Lonergan's Secrets

Which was, he told himself, exactly why he’d been avoiding her all week.

Because that night with her was never far from his mind. Because with every breath he wanted her again. And again. And again.

Shaking his head, he blew out a breath. Damn it. Having her should have taken the edge off the hunger. Instead he now knew just what he could find in her arms and it was taking everything he had to keep from trying to have it again. “Like I said. Observant.”

Silently he took the gathered edges of the sheet, folded them neatly and dropped them onto the stack already in the basket. When he was finished, Maggie handed him a pillowcase and took one for herself.

“Hmm,” she quipped with a glance at him, “not even going to try to deny it?”

“Not much point in that, is there?”

“So want to tell me why you’ve been avoiding me?”

“Not particularly,” he admitted and took the pillowcase she handed him.

“Okay, then why don’t I tell you?”

“Maggie.” He dropped the pillowcase onto the stack of clean laundry.

“See,” she said, cutting him off neatly, “I think you don’t want to talk about that night because it meant something to you. And that bothers you.”

He stiffened, narrowed his gaze on her and watched as she quickly plucked two more clothespins off the line, gathering up a sheet as she went. “I already told you, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding, “we’ve already covered that.”

“So why don’t we just leave it alone?”

“Can’t,” she said, turning to face him.

“Why am I not surprised?”

She gave him a sad smile. “Is it really so hard for you to admit that what we had that night was special?”

“No.” He huffed out a breath. “It was. I can admit that. But I can’t give you anything else.”

“I didn’t ask for anything else,” she reminded him with a patient sigh.

“Yeah, but you will,” he said, meeting her dark gaze with his own. “It’s in your nature.”

She laughed and the music of it slammed into him, rocking him on his heels.

“My nature,” she repeated. “And you know this how?”

He waved one hand, encompassing the ranch yard, the house and her. “You’re a nester, Maggie. Look at you. I can see the curtains you hung in the guesthouse from here. You’ve burrowed your way into the very place that I’ve been steering clear of for fifteen years.”

“But you’re here now.”

“For the summer,” he clarified, in case she’d missed him saying it in the last week. “Then I’m gone again.”

“Just like that?” she asked. “You can leave again, even knowing how much your grandfather needs you? Loves you?”

Sam shifted uncomfortably. Guilt pinged around inside him like a marble in the bottom of an empty coffee can. “I can’t stay,” he said finally through gritted teeth.

She shook her head slowly and he followed the motion of her ponytail swinging from side to side behind her head. “Not can’t,” she said, “won’t.”

“Whichever.” He sounded as irritable as he felt, but apparently the tone of his voice had no effect on her. Because she only looked at him with that same sad smile, half disappointment, half regret.

“Fine. But even if you’re leaving at the end of summer, you’re here now,” she reminded him.

Yeah, he was. And he wanted her. Bad. For one brief instant his body tightened and his breath staggered in his lungs. Then he came back to his senses. “You’re not a ‘right now’ kind of woman, Maggie. And I can’t make you promises.”

“You keep forgetting that I didn’t ask for anything from you.” She stepped toward him, cupped his cheek in her palm and stared directly into his eyes. “What? Only men are allowed brief, red-hot affairs?”

He caught her hand in his, stilling the feel of her fingertips against his skin. “What about the other?”

“Hmm?”

“The chance of pregnancy?” Couldn’t believe he had to remind her about that.

Realization dawned on her features, but she said, “I don’t know yet. But since there’s nothing we can do about it at the moment, no point in worrying about that until we know for sure, is there?”

“Guess not.” Though he knew damn well a corner of his mind would be worrying about that small chance nonstop until he knew one way or the other.

“And we could be careful.”

Her voice brought him back from his thoughts, and as he looked down into her eyes, he felt his resolution to keep his distance fading into nothingness. If they were careful, if she didn’t expect more from him than he could give.

It would be crazy.

Stupid.

Great.

When he didn’t speak, she shrugged. “Either way,” she mused, still giving him that half smile, “still got to get the laundry in.”

With the abrupt shift in subject, Sam felt as if he’d just been shown a safe path through a minefield. As she walked along the line to take down the next sheet, he studied the sway of her hips, despite knowing that he’d be better off ignoring it. “Why don’t you just use the dryer on the service porch?”

“This way things smell better,” she said, lifting one shoulder in a half shrug as she reached up to the line. The hem of her tank top pulled up, displaying an inch or two of taut, tanned abdomen. Just enough to tempt him. “The wind and the sun… at night, you can sleep on sheets that make you dream of summer.”

That’d be good, he thought, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets. But then, anything would beat the kind of dreams he normally had.

“Besides,” she was saying as she tossed him one end of a pink-and-blue floral sheet, “when I was a little girl, I always wanted my own clothesline.”

He chuckled, surprising both of them. “That’s different.”

She glanced at him, then looked down at the sheet they were folding. “There was a house down the street from where I lived and this woman would be out there almost every day.” Her voice went soft and hazy and he knew she was looking at a memory. “She had this big golden dog who followed her all around the yard and she’d laugh at him while she hung out clothes to dry. Sometimes,” she added, smiling now, “her kids would go out there, too. And they’d all play peek-a-boo in the clean clothes and it all looked so… nice.”

“So your own mom wasn’t the clothesline type, huh?”

Maggie’s features stiffened and a shutter dropped over her eyes. “I don’t know what my mother preferred,” she said and heard the wistfulness in her voice. “I never knew her.”

She glanced at Sam and saw his wince. “Sorry.”

She shrugged again and reached to push up the strap of her tank top that had slid down her arm. “Not your fault. You didn’t know.”

“And your father?”

She forced a smile. “He’s a mystery, too. They died when I was a kid. I went into the system and stayed there until I was eighteen. That neighbor I told you about? She lived down the street from the group home.”

“You weren’t adopted?”

“Nope. Most people want babies. But don’t get that sympathy look on your face,” Maggie warned. She hadn’t needed anyone’s pity in a long time and she sure didn’t want it from Sam. “I did fine. There were a couple of foster parents along the way and the group home was a good one.” Wanting to throw up roadblocks on memory lane, she changed the subject fast. “Anyway, now that there’s a clothesline nearby, I get to indulge myself.”

Thankfully he didn’t ask anything else about her childhood. It hadn’t all been popcorn and cotton candy, but it hadn’t exactly been a miserable Dickensian childhood or anything, either. But that was the past and she had the present and future to think about.

“Indulge yourself even though this way it’s more work.”

“Sometimes more work makes things better.”

“Not your average attitude these days.”

She smiled at him. “Who wants to be average?”

“Good point.” He finished folding the sheet, glanced around the yard. “You know, there’s something still missing from your laundry recreation. Pop used to have a dog.”

“Bigfoot.” Maggie nodded sadly. “I know. He died last year.”

“Last year?” Sam whistled as he did the math. “He had to have been nearly twenty years old.”

“Almost,” Maggie agreed, “and pretty spry right up to the end. Jeremiah was brokenhearted when that dog died. He said it was his last link to you and your cousins.”

He slapped one hand to his chest and rubbed it hard, as if her words had hit him like a dart.

“You shouldn’t have stayed away so long,” she said.

His gaze slid to hers. “I couldn’t come back. Couldn’t be here… be surrounded with memories. Couldn’t do it.”

“But you’re doing it now.”

He snorted. “Just barely.”

“Maybe it’ll get easier the longer you’re here.”

“No, it won’t.”

“You could try. For his sake.” She nodded in the direction of the house.

“It’s only for his sake that I’m here at all.” He reached up, closed one hand around the nylon clothesline and hung on as if it were a life rope tossed into a stormy sea.

“It wasn’t your fault.” She said it without thinking, and the minute those words came blundering out of her mouth, Maggie knew they’d been a mistake.

His features froze over. His jaw clenched. She watched him grind his teeth together hard enough to turn them to powder. And his gaze—dark, filled with pain—stabbed hers. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“You could talk about it. Tell me.”

Another harsh, rasping laugh shot from his throat as he shook his head. “Talking about it doesn’t change anything. Talking about it doesn’t help. It just brings it all back.”

“Sam,” Maggie said softly, “you don’t have to bring it back. It’s with you all the time.”

“God, I know that.” He blew out a breath, seemed to steady himself, then started talking again, forcing a change of subject. “So how’d you come to be here on the Lonergan ranch, working for Jeremiah?”

Maggie nodded, silently agreeing to the shift in topic, and she was pretty sure she caught the flash of relief in his dark eyes. Then she took down the next sheet and handed one end to him. They had a rhythm now, working together as a team, and a part of her wished that that teamwork could spill over into other areas.

“My car broke down,” she said. “Right outside the front gates.” Pausing to remember, she added, “Broke down doesn’t really cover it. More like it fell apart.”

One corner of his mouth lifted and Maggie wondered what he looked like when he was really smiling. Or laughing.

“Anyway,” she said, getting her mind back on track, “Jeremiah invited me in, made me lunch, called a mechanic. And by the time Arthur’s Towing Service arrived to take my car away to heap heaven, your grandfather had offered me a job as his housekeeper.”

“That explains how you got here,” he agreed, folding the sheet and setting it down on top of the rest. “Now tell me why you’re still here.”

Nodding, Maggie straightened up and looked around beyond the ranch yard and the outbuildings. To the now golden-brown fields stretching out for miles all around them, the acres of blue sky overhead and finally to their closest neighbor, the Bateman ranch house that was no more than a faint smudge of red in the distance.

Finally she looked back at him. “Why wouldn’t I be?” she asked. “It’s beautiful here. I like the small town. I love your grandfather—and I owe him a lot. He gave me a place to belong.”

A simple word and yet it meant so much to Maggie. It probably meant more than Sam would ever be able to truly understand. No one who’d had a home and a family could ever really know how lonely it was to be without those things.

“And,” she said, “working for Jeremiah gives me plenty of time to take classes at the community college in Fresno.”

“What kind of classes?”

“Nursing. I… like taking care of people.”

“According to Jeremiah and Doc Evans, you’re good at it, too.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

The conversation was dwindling pretty fast. But maybe that was because they were through working. There was nothing else to focus on but themselves. Each other.

Afternoon sunlight streamed down from a brassy sky, and heat radiated up from the pebble-strewn dirt. A halfhearted puff of wind stirred things up a bit without cooling them off.

And seconds continued to tick past.

He looked down at her, a thoughtful expression on his face, and Maggie wondered just what he was thinking.

More than that, she wondered if he was ever going to kiss her again. Heartbeat suddenly thundering in her ears, she was painfully aware of every shallow breath panting in and out of her lungs. Her mouth was dry, her throat tight.

He continued to stare at her. His dark, shadow-filled eyes drew her in. She couldn’t have looked away even if the notion had occurred to her. There was something about this man that touched something in her no one else had ever come close to.

And, oh, God, she wanted his mouth on hers again.

As if he were reading her mind, his gaze dropped briefly, hungrily, to her mouth. Maggie’s stomach did a nose dive and heat pooled somewhere even farther south.

When he reached for her, she leaned in toward him, and her breath caught as his hands closed around her upper arms.

Lowering his head to hers, he whispered, “We’re going to make the same mistake again, aren’t we?”

She felt his breath on her face and nearly sighed. Then, looking deeply into his eyes, she said, “Every chance we get.”

Eight

His mouth came down on hers and Maggie felt herself sway into him. Her breasts pressed against his broad chest, her nipples hardened in eager anticipation.

Her lips parted under his and his tongue swept inside. She sighed and gave herself up to the intense sensations pouring through her. Deliberately she shut her brain down and ignored completely the one small, rational voice still whispering warnings in her brain.

He pulled her even tighter against him, and the combined heat from his body and the blistering warmth from the afternoon sun on her back made Maggie feel as though she were about to combust.

He growled low in his throat, and one of his hands slid down her spine to the curve of her rear. He held her tightly to him until she felt his erection through the thick fabric of his jeans. Instantly her own body went hot and needy.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, and when he tore his mouth from hers to lavish kisses along the length of her throat, she threw her head back and stared blindly at the clear summer sky overhead. There was a delicious haze at the edges of her vision and a distinct wobbly feel to her knees.

And she was loving every minute.

“Well. Ahem.” A deep voice, then a cough, then someone said, “Excuse me, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Oops!

Abruptly the moment was shattered. Maggie swayed unsteadily as Sam lifted his head to reluctantly face the speaker. Doc Evans stood on the back porch, studiously avoiding looking at them by using his handkerchief to polish the lenses of his glasses.

“Hi, Doc.” Sam took a step back from Maggie, though it cost him. His body was tight and hard and his vision was blurred with the desire nearly throttling him. Beside him Maggie quickly tugged the hem of her tank top down and ran one hand over the sides of her head, checking to make sure her ponytail was still straight.

“Just wanted to let Sam know I was leaving,” the doc said, slipping on his glasses and stuffing the handkerchief into his pocket.

“How is Jeremiah feeling?” Maggie asked, and if her voice sounded a little breathless, Sam was probably the only one to notice.

Doc took the few steps to the yard and glanced at the watch on his left wrist before answering. “He seems… better.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed on the older man. With lust still pounding through his blood, he was on the ragged edge of control. This thing with his grandfather—the unidentified “illness”—was bothering him, and now seemed like as good a time as any to have some questions answered. “Have you determined just what the problem is yet?”

“Not yet. Um, still running a few tests.” He started rocking on his heels and his gaze shifted to a spot just to one side of Sam. “I’ll, um, keep on top of things, though. Don’t you worry.”

“Doc.” Every instinct he had was telling Sam that something was definitely up. Bert Evans and Jeremiah had been best friends and fishing buddies most of their lives. There wasn’t much one wouldn’t do for the other. Up to and including trying to pull a fast one. He crossed the yard to the other man and looked down at him. “Is there something I should know?”

Doc ran one finger along the inside of the collar of his shirt and swallowed hard. Still not meeting Sam’s gaze, he shook his head. “Nope, not a thing, boy. Everything’s as it should be.”

“Uh-huh.” Folding his arms over his chest, Sam braced his feet wide apart and simply stood there. Waiting.

Seconds ticked past, and a strong breeze jumped up out of nowhere and rushed through the yard. The older man shifted uneasily on his feet, glanced around the yard, looking everywhere but at Sam.

“He’s faking, isn’t he?”

Bert’s gaze snapped to his and he didn’t even have to say anything for Sam to know that he’d guessed right. Guilt was stamped on the other man’s features.

“Now why would you say that?” The doctor asked, deliberately avoiding answering the question outright.

“Because,” Sam said, scowling now, “it occurs to me that if Jeremiah was really as desperately ill as you two want me to think, you’d have him in the hospital. Or at the very least, have a trained nurse here taking care of him.”

“Maggie’s here,” Doc argued.

“Yes,” Sam said and heard Maggie come up to stand beside him. “And she’s been great with Pop. But she’s not a trained nurse. Not yet anyway,” he conceded, remembering that she was studying to be just that. “So I have to wonder, Doc. Is Jeremiah putting one over on me? Or you?”

The older man cleared his throat, rubbed his jaw, then blew out a breath. When he didn’t speak, Maggie did.

“Dr. Evans,” she said, aligning herself with Sam, “is Jeremiah ill or not?”

He huffed out another breath, swallowed hard, then admitted, “I never wanted to lie to you, Maggie. Or you either, Sam.”

“I don’t believe this,” Maggie muttered.

“I do,” Sam said with a shake of his head. “The old goat tricked us into coming home.”

Instantly Bert’s eyes fired up and his spine straightened as if someone had suddenly shoved a steel pole down the back of his shirt. Shaking an index finger at Sam as if he were still a kid and needed a good dressing-down, the older man said, “It’s a damn shame that old goat had to trick the three of you into coming back to the ranch.” He took a breath and rushed right on before Sam could try to defend himself. “You boys haven’t been back since that summer, and do you think that’s right? Do you think it’s a fair thing to do? Cutting your grandfather out of your life?”

“No, but—” Sam shoved both hands into his pockets and backed up a step. He also noticed that Maggie’s gaze was on him.

“There’s no buts about it, boy,” Doc Evans said. “You three mean the world to that ‘old goat’ in there. Not surprising he’d do whatever he had to do to get you back here, now is it?”

No, it wasn’t. And if the doc’s aim had been to make Sam ashamed of himself, it had worked. But no one could understand just how hard it was to come back to Coleville. To this place that had once meant everything to him. No one could know that coming here, being here, felt as if he was somehow dismissing what had happened that summer. As if he was trying to forget.

“It was an accident,” Doc said, his voice softer now. “But you three have been making Jeremiah pay in loneliness. That isn’t right.”

Sam didn’t trust himself to speak. Guilt roared through him with a sound so thunderous it surprised the hell out of him that the others couldn’t hear it. The doc was right. Jeremiah had been punished for something that wasn’t his fault. Sam and his cousins had each cut this ranch and the old man out of their lives to make living with that summer easier on themselves. But they’d never stopped to consider how their actions affected their grandfather. And what kind of bastards did that make them?

He scrubbed one hand over his face and turned away, suddenly unable to face the accusatory glare in Doc Evans’s eyes. He walked across the yard in long, hurried strides until he reached the edge of the field. Then he stopped and stared. Stretched out for miles in front of him, open land raced toward the horizon. The breeze whistled past him, lifting his hair, tossing dirt into his eyes. Midday sun beat down on him like a fist and made him feel as though he were standing at the gates of hell, feeling the heat reaching out for him.

Appropriate.

Behind him, he absently listened to Maggie thanking Bert for coming and then to the soft sounds of the doctor’s footsteps as he left. Shame still rippled inside Sam and he had no defense against it. The bottom line was he and his cousins had forced their grandfather into faking a serious illness just to get them home.

“Are you okay?”

Maggie came up beside him and laid one hand on his arm. The simple heat of her touch, the gentleness of her voice, eased back the knot of pain lodged in the center of his chest.

“No,” he admitted, never taking his gaze from the horizon. “I don’t think I am.”

She sighed. “What Jeremiah did wasn’t right. He shouldn’t have worried you and your cousins—or me.”

Finally then Sam looked at her, caught the worry in her dark eyes and warmed himself with it. “He shouldn’t have worried you. We had it coming.”

“You’re being really hard on yourself.”

He laughed at that. “Aren’t you the one who’s been telling me that I should never have stayed away?”

“Yes,” she said. “But if anyone should have understood what you were feeling, it should have been Jeremiah.”

“No.” Sam turned to face her and laid both hands on her shoulders. “He couldn’t. Because he doesn’t know all of it.”

“Tell me,” she said, reaching up to cover his hands with her own. “Tell me what happened.”

His fingers tightened on her shoulders, his grip clenching as if holding on to her to steady himself. Maggie sensed the pain radiating from him and wished she could do something to ease it. But there was nothing—not unless he could talk to her. Tell her what it was that kept him in pain. Kept him from the home and the grandfather that he loved.

“Sam…”

He inhaled sharply, deeply, and blew the air out again in a rush. “Every summer we came here. There were four of us. All of us born within a year or two of each other. Our fathers were brothers and we were more like brothers than cousins ourselves.”

His eyes misted, and she knew he was staring into the past, not seeing her at all, though his grip on her shoulders remained strong.

“Me, Cooper, Jake and Mac.” A wistful smile curved one corner of his mouth. “I was the oldest, Mac the youngest. Not that it mattered,” he admitted.

The wind kicked up again, twisting dirt into tiny tornadoes that raced across the yard in front of them.

“Mac was brilliant. Seriously smart. He was only sixteen, but he had some great ideas.” Sam smiled now and Maggie felt the tension in him climb. As if talking about that last summer brought it all even closer. “That year Mac had come up with some gizmo he said would make us all rich.”

“Really?” Maggie smiled up at him, trying to make this easier. “What was it?”

He smiled back at her and shook his head. “Hell if I know. Mac and Jake were big into motorcycles, though—always tinkering with some damn thing or another. And that summer the two of them said they’d come up with something that was going to improve engine performance and make us all millionaires.” His smile faded slowly. “They were right. The royalties on that invention have been incredible. But Mac never lived to see them.”