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“I’m not crazy.” Raine stood beside her again, her dark eyes filled with a sadness that wasn’t there before. “I see the way he looks at you. The way he touches you as if you belong to him. The way he gets annoyed when Jake or Mac take up too much of your time. He might not even realize it yet, but he does love you, and you feel the same way.”
“I don’t…we barely know each other. Love takes time, and besides…” Maggie needed her to understand. “It doesn’t matter. Cain isn’t part of this equation. I’m leaving. It’s my only option.”
Maggie’s watched the petite brunette as she leaned against the sofa and crossed her arms across her chest.
“You can’t measure love by time, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t predict when or who or when…” Raine’s eyes widened and Maggie saw the pain reflected in their depths. “It just is.” A shimmer of tears glistened at the edges, and Raine wiped them away impatiently. “It can last a lifetime if you’re lucky. Or it can last a week. It doesn’t matter, so long as that one moment, that special moment in time that existed just for the two of you is the most amazing, crazy, awful, scary, and wonderful moment ever.”
Maggie’s eyes misted as she listened to Raine. She knew the young widow was talking about Jesse. Her loss was still so fresh, her pain palpable.
“You don’t know how lucky you are, Maggie. To have that chance. To matter to someone.”
The two of them stared at each other in silence until Michael appeared. He was dressed in his Batman pajamas, his hair slicked back and skin glowing from the shower. He stifled a yawn, and it was obvious that he’d had a full day.
“Go to bed, honey, I’ll be in shortly to kiss you good night.”
“No TV?”
Maggie shook her head and pointed to the hall. “No.”
“Okay.” He smiled at them. “Night, Raine.”
He disappeared back down the hall, and Maggie followed Raine onto the porch. The night lay heavy against everything, its dark embrace full of a cool freshness that was a relief from the heat of the last few days.
Crickets chirped, their excited chatter echoing from inside the hidden places along the ground, and in the distance voices drifted on the breeze.
“Raine, you can’t tell anyone what I just shared with you.” Maggie’s eyes pleaded. “Promise me.”
“I won’t.” Raine hugged her tightly and then whispered into her ear. “But be smart. Listen to what I said. Don’t throw away a future with Cain until you’ve talked to him. Because if you leave without sorting things out, the regret will eat you up. Maybe not right away, but trust me, you won’t escape it. You’ll never know what could have been, and you will break his heart as well as your own.”
Raine pulled away, her expression dead serious. “And coming from someone whose heart has been ripped out of her chest…I gotta say, that would be tragic.”
Chapter 31
The smell of coffee penetrated the fog inside his head and slowly brought Cain around. He groaned and rolled over, cursing as a twinge of pain ran across his shoulders. God, he’d slept like absolute shit, if he’d slept at all.
His muscles were stiff. Really stiff, though he supposed manual labor would do that to you. He flexed his arms and cursed. Guess he wasn’t in as good a shape as he’d believed, though to be honest, the mattress was a piece of crap—it was like sleeping on a slab of concrete—and this had been the first night in weeks he’d actually slept on it.
He missed Maggie’s bed and the feel of her warmth against his body. The way she burrowed into his side as if she were a part of him—that feeling was something he wanted to know every damn morning.
Arm flung above his head, he stared at the ceiling and frowned. He was still pissed off. He should have stayed. He should have refused to leave until they’d had it out, but then…if he’d pushed things, forced the issue, it might have made the situation worse.
Maggie needed some time to process. She’d come around. He hoped.
Cain groaned and rolled out of bed.
Maybe he was in too deep. His feelings had grown over the last several weeks. He knew it. She had to know, and it frustrated the hell out of him that he didn’t know where he stood with her. Quicksand was easier to navigate than the mystery of Maggie O’Rourke.
Cain rolled his neck and swore under his breath as another wave of pain crossed his shoulders. He gritted his teeth. There was no damn way he was going to accept they were done.
Cain followed the scent of coffee and moved toward the open-concept kitchen located opposite the bedrooms. It was the focal point of the cottage, with a large island and lots of greenery. The cupboards were old, probably oak, but someone had decided to paint them bright yellow, which wasn’t so bad, except they clashed horribly with the burnt-orange countertop and purple pottery that was strewn everywhere.
He glanced to the right. The wall of windows allowed the lake to come inside the space, and he spied Mac down on the dock, reading the morning paper. His eyes narrowed. Or was that Hollywood Scene in his hands?
“You look like shit, mate.”
Cain grabbed a mug from the cupboard, filled it with some hot brew, and took a sip. Dax grinned at him and raised his glass in a mock toast. He was in his boxers—Union Jack, no surprise there—and his pasty white skin glowed in the bright sunlight that streamed in from the window above the sink. His thick, dark hair was all over the place, and a day’s worth of stubble graced his chin. He didn’t have his contacts in, and with his overly large horn-rim glasses, he was about as far away from a rocker as you could get.
If their fans could see him now…but then again, Dax had a certain charm all his own that seemed to transcend whatever his particular look was. Cain had decided long ago that it was a British thing.
