Thea Devine Read Online Free PDF Page B

the same reaction.
    “And I ain’t leaving, Mistress Maggie, no matter what you say.”
    “The day may come,” Maggie muttered, tired of his theatrics. The story never changed. The contract existed, and his blackmail rested solely with what the townspeople would think if Maggie fired him. They would believe in the contract, even without the evidence, and the fact that Frank had hired him. She had never heard of a more gullible herd of cows than the townspeople of Colville, she thought exasperatedly.
    She felt the urge to let them reap the reward of their own stupidity. Who was she to be their keeper when they had the likes of Arch Warfield to show them the way? Damn, why couldn’t he just leave?
    He left. Somewhere in the midst of her vitriolic reflections, he skulked away. The office got emptied, the outside light waned, and a welcome quiet descended around her.
    As Jean moved back to his desk to lay out the advertisementsshe heard A.J. leave through the front door on his way to the express office, the sound of Jean’s pen as he worked, and the flick of a match as he lit a lamp.
    He was not a talkative man, she thought, pausing for a moment in her furious rewriting. He was calm and temperate, spare and fastidious in his work and his person, as unlikely a person to find in a small town newspaper office as Frank Colleran had been, and as successful in his way as well.
    His was a solid, reassuring presence, and he never left the office before she did. Of course he could not know that she did not wish to leave the office tonight to face her self-satisfied mother-in-law and her cocky brother-in-law.
    She turned to tell him that she would be staying late, and her heart jumped into her throat.
    Logan Ramsey was sitting at Jean’s drawing board, one of Jean’s pens in his long fingers, his face in shadow once again so she could not see his expression, and his lean body totally relaxed.
    It was stunning to see him sitting there as casually as if she had seen him yesterday, when she had not seen him in so many months. Her composure totally deserted her.
    She couldn’t say a word, and neither did he for the space of several long, intense moments. Then she finally managed to push words out from her dry throat.
    “Hello, Logan.” That was fine and conventional and just what a widow of one year should say to an old friend. She put down her own pen for want of something to do until he spoke.
    “Hello, Maggie.”
    She didn’t expect to have such a reaction to his voice. A rush of galvanic heat spurted through her body and settled in a knot in her stomach. She couldn’t think of another thing to say, and it confused her. It had to be because she had been thinking about him today, nothingelse, and she was so glad to see him.
    She
was
glad to see him. “You weren’t at the church today.” Her words sounded awkward, grasping at any topic to fill the silence between them.
    “Did you think I would be?” There was a repressed violence in the question. “Did you honestly think that I, of all people, would want to memorialize your four years of hell with Frank?”
    His vehemence shocked her, but even she had no cause to know that it was compounded not only of his utter hatred of Frank but also his knowledge of the fact that Reese Colleran had come to town.
    “Perhaps you could have come merely to support me,” she suggested, her tone faintly acid because of the wallop of disappointment his words sent right to her gut. “
I
had to go through it, damn it.” She wheeled her chair away from him. “Is there anything else, Logan?”
    “I thought there was,” he said sardonically.
    She swiveled around to face him. “That wasn’t an apology, obviously.”
    “No, I won’t apologize for that, Maggie. I’m sure you were surrounded by strong arms—and strong stomachs. I could even make a winning wager on who did attend.”
    “Fine. I leaned on Dennis and Sean Mapes instead. They liked Frank, but they like me more.” She waited