man like him didn’t get second chances.
Minutes later, he didn’t know how many, Cain reached for the light switch and flicked it off. For a long time, he just sat there in the dark, counting the seconds ’til morning. If he could just make it to dawn, he’d be all right.
He wouldn’t think about luck, or about the woman sleeping a few hundred yards away, or anyone who reminded him what it was to be alive. Because he owed Annie that much.
Dawn had barely lightened the sky when the phone beside Maggie’s bed rang. Groggily, Maggie looked at the clock. 5:45 a.m. She frowned. Who would be calling her at this hour? And why, after a sleepless night, did they have to pick this particular morning to wake her up?
She dragged the receiver to her ear across the sleep-rumpled bedclothes. “Hello?”
There was only silence on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” she repeated, sitting up on one elbow. “Is anyone there?”
Nothing. Angry, she began to shove the receiver back in its cradle when she heard a voice, the words too indistinct to make out.
Pulling it back to her ear, Maggie listened. “Hello? Is someone there?” Nothing. “Okay, I’m hanging up now.”
“Don’t,” said a man’s voice.
A shiver went through her and her hand tightened on the receiver. “Who is this?”
“A friend.” The voice was cigarette hoarse and unfamiliar.
“I know my friends’ voices. And I don’t know yours.”
“Your husband…” the man continued, undeterred. “Ben?”
Her heart started to pound. “What about him?”
There was a long pause. “He didn’t fall on his own. He had help.”
“Wh—what are you talking about?”
“If you want to know more, find Remus Trimark.”
“Who?” Maggie scrambled into the bedside drawer for a pen and a scrap of paper. “Who’s Remus Trimark?”
There was another long pause before the caller said, “It’s not over,” and clicked off.
“Hello?” The dial tone buzzed in her ear. Maggie stared at it, feeling dizzy and off balance. Not over? What’s not over? She hung up the receiver and scribbled the name he’d mentioned down on the back of an old Hallmark anniversary card from Ben.
She remembered to breathe.
Remus Trimark? What kind of a name was that, and what did he have to do with Ben’s death? And why had the man on the phone waited six months to tell her about it?
She eased back down on the pillow, clutching the card between her shaking fingers. Her mind raced over those last days with Ben, trying to remember something, anything he’d said about a Remus Trimark—what an odd name—or anyone he’d mentioned for that matter. She came up blank. Completely blank.
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t already racked her brain for months on end, trying to piece together the how’s and why’s of his death. Trying to deconstruct those last weeks. The only conclusion she’d come to was that she and Ben had been so far apart by then it was as if they were strangers.
She turned the card over in her hands, running her fingers over the picture on the front of a yellow rose in a slender glass vase. He’d given her this card on their first anniversary. Inside, the sentimental Hallmark greeting had nothing to do with why she’d kept this particular card. It was the handwritten inscription there that had made her tuck the card away here years ago.
Happy Anniversary, sweetheart. When we’re old and gray, sitting around the fire on some cold winter night, remind me to thank you for taking a chance on me.
All my love,
Ben.
It seemed so far away now, those days when he’d loved her so completely. That fire had been banked long before he’d died. He’d gambled that away along with nearly everything else.
He had help.
The stranger’s words echoed in her ears. Help? What did he mean by that? And how was she going to find some man named Remus Trimark? In the phone book?
The sound of thunking came from outside Maggie’s window. Silently, she slid out of bed and padded barefoot to the window. The filmy drapes billowed as the cool night air slid through the one inch crack between window and sill. She wrapped her arms around her waist and searched the dusky yard for the source of the sound.
She spotted him half-hidden beneath the ash tree in her yard, shirtsleeves rolled halfway up his elbows, hacking away at what was left of that old tree limb.
Cain.
What was he doing up so early? Maybe he figured to finish the job and leave before she could get him to change his mind.
Maybe he hadn’t slept any better than she had.
She’d spent most of the night thinking about him, her situation, and the impossible scenarios she’d constructed around how she could save her home—everything from auctioning off the nonessential contents of her house to taking up striptease dancing at the local hangout. But none was as far-fetched as the one that had hit her sometime before she’d drifted into an uneasy sleep. It was too insane to even consider. Really. And Cain would probably call the men in the little white suits to come and take her away for even suggesting it.
Maggie chewed on her thumbnail, watching him bend over to scoop up an armload of wood. The muscles in his thighs bunched like liquid iron. He was strong. And if she didn’t miss her guess, a little reckless and maybe even a little desperate. Exactly the sort of man she needed.
It’s not over, the voice on the phone echoed in her mind.
Neither was she, she decided. Not while she still had a shred of hope.
With a grateful smile, Cain took the glass of lemonade from her hand and guzzled the cold liquid down. The afternoon heat had backed up in the barn where he was shoveling out stalls and he’d taken off his shirt again. He didn’t miss the way her gaze traveled across his bare chest, or the way that little bead of sweat had gathered above her lip.
“Where’s yours?” he asked.
She jerked her gaze upward with a flustered little flush of color. “What?”
“Your lemonade,” he said.
“Oh. Um.” She took the empty glass from him. “I…I’m not thirsty.”
He nodded, not believing her for a second. She’d been working her butt off in the pole corral with that demon seed, Geronimo, for the last two hours, getting nowhere. But she looked like she had more important things on her mind.
She’d been quiet at lunch, but he’d figured those dark circles under her eyes might explain that. She looked like she hadn’t slept any better than he had. But work, for him, was like a tonic. It made him feel useful. She looked plain worn down.
Or maybe she’d decided he’d worn out his welcome.
He braced a hand on his pitchfork and stabbed at the dirty straw near his feet. “I got that gate latch working again. It just needed a little grease, a couple of screws.”
“Gate latch?” she asked, lost.
“By the paddock.” When she still looked blank, he pointed. “By the north pasture?”
“Oh! The gate latch! Of course…the gate…latch. Thank you. Thanks…” She squeezed her palms together, as if she were looking to enhance her bustline. Something, as far as he was concerned, she didn’t need to do.
“Somethin’ wrong?” he asked.
“Wrong? No.” She smiled broadly. “Nothing’s wrong.”
Her teeth tugged nervously at her lower lip for the second time since she’d come in here, and she turned away from him, pacing to the other side of the barn hallway.
He couldn’t help but notice the way her jeans hugged those long legs of hers, curving against her backside. Nor did he miss the way that little sleeveless cotton blouse of hers outlined the slenderness of her waist and pulled against the fullness of her small breasts. Thoughts he had no business having pulsed through him with little jabs of awareness in regions he’d been ignoring for far too long. But, hell, no matter what his convictions, he was still a man. And she was a—
“I’m just going to say it,” she blurted out, whirling back toward him. “There’s no point beating around the bush. I have a proposition.”
His eyebrows went up. He liked the sound of this already.
“Cain?” she said in a voice usually reserved for pleas to the executioner. “Will you marry me?”
Chapter 4
Following a moment of protracted silence, he laughed out loud. “Man, for a minute there, I thought you asked me to marry you.”
Her face had gone two shades of red. “I did.”
The smile slipped disbelievingly from his expression. Cain stared at her, dumbfounded. Standing up to his ankles in the horse dung and straw he’d swept out of the stables, he nearly sat down where he was.
“Not a real marriage, of course. Don’t look at me that way. I know how this sounds.”
Cain snorted, thinking it sounded like he’d been transported into some weird alternative universe while he wasn’t looking. “You do?”
“I-I said it all wrong. Actually,” she said, wrinkling her brow, “there is no right way to ask a complete stranger to marry you.”
He let the pitchfork’s handle thunk against the silvery old wood of the stall door. “Stranger being the operative word.”
“I know.” Maggie turned and paced to the other side of the barn’s main hallway. “I know. Don’t you think this sounds crazy to me, too?”
He shook his head, still not comprehending. “Then why—?”
“Because I need a husband, Cain. Technically. I need a husband or I’m going to lose this place.”
The gears began to lock in place in his brain. “Look,” he began, “I’m sorry to hear that. But I don’t see what that has to do with me.”
“Believe me,” she said, pacing from one side of the hallway to the other, “no one is more surprised by what I’m suggesting than I am.”
“Really.” Cain tore off one work glove and slapped it against his knee. Fragrant bits of straw dust swirled in the air between them. “I don’t think I want to know…but what exactly are you suggesting?”
She stopped pacing. “An arrangement.”
“Arrangement.” Even his voice sounded odd. And was it suddenly hotter in here?
“Yes. It would be strictly a business arrangement. With a contract. Guidelines. That sort of thing.”
“Guidelines.”
“You’re horrified.”
Cain rubbed his temple. “Horrified isn’t exactly—”
“Because I’d be horrified if I were you. I mean, after all, all you did was ride onto my place and innocently ask for a job and here I am—”
“Speechless is more the word I’d go for.”
“Right. I understand. But this could benefit us both.”
This he had to hear. “How?”
“Well, first of all, there’s the obvious. I need a husband to qualify for the loan I need to save this place. You seem to need a place to be. I just thought, since you weren’t heading anywhere in particular—”
“Did I say that?”
Her lips parted in surprise and he cursed himself for snapping at her.
“I…I—” she stammered, “maybe not.”
“I never said that.”
She nodded. “All right. At any rate, I wouldn’t ask you to do me this favor without compensation. I’m prepared to offer you—“she swallowed hard “—five hundred acres of my land in exchange for posing as my husband.”
Five hundred—! Cain nearly choked.
“To be delivered after our arrangement is terminated.”
Cain was still stuck on the five hundred acres of prime cattle country she’d offered. Something old and rusty lurched back to life inside him. A dream he’d thought long dead. Land.
Land that he could call his own. Maybe the old dream wasn’t as dead as he’d thought it was.
“Cain? Did you hear me?”
He dragged himself back. “What?”
“I said, you’d have to promise to stay—play my husband that whole time. If you broke your end of the bargain, or if we fail to make this place work…I’ll lose the ranch. And your part with it.”
She was right. It was a gamble. If she lost, he’d be out six months and the prospect of a place to start over. If she won, though…what? He’d settle down? Build a house and a picket fence and pretend he could ever have go back to the life he’d walked away from?
He reached for the pitchfork again, and just for the hell of it, asked, “How far do you mean to take this little fantasy of yours?”
“What do you mean?”
He turned back to her. “You and me. How far do you intend to take this marriage charade?”
“I told you. It’s a business arrangement. You will, of course, sleep in the tack room.”
“The tack room. You want me to play your husband from the tack room.”
She cleared her throat. “Yes. No one needs to know.”
Images of another wedding and another time clicked through his brain. Pictures that turned like a Rolodex in his mind whenever the hell they wanted to. He turned away from Maggie. Hell, what was he thinking? That he could ever start over? Be that man he’d been once? That anyone would ever let him forget where he’d been?
“No,” he said, shoving the pitchfork into the last of the soiled bedding in the stall.
Maggie let her arms drop to her sides. “No…as in you won’t sleep in the barn? Or—”
“No…as in I won’t marry you.” He dumped the load of dirty straw at Maggie’s feet and turned back to toss the fresh flake of straw around the clean floor.
Behind him, Maggie was silent for the space of ten heartbeats. But that didn’t last.
“You could…think about it.” Her voice was small and sounded thin. “We could…discuss—”
“I don’t need to think about it. I’m not in the market. I told you. I’m just passin’ through.”
“I could even pay you a small salary when I get the loan. Enough to get you started—”
“Not interested.”
Maggie studied one of her palms. “Right. Okay.”
Cain leaned against the pitchfork, staring at the dirt floor. He should’ve left this morning. Early. He didn’t want to hear the need in her voice or ponder what it meant to leave her alone here on this place when she was begging him to stay. The flash of anger her offer had set off in him subsided. He wasn’t sure where it had even come from. All he knew was that it was time to get out of here.
He combed a hand through his hair. “It’s probably best if I go now. I’ve stayed too long already.”
Straightening her shoulders, she started backing out of the barn. “Right. You have to do what you have to do. I’d, uh, better get back to the horses. Please, say goodbye before you go.” She turned on her heel and walked out of the barn like a queen. Untouchable. Surrounded by glass.
But he suspected that underneath all that glass was a real woman whose passions ran deep. A woman who, in some other time or place, he would have wanted to get to know.
Did that make him a heel for turning her down? For not wanting to get involved in her troubles? Hell, he’d had enough troubles of his own for more years than he cared to remember. He didn’t need anyone else’s.
He ground the tines of the pitchfork into the dirt, and headed into the tack room to gather up the few things he’d unpacked there and shove them back in his knapsack.
He’d get on his bike and ride to the next place. And after that, he’d ride some more. Because he had places to go and things to forget.
Maggie managed to reach the pole corral at the far side of the yard before she allowed herself to crumble inside. Grabbing hold of the bark-covered lodgepole fence rail, she climbed up it and wrapped her arms around the top rail. Inside the corral, Geronimo was doing his imitation of a caged cat in the afternoon sun. She knew just how he felt.
Dammit all!
She’d had her share of humiliating moments in this lifetime, but this one just might be the topper.
What had she been thinking? That he’d say yes? That he’d bite on the bribe she’d dangled in front of him in exchange for yoking him with a marriage he didn’t want? God. What idiot would want to burden himself with a woman he didn’t even know? One that was sinking up to her neck in troubles? Certainly not Cain MacCallister. Nor could she blame him.
Fine, she thought. Let him go. Let him ride off into the sunset. She’d find a way. With him or without him! She wouldn’t fail. She simply couldn’t. This was the first real home she’d ever had. The ranch meant everything to her and they’d have to physically drag her off, kicking and screaming, before she’d allow them to take it from her.
Geronimo cruised by her, his tail set high, his ears pitched forward at full attention. A shrill sound came from his throat, like the sound wild stallions make when they’re gathering their remuda of mares together. He was beautiful, with the conformation of the champions that ran in his bloodline. He wasn’t meant to be put behind fences or separated from his kind. Headstrong and a more than a little wild, he had a good heart. A strong heart. She recognized the same qualities in Cain, too. But he was meant for the road, too. A man like him didn’t operate under contracts or guidelines. The man was like the horse. Probably untamable and most definitely dangerous to her.
The sight of a truck and a horse trailer coming down her road made Maggie hop down from the fence rail and brush away the moisture that had dampened her cheeks. She cursed under her breath.
Donnelly.
Her heart began to race and she backed toward the house, trying not to panic. She’d left Jigger sleeping inside, dreaming about chasing rabbits. She hadn’t had the heart to wake him. But now he was barking worriedly inside the house.
The truck pulled into the yard, spitting gravel and crunching it beneath its tires. Laird was behind the wheel. The passenger seat was empty.
She actually pictured Ben’s rifle, tucked safely away in the closet of her bedroom. Too far to help her now. And it was probably just as well because in the mood she was in, she might be tempted to use it on him for simply getting out of his truck.
Laird pulled to a stop not five feet from her. “Told you I’d come by with your mares.”
“Don’t bother to get out, Laird,” she told him. “I’ll unload them.”
He opened the door anyway and unfolded himself from the truck. “That wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of me, would it? After all, I brought the ladies all the way back here…”
“I mean it. Don’t come near me.”
“I came to pay a simple, friendly visit, Maggie.”
“Nothing you do is either simple or friendly.” She moved toward the back of the loaded horse van. She lifted the slide bolt and whacked it open with the heel of her hand. But as she swung the door open, Laird appeared beside her.
“Anybody ever tell you you’ve got a touch of paranoia, Maggie Mae?”
She shot an ugly look at him before climbing up into the trailer. “Don’t call me that.”
He followed her, crowding her in the dark, narrow space as she moved to unhook the first mare’s halter from the stabilizing tether. She fumbled with the metal latch several times before she got it.
Laird moved to unhook a second mare, all the while watching her. “What?” he drawled. “I get no thank-you for goin’ to all this trouble? It’s not like I didn’t have better things to do with my afternoon.”
“You could have sent one of your men. God knows, you have enough to spare.”
“True. But to tell you the truth, I was curious to see how you were holdin’ up on your own out here. Without Ben.”
Maggie ignored him and backed the mare down the ramp, clucking at her as she went. “Atta girl. There you go,” she crooned.
Laird followed with the other mare, but he wasn’t paying much attention to the horse. “He was a fool, your husband. Abandoning you the way he did.”
“Go home, Laird. I mean it,” she said, leading the mare to the paddock where she tied it up to the fence rail. Laird did the same with his horse but cornered her there against the fence before she could move.
Maggie swallowed hard. “Get out of my way.”
“There’s nobody else here, Maggie. Just us.”
He was close enough that she could smell the stink of cattle on him, and whiskey if she wasn’t mistaken. He’d been drinking. And cigars. He reeked of cigar smoke.
Her throat felt like it was closing up with each thudding beat of her pulse. “Don’t.”
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