Summer's Freedom Page 18

  Getting a little desperate, aren’t you? she asked herself with irritation. And maybe she was. She simply couldn’t imagine living her life without him—whichever him he turned out to be.

  Nor could she see herself agreeing to love, honor and cherish a man who had been convicted of murder. What she needed, to make sense of all of it, was the critical, missing information. She needed to know what had happened.

  * * *

  It took some research, since Maggie didn’t know exact dates, just general time periods. In the library of the daily newspaper, she looked up first the wedding announcement of Mitchell and Nina Gray. It was simple and to the point, giving Maggie the information she needed: Nina’s maiden name was Hunt.

  Next, she looked up the murder trial and worked backward to find the original police report, which simply stated that Mitchell had been taken into custody after a forty-year-old auto salesman had been killed under suspicious circumstances.

  The trial reports held little of interest. By the time it had taken place, the city had grown large enough and violent enough that one murder trial was not much to write about. There was, however, one photograph that Maggie found electrifying.

  Joel, his hair shorn into a severe cut, stood just outside the courtroom in a well-cut suit. His eyes, electrically blue even in a black-and-white photograph, were trained on the haughty woman walking toward him. Her heavy, dark hair swung in a bell around her shoulders. Maggie’s eyes narrowed at the expressions of the two principals, frozen for all time in the photograph. On Nina’s face was a definite smirk of satisfaction.

  Joel’s face showed not the hatred Maggie would have expected, but an unmistakable mask of sorrow. Whether it was for the loss of this love or the loss of his freedom, Maggie had no way of knowing. She did know the expression pierced her.

  She closed the book of newspapers, fingering the slip of paper with Nina’s name. The reason she’d come to the paper this morning was to learn Nina’s last name, with the vague aim of confronting her about the night of the murder. There was something odd about it, as nigglingly out of kilter as the demonstrations against Proud Fox had been.

  In the end, she went to the courthouse and looked up the transcripts of the trial. It took hours to sort through the judgments and legalese, but Maggie finally found what she was looking for: Testimony from both Joel and Nina.

  It was painful, she discovered, for she heard every word of Joel’s terse account in his rich, bass voice. A part of her ached for him, her gentle lover, in his moment of darkness, and she was acutely angry at Nina, who should have supported her husband in his crisis.

  Instead, Nina’s testimony seemed designed to incriminate Joel even further. As she read, Maggie saw again the beautiful woman’s expression in the newspaper photograph—meanly triumphant.

  By the time Maggie finished, her eyes were weary with nearly twenty-four hours of reading, and her neck ached from bending over the transcripts. She headed home with a whirl of thoughts spinning in her mind.

  Galen and Samantha were just about to sit down to dinner, and Maggie joined them, but she was distracted throughout the meal. “I’m sorry, you two,” she said, carrying her plate to the sink. “I know I’m a million miles away, but I’ve got to get some sleep.”

  “That’s all right, Mom. We understand.”

  “Good,” Maggie said vaguely, and drifted upstairs and to sleep.

  * * *

  Joel spoke softly to a tiny screech owl, newly admitted and terrified. The bird’s yellow eyes were wild with fear and pain, darting from Joel to the hunk of meat in front of him. Joel chuckled quietly. “Go on, little one,” he coaxed. “It’s not what you’re used to, but I think you’ll like it, anyway.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a swath of honey-gold hair in the parking area. His heart squeezed and leaped simultaneously before he remembered that it wouldn’t be Maggie.

  He’d been half seeing her in his peripheral vision for the endless, endless days since that morning in his bedroom. Any long-legged woman, any head of honey hair, any woman with Maggie’s firm, purposeful stride caught his eye, made his heart constrict until he could see that none of them was her.

  A footstep in the gravel nearby made him look up, and for a second his heart stopped completely. This time, it really was Maggie.

  She stood next to him, and Joel looked away. “If you had just trusted me, we could have avoided a lot of pain,” she said quietly.

  “I thought we’ve already been through this,” he said, his voice reflecting his punctured hope.

  “Not this part.”

  He looked at her. “What part, Maggie? The murder?”

  Maggie took a long, slow breath, stealing herself against his incredible beauty. In one week, her mind had erased some of the perfection of that face, and seeing it in all its glory proved more difficult than she had anticipated. “It wasn’t murder,” she said finally. “The charge was manslaughter.”

  “Big difference, right?”

  “I think there is.” She shifted in the gravel. “Why don’t you tell me about it.”

  He rose from his squatting position. His jaw was hard. “You obviously know enough. Why don’t you tell me?”

  This was a side of him she hadn’t seen. No emotion showed on his face, no translucent light shone in his eyes. This was Mitchell facing her—Mitchell, who’d learned to survive in prison. “You thought he was killing her,” she said.

  He blew out a lungful of air, touching his chest in a vulnerable gesture. “Yeah.” His eyes focused high on the horizon. “She called me at work, terrified. We were split up by then, but I went to her rescue the same way I always did.” His fist clenched and lifted, fell impotently back to his side.

  “When I got to her house, I heard her screaming. It scared the hell out of me. I ran up the steps and tore into the room—“He shook his head, licked his lips. “There was this ape in there, throwing her around like a rag doll. She had blood on her face and she was screaming, and something in me just broke.” He swallowed. “I didn’t mean to kill him, Maggie,” he said. His voice was subdued.

  “What did you do?”

  “Look at me,” he said, and now myriad emotions raced through his voice, which had risen in regret and remorse. He held up his hands in front of him, like a surgeon awaiting his sterile gloves. “My whole life I’ve been bigger than anyone around me, stronger than three guys put together. All the way through school, guys challenged me to fight so they could prove themselves. The coaches wanted me on the football team so I could mow down all the little guys playing quarterback and center.” He raised his eyes. “My dad always said, ‘Boy, you let them break on you. Don’t ever hit ’em back.’” He shook his finger as he imitated his father.

  Maggie thought then there might be something she should say. But she needed to hear it all and remained silent to listen.

  After a moment, he said, “So I always let them break on me. I didn’t play football and I didn’t fight. I had no idea what my hands could do to a man.” He paused. “I wish to God I’d never found out.”

  It was impossible to check her tears then. She loved him too much to avoid feeling his pain. But with that first emotion, all the others she’d been holding back were released, as well.

  Hearing her sob, he looked up. “Maggie…” he began.

  “No. You listen to me now. I’m hurt because you didn’t trust me, not with your real self when you wrote to me and not with the other parts of yourself when you became Joel. Now I’m having a little trouble putting the two people together. I don’t know who I’m talking to or who I love.” Her voice broke and she furiously dashed away her tears.

  “You and Galen keep talking about how necessary it was that you lie to me, that I wouldn’t have accepted you if you had come to me as Mitchell.” She straightened her shoulders. “Well, I have news for both of you—I would have welcomed Mitchell, because I already loved you. Now I don’t know what to do.”

  He stepped forwar
d, his hope blazing anew. She stepped back to ward him off. “I’m not ready yet, Joel—“she shook her head “—Mitchell. You see?” she cried. “I don’t even know what to call you!”

  She whirled to hide the tears that blinded her. With her back turned, she added, “The thing that makes it so terrible is that you and Galen are the only men I’ve ever trusted. And neither of you trusted me in return.”

  Before he could say another word, she bolted for the car. When she reached it, she burst into huge sobs, gripping the steering wheel. She had come here to sort things out with him and had botched it completely. Never in her life had she been so confused.

  Chapter 14

  Galen left Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon, the new neighbors moved into the other half of the building, which never went unrented for long. It was a young married couple, a fact Maggie viewed with more than a little irony.

  The letter came Monday morning, the only thing the postman delivered. Before she even lifted a hand to pull it out of the box, she knew who it was from by the deeply colored sky visible on the edges of the envelope. For an instant, she hesitated, then withdrew it.

  At first glance, there was no difference in the drawing. A single hawk circled above her name and address, written in the familiar bold hand. As her trembling hands carried the slender envelope closer, she saw that Moses with his many toes graced one corner. Curled deeply in the hollow between his paws was the kitten Buddy. And on the left of her name stood Maggie in a meadow, her hands lifted around a ball of string that trailed below her name to attach itself to the flying bird—a kite.

  Again, he’d quoted Longfellow on the bottom of the envelope. “Love is sunshine, hate is shadow, Life is checkered shade and sunshine, Rule by love, O Hiawatha!”

  Her throat tight, she carried the letter inside and sank down onto the nearest seat. It was impossible to simply tear it open, her hands shook so terribly, and she had to wait for them to calm a bit.

  Finally, she turned it over and slipped loose the glued flap to pull out a single sheet of paper.

  Dear Maggie,

  This is the last card I have to play. When I wrote you from prison, I couldn’t afford the luxury of emotion. Now there are no such restrictions.

  And I find I have no words to tell you how I feel. For days I’ve sought the perfect phrase—I’ve combed every poetry book I own, reread every passage in every love story that I know of. Nothing fits because you are unique.

  So humbly, I draw.

  Love, Joel.

  Below, he’d sketched a radiant ball of light. Around it curled broken prison bars. In the center of the light was Maggie’s face.

  * * *

  Maggie found him on a hill with a prairie falcon she recognized as the one that had snagged a field mouse for Joel one sunny afternoon. Since he was unaware of her, she watched him for a long time, his letter pinched between her fingers in the pocket of her skirt.

  Never had the perfect balance between size and grace been more carefully achieved. Never had colors been so beautifully arranged, from the bright, clear blue of his eyes to the palette of blacks and reds that made his hair.

  It was no accident that he loved these birds, these fierce and beautiful birds of prey. Like the hawk he’d mourned with Maggie in their lilac-scented backyard, he had failed to thrive away from the sight of the open sky. And like all birds of prey, he killed only in defense of his own.

  As she watched, he untied the jess on the falcon’s leg and moved his arm to launch the bird into the azure sky. The falcon circled, higher and higher, testing the currents of wind. Joel lifted his face to watch it, and Maggie saw his throat work with emotion.

  The bird beat its powerful wings, and with an amazing display of speed, flew away. Maggie followed its flight until it disappeared, then looked up to find Joel’s eyes upon her.

  She climbed the hill, unabashedly letting her tears flow hot over her face, tears of joy and release. In the knee-high yellow grass at the top of the hill, she stopped. “I was wrong to judge you so harshly,” she said. “I don’t care what your name is.” She swallowed to give her throat room for words. “I love you.”

  With a quick sound of joy, he swept her into a rib-crushing hug. Against her neck, he breathed, “I missed you.” He pressed his lips to her neck, her jaw, her eye, finding at last her mouth, which he claimed in joy.

  Maggie met his passion eagerly, feeling the light burst once again within her. Pulling away a fraction of an inch, she said, “I can’t believe I considered actually letting this go.”

  As if the thought pained him, Joel pressed her head into his shoulder. “I was so afraid that you would, that I would have lost you.” His chest expanded with a breath, and he eased his hold to look at her. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced,” he said.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Maggie protested.

  “My name is Mitchell Joel Gray. Everyone but my mother and the state of Colorado has always called me Joel.”

  She nodded. “Joel, then.” She smiled. “Samantha is going to be thrilled. She’s been mad that you moved and took the cats ever since she got home.”

  “She’s back home?”

  Maggie nodded.

  “That means no more making love, then.”

  “No. I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not. I’m in love with you, I’m grown, and sometimes sex is a part of a relationship like that.”

  He said nothing for a moment, measuring her. “It’s also sometimes a part of marriage.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  The dimples in his cheeks flashed deeply. “Well, I don’t want to spend another seven years getting to know someone else,” he joked. “Of course that’s what I want,” he said, suddenly sober.

  “And children? More of them, I mean? Will you want to do that?”

  “Do you want more children?”

  The tears sprang to her eyes again. “Oh, yes, Joel. And I can’t think of anything I’d like more than being your wife.”

  “You’re sure you feel okay about my past?”

  Maggie nodded. “I may still have some things to work through about that. It may not always be easy for you.”

  “As long as I’m with you, Maggie, I really don’t care.”

  She laced her fingers with his as they started down the hill. “We’ll tell Samantha tonight at dinner.”

  “I’ll bring Moses and Buddy to visit.”

  Maggie stopped and faced him, suddenly very sure. “Bring them to stay, Joel. And bring your clothes. I don’t want to ever spend a night without you again.”

  “I can see,” he said, his neon eyes glittering, “that we aren’t going to have time for a big wedding.”

  Maggie laughed. “No time at all.”

  As he wrapped her in his arms again, a hawk called in the clear blue sky. Maggie opened her eyes to watch it, feeling her heart soar in the endless depths of the sky. “I love you, Joel,” she whispered, and laughed. “You, too, Mitchell Gray.”

  ~~###~~

  For Denise West,

  who loves and endures no matter what.

  BARBARA SAMUEL O'NEAL

  Barbara Samuel (also known as Barbara O’Neal) is the bestselling author of more than 40 books, and has won Romance Writers of America’s RITA award an astounding six times, and she has been a finalist 13 times. Her books have been published around the world, including France, Germany, Italy, and Australia/New Zealand, among others. One of her recent women’s fiction titles, The Lost Recipe for Happiness (written as Barbara O’Neal) went back to print eight times, and her book How to Bake a Perfect Life was a Target Club pick in 2011.

  Whether set in the turbulent past or the even more challenging present, Barbara’s books feature strong women, families, dogs, food, and adventure—whether on the road or toward the heart.

  Now living in her hometown of Colorado Springs, Barbara lives with her partner, Christopher Robin, an endurance athlete, along with her dog and cats. She is an avid gard
ner, hiker, photographer and traveler who loves to take off at dawn to hike a 14er or head to a faraway land. She loves to connect with readers and is very involved with them on the Internet.

  You may read more about Barbara’s books at her main website, find her at her A Writer Afoot blog and on Facebook.

  Visit Barbara on the Web!

  www.BarbaraSamuel.com

  www.AWriterAfoot.com

  www.BarbaraONeal.com

  ~~~

  BONUS MATERIAL

  Please enjoy excerpts of some of Barbara's other Books:

  Excerpt: In The Midnight Rain

  Excerpt: Breaking the Rules

  Excerpt: Jezebel's Blues

  Excerpt: The Last Chance Ranch

  Excerpt: A Minute to Smile

  Excerpt: Light of Day

  Excerpt: Walk in Beauty

  Excerpt: Rainsinger

  Additional titles, including those from other genre, are listed at the end of the excerpts or click HERE to jump there.

  Barbara is very active writing new books and converting her backlist into eBooks. To find the most up to date information, please visit her website.

  IN THE

  MIDNIGHT

  RAIN

  (Excerpt)

  by

  Barbara Samuel

  1

  The sky was overcast and threatening rain by the time Ellie Connor made it to Gideon at seven o'clock on a Thursday evening.

  She was tired. Tired of driving. Tired of spinning the radio dial every forty miles—why did the preaching stations always seem to have the longest signal?—tired of the sight of white lines swooping under her tires.

  She'd started out this morning at seven planning to arrive in Gideon by midafternoon in her unfashionable but generally reliable Buick. She'd had a cute little Toyota for a while, but her work often took her to small towns across America, and if there were problems on the road, she had discovered it was far better to drive American. Since she'd lost a gasket in the wilds of deepest Arkansas, this was the trip that proved the rule.