Twice Kissed Read Free

curled wildly, but Mary Theresa’s had been highlighted with gold and framed her face in soft layers while Maggie’s had been scraped back into her ever-functional ponytail. Mary Theresa had worn a short, shimmering black dress, a designer original, complemented with a strand of pearls, black hose and three-inch heels. She’d been on her way to a party with some once-upon-a-time celebrities.
    At that same frozen moment in time Maggie had worn sneakers, jeans, and a flannel shirt with a tail that flapped in the wind and had balanced three-year-old Becca on one outthrust hip. With the snow-shrouded Rocky Mountains as a backdrop, the two sisters braced themselves on each other, then swiveled their heads to grin into the camera. Bright I-can-take-on-the-world smiles, rosy cheeks, a smattering of freckles and green eyes that snapped with fire had stared into the lens.
    It seemed like ages ago.
    A lifetime.
    She set the photo on the mantel, where it had been, between pictures of all stages of Becca’s life as well as her own, then glanced outside. The evening was gathering fast, stars visible through the thin layer of clouds.
    “Come on, Becca,” she worried aloud as she snapped on the exterior light and stepped onto the front porch. Silently she hoped for some sign of Jasper galloping toward the barn. But there was no sound of hoofbeats, no glimpse of a gray horse appearing over the slight rise of the field. Instead she heard a breath of wind sighing through the dry leaves that still clung to the trees and the clatter of a train rolling on far-off tracks. Again the howl of a coyote on some nearby hill.
    Her gaze scoured the distance.
    An answering soulful cry, lonely and echoing, reverberated across the land and put Maggie’s teeth on edge. Leaning one hip against the porch rail, she tried to find the sense of calm, of well-being that she’d been looking for when she’d leased this place at the first of the year.
    Everything’s fine; you’re just letting your overactive imagination get the better of you. If you were smart, Maggie-girl, you’d use this to your advantage, go inside, pour yourself a cup of coffee and start writing. You’ve got a deadline in your not-too-distant future.
    Nervously she fidgeted with the wedding ring that she still wore on her hand. It was a joke really, something she’d have to give up, but couldn’t quite. Not yet.
    She’d reached for the door when she heard it—the muted rumble of an engine that got louder, then the crunch of gravel being flattened by heavy tires. Turning, she spied twin beams flashing through the night, the beacons broken by the trunks of trees as they passed, headlights from a truck that rolled to a stop not far from the barn. Black, slightly battered, sporting a canopy, the truck was unfamiliar.
    A solitary man was behind the wheel—a man she thought she recognized.
    “Oh, God,” she whispered.
    It couldn’t be. Or could it? Was her mind playing tricks on her? All the saliva in her throat disappeared.
    The driver cut the engine and opened the door. “Maggie?”
    She’d know that voice anywhere, even after more than a dozen years.
    Thane Walker, big as life, stepped out of the cab.
    Her throat turned to sand, and her stupid heart jolted.
    “Well, well, well,” she said, forcing the words past lips that were numb. As he slammed the door of his truck, she told herself that the accelerated beat of her heart was way out of line.
    He started toward the porch.
    Looking every bit like the devil he was.
    The memory of Mary Theresa’s “voice” haunted her again. It was Thane. He did this to me. Maggie swallowed hard. She gripped the porch rail with nervous fingers and told herself she wasn’t going to be taken in by him. Never again.
    His slow Western saunter had disappeared, replaced by purposeful strides that ate up the gravel-strewn lot that separated the house from the barn. With a countenance as harsh as the windswept Wyoming plains he’d once called home,