The Man For Maggie
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Hearing his thoughts from the pub echo back at him knocked Max for six. He stared at the strong lines dissecting the hand challenging him, and garnered his wits. Coincidences did happen. They happened every day. He had no problem with that. No one could look into your mind and extract a thought. His gaze shifted from hand to eye, and he knew without a doubt Maggie was enjoying herself at his expense.
“I don’t think I’ll waste my money, because if you can’t see there’s no more than a working relationship between Jo and me, you aren’t much good. I’m her superior at work, and I can’t help it if she likes me—a lot. But I don’t mix business and pleasure. Which is another reason for not listening to tales of your nightlife.” Max tilted half a glass of wine down in one swallow. Hell! He’d sounded like an egotistical jerk. “I think she’s mixing pity with attraction because of the way my marriage ended.”
“How long ago was that?”
“A bit over two years.”
“Then I think Jo’s gone way past feeling sorry for you.”
Max sighed out loud. “All right. She may care more for me than I do her. We’ve talked about it and hopefully sorted it out, because I don’t want to lose her as a friend or a colleague. As for your friendship with her, if it doesn’t impinge on police business, then it’s none of mine. I believe you two go back a long way.”
“It feels like a lifetime. Maybe we don’t see each other as much as we used to, but when we get back together it’s as if nothing’s changed. I would hate anything to hurt that.” Maggie watched him through narrowed eyes, but even that couldn’t diminish his size or his presence. Her friendship with Jo was precious to her. All the while they’d boarded at Saint Mary’s Convent School, Jo had been her rock—strong, stubborn, immovable and on Maggie’s team. And she had an uneasy feeling Max could be the catalyst that could blow their friendship apart. No way; it was unthinkable. Jo was all she had left.
“You can trust me, Maggie. I won’t let that happen.”
There was nothing Maggie would like better than to be able to trust Max. But she couldn’t. She’d long since decided cops were born with an instinct to catch people at their most vulnerable and use it against them. That’s what had happened on the day she’d watched the divers search for the remains of her father’s plane. A day when she’d been at her lowest ebb. Even now she couldn’t remember which hurt most, her father’s death and the fact that it could have been prevented or what came after. The memory of the way her father had scoffed at her warning made her shudder. Life had been good to Frank Kovacs, given him all he’d ever needed or wanted. Nothing could touch him. He’d thought himself invincible, and had died trying to prove it.
Max knew it was too much to expect Maggie to simply acquiesce, too much to expect her to trust a stranger—trust him. They were at the beginning of a journey that could be rough, full of twists and turns and occasional dead ends. But chances were, if Maggie was half as strong as he thought, they’d both go the distance. The silence stretched between them until Max could wait no longer and broke it by clearing his throat. “How about you? Are you in a relationship?”
Maggie’s laugh had a fragile edginess that set it half a note off-key. “Who, me? You must be joking. I’m too busy for a relationship. I have a winery to run, and don’t tell anyone, but I’m feeling my way here. I’ve hired a new wine maker, and if he doesn’t come through for us we could lose a lot of our markets. Don’t get me wrong. He’s good. I just don’t know if he’s got the flair Dad had. We’ll start releasing his first vintage in October and I’m organizing a wine fest for Labour Weekend. I just hope it’s a success. This is a new concept for us. I always wanted Dad to run one, but he said our wines sold themselves. I can’t count on that anymore, so I’m working on promoting it whenever I can.” She cut off her words in midstream, pushed at her hair and rolled her eyes in embarrassment. “Oh, boy! Will you listen to me?” She excused herself with a shrug. “For the last year the winery has been my life.”
“Join the club. This would be maybe the third night off I’ve had in three months.”
“And you’re wasting it on business?”
“No…pleasure.”
“So, you’re saying this isn’t business?”
“It isn’t business.”
“Then why are you here?”
“For starters, your scarf. Secondly, I wanted to get to know you and I seized on the scarf as an excuse. But I’d have come without it. I couldn’t keep away.”
“I don’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“Well, hear this,” he said bluntly, as he got to his feet and walked around to Maggie’s side of the table. He took the glass from her hand and set it down, then pulled her to her feet so she wouldn’t feel intimidated by his height. Her eyes had gone black and opaque as if she were dazed. He’d forgotten she had no shoes on, and he towered over her. So he slipped an arm around her and pulled her up onto her toes. He felt himself tremble and abandoned all reason. Maggie Kovaks was David to his Goliath and he would die if he couldn’t taste her lips. “I want you, Maggie.”
Her hands pushed against his chest and he heard her breath quicken. “Don’t be frightened, Maggie. I don’t mean here and now, but someday, you and I are going to get together. When the time is right, it will happen.” He tilted her chin up and felt a tremor run through her, mimicking the ones weakening his body with desire. “Like this,” he said, and feathered his lips over hers. “And this.” Max slanted his mouth across Maggie’s, tasting wild blackberries, tasting sunshine.
Her hand slipped around his collar as he caught a sigh from her lips and breathed it in. The kiss deepened as she opened for him and his tongue searched out the dark, sweet cave of her mouth, savoring every nuance and flavor. Knowing this might be all he had of her for quite a while, he memorized the subtle textures of satin and pearls to keep him going during the sexual drought ahead of him.
Maggie’s hand fisted in his hair as he felt her tongue seek his out. When she stepped onto his shoes, pressing closer, his hand cupped her hips, plastering them together from knee to shoulder. Hunger, hot and dark, slashed through him as her breasts cushioned his chest and he ground his hard, aching need against the softness of her belly, giving passion its rein.
Max didn’t want to stop. He had to stop. Now—before he threw her on the floor and took her there and then, like an uncontrollable animal. A groan of pain ripped from him as he put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her away while he had the strength. The look in Maggie’s eyes almost broke his resolution as he set her back a step, leaving his hands as their only link.
He brushed his thumb over the full redness of a bottom lip that looked thoroughly kissed. “Seems the feeling is mutual.” Max heard her small gasp of shock as realization hit. “I ought to go while I’m still able.”
“Oh, no, you don’t!” Maggie felt like spitting tacks. So, he was right. The feeling was mutual. She’d been caught up every bit as much as Max, so much so that she hadn’t wanted to break the contact, the kiss. And it riled her that he’d been able to…to push her aside. It rankled that it could never happen again. He was wrong for her, wrong in every way. She’d lived the first part of her life with a man who hadn’t believed in her, and had no intention of getting caught up with another. One who called the part of her that should have been special “garbage!”
“This ends the moment you walk out that door,” she declared.
“You mean you want me to stay?”
“No, dammit! I mean this is it. Over! Kaput! I won’t hurt my best friend and I’ve no intention of having an affair with a man who reminds me of my father.”
“Don’t try to tell me you kissed your father like that. I won’t believe you.”
Maggie almost spat in disgust. “What I’m getting at is that my father never believed me, either. If he had, he’d be alive today and you wouldn’t even be in the picture. You’ve got too many counts against you, Max. I’ve already suffered at the hands of the police and now I’m gun-shy. I need a man who isn’t frightened of the unknown, one who can open his mind to the possibilities.”
“I never said I didn’t believe in fate.”
A rueful note wove its way into Maggie’s laughter. He was a beautiful man, and she bet he stripped off well. She’d already felt the lean strength of his arms and would like nothing better than to rest her head on the hard bulk of his chest at the end of a day when things had gotten too tough. She was tired of shouldering everything alone. Strength was good, but she wanted more, she wanted a man who would listen—listen and empathize—without cringing.
“I’ll bet before you met me, when Sergeant Gorman was slinging his mouth off to the tabloids, you thought I was weird.”
“Truth to tell, I probably thought a lot worse. I would have been separated about a year by then, and there was a lot of stuff I didn’t like about women, and so-called psychics would have topped the list.”
His words hit Maggie like a slap in the face, wiping out her last scrap of hope, a scrap she hadn’t even realized she’d been saving.
“Humph, that sounded pretty harsh. It wasn’t meant as a put-down—honest, Maggie.” He reached out, needing to touch her, but before he could caress her cheek, she stepped back.
“I thank heaven I’ll never have to experience your version of a put-down, as I doubt we’ll ever meet again. I think it’s time you went now. Don’t you?” Turning on her heel, she walked away, hoping Max would follow her. He was too big to throw out.
He followed in her footsteps, then slipped in front of her before she reached the archway. “Look, Maggie, the way I see it, you’ve got a history and I’ve got a history and we haven’t got time to go into them tonight. But what’s between us could be bigger than all of that, if only you’ll give it a chance.”
“And I think we used up all our chances long before we met. Everything we have going for us is on the debit side, and I can’t stand being in the red.” She moved around Max and headed for the door before he could attempt to change her mind.
Maggie gripped the handle tightly, ready to close the door the instant he walked through it. She supported herself with the doorknob and raised her heels from the floor. It wasn’t fair; Max’s height put all the advantage on his side.
“I want to hear you lock this door behind me,” he said, moving closer. “I don’t trust that security guard. He’s probably asleep behind his desk.”
She tilted her chin, refusing to be cowed. “Don’t worry, I’m going to make sure you can’t get back in.”
Max laughed and took her stubborn chin between his finger and thumb, then gave her a kiss meant to curl the toes she was standing on. When he lifted his mouth it was with reluctance, and as he straightened he could swear Maggie was swaying on her feet.
It didn’t stop her trying for the last word. “So, goodbye.”
“Wrong, Maggie. I’ll never kiss you goodbye. Only hello.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“I won’t. I’m not a betting man. So I’m going to count on it.”
Maggie leaned her back against the door after she’d locked it and a rap of Max’s fingers on the outside told her he was on his way.
Why did life have to be so complicated? She had enough problems without Max adding more. Despite his confidence, Maggie knew things could only get worse.
Without Max’s presence the apartment closed in on her and the air grew thick with memories of past apparitions. She shivered as she thought about going to bed. The last thing she wanted was to cushion her sleep and dream.
Chapter 3
The baby was fussing again. For almost a week now, it had kept Maggie awake. Fussing and fretting, fussing and fretting, driving Maggie mad as it brought her maternal instincts screaming to the surface. Instincts she could do nothing to quash, as the source of her dilemma hid in the center of her mind where no human hand could find it. There were no ear-plugs or sleeping pills to fix what ailed her.
A baby fist reached inside her and twisted her gut, more tightly than any man’s could, with its demands for succor. She wanted, needed to find it, to comfort it and relieve herself of the torture her nights brought.
Maggie slammed her fist into the pillow, displacing the feathers. Hands above her head, she twisted and turned while attempting to cover her ears with the soft, insulating sound barrier.
There was no hiding from herself.
“Go away! Go to sleep and leave me alone…leave me alone.”
She didn’t want to cry. It was exhaustion, not self-pity, that spilled tears from her eyes. She tried unsuccessfully to focus on Max, anything but the plaintive cries in her head. Max wasn’t the answer. How dare he or any damn cop think she’d wished this on herself?
Pulling the pillow off her head, she slapped it a few more times and threw herself on top of its downy softness. She lay partly on her stomach, twisting sideways as she brought her knees up to ease the ache pulling at her insides. It was 11:02 p.m. by the bedside clock when the baby stopped crying and Maggie fell asleep.
And began to dream.
He stepped back from the bed to admire his handiwork and frowned. Under the heels of her shoes the duvet wrinkled slovenly. With care he slipped the shoes off, set them neatly at the side of the bed, then smoothed out the creases.
He sighed, thinking, I’ll bring my camera next time. Definitely. A ripple of pleasure caressed his senses. The way the red scarf picked up the flecks in her suit, she could almost have dressed for the occasion. Even the bedcovers, sprigged with roses, added to the overall effect. She had good taste. They made a beautiful picture. He’d arranged it just right. Madonna with child.
And the baby! So good, so angelic. No more crying now it had found its mother. The effort it had taken to tuck the babe against its mother’s breast had been worthwhile. Luckily she was a full-busted woman, ample. The child would never have to go without again.
He walked to the door. His surgical gloves snapped as he rolled them tighter across his knuckles. He touched the light switch, then hesitated. He couldn’t bear to turn the light out. One more look, just one, and then he would go.
He smiled the smile of an artist who knows when to paint the last brushstroke. So perfect. To leave them in the dark would be a crime.
Quietly, he slipped out of the house into the night. As he vaulted the back fence his head spun with pictures of blond hair arranged across a pillow scattered with rosebuds.
And two pairs of matching blue eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.
Maggie parked her car in the civic car park and walked up the slope of Mayoral Drive. Auckland Central rose six stories above her. A patchwork of earth-colored scoria blocks some volcano had spewed up millions of years ago formed the basement wall. It opened halfway along its length, a gaping black maw indiscriminately swallowing cop cars, cops and prisoners alike. Dim, hollow, a place where slamming metal doors and screaming sirens echoed in air heavy with disinfectant, vomit, fear and defeat.
Maggie took the last few paces at a run, turning into Cook Street and up the steps to the entrance as if the devil nipped at her heels. Time, precious time didn’t allow for a meeting on neutral ground and had driven her to this place against her will. On the top step she paused, her heart in her throat. Hadn’t she vowed never to cross this threshold again? And here she was doing just that.
Conscience drove a hard bargain. Hers had been up and running from the moment she’d opened her eyes. Three women dead. Three too many. A single thought, blinding in its simplicity, had forced her out of bed, into the shower, and sent her in search of paper and pencil.
Maybe it’s not too late.
This, the first dream of death she’d had in Auckland, had been clearer, more edgy in its intensity. Pathetically, she shied away from the word murder. It was too out there, too in her face. The word death was easier to swallow, if it stopped her wanting to run to the nearest bathroom and throw up. And if living the dream slammed her with a knockout punch, the flashes, images, caught her off guard, winding her with short, sharp jabs to the solar plexus. What could be worse? Nothing—except maybe the ridicule she knew waited on the other side of the door.
She’d been directed to the fifth floor. Reception was empty, though a light, electronic hum issued from a double-doored office. Her muscles tightened, screaming with tension. Maybe she should barge in and sing out, “Can anyone tell me where to find Sergeant Strachan?”
Impatience gave in to need. Fists clenched, teeth clamped over her bottom lip, she stepped toward the office.
Maybe it’s not too late!
A huge, tawny-haired man dressed in uniform blues preempted her decision. Doors swinging in his wake, he asked, “Need any help?”
He had a look of authority, of reliability, and a badge with the legend Sergeant McQuaid sitting squarely on his massive chest. A cop she could trust, thought Maggie, taking in his attractive, craggy features. If only he was the one she had come to see. “Yes, could you show me to Sergeant Strachan’s office?”
“Sure thing.” Warm, teasing hazel eyes gave her a quick, speculative once-over. “Follow me,” he said as he walked on, keeping her pinned with his inquisitive gaze.
Since he hadn’t asked her name, she didn’t have to suffer a swift change in his attitude. Taking two steps to his one, she kept pace with him, keeping close to the wall; the sergeant’s shoulders needed all the space they could get.
They passed two interview rooms before they reached the corner office. Knocking once, Sergeant McQuaid opened the door. With her view blocked by his bulk, Maggie listened for Max’s voice with her nerves prickling her skin like an invasion of ants.
Maybe it’s not too late!
Max looked up as Rowan McQuaid invaded his privacy. “What’s up?” Although McQuaid was slightly younger than Max, they’d been in the same year at Trentham Police College. Jamie Thurlo, the other member of their trio, had been a helicopter jockey when he signed on and now rode the skies in a blue-and-white beauty. Their friendship had survived the years and been tempered by them. The young hotheads were long gone. Rowan, the more methodical member of the group, had stuck to the route where the donkey work lay, the papers and reports that Max hated. Like the ones littering his desk. After eight agonizing hours of constant arousal, while his mind reran in a constant loop every second spent with Maggie, he’d woken up feeling as if half his brain had shut down while the rest worked at half speed.
“Visitor for you, Max.”
Secretly glad of the interruption, he grumbled, “This better be important. I’m busy.” Anything was better than reading each line three times over without taking it in. The hell with it. He needed something, someone, to take his mind off Maggie. “All right, show them in.”
“I’m sure you’ll want to see this one,” Rowan said, grinning, and he moved out of the way, giving Max his first glimpse of his visitor.
“Maggie!” Max was halfway out of his chair before she’d stepped into the room. He caught the conjecture in Rowan’s glance as he rounded his desk. “Maggie,” he said, “this is a friend of mine, Rowan McQuaid.” He watched her offer her hand as he finished, “Rowan, meet Maggie Kovacs.” But her eyes were on him.
Max took in Rowan’s recoil without surprise. The trouble with friends close enough to know your whole life history, preferences, prejudices and the kind of breakfast cereal you ate was they took a personal interest in what you were doing and with whom. They stood up with you at your wedding and cried with you over your divorce, and because of the last two, this meeting with Maggie wouldn’t make any sense to Rowan.
Max cut off the question forming in Rowan’s eyes with a meaningful glare and a nod that said he should leave.
“I’ll leave you to it then.” Rowan started to turn away, speaking over his shoulder as he left. “Good luck, and don’t sweat it, mate. I won’t tell a soul.”
Max brushed past Maggie and closed the door, shutting out his friend and the rest of Auckland Central. He’d no idea why she had come, but he wasn’t sharing. A pulse throbbed in his temple as fantasies born in the dead of night flooded his memory. At the mere sight of her, his palms itched to touch and the fire in his groin as her scent filled his head warned him to keep his distance if he was to maintain control.
“Take a seat, Maggie.”
“I won’t, thanks.” Turning her back on him, she walked over to the corner window and stood looking down.
“If all you came for was the view, there’s a better one from your apartment.” Drawn by the vulnerable picture she made, Max followed, but instead of dropping a kiss in the unguarded hollow at her nape to appease his craving, he turned her to face him. All his good intentions crashed and burned the moment he searched her eyes. They shone darkly, sparkling with unshed tears that made his breath catch. “What are you doing here, Maggie?”
“Maybe it’s not too late!” Emotion made her voice crack as she uttered the words chasing through her brain in a monotonous litany. “It doesn’t have to be.”
“Too late for what? C’mon, give me a clue, babe. I need more.” His hands tightened on her shoulders.
Dammit, he needed Maggie!
It had happened so swiftly, this blinding need for the one woman who should be anathema to him. Steady boy, steady. Max drew a deep, calming breath and compounded his dilemma with her womanly scent. The perfume she favored blended subtly with her own secret essence. It had lingered on his hands and driven him crazy replaying the pleasure derived from touching her. Tasting her. Crushing her against—
He had to stop punishing himself. He couldn’t.
Her warm camel coat, the same one she’d worn last night, seemed to melt away beneath his palms as her tight muscles communicated with him. Could Maggie feel him through it? Feel the heat generated by the burning ache in his groin? Hell! No wonder. Being close to her was playing with fire. And he knew it. Sliding his palms from her shoulders to her hands, he pulled her away from the window before he could set her on the ledge and take her there, for all the world to see. He forced the words “Let’s sit over here,” past the stricture in his throat, and settled Maggie in a chair, pulling the other one close. “What’s got you so upset? Are you still worried about Jo?”
“No, not her!” She felt Max’s hands caress hers as if he would rub her cares away. How would he react when she told him her reason for searching him out? He looked tired, and a strange longing to hug him tightly shoved her other emotions aside. Not that she wanted to mother him. How could she? He was so big, so handsome. And the rakish silver blaze in his hair curled on his forehead and fought with the tenderness in his eyes.
Any second now, all that would change. Preventing it was beyond her control.
She wished this small section of time and space could be set aside for herself and Max. Wished everything standing between them to the farthest ends of the earth. And knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of it happening.
What would Max think if she told him she didn’t want him to make her dreams come true? She wanted him to make them go away!
But all this heart searching could only delay the inevitable. Time he faced up to who she was, even if it drove him away.
Pulling her hands back, she reversed their positions, holding his long fingers and taking courage from their strength. “Max, I had another dream last night.”
His withdrawal was more spiritual than tangible. The heat drained from his hands. She gripped tighter. His eyes iced over, still true blue, but cold, icy cold, and although she’d expected his reaction, it still hurt.
“Sure you did, baby. So did I. You were there, hot as hell and pure, freaking magic.” Max’s lips curled without showing his teeth and his gaze stripped every stitch from her body.