The Newcomer. Margot Dalton

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СКАЧАТЬ don’t even get a deduction for Rose,” he admitted. “She just works here to help out.”

      “Why?”

      “Because she’s on a visitor’s visa—not a work permit.”

      “You mean she and the children are in the country illegally?” Maggie asked.

      “Not exactly. But her visa is on the point of expiry, and she hasn’t been able to get it renewed.” He sighed. “It’s easier to find the Hope Diamond than get a green card.”

      “Why are you telling me this?” Maggie asked curiously. “You don’t even know who I am, Doug. What if Terry and I were immigration agents, coming here to investigate your sister?”

      He met her eyes steadily, with a gaze so probing that she was forced to look down at the table.

      “That’s not who you are, Maggie,” he said gently. “I’m still not sure what you’re doing here, but I do know you’re not at all interested in my sister and her citizenship.”

      Maggie traced the damp circle left by her glass on the shining wooden surface of the table. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m no threat to Rose.”

      “So do you think I’m daft, Maggie?” he asked casually. “Opening my books to you?”

      Maggie shook her head. “I never saw your numbers, not even one entry. I just offered a bit of computer software, that’s all. But I’d say your business seems pretty well managed.”

      He chuckled, a pleasant sound in the cozy firelit pub. “Oh, I’m a good manager, all right. I’m just not much of a computer technician.”

      She smiled at him. Their eyes met and held for a long moment, and again she was the first to turn away. “So Rose doesn’t want to go back to Scotland?”

      “Not at all. Her ex-husband is a harsh, cruel bastard. He’s been abusive to Rose and a terrible influence on the girls. For the sake of the kids, she’d much prefer to keep an ocean between them.”

      Maggie thought about the gentle blond woman and her two little girls. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. “Do you have any family there who could help her if she’s forced to go back?”

      “Our father died when we were small and our mother remarried not long after. She’s dead now, too. There’s nobody left but a stepfather. And he’s not a man who’d help either of us, not unless there might be some profit in it for him.”

      “How sad.” Maggie thought about the meaning of his words, and what his childhood must have been like. “So did you come to Texas to escape all that?”

      “Not at the time. I was still working in the family business then. It was soon after my mother died, and I came here in the line of duty. But once I was here, I couldn’t seem to leave.”

      “It’s a long way from Scotland.”

      Doug laughed. “Moira and I were just talking about the same thing. In many ways the landscape in the Hill Country is similar to the place I grew up, you know. But there’s more sunshine here.”

      “It sounds like you really love Texas.”

      He considered her words for a moment, sipping his drink. “Not so much as I love the town,” he said at last. “This is the first place I’ve ever felt truly at peace with the world. Crystal Creek and my hotel…” He waved his hand at the comfortable room, the flickering glow on the hearth. “It’s home to me, Maggie.”

      She felt a sudden tug of uneasiness, and a deep, painful feeling of guilt over what she was doing in Crystal Creek.

      “What is it?” he asked, watching her intently.

      She sipped her drink, avoiding his glance. “I don’t know what you mean.”

      “You have a very expressive face. And just now, you look troubled.”

      “Troubled?”

      He reached out to touch her forehead with a gentle hand. “Whenever you frown, you get this lovely wee line between your eyebrows.”

      She ducked away from his hand and shifted awkwardly on the padded bench.

      “Look, Doug,” she said with forced casualness, “don’t keep watching me so closely, all right? I’m not used to it.”

      His eyebrows arched in disbelief. “You’re not used to a man watching you? That’s hard to believe, for a woman like you.”

      She stared at him, genuinely surprised. “You’re kidding.”

      “About what?”

      “I’m quite an ordinary person, Doug. And when you get to know me, I’m not even all that nice,” she added with another pang of remorse.

      “I’ll be the judge of that,” he said with a gaze so warm that she felt the color rise in her cheeks again.

      “Now it’s your turn,” he told her after an awkward silence.

      “Me?”

      “What’s the story of your childhood? Did you grow up in California?”

      She shook her head. “Terry and I were raised on a farm in Ohio. We didn’t move to California until we were adults.”

      “I see. And what took you from Ohio to the Golden Coast?”

      She thought about the question. “Well, mainly the fact that we had a patron who sponsored our college education out there. Like you, we’d lost both our parents by the time we reached our late teens.”

      “I’m sorry,” he said with genuine sympathy. “That’s a hard road, I know.”

      “But our situation was the opposite of yours,” Maggie said. “Our mother died of ovarian cancer when I was seven and Terry was five. Our father did such a wonderful job of raising us on his own,” she added with a fond, faraway smile. “He worked all day on the farm, and then at night he was a mother to us as well, doing laundry and packing school lunches.”

      “I never knew what it was to have a loving father,” Doug said. “I can’t even remember mine.”

      “Daddy was our hero. And then when we were in our mid-teens and his life was starting to get a little easier, he was killed in a tractor accident on the farm.” Her eyes stung with unshed tears. “It was just a careless mistake,” she said, swallowing hard. “He took a shortcut up an incline behind the barn, and the tractor flipped over on him. He was pinned there all alone for most of the day. By the time we got home from school and found him, it was too late.”

      “I’m so sorry, Maggie.”

      Doug covered her hand with his own and waited for her to compose herself.

      “Do you look like him?” he asked, clearly trying to set her at ease again. “You and your brother are not at all alike.”

      Maggie hesitated, СКАЧАТЬ