Twice Kissed - Lisa Jackson [82]
“What do you mean?” So innocent. Had he been wrong? She reached for her purse. Maggie’s fringed suede bag.
“You’re not Maggie.”
She paused, then shook her head. “You’re drunk.”
“Nope.”
She glanced at the opened bottle of scotch on his bedside table. “Whatever you say.”
“What kind of game are you playing, Mary Theresa?”
She flinched a bit, bit her lip, then slowly extracted a key ring from her purse. With her left hand. The keys jangled over the soft hum of the alarm clock and the muted songs of morning birds that filtered through the open window. “I’ll see you later.”
“Not until you explain yourself.”
“There’s nothing to—”
He leaped out of the bed and, bare-ass naked, pushed her up against the wall. Her back and shoulders flattened against the plaster.
“Oh! Damn it, Thane! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded as his fingers gripped hard.
“That’s what I asked you.” Nose to nose, eyeball to squinted eyeball, they glared at each other. “I know you’re not Maggie,” he said, disgusted with himself and the fact that even though he knew the truth, with her pinned against the wall, her perfume teasing his nostrils, the hard muscles of her body flexing defiantly against his weight, he was beginning to get turned on again. His brain was pounding, his eyes burning, the impending hangover parching his mouth as the thought of what he’d done dehydrated his soul. “You goddamned slut.”
“Careful, Thane,” she warned and Frank Reilly’s threats echoed through his pained head. If anyone found them here, him naked and strong-arming her, she playing coy, fragile, and underage, what would happen? The police would be called in and he had a record, a bad one…if they located it in Wyoming…Slowly he let his arm drop and stepped away from her.
“Get out.”
“Gladly.” She flashed him her thousand-watt smile, and he had the distinct impression that he’d been set up. Big-time. By a master.
“This is between us.”
“Believe me, I won’t say a word.” She walked out of the bedroom, and he followed her as she made her way past a pile of dirty clothes and a few lawn chairs that he used for furniture. She wrinkled her nose and shook her head at the sorry state of his home. Not that he gave a good goddamn. Any money he didn’t use, he saved and invested. He intended to buy a spread of his own someday. Furniture and the amenities could wait.
“Maggie will never know,” he said as she reached the door.
Her hand paused over the doorknob. “Unless you tell her.”
“What’s this all about, Mary Theresa?”
She looked over her shoulder, her eyebrows raised, her face as beautiful as that of her sister. Thane’s guts ached with the depth of his betrayal. “It’s personal,” she said, and breezed through the door in a cloud of Maggie’s perfume.
He heard the sound of a car’s engine being fired, then the chirp of tires. “Good riddance,” he muttered, sick at what had transpired between them. But it was over. He’d never have to face her again.
Or so he’d thought.
But he’d been wrong. Dead wrong.
A month later she turned up pregnant.
Chapter Eleven
“So you couldn’t resist making love to her.” Maggie had settled down in the seat, her head propped on the backrest as the city of Denver came into view. Sprawled at the base of the Rocky Mountains, concrete and glass skyscrapers stretched far and wide, rivaling the snow-covered peaks in their ascent to the sky.
Thane’s eyebrows slammed together. “I couldn’t resist making love to you,” he said, and the interior of the cab seemed suddenly close. “Remember?”
All too well. Her heart ached with old, never-forgotten pain. “Mary Theresa wasn’t me.”
“I said, I made a mistake.” He shifted down as he approached the traffic-snarled city. “If it’s any consolation, I paid.” Glancing at Maggie, he added, “Being married to your sister wasn’t a picnic.” A shadow flickered through his eyes and she sensed it was concerning the child he’d never seen born. Silent memories were ghosts between them, dark spirits of distrust and deceit.
“I don’t know why she impersonated