Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [68]
Maggie’s stomach clenched. “But—”
It’s no mistake, Maggie. Mitch said he was gonna do it. Mary Theresa’s body began to shake. Her eyes held her sister’s, and without so much as a sound, she said, I think he killed himself.
PART III
Cheyenne, Wyoming
November 1998
Chapter Nine
Thane felt no sense of homecoming, just a cold, dark certainty that his life had changed forever. With Maggie asleep in the passenger seat beside him and the gauge of the gas tank nearly on empty, he cranked the steering wheel and turned the truck into the lane leading to the heart of his ranch. Home, if you could call it that. Dawn was just cracking—spreading weak light over the flat, snow-laden acres.
Against Maggie’s protests, they’d spent five hours of the past night in a fleabag of a motel on the sagging mattresses of twin beds only a few feet from each other. Thane hadn’t slept a wink. Just knowing she was an arm’s length away had kept him awake, an erection so intense it was nearly painful, reminding him how much he wanted her. That he’d once loved her.
Hell.
It had been a long, long time ago.
A lifetime.
Now, as the blizzard chased them down and the beleaguered windshield wipers slapped time to a fading country ballad, he shoved any lingering tender thoughts of her aside. He didn’t have time for the pain of nostalgia. He’d leave that to lovesick fools who didn’t know better.
Bone tired, his bladder feeling as if it would burst from half a dozen cups of coffee, he wheeled the rig down the lane where ten inches of snow smoothed out the ruts that ran parallel to the fence posts that were his guide. No tire marks were visible, no weeds poking above the smooth white surface.
Four-wheel drive kept the wheels moving, snow packing and churning under the tires as the ranch house came into view. This little piece of land had become his sanctuary as it had once in a while been Mary Theresa’s.
Christ, what a mess. Damn Mary Theresa. His fingers tightened over the wheel, his knuckles showing white. As if he were choking his beautiful, self-centered and destructive ex-wife.
“Damn it all to hell.”
And still the snow fell.
The outbuildings of the ranch appeared through the flurries and the house, two compact stories of stone and cedar, stood dark, not a lamp lit. It didn’t matter; he was relieved to have made it this far.
But for how long? What is all this crap with Mary Theresa? Where the hell is she? For the past few days, ever since he’d come to the conclusion that she really was missing, the same questions had been racing like a brush fire through his mind, powered by caffeine and the slow-burning anger he’d always felt for that woman—the one woman who had been his wife. If it was possible, he’d love to grab hold of her narcissistic shoulders and shake some sense into that calculating, beautiful head of hers.
Whoa, pardner, she could already be dead for all you know.
Again his jaw clenched to the point of breaking and he eased off on the gas as he parked as close to the house as possible.
“Where…where are we?” Maggie asked, yawning and opening one eye. She’d been half-asleep, dozing on and off for hours. Now, with her auburn hair resting against her cheek, her eyes blinking off any lingering bit of slumber, she straightened, squinting through the foggy glass.
He’d hoped she’d aged over the years—put on weight, or shown signs of wear, but the few little lines around her eyes only added a depth to her—a maturity that he hadn’t been aware was lacking all those years ago.
God, he’d had it bad for her then. No woman, and he’d had more than a few by that time, had touched him as she had. It wasn’t so much her beauty, but her spirit that had reached him. Her razor-sharp tongue hadn’t hidden the complexity of her soul, and her sense of humor, even in those tense days, had been his undoing. He’d sensed that she’d been frightened of him, but fascinated, and though he’d told himself to forget her, to leave her alone, to keep his goddamned fantasies buttoned up and his pants on, he hadn’t been