pressed a palm against his aching erection. If Maddie hadn’t stopped him, he would have slid his hand up her thigh. He would have pulled off her panties and had sex with her right there, against the door. He would like to think he’d have had the presence of mind to lock the door first, but he wouldn’t bet on it.
He dropped his hand and circled his desk. Her red sweater was thrown on the floor and he picked it up before sitting in his chair to stare at the safe across the office from him. Earlier, looking across his bar and seeing Maddie sitting at a table, sipping a martini as if he hadn’t told her to stay out of his bars, had shocked the hell right out of him. Shocked him like that Taser she carried in her purse. On the heels of all that shock came a big dose of anger and an urge to smell the side of her neck.
Seeing her chatting it up with the Aussie, he’d felt something else too. Something a little uncomfortable. Something that felt a bit like he wanted to rip the man’s head off. Which was absolutely ridiculous. Mick didn’t have anything against the Aussie, and he certainly didn’t have any sort of relationship with Maddie Dupree. He didn’t feel anything for her. Well, except anger. And raging lust. A burning desire to bury his nose in the side of her neck while he buried himself between her soft thighs. Again and again.
There was something about Maddie. Something other than her beautiful body and pretty face. Something beyond the scent of her skin and her smart mouth. Something that drew his gaze across a crowded bar to a table in a dark corner. Something that recognized her dark outline as if he knew her. Some indefinable thing that made him kiss her and touch her and hold her tight against his chest as if that’s where she belonged, when in reality, she didn’t belong anywhere near him. A fact he tended to forget when she
He brought the sweater to his face. It smelled like her. Sweet, like strawberries, and he tossed it onto his desk.
A few weeks ago, his life had been fairly good. He had a plan for the future that didn’t include thinking about his past. A past that he’d done a pretty good job of forgetting.
Until now. Until Maddie had driven her black Mercedes into town and run his life off the road.
Chapter 10
It took Maddie a little over a week to track down her mother’s friend and neighbor from the Roundup Trailer Court. Shortly after her mother’s death, Trina Olsen-Hays sold her trailer and moved to Ontario, Oregon. She’d married a fireman in the mid-’80s, had three grown children, and two grandchildren. Now, sitting across from her at a local cafй, Maddie had a slight recollection of the plump woman with red poufy hair, freckles, and painted-on eyebrows. She remembered staring at those brows and being somewhat frightened. Seeing Trina also brought back the fuzzy memory of a pink polka-dot quilt. She didn’t know why or what it meant. Just that she’d felt warm and secure wrapped up in it.
“Alice was a real nice girl,” Trina said over coffee and pecan pie. “Young.”
Maddie glanced at the tape recorder sitting on the table between them, then returned her gaze to Trina. “She was twenty-four.”
“We used to share a bottle of wine and talk about the future. I wanted to see the world. Alice just wanted to get married.” Trina shook her head and took a bite of pie. “Maybe because she had a little girl. I don’t know, but she just wanted to find a man, get married, and have more kids.”
Maddie hadn’t known that her mother thought about having other children, but she supposed it made sense. If her mother had lived, she’d no doubt have a brother or sister or both. Not for the first time, she was struck by how different her life would have been if not for Rose Hennessy. Maddie loved her life. She loved the woman she’d become. She wouldn’t change it for anything, but sometimes she did wonder about how differently she might have turned out.
“Did you know either Loch or Rose Hennessy?” As she looked across the table at Trina, she wondered if her mother would have time-warp hair or if she would have kept up with changing styles.
“They were older than me, but I knew them both. Rose was…unpredictable.” Trina took a drink of her coffee. “And Loch was a natural-born charmer. It was really no wonder Alice fell in love with him. I mean, everyone did. Even though most of us knew better.”
“Do you know how Loch felt about Alice?”
“Only that she thought he was going to leave his wife and family for her.” Trina shrugged one shoulder. “But every woman he ever got involved with thought that too. Only Loch never did. Sure, he had affairs, but he never left Rose.”
“Then what do you think made the affair between Loch and Alice different? What set Rose over the edge and made her load a gun and drive to Hennessy’s that night?”
Trina shook her head. “I always figured she’d finally had enough.”
Maybe.
“Or it could have been that Alice was so much younger and prettier than the others. Who knows? What I remember most was how quickly Alice fell in love with Loch. You wouldn’t believe how fast it was before she was madly in love.”
After reading her mother’s diaries, Maddie actually could believe it.
Trina took another bite of pie and her gaze dropped to Maddie’s mouth as she chewed. Her painted brows lowered and she looked up into Maddie’s eyes. “I recognize your mouth. You’re Alice’s little girl, aren’t you?”
Maddie nodded. It was almost a relief to have it out.
Trina smiled. “Well, how about that? I’ve always wondered what happened to you after your aunt took you away.”
“She was my great-aunt and I moved to Boise with her. She died last spring. That’s when I came across my mother’s diaries and your name.”
Trina reached across the table and patted Maddie’s hand. The touch felt cool and a bit awkward. “Alice would be very proud of you.”
Maddie liked to think so, but she would never know for sure.
“So, are you married? Have any kids?”
“No.”
Trina patted her hand one last time, then reached for her fork. “You’re still young. There’s time.”
Maddie changed the subject. “I have a faint memory of a polka-dot quilt. Do you recall anything about that?”
“Hmm.” She took a bite and looked up at the ceiling in thought. “Yes.” She returned her gaze to Maddie and smiled. “Alice made it for you, and she used to roll you all up in it like—”
“A burrito,” Maddie finished as a recollection of her mother whispered across her memory.
She interviewed Trina for another forty-five minutes before packing up her notes and tape recorder and heading for Boise. She had another bridesmaid dress fitting that afternoon, and she met her friends at Nan’s Bridal before grabbing a late lunch with them and heading home to Truly.
She stopped at the Value Rite to pick up some toilet paper and a six-pack of Diet Coke. The drugstore had a display of wind chimes and hummingbird feeders and she chose a simple chime made of green tubes. She’d never had a hummingbird feeder, and she reached for one and read the instructions. It was silly, really. More than likely she wouldn’t be living in Truly next summer. No use in making the house homey. She placed
