Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [76]
“And do you remember that you avoided me?”
Sighing, she nodded, not wanting to think about her part in the unraveling of all that she’d once held as good. “I couldn’t face you.”
“Because you threw me to the wolves.”
She nodded and ground her teeth together. She wasn’t going to take the blame for more than her fair share of what had happened. “If you’re talking about telling Mom and Dad the truth about seeing you, yeah, that’s what I did. But I didn’t know at the time that Mitch had…had drowned.” After all these years she still had trouble thinking that her adopted brother had somehow taken his own life, couldn’t believe it.
He flipped down the visor as the sun began chasing away the clouds in earnest, bright rays dancing on the pristine countryside. The road had been plowed, but the truck’s tires still spun once in a while, the truck sliding where patches of ice were hidden beneath the drifting snow. “Your dad came at me like a hound from hell.”
“He was upset.”
“Oh, no.” Thane’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, his knuckles showing white. “He was beyond upset. Way beyond. Showed up at Flora’s ranch, called me every name in the book and swore that if I ever so much as looked at you again, he’d kill me. It’s a wonder I wasn’t fired.” His mouth compressed in a silent rage that spanned the years and pulsed in the cab. “I was lucky that Flora took my side.”
Maggie picked at a hangnail. “What’s this have to do with Mary Theresa?”
“That’s just it. It didn’t start out as anything to do with Mary Theresa. But I figured you and I were through.”
Her heart squeezed at the memory.
“So, imagine my surprise when you called and told me you wanted to meet me, that you didn’t care what your folks said, that you missed me.”
She forced her hands into her pockets so she’d quit fidgeting and stared out the windshield. “I meant it,” she conceded. At least she thought she had. She remembered stealing into the den, making the call. She’d been so nervous she nearly knocked over a desk lamp, her heart pounding loud enough that she was certain her sister, sleeping down the hall, could hear its wild beat. But she hadn’t been able to stop herself from dialing him—hadn’t been able to believe that it was truly over. “Can you pick me up?” she’d asked, scared spitless at the thought that she was openly defying her parents.
Less than two weeks earlier, Frank Reilly, his upper lip quivering in rage, had specifically forbidden her ever to see “that two-bit rodeo punk” again. “If I ever catch him near you, I swear, Margaret Elizabeth, I’ll break his goddamned neck!” her father had promised her, his gaze steady, his lips compressed into a razor-thin line beneath his stiff, unyielding mustache.
For the first few days, Maggie had accepted her father’s edict—she’d never been one to defy him openly—but the week after the funeral, when the oppression in the house felt like a smothering cloak and the air-conditioning unit had given out, creating a heat that mingled with the general desperation and malaise within the thick walls, Maggie had needed to get away.
She’d been consumed by memories of making love to Thane that first time, had recalled the smell of rainwater slickening his body as he’d entered her and broken the thin veil of her virginity. She’d remembered looking up into blue eyes that seemed to mirror her own soul as he’d spilled himself within her.
Finally, Maggie couldn’t stand another second in the dark gloom of her parents’ grief, nor could she bear her sister’s fake upbeat attitude. Mary Theresa was forever shopping, buying new clothes, trying out new hairstyles, and painting her fingernails outrageous colors. Her laughter rang down the tile hallways and sounded as phony and out of place as a foghorn in the desert. But she refused to slow down, to face what had happened, and had kept herself in constant motion so that she wouldn’t feel the pain that shrouded Maggie as she’d lain on her bed, pinned by the burden of her grief.