The Man For Maggie. Frances Housden
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off it, Jo. You know why. I’ve never been able to talk to anyone but you about it. Where else would I go?”
“You managed it once—”
“Yeah.” Maggie placed her arms on the table, her elbow accidentally hitting her wineglass. She heard it skitter across the laminated top, but if a crash came she blanked it out as unimportant. “And only just lived to tell the tale. Look what happened!” Look what they did to me! “I won’t let it happen again!” I can’t.
“Is this a private argument or can anyone join in?”
Maggie looked up, startled by the deep resonant voice. Immediately, she went into denial. “We weren’t arguing.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jo smile at the new arrival. Someone special?
“Max, I didn’t think you’d be here this evening.” Delight rang in Jo’s voice. “I thought you were pulling an all-nighter. Come and join us.”
So this was Max. Detective Sergeant Max Strachan, to be precise. Jo’s boss. The man she’d been pressing Maggie to speak to.
“Never spilled a drop. Neat trick. You’ll have to show me how to do it.” A large hand, slim fingered with blunt tips, set the glass it had caught back on the table. All she could see was his hand with its sprinkling of dark hair as the lights behind him captured all but his silhouette, making his features invisible.
“It’s not something you can learn overnight. I’ve had years of practice,” Maggie said, watching him hook the leg of a chair from the table next to theirs with a large, black-shod foot.
She flinched as the chair scraped across the tiled floor and he pulled it up to their table. His gabardine-covered thigh, cold from the night air, brushed against her nylon-clad knees as he sat down between her and Jo. At the same time a searing heat from the hard-muscled flesh molding the soft cloth made her ache to pull away. But that would be too obvious.
Wide shoulders blocked the rest of the bar from view as he settled into his chair, giving Maggie the uneasy feeling of being trapped. He could easily be six-five. Built like a brick outhouse. A man who would make male offenders shake in their shoes and female ones want to get down and slobber over his size twelves. A man to avoid. And as soon as she could, Maggie aimed to do just that.
“This is my friend Maggie Kovacs. Maggie, Max Strachan.”
Max held out his hand. Automatically she placed hers in it and felt her own swallowed up by a mass of contained strength. Since he was impossible to ignore, she let her reluctant gaze travel over him. A scar ran from his left eyebrow to his hairline, and a streak of silver made his dark hair, as dark as hers, look jet-black. Was there irony in the way the silver striation turned his already handsome face, with its black winged brows and aesthetically high cheekbones, into a prototypical pirate? In the midst of all that perfection, the slight bend in the bridge of his nose should have been a reminder that the man was a cop who had more than likely done battle before. It wasn’t. Cops were supposed to be good guys, but Maggie usually took them as she found them; her last experience had colored most of them charcoal-gray. But in Max’s case she’d rather remain in ignorance.
His eyes paid Maggie the compliment she’d given him—a detailed inspection. She swallowed at his intense look as their gazes collided. His eyes were truly blue. The truest blue she’d ever seen, ringed by long sooty lashes any woman would envy. True blue eyes that searched and sought out her deep hidden secrets. Maggie blinked in self-defense. He was the last man she wanted to share secrets with. Especially the one she’d just added to the list—the mind-blowing attraction he stirred, like a sleeping volcano wakening. Max smiled, just a slight curve of his chiseled lips, but enough to make her insides quake.
“Margaret Kovacs.” Her name rolled off his tongue one syllable at a time, as though he savored each nuance with teeth and tongue before letting it go.
Someone had let loose a whole load of geese in the graveyard. How else could she account for the shivers running down her spine?
Maggie gauged his thoughts. Was he trying to place her name, flicking through the filing system in his brain for where he’d heard it before? “Maggie,” she corrected. “I prefer Maggie.” By repeating her name, she hoped to nudge him off the track his mind had started down.
“Maggie it is. And what brings you to this neck of the woods, Maggie? We don’t usually see ladies like you in here.”
“I wanted to catch up with Jo. It’s been a while,” she said and flashed him a scathing look. He’d had to state the obvious. It hadn’t taken a detective to recognize her as the most overdressed person in the bar. Or did she mean underdressed? The only person in a miniskirt in this place where jeans and casual gear were the uniform of the day.
Even her hairstyle set her apart, with its precision cut. She’d let her stylist crop it ruthlessly to the shape of her head, leaving a shiny black length of hair to swirl across the tops of her ears and eyebrows. “It’s a crime to hide that bone structure, my dear. Your cheekbones are to die for,” was Stefan’s cri de coeur.
Maggie took a deep breath. At twenty-eight she should be past the age of letting people like Max get to her. But at least she hadn’t let it show how much his comments had bothered her.
“Almost three years,” confirmed Jo. “I couldn’t even make it back to Maggie’s father’s funeral, and that must have been a year ago, when I was in Gisborne.”
“Fifteen months.”
“A year this past March. That would have been Frank Kovacs?”
Maggie caught the gleam of recognition in his eyes, the slight tensing of his hand around his glass, and knew the seed of speculation had been sown. This was exactly the situation she’d wanted to avoid. “Yes. Did you know him?”
“I’ve heard of him.”
I’ll just bet you have.
Suddenly she just wanted out of there, wanted to run away from eyes that saw too much. Too easily.
She’d come to talk to Jo on a wave of courage, and the longer she stayed the more it ebbed. She’d already had her fifteen minutes of fame, and taking a chance on thirty might just push her over the top.
Max drained his glass. “Can I buy you both a drink?” He looked at their glasses, Jo’s empty one and the half glass of red wine of Maggie’s that he’d caught and replaced. “Not your usual vintage, I imagine? Maybe I can do better?”
That was all the confirmation Maggie needed. Max remembered her story and wasn’t too subtle about letting her know. “I doubt it.” She took another sip as if to prove him wrong.
Jo pushed her glass toward Max. “Thanks, I’ll have my usual,” she said, giving him another of the smiles she’d been rationing, as if the undercurrents in the conversation were passing her by. Maggie knew Jo wasn’t that dumb. Jo was sending a few signals of her own, and Maggie got the impression they were all for her benefit. Showing her the lay of the land. One minute Jo was practically pushing her to meet the guy, the next Maggie could see a sign in bold writing: Hands Off.
Maggie took another look at the clock with its small brass pendulum swinging back and forth. No chance of time slowing for her.
“Would you look at the time? I have to go.” She stood up and slid her arms into the camel-colored, cashmere coat she’d left hanging over the back of her chair. She turned her collar up till it framed her face, ready for the biting wind that had sprung up as the sun set. “Jo, give me a call when you’ve got the time. You’ve got my numbers. Nice to meet you, Sergeant Strachan.”
Max stood up and Jo followed his example. “Do you have to?” she asked.
Maggie slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “Yeah, I have to. Bye now.” She left them with an inane wiggle of her fingers, which showed the panic in her mind. Unable to get away quickly enough, she aimed for the door with the distinct feeling that Max’s eyes were boring into her back. With every step she took the door