Wife for Hire

  Bubba took a sip of coffee. “So, how’s the book going?” he said to Maggie. “I was talking to Elmo Feeley at the feed store, and he said the book is full of sex, and you’ve already been asked to make it into a movie.”

  Maggie’s fork slithered through her fingers and clattered onto her plate. Her mouth hung open, but she couldn’t find her voice. Even if she’d had a voice, she wouldn’t have known what to say.

  Hank set his coffee cup down and looked from Maggie to Bubba. It was the first time he’d seen Maggie tongue-tied and he rather liked it. She’d been quick to believe the worst about him, he thought. Now he was interested to see how she handled a little false notoriety about herself.

  “Yup,” Hank said, smiling at Bubba, “Cupcake here is going to be rich.” He leaned closer to Bubba and dropped his voice to a whisper. “That’s why I married her, you know. I needed money for the cider press and the bakery equipment.”

  Maggie sucked in her breath and narrowed her eyes. He was doing it again!

  “And is the book really full of sex?” Bubba asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe what’s in that diary,” Hank said. “Maggie and I have been going through it, page by page, for the last three nights, and it’s got stuff in there I’ve never even thought of. We’ve been trying it all out just to make sure a person can really do it. Maggie wouldn’t put anything in her book that she hasn’t personally experienced. You know, sort of like testing recipes before you write a cookbook.”

  Bubba chuckled and punched Hank in the arm. “You dog, you.”

  Elsie hit Hank on the head with her wooden spoon. “The Lord’s gonna get you for that.” She bit her lip to keep from laughing out loud and quickly turned back to the stove.

  Maggie’s mouth was still open, and she’d taken hold of the table. Her knuckles were turning white and her eyes were small and glittery.

  “Maybe you should go easy on the diary stuff for a while,” Bubba whispered to Hank. “She looks a little on edge, you know what I mean?”

  “It’s the way she gets,” Hank said. “Hungry. All you have to do is mention the diary, and she turns into an animal. She’s just trying to control herself. That’s why she’s holding on to the table. She doesn’t want to rip my clothes off at the breakfast table.”

  “Wow,” Bubba said. “Are you doing okay? I mean, she isn’t hurting you or anything, is she?”

  Hank finished his coffee and winked at Bubba. “I can handle her.”

  Bubba chuckled and punched him in the arm again.

  Hank pushed away from the table. He kissed Maggie on the top of the head and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “I know you’re feeling desperate, but I have to go to work now, pumpkin. Maybe you can find some techniques for when I come home at lunch.”

  “I—you—” she said. She grabbed a jar of strawberry preserves and threw it at the door, but Hank and Bubba had already disappeared down the back stoop. The jar ripped through the screen and smashed against a stack of empty wooden apple crates.

  “Did you hear something crash?” Bubba said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Hank told him. “Sometimes she gets violent when I leave her.”

  “Crazy about you, huh?”

  Chapter 6

  Maggie and Elsie stood staring at the hole in the screen door.

  “You didn’t miss him by much,” Elsie said. “It was the screen that slowed you down.”

  “I didn’t really want to hit him. I just wanted to throw something.”

  Elsie nodded. “Good job.”

  Maggie grinned. “He would have been disappointed if I hadn’t thrown something. He likes to provoke me.”

  “You mean you weren’t really mad?”

  “Of course I was mad. He makes me crazy.”

  Elsie shook her head. “This is too complicated for me. I’m going to do the dishes.”

  Maggie cleaned the back porch and went upstairs to work. It was going to be another perfect day, she thought. Blue sky and warm with just the tiniest of breezes. In the distance she could hear an engine turn over and guessed it was Bubba on the loader.

  She reread the handwritten notes she’d been compiling. The diary lay to her right. It was open to December 3, 1923. Aunt Kitty had talked of the weather, the tragedy of the Thorley baby’s death from the croup, and Johnny McGregor, whom she declared to be the handsomest man she’d ever seen. The “diary” actually consisted of seven diaries, covering a span of thirty-two years. Among other things it was a chronicle of love for John McGregor.

  Maggie had chosen to treat her book as historical fiction. It would enable her to give a true recording of history, according to Aunt Kitty’s wishes, and still ensure her family a mea sure of privacy.

  The thought that someone might have broken into Hank’s house to steal the diary sent a chill through her. It would have to be someone sick, because Aunt Kitty wasn’t a famous person. The diary wasn’t worth much money. It probably wasn’t worth any money. For that matter, Maggie suspected the book she was writing wouldn’t be worth much money either. Her goal was simply to get Aunt Kitty’s story in print. That in itself seemed a formidable task.

  Twelve hours later Hank leaned against the kitchen counter, drinking milk and eating oatmeal cookies. “She’s still up there.”

  Elsie shook her head. “I tell you she’s a woman possessed. Couldn’t even coax her down with my meat loaf.”

  “Maybe I should throw the circuit breaker.”

  “Maybe you should take out more health insurance first.”

  “Okay, so I won’t throw the circuit breaker. I’ll try charming her out of the room.” He went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Chablis. “A little wine wouldn’t hurt either.”

  The door to her study was closed. He knocked twice and received a muffled answer. He pushed the door open and found Maggie with her arms crossed on the desktop and her face buried in her arms. She was crying her eyes out, making loud sobbing noises. Her shoulders were shaking, and she had tissues clutched in her hands. He rushed to her and put his hand at the nape of her neck. “Maggie, what’s wrong?”

  She picked her head up and blinked at him. Her face was flushed and tears tracked down her cheeks. “It’s so aw-w-wful,” she sobbed. Her breath caught in a series of hiccups.

  Hank pulled her out of her chair, sat down, and took her onto his lap, cuddling her close. He stroked the hair back from her face and waited while she blew her nose. He thought his heart would break. He had no idea she’d been so miserable.

  “Tell me about it, honey. What’s so awful?”

  “J-J-Johnny McGregor. She loved him terribly. It was b-b-beautiful. But he couldn’t marry her.”

  “She?”

  “Aunt Kitty. He couldn’t marry her. He had an invalid wife and a little girl.”

  “Let me get this straight. You’re crying your head off because Johnny McGregor couldn’t marry Aunt Kitty?”

  “It’s all in chapter two. I just finished it. It’s w-w-wonderful.” She wiped the tears from her eyes and took a big gulp of air.

  “They were sweethearts, but their parents were against their marrying. Aunt Kitty’s father sent her to Boston to live with relatives, and while she was there Aunt Kitty discovered she was pregnant. By then his parents thought she was a tramp. Johnny and Aunt Kitty wrote letters to each other, but neither of them ever received them. Aunt Kitty had her baby in Boston, thinking Johnny had abandoned her. And after two years of not hearing anything from Aunt Kitty, Johnny married his third cousin Marjorie.”

  Hank thought if he lived to be a hundred he’d never understand women.

  “When Aunt Kitty’s father died from a heart attack, she came back home for the funeral, and met Johnny on the street, downtown. It was just as if they’d never been separated. They still loved each other, but now Johnny was married, and his wife was frail, and he had an infant daughter.”

  “He should have waited for Kitty,” Hank said. “He should have gone looking for her. I think th
is McGregor guy sounds like a jerk.”

  Maggie smiled between snuffles. Hank was more of a fighter than Johnny McGregor. Hank wouldn’t have knuckled under to his parents. And Hank wouldn’t have stood still while his sweetheart’s father spirited her away.

  “So, where did all this take place? Was this in Riverside?”

  “No. Aunt Kitty and Johnny lived in Easton, Pennsylvania. Aunt Kitty stayed there so she could be near Johnny, and after some hard times she was befriended by a woman who ran a brothel. One thing led to another, and eventually Aunt Kitty took over as madam. She moved to Riverside when she was an old woman.”

  “And you’ve got all this in your book, huh?”

  “I will eventually.” She gave one last sad sigh and got off his lap. “Chapter two is an emotional chapter.”

  “I can see that.” He half-filled a wineglass with the chilled Chablis and passed it to her.

  Maggie took the wine and held it a moment before drinking. She watched while he poured some for himself, and smiled when he clinked glasses in a toast.

  “To Aunt Kitty,” he said. He took a sip, set the glass on the desk, and reached for the fragile leather-bound book Maggie had left lying open. “Do you mind if I read this?”

  “I don’t think Aunt Kitty would mind. It’s the first volume. She started keeping the diary when she was sixteen.”

  He read the first page and drank a little more wine. Then he thumbed through the book, reading pages at random. “This is actually very interesting.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I’ve always thought girls’ diaries were sappy. I always figured it was something you filled with lies and exaggerations and then left laying around for your friends to read.”

  “I think the middle diaries are the most interesting. They detail house hold accounts for the brothel. It’s a unique slant on history.”

  Hank selected one of the middle diaries and began reading. His eyes opened wide, and his mouth creased into a broad grin. “Whoa! You were right. This is definitely more interesting. Aunt Kitty had a real flare for words.”

  “What page are you on?”

  “Page forty-two. She’s talking about Eugenia and the button salesman.”

  “Give me that book!”

  Hank edged away from her, holding the book too high for her to reach. “Each month Eugenia waited for the button salesman to come into town,” Hank read. “Eugenia would wear her sheer red dress and her fancy red-and-black garters…”

  Maggie lunged for the book, and Hank pinned her against the wall. His eyes were dancing with mischief. “Do you have any garters, Maggie?”

  “You’re squashing me!”

  “Stop squirming. No, on second thought, I think I like the squirming.”

  She instantly went still. “I’m going to scream for Elsie.”

  “Coward.”

  “You bet.”

  Hank continued to read out loud. “And Eugenia would dot her very best, most expensive French perfume at every pulse point. On the column of her neck…” Hank dipped his head and leisurely, thoroughly kissed the pulse point in Maggie’s neck. “At her wrist…” Hank’s mouth moved over Maggie’s wrist with slow passion. “Along the heated crevice between her full breasts…”

  The air felt trapped in Maggie’s lungs. Her chest burned with it. Her head hummed with Hank’s words, with the sound of his voice, soft and resonant. Desire was rising from somewhere deep inside her and radiating outward in waves that left her weak-kneed.

  He’d opened the top buttons on her cotton shirt. It was an outrageous liberty, she thought, but she was powerless to stop him. She wanted to feel his mouth on her breast, and when his lips finally grazed along the soft flesh that swelled from the cup of her lacy bra, she shuddered.

  “Should I continue?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She could barely say it, barely hear her own words over the pounding of her heart.

  “She perfumed the tips of her breasts…” he said, improvising wildly.

  His large hand covered her, molding her to fit his palm. She was soft and full, and he thought he would burst with love. And if he didn’t burst from love, he certainly was ready to burst with passion.

  He’d thought ahead, and he knew there was only one place left for Eugenia to put the damn perfume. If Maggie allowed him to put his hand there, it was all over.

  Then he thought of Elsie, puttering around downstairs in the kitchen and wondered why he’d ever started this.

  Maggie had also thought ahead. “Stop,” she whispered. “Stop now.”

  He sagged against her. “You ever seen a grown man cry?”

  Maggie giggled from nervousness. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “We have to talk.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She splayed both hands on his chest to put some room between them, but he wouldn’t move far.

  “I’m going to be honest with you. I’m very attracted to you. It wouldn’t take much for me to fall in love and do something foolish, like go to bed with you.”

  “Why would that be foolish?”

  “I’m not like you. Falling in love would be serious for me. It would be painful. It would be disruptive.”

  A crease formed between his eyebrows. “What makes you think it wouldn’t be for me?”

  “I think your outlook on life is different from mine.”

  He held her by the shoulders and gave her a small shake. “You don’t know anything about my outlook on life. You don’t know anything about me. You only know the stories. Give me a chance, Maggie. Look for yourself.”

  “I don’t want to give you a chance. We have six more months of cohabitation. I don’t want to make that any more awkward than it already is. Even if you were the right person for me, this wouldn’t work out. Skogen is another Riverside. I’m the prime topic of conversation for the entire town. I’m crazy Maggie Toone all over again, and there probably isn’t a man, woman, or child within a fifty-mile radius who isn’t waiting to hear about my latest outrageous act.”

  “You’re wrong. You’re not crazy Maggie Toone. You’re crazy Maggie Mallone.”

  “I don’t want to fall in love with you.”

  “Fine. Do what ever you can to try to prevent it, but I don’t think it will help.”

  He released her and took a step back. “And what about me? It’s too late for me, Maggie. I’m already in love with you.”

  Disbelief quickly replaced the initial surge of joy. “I suppose that’s your problem.”

  “Wrong. It’s your problem, because I intend to do what ever is necessary to get you to love me.”

  “Wasn’t it just last night you told me you weren’t going to put any moves on me?”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “I don’t know. I started out wanting to comfort you when you were crying, and I ended up trying to seduce you. About halfway through, it became obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to hide my…feelings.”

  Maggie smiled. “You have a point. Your feelings were pretty obvious.”

  “And you’re wrong about Skogen. It’s a nice place to live. I think you need to get to know some of the people here. They aren’t so bad. They like to gossip, but there isn’t anything mean in it. It’s just recreation. We don’t have a movie theater or a shopping mall, so folks around here spend their time passing along false information.”

  “I don’t know if I want to meet any more Skogenians.”

  She knew she didn’t have a good attitude. After all, she had an obligation to fulfill as his wife.

  “Okay, I take that back. I want to meet the locals. What did you have in mind? I hope it’s not another dinner party.”

  “There’s a dance at the grange Friday night.” Did he just say that? He hated dances.

  “A dance?” Her face brightened. “I love dances. What kind of a dance is it?”

  Damned if he knew. He’d neve
r been to one. “It’s just your average dance, I guess. Elmo Feeley and Andy Snell and some others have a band.”

  “A live band? And the dance floor, is it wood?”

  “It might be.”

  Hours later Maggie lay wide-eyed in bed, unable to sleep. She was in love, of course. And of course she’d never admit it to Hank because falling in love with Hank Mallone was a no-win situation.

  Still, it was exciting. It was also terrifying. Not terrifying in a daredevil sort of way. That kind of danger had never bothered her. This was real terror. The kind she carried around in the pit of her stomach. The kind that gnawed at her during quiet moments when her mind was unoccupied. Hank Mallone was capable of breaking her heart, and that was much more dangerous than writing a dirty word on a grade school door.

  There were slippered footsteps in the hall, and Maggie heard her doorknob turn very slowly, very carefully. There was no light in her room and no light in the hall. Nothing was visible in the dark when the door opened, but Maggie sensed it was Elsie. She was the only one who wore slippers.

  “Don’t move,” Elsie whispered. “And don’t say anything. There’s a man climbing a ladder up to your window.”

  “What?”

  “Shhhh! I said to keep quiet. I’m gonna fix this guy’s wagon. When I get done with him, he isn’t gonna be climbing ladders for a long time.”

  That was when Maggie saw the barrel of the gun glint in the blackness. Elsie was right beside her, and she was holding a gun with two hands the way Maggie had seen on the cop shows. “Don’t worry about a thing,” Elsie said. “I’ve done this before. I know just where to aim.”

  A black shape appeared in the far window. A knife sliced along the perimeter of the window screen, and Maggie was able to see that it was a man, and that he was wearing something over his face. A stocking maybe. She and Elsie were hidden in the shadows of the room, but the intruder was slightly backlit from a sliver of moon. He leaned forward to enter the room, and Elsie pulled the trigger.

  Maggie thought it had to be like standing next to a howitzer. The blast was deafening, there was a flash of fire from the gun barrel, the smell of smoke and gun oil stung her nostrils, and the man at the window screamed in fright and instantly disappeared. There was a solid thunk as his body hit the ground, followed by the clatter of the ladder falling on top of him.