Maggie Moves On(31)

11



A string of curses volleyed out of the kitchen, echoing off the walls of the hallway. Silas proceeded with amused caution.

He found Maggie yanking a sledgehammer free from the wall and hauling back to take another swing. It wasn’t the kind of deliberate, economical move that he’d come to expect of her. This was temperamental destruction. He recognized it as he, too, was a fan of physically exorcising a good mad when the occasion called for it.

She was winding up again when he stepped up and plucked the sledgehammer out of her grip.

“Hey!” She was not amused.

“Hey back,” he said, leaning the hammer against the wall out of her reach.

She had a fine layer of plaster dust on her shoulders. There was a raw scrape on her forearm and a tear in the knee of her pants that hadn’t been there that morning.

Her eyes, that whiskey-in-a-glass color, flashed with emotion.

Silas knew better than to ask what was wrong.

“What do you want?” she asked. It wasn’t exactly a snarl, but it was in the neighborhood.

“Wanna take a walk? Look at some dirt?” he offered.

She frowned. “What time is it?”

“Just after three,” he said.

Swearing, she glanced around the dust-covered room. Taking a stab at what she needed, Silas handed her the thermos he found under the table and watched as she drank deeply.

“Been at it a while?” he guessed. He’d been at another job—an outdoor kitchen hardscape—and hadn’t seen her outside when he returned after lunch.

Maggie tugged up the hem of her tank and swiped at the sweat dotting her brow, earning him a peek at her taut stomach and bright-purple sports bra. Her gaze slid to the massacred wall and then back to him. “Let’s look at some dirt,” she said with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

It had become their little tradition in the week he’d been on the job, dragging her out of whatever she was doing at quitting time so he could walk her through what his crew had accomplished. It was as much to show off as it was to get the woman to take a damn break. Maggie Nichols didn’t know when to stop.

He started the tour on the north side of the house. Showed her the now deeper bed between house and garage, newly edged and ready for plants and mulch. Rather than being impressed, she took another long drink and swiped at her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes miles away.

Leading her around to the back, he pointed out the plots where the sod had been removed to reveal rich earth. Each six-foot-by-three-foot section would be its own raised bed for roses. When she stepped right over the spot where the creepy cemetery fence had been only that morning without noticing, Silas knew there was trouble.

Changing tactics, he nudged her farther away from the house. “Let’s take a walk, slugger,” he said.

“I have work to do,” she grumbled, obviously not realizing that they were exploring a new path that had been created with two passes of a brush mower and some enterprising chainsawing only hours before.

“I know you do. Watch your step,” he cautioned.

She grunted an acknowledgment, and he squashed the testosterone-fueled impulse to ask what was wrong so he could tell her how to fix it. He kept one eye on her and one on the path as it curved and climbed until they got to their destination.

“I can appreciate a good mad,” he ventured.

“You don’t want to talk me out of it? Soothe the beast?”

It was a little bit adorable that she could refer to herself as “the beast” and mean it.

Silas pulled off his hat and shoved a hand through his hair. “They’re your feelings,” he said. “You’ve got a right to them.”

The tension that was holding her shoulders up around her ears seemed to release. She frowned thoughtfully. “I do. Don’t I?”

He caught it for an instant. Underneath the thin layer of mad was hurt. Maybe even the tiniest edge of fear. “Sure do,” he said lightly.

Then he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face the view.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” A brand-new panorama spread out before them. Lake. Town. Mountains. River. Silas kept his hands where they were and gently dug into the knots he found with his thumbs.

“Oh,” she said again. Only this time, it was a sigh as he kneaded the tension, the muscle, the hurt. “It’s beautiful.”

“And it’s all yours,” he told her.

“For now,” she said bitterly.

The new tension he felt in her shoulders was definitely not in his imagination. “Now is all anyone ever has,” he said, shifting his thumbs lower. Her sweat-slicked skin was soft to the touch, and under that softness was the tense rigidness of anger.

“Said the philosophical landscape architect.”

“I took my share of philosophy classes back in the day.”

She was quiet for a beat before asking, “You ever realize that you don’t know someone as well as you thought you did?”

“Every damn day.”

“I’m serious,” she said dryly.

“So am I. Mags, you’re talking to the man who walked in on his father and stepmom watercoloring some damn duck by video tutorial last weekend.”

“Watercoloring a duck?”

Clearly she didn’t appreciate just how out of character this was for his biology teacher dad and financial planner stepmom. Their hobbies—as far as he’d known—were limited to drinking good wine while watching documentaries about how fucked the earth was. “Trust me,” he promised her. “You’ll understand when you meet them.”