Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [75]
“That I did.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Let’s load up. On the way to Denver I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“Everything?” she asked, wondering if she really wanted the truth.
“Whatever your little heart desires, Mag Pie.”
If you only knew, Thane, she thought, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat. If you only knew. But this wasn’t the time for sentimentality. Too much was at stake.
Chapter Ten
“Okay, Walker,” Maggie said, once they were inside Thane’s cold pickup. “Let’s start with Mary Theresa. What did you have to do with her disappearance?”
“I thought we’d already settled that one.” Thane guided his truck onto the main road. The tires slipped, spun, then held as sunlight pierced through the clouds. “I don’t know anything about what happened to her. Period. The cops seem to think otherwise.”
Maggie wasn’t convinced he was telling the truth and if the police were questioning him, there had to be a reason. A good one. The police weren’t stupid. They were used to dealing with kidnappings, murders, abductions, rapes, and every crime under the sun. “When was the last time you saw her?”
He hesitated. “The night before she disappeared.”
“Oh, God.” She felt as if someone had kicked her in the gut. “The night before?” she repeated, trying to register this information. According to Mary Theresa she and Thane hadn’t had much contact after they were divorced. They had gone their separate ways. “I don’t understand.”
His lips pursed, and she felt that same old invisible wall, a shield, rise between them. A muscle worked in his jaw and his eyes narrowed on the horizon as if he were carefully weighing his words. “We had some unsettled issues.”
“What issues?” Maggie leaned closer to the passenger door and stared hard at this man she’d loved, the one to whom she’d willingly given her virginity and heart, the one who had betrayed her so brutally that she never thought she’d love again. She wasn’t immune to him, couldn’t ignore his rugged male allure. Chiseled features, harsh as the Wyoming countryside that had spawned him, stretched tight.
“I think we’d better start at the beginning,” he said slowly.
“Always a good idea.”
“I mean at the very beginning.”
She felt a jab of apprehension, a frisson of foreboding slide down her spine, but she wasn’t one to back down. “Okay.”
“I never did explain to you what happened between Mary Theresa and me, did I?” He sent her a glance that warned her that the conversation was going to travel in painful territory.
“I don’t think I wanted an explanation.”
“Sorry, Maggie. You’re gonna get one anyway.” He shifted down for a corner, then snagged his sunglasses from the dash. “I’m afraid you’re not going to like what I have to say.”
“That’s pretty much guaranteed.” Steeling herself, she decided she could face anything. She’d spent the last eighteen years second-guessing everyone involved; now it was time to hear Thane’s side of the story.
“You and I were pretty involved, remember?”
How could she forget? Rather than show any emotion, she nodded. “I’d say so.”
“Then Mitch drowns, and all hell breaks loose.”
She couldn’t disagree. The pain that existed in her family; the fingers pointed in accusation; the disbelief that Mitchell Xavier Reilly, captain of the Rio Verde High School swim team, could have drowned; the suspicion that he’d taken his own life had infiltrated the house like a disease that gnawed at all of them, eroding the family. There was darkness then, and depression. Their mother drank more heavily, didn’t bother to hide her alcoholism; their father took up smoking again and avoided going to the office, which had always been his sanctuary—his bastion of self-esteem. Mary Theresa pretended nothing was wrong, smiling, laughing a little too loudly, wearing more makeup than usual, and avoiding the house, while Maggie turned inward, lying on her bed for hours, staring at the ceiling and fighting the insidious but oh, so real suspicion that her brother’s death had somehow been her fault. “I remember,” she said, her voice husky