This Perfect Stranger. Barbara Ankrum
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glanced around at the people milling in the teller line, at the bank officers handing out forms to perspective clients. People she knew and once trusted. Her throat felt like it was closing up.
Maggie got to her feet, gathering up her purse and paperwork from the desk that stood between them. “I think you know exactly what I mean, Ernie. Thanks for your time, but you know what? I don’t need your money. I’ll find a way, with you or without you. If you think I’m going to fold just because Laird Donnelly has every man in this town by the short hairs—”
“This has nothing to do with Laird Donnelly,” Ernie sputtered, shoving to his feet as Dorothy LaBecque, the pretty, thirty-two-year-old blonde watching them from the express window, ducked her head and pretended to be counting her drawer. “Our decision was based solely on your ability to—”
“Play my part? Is that what you were going to say?”
“No, of course not.” Flustered, he glanced around at the stares they were beginning to draw, then, in a lower voice, stammered, “Based on—on your, uh, potential to show a profit.” He hesitated and leaned closer, as if what he had to say embarrassed him. “You’re all alone out there, Maggie. The bank…they don’t put a lot of stock in a single woman’s ability to…” He shook his head. “If you were uh, still married…” He let the rest drift off.
The laugh that escaped her made him flinch. “Still married? Since when is that a requirement for loans these days? Isn’t there something in American jurisprudence about discrimination in regards to single—”
“This isn’t about discrimination and you know it. It’s a hard life up here. Hard enough for men, let alone women. Now…you need to calm down, Maggie. I think you’re overwrought.”
Overwrought? With slow deliberation, she placed one palm flat on his desk, leaned closer to him. “It’s Mrs. Cortland to you. And you can tell Laird Donnelly for me that I will never roll over for a man like him, no matter how many people he’s got on his payroll.” She glanced meaningfully at the tall blonde behind the express window, then back at Ernie.
Ernie absorbed the blow, then leaned one smooth hand on the desk himself, coming inches from her face. “Watch yourself, Maggie. You don’t know what you’re playing with here.”
“If I were a man, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. But this isn’t the nineteenth century and Donnelly’s not the only one making up the rules.”
Ernie slid his gaze to the bank’s only window, where clouds were crowding the morning sky. “Ben would’ve wanted you to sell.”
His words hit her like a ringing slap, and the sting of them made the room go blurry for a moment. When she’d gathered her control again, she pinned Ernie with a look that had all the color rushing out of his florid cheeks. “That,” she said quietly, “was beneath even you, Ernie.”
Ernie lowered his eyes, searching for somewhere safe to land his gaze as Maggie turned and headed out of the bank. In the glass reflection of the door just before she pushed past it, she could see Dorothy hurrying over to Ernie’s desk.
Outside, the air was crisp, even for May, and the dark clouds that scudded along the shanks of the Bitterroots carried the promise of weather. She wished she had foregone the dark business suit today and worn her usual work clothes. It was cold and no one gave a damn about her experience running a business anyway. No one gave a damn, period.
There were a million things to do this morning, but at the moment, she couldn’t think of a single one that sounded more important than drowning her sorrows in a steaming cup of coffee at Moody’s. Not that she wanted to talk. She didn’t. She simply couldn’t face heading back alone just yet.
Her hands were shaking as she pushed the door to Moody’s open. The rich aroma of coffee hit her the moment she entered the shop and settled over her like a balm.
“Hey, Maggie,” the attractive, middle-aged woman called out to her from behind the counter where she held court with her coffeepot. A half-dozen men of various ages gathered around her on the vinyl-covered counter stools like a bunch of hungry old roosters, pecking for crumbs. They turned to look as Maggie walked in the door.
“Hey, Moody,” she said, ignoring their stares. “Can I get a cup of coffee?”
“Comin’ right up.”
The café was warm and cozy with gingham-checked curtains and a different Victorian lamp hanging down over each table. Old books covered the shelves that rode above the windows and antiques and greenery dotted the wall space that wasn’t taken up by windows. Moody had done more than convert this old diner into something special. She’d created an ambiance that made Maggie feel at home here. She suspected that half of Fishhook felt the same.
Her name, of course, wasn’t really Moody. But anyone who still remembered her real one lived under penalty of death if they divulged it. No, Moody Rivers was as much a fixture here in the valley as the river that had earned her her nickname. A free spirit, who, at fifty, answered to no one but was adored by all.
She set a steaming cup of coffee and a pitcher of cream down on the booth table, tilting a sideways look at Maggie. “Wanna talk about it, hon?”
Maggie thought she couldn’t stand kindness right now. Her eyes glistened as she shook her head.
The older woman smiled. “Well, then, I know just the thing.” A minute later, a plate appeared under Maggie’s nose filled with a “Moody’s Dutch Double-Fudge Brownie,” last year’s county fair grand prize winner.
“Chocolate,” Moody sighed. “The elixir of life. It’s on me. Talk’s free, too, if you want it.”
She wanted to wail, but prudence prevailed. She thanked Moody and stirred cream into her cup, watching the white slowly spiral into the black. A gaff like public crying would instantly be fodder for the wags of Fishhook and a mere two degrees of separation from good ol’ Laird Donnelly—a man who regularly ate the young for breakfast and was already licking his chops at the prospect of her next falter. No, she couldn’t show weakness. Not for a moment. She took a sip of coffee and sank back against her seat. Exhaustion pulled at her, even though the day had barely begun.
Peripherally, she heard the little bell above the café door jangle, felt the men at the counter turn to take in the newest arrival with a collective, male bristling. To her left, Moody looked up too. The perpetually easygoing woman fumbled a coffee cup against its saucer, then juggled it still again, seeming to attempt the same thing with her expression.
Cool air from outside slithered against Maggie’s face as curiosity tugged her gaze in the direction of the lace-covered door that still blocked the newcomer from her view.
“C’mon in,” Moody invited, still a bit wide-eyed. “Find yourself a seat. I’ll bring ya a menu.”
“Just coffee,” he said in a deep, baritone voice as he cleared the door, tugging off his black leather gloves one finger at a time.
The coffee cup poised at Maggie’s lips froze where it was. For a moment, she actually forgot to breathe. Big, was the first adjective that leapt to mind. No less than six foot-three and used to ducking door frames. Drop-dead handsome was the second. No, that was three adjectives, she amended stupidly, unable to tear her gaze from him. Square-jawed, with shockingly blue eyes hooded by thick brows, the dark-haired stranger took in the small café with a quick turn of his head. His gaze locked with hers for an assessing moment before it swept away again. And like a blow to the solar plexus, it left her heart inexplicably racing in her chest.
He moved with the graceful efficiency of a caged cat, prowling to a table in the corner of the room and sitting with his back to the wall. If this had been the Old West, she would have guessed him a gunslinger, but she supposed he was just another loner on his way to somewhere else.
Here, machismo was as much a part of the landscape as cattle, but there was no pretense about the pure, unadulterated maleness that lurked beneath the black clothing this man wore from head to foot. His self-contained