“That mustn’t have been pleasant.”
“It was all right. Sybil is a very loving woman—it’s just that children bored her once they got past the stage where they posed successfully. I think she th
ought of us as fashion accessories—pretty little girls to smile up at her adoringly, with or without cameras around. She didn’t care much for grubby hands and blue jeans and sticky kisses.”
“So who got the grubby hands and sticky kisses?”
“Granny Bennett, for as long as she lived. And Queenie, Sybil’s housekeeper. And then me.”
“You?”
“I brought up the other three. Kate and Holly and Jilly. I was a very maternal older sister, a little domineering, I suppose. By the time I was twelve, even my mother was coming to me with her problems.” Maggie laughed, a wry, accepting sound in the warm night air. After a moment Maggie looked distracted and sad. “My ex-husband told me I was too much for any man to live up to. Peter Wallace said pretty much the same thing.”
“Do you think that’s true?” He was toying with his brandy glass, and his hazel eyes were warm and tender in the reflected lights from the street.
Maggie shrugged. “Close enough. I scare the hell out of men, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I scare even you.”
“Who says?”
“You did. Last night, on the beach.”
Mack considered it for a moment, then nodded. “Yes, I suppose you do scare me. But I’m willing to bet it’s not in the same way you scared the others.”
“How do I scare you?”
He grinned. “As you said last night, that’s for me to know and you to find out. Would you like more coffee or would you like to go for a walk along the water?”
“Neither,” she said with a yawn. “It’s after eleven already, and we need to get to Tegucigalpa as early as we can tomorrow. I want to go back to the hotel, take another shower, and go to bed.”
“Another shower? You just took one.”
“Yes, but you brought me lavender soap, shampoo, and conditioner. I’ve never appreciated the pleasures of civilization so much in my entire life, and I intend to take full advantage of them. Once we get to Tegucigalpa, God knows what will happen.”
“Does this mean I get spared the Holiday Inn?”
“Nope. But it means we may not be in the Holiday Inn any longer than we were in the Travers Hotel. I want to take my creature comforts while I can.”
“Sounds reasonable. Let’s go.” He rose, tossing a handful of paper money down on the table, and Maggie looked up at him for a long, pensive moment before following.
It wasn’t until she’d stepped under the shower a few minutes later that Maggie realized what was bothering her. Mack had been warm, charming, and infuriatingly distant. Clearly he didn’t feel the same strong sensual pull that she’d been fighting all night. It was probably the fault of the unaccustomed good food and alcohol, she told herself, rubbing the sweet-smelling shampoo through her tangled hair. She’d sat there, staring at his strong, lean body lounging comfortably in the chair across from her, trying to fight the insidious attraction that was threatening to overwhelm her. She was becoming weak in her old age, her strength and resolution wavering in the face of almost continual disasters. With Peter’s death her life had undergone a change that she could no longer deny. Life and death were indelibly imprinted on her brain. Tomorrow Mack could be dead. Tomorrow she could be dead. It was useless to miss chances that might never come again.
Life needed to be lived to the fullest, Maggie told herself when she stepped from the shower, wrapping the threadbare towel around her tall body. And the next time Mack made one of his halfhearted passes at her, she was going to take him up on it. Because even if he was only marginally attracted to her, he was becoming an obsession with her.
She wasn’t one for spending a great deal of time looking in mirrors, but tonight was different. She saw that she was attractive, with her wide-spaced aquamarine eyes, her Danish corn-silk hair, which was now hanging wet and shiny down her back, her good nose, high Nordic cheekbones, and generous mouth. And her body was strong and sleek and healthy, a good body for loving. But maybe Mack liked petite brunettes full of soft curves. After all, he’d said he’d always had the hots for Sybil Bennett. Maybe he’d settle for bedding someone with the same eyes.
“You’re an idiot, Maggie,” she said out loud, grimacing at her mirror. “You only get into trouble when you go after someone. Look at Deke. Look at Randall. Look at your marriage. Forget about sex and concentrate on a good night’s sleep. Pulaski looks good to you only because there’s no one else around.”
Which was a fat lie and she knew it, but she stuck to it anyway, turning her back on the mirror and rubbing her body briskly with the towel before pulling her wet jumpsuit back on for the dash down the hallway. She’d washed all her clothes in the sink, with the hopeful thought that they’d dry by morning. Even in the heat of the Honduran summer the wet cotton chilled her flesh, and she shivered as she ran barefoot down the hall to her room.
There was a light burning by the narrow bed as she closed and locked the door behind her. A light that illuminated Mack lying on her bed wearing his jeans and nothing else. Waiting for her.
She held herself very still, pressing her shoulder blades against the thin wooden door behind her. “What’re you doing there?” Her voice came out admirably controlled. “That’s my bed.”
Mack smiled up at her—a sweet, understanding smile. “I’m sleeping here.”
“And where am I supposed to sleep?” Stupid question, she thought.
But Mack was still curiously gentle, almost reassuring. “Here,” he said.