LITMIR.BIZ

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give you a lot of money. I think that’s a pretty good deal for you.”

      “Pretty good deal,” she echoed darkly.

      “Maggie, I explained all this to you and I thought you had agreed. I’m going to need you to accompany me every day, starting with breakfast meetings and going into the late evenings with all the social events I’ve got to attend.”

      She frowned into the phone. “You never liked all that social stuff before.”

      “That was true ten years ago,” he said smoothly. “Now I figure it’s a small price to pay to get what I want.”

      “The price of doing business?”

      “Exactly. And it won’t hurt you to be seen with me, Maggie. It’ll be good for your business to meet the people I know, too.”

      She knew he was right about that. But still. “Okay, but I’m not going to the dance.”

      “You’re going with me, Maggie.”

      “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

      There was a moment of silence, and then Connor said, “Are you saying this is a deal breaker?”

      Her shoulders slumped as she recognized that hard-nosed tone of his. She wasn’t about to break their deal, but she still had no intention of attending the stupid dance. Especially because it wasn’t just a dance. Maggie had looked it up on the festival website. The dinner dance was actually a formal affair, a gala event, meant to celebrate the culmination of the festival year and probably as snooty as any high-society ball she had ever attended in Boston. But since she didn’t want to argue anymore, she left it alone for now. After a minute more of conversation, she disconnected the call.

      She couldn’t tell him that she didn’t mind being his date for all the events during the week. That wouldn’t be any problem at all. But the thought of having to share his hotel suite with him? It made her want to run through the house screaming. She didn’t know how she would manage it, but unless another hotel room opened up in the next few days, she would soon find out.

      But even another hotel room wouldn’t fix the somewhat smaller dilemma of her not attending the dance. Maggie groaned and pushed that little problem away. If they managed to make it through the week together, Connor would just have to understand.

      None of this would’ve been necessary if the banks hadn’t turned down her loan. But the money was critical now. Even though Grandpa insisted that he was still hale and hearty and fit as a fiddle, Maggie was so afraid that one of these days he would need more care than she could afford to give him. She had gone through most of her meager settlement money fixing the roof of the house and then she’d bought a number of replacement items for the brewery.

      She had been hoping to use the remaining funds as collateral, but now that Angus needed expensive medication and possibly even surgery someday, she’d reached the point of desperation. Her business was on the verge of expanding into a wider market, and that would bring in more money eventually, but before that happened, she needed to raise some capital to keep things going. And that was where Connor came into the picture. Negotiating and trading her beer formulas for cash was better than going to the bank. This way, she wouldn’t have to pay back a loan.

      She suddenly felt so tired and gazed at her comfortable bed longingly. How nice it would be to climb under the covers and take a long nap, but first she wanted to help Grandpa feed the goats.

      As she stripped out of her “nice” jeans and pulled on her old faded pair, she had to laugh at herself. A few years ago, she wouldn’t have dreamed of wearing jeans to a meeting in the city. Not even her “nice” jeans. But happily, jeans and work shirts had gradually replaced most of the clothing she’d worn during her marriage.

      Alan, her ex-husband, had expected her to dress up every day, usually in smart skirts and twin sweater sets with pearls. It didn’t matter what she was planning to do that day.

      “You must always be seen wearing fashionable yet sensible clothing,” her ex-mother-in-law, Sybil, was forever reminding her, usually in a scolding tone of voice.

      Three years ago, when Maggie first arrived back in Point Cairn after her divorce, she’d had no idea what an emotional mess she was. She just knew that her marriage had gone disastrously wrong and she was determined to get past the whole experience and move forward. She wanted to catch up with old friends and explore the town she’d missed so dearly. So one day, shortly after she’d returned, she drove into Point Cairn to do the grocery shopping.

      While at the store, she ran into some of her old high school friends she hadn’t seen in years. She was thrilled to reconnect, but they quickly put her in her place, telling her they wanted nothing to do with her. They were still resentful that she had turned her back on the town. More important, they were livid that she’d hurt Connor so badly all those years before. Her friends had made it clear that while Connor was still universally loved and admired by one and all, Maggie was most assuredly not. One friend put it more succinctly: Maggie could go stuff it as far as they were concerned.

      It was another blow to Maggie’s already fragile self-esteem and she had limped home to cry in private. For a full month afterward, she lived in her pajamas, wandering in a daze from her bed to the couch to watch television and then back to bed again. The thought that she might’ve hurt Connor was devastating to her, but the notion that Connor had lied to her old friends about their mutual breakup was just as bad. Why would he do that?

      She remembered tossing and turning at night, unable to sleep for all the pain she might have caused—without even meaning to do so!

      Then one day, her grandfather told her he could really use her help with the goats.

      Maggie’s spirits had lifted. Grandpa needed her! She had a reason to get dressed and she did so carefully, choosing one of her many pastel skirts and a pale pink twinset with a tasteful gold necklace and her Etienne Aigner pumps.

      When she walked into the barn, Grandpa took one look at her and asked if she thought they were going to have a tea party with the goats. He chuckled mightily at his little joke, but Maggie jolted as if she’d been rudely awakened from a bad dream. She stared down in dismay at her outfit, then ran from the barn and stumbled back to the house in tears. Poor Grandpa was bewildered by her behavior and blamed himself for upsetting her.

      But Maggie knew where to place the blame. It was her own damn fault for being so weak, so blind and so stupid. She’d been well programmed by her manipulative ex-husband and could still hear his sneering voice in her head, telling her what to do, how to behave, what to wear and what she’d done wrong. As soon as their wedding vows were exchanged, Alan’s disapproval began and never let up. It had come as such a rude shock and she realized later that she’d been in a terribly vulnerable state after leaving Connor. Otherwise, she might have recognized the signs of cruelty behind Alan’s bland exterior.

      During her marriage, she’d occasionally wondered why she ever thought Connor’s love of extreme sports was too risky for her when compared to the verbal assaults she received constantly from her husband and his mother.

      Maggie still couldn’t get the sound of their menacing intonations out of her head.

      She had thought that by moving three thousand miles away from her ex-husband and his interfering mother, she would be rid of their ruthless control over her. But the miles didn’t matter. Alan and Sybil were still free to invade Maggie’s peace of mind with their disparaging comments.

      That moment in the barn with Grandpa provided Maggie with a sharp blast of reality that quickly led to her complete meltdown. For days, she couldn’t stop crying. Grandpa finally insisted on taking her to the local health clinic to talk to a psychologist. But how could she make sense of something so nonsensical? All she knew was that everything inside her was broken.

      Gradually, though, Maggie came to realize that she was not to blame for succumbing to Alan’s masterful manipulations. Through the outpatient clinic, she met other women who’d survived similar relationships. And she discovered, quite simply, that

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