giving you a bad time?”
She bristled inwardly. It was one thing for her to complain about Becca, another thing entirely for an outsider to make a deprecating comment. “It goes with the territory. I can handle it.”
“Can you?” He didn’t seem convinced, but she ignored the silent questions in his eyes and walked to the telephone. By rote, she dialed Mary Theresa’s number and again was connected with the answering machine. Her stomach clenched when she heard her sister’s recording. She drummed her fingers on the receiver. At the tone, she said, “Hi, M.T., it’s Maggie again.” Leaning a hip against the small table where the phone rested, she bit the corner of her lip and glanced up at Thane, who was watching her every movement. As she turned her back for a bit of privacy, she said, “Look, Mary Theresa, I know I called earlier, but I’m worried. Call me back as soon as you get in, okay?” She rattled off her telephone number again, then slowly hung up, her fingers lingering on the receiver as if she expected the phone to jangle at any second.
“She’s not gonna call back.”
Facing him again, Maggie said, “She will.” She has to. Maggie couldn’t comprehend, wouldn’t give a second’s thought to the horrid idea that something had happened to her sister. “It might be a while, but she’ll call.” She wasn’t going to think of the other alternative and opened a cupboard to pull down a can of coffee. Shaking the grounds into the basket of the coffeemaker she felt the same dark fear that had attacked her in the barn earlier today start to stalk her all over again.
“I hope you’re right.” He adjusted the screen in front of the fireplace, then dusted his hands together and unbuttoned his jacket.
“You planning on staying?” she asked, suddenly nervous as she filled the coffee carafe with water.
“For a while.” As if he’d lived here all his life, he tossed his jacket over the screen.
Maggie was instantly wary, her muscles tense. She glanced at him over her shoulder and sloshed some of the water onto the counter. Damn. The man made her so jittery, it was ludicrous. “How long is ‘a while?’”
His eyes glinted, and a corner of his mouth lifted. “Don’t worry, Maggie, your virtue is safe with me.”
She gasped, nearly sputtered out some kind of lame reply, and bit her tongue until she had control of it. “Still the same charmer you always were, aren’t you, Thane?” she mocked, snapping on the coffeemaker, then swiping up the spill with a sponge.
“I try.” His smile widened into a familiar sexy grin that she wanted to slap off his face. The same cocky, self-assured expression that had won as many hearts as it had broken.
“Well, it won’t work on me.”
“No?” he asked, one eyebrow lifting as if he sensed a dare.
“No.” She was firm.
“Good. That’ll make things easier.” His gaze swept the mantel, lingered for a while on the photos of Becca growing up, of the framed picture of the two sisters back to back, then stopped short on the only wedding picture that Maggie displayed, one of her and Dean, smiling happily at each other, she in her ivory-colored dress, her veil falling off, her fingers around the nosegay of baby’s breath and pink roses, Dean’s tuxedo tie loosened, his eyes full of life—a spark that had extinguished early on.
Without comment, Thane took a seat in a worn wing-backed chair and propped one heel on the ottoman as the coffee began to perk.
“Easier? How?”
His smile slowly disappeared and he stared at her with an intensity that made her want to squirm. She wrung the sponge over the sink as he said, “I have a favor to ask of you.”
“Shoot.” She was ready to say “no,” to deny him anything he might want from her, because she knew deep in her soul he wasn’t a man to be trusted, wasn’t a person she wanted anything to do with. “What is it?”
“I want you to drive back to Denver with me.” Eyes never leaving hers, he nodded slowly. “I think I might need you as a character witness.”
If he hadn’t been so deadly earnest, she would have laughed. “You’re kidding, right?” she said. “Me? A character witness for you?”
“I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
In an instant she believed him. The expression on his face was determined: his jaw set, his eyes steady, his lips blade-thin and unforgiving. Not a hint of the man who had joked just a few seconds before.
“I don’t think I owe you anything,” she said slowly, folding the cloth, eyeing the pan of cold, burned stew, and ignoring it. She wasn’t hungry, hadn’t been since Thane had walked back into her life.
“This isn’t a matter of payback.”
“Then why?” She walked into the living room and took a seat on the arm of the sofa.
“You know I would never lift a finger to hurt Mary Theresa.”
Her heart squeezed painfully. Oh, how she knew it was true. From the minute Thane had set eyes on her more seductive twin, he’d been smitten. She suspected that Thane had never stopped loving Mary Theresa. He’d only stopped loving Maggie. “Of course.”
“The police don’t know it.”
In an instant, she understood. “You mean, not only do the police suspect foul play in Mary Theresa’s disappearance, but they think you’re involved.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
It was Thane. He did this to me. Mary Theresa’s cryptic message crept through her brain again, chilling her blood, causing her stomach to cramp.
“I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t have to,” he said, and she knew he meant it.
“I just can’t up and leave,” she began, then heard herself. This was her sister they were talking about. Her twin sister. The person most like her on this earth. And she was in trouble. “There’s Becca to consider and…” She let her thoughts trail off. What if Mary Theresa needed her? The coffeemaker dinged, and she returned to the open kitchen to pour two cups with hands that weren’t quite steady. “I…I don’t know,” she admitted, carrying the mugs of steaming coffee into the living room and handing one out to him. “There’s sugar or milk in the kitchen…”
“I take it black. Thanks.”
She remembered. Not that she wanted to. Not ever. She settled into a corner of the couch, tucked her feet onto the cushions, and blew across her cup. “Tell me exactly what you want me to do,” she suggested. Maybe if she heard what he had on his mind, she would better understand the situation.
“I don’t know what happened to Mary Theresa or Marquise or whoever you want to call her,” he admitted. “No one seems to. Some people think she was kidnapped; there’s even talk of murder, you know that.”
Maggie nodded mutely.
“Then there are those who think this is some kind of publicity stunt, or that she just left because the pressure was so great,
