LITMIR.BIZ

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underrated,” he mumbled as he shifted his feet again. Professionally he was her agent, but personally C.J. considered himself her friend, perhaps her best friend since Jerry had died. Thinking of that, he changed his tone again. This time it was gentle. “Look, Maggie, I know you’ve been through some rough times. Maybe L.A. has too many memories for you to deal with right now. But you can’t bury yourself.”

      “I’m not burying myself.” She put her hands on his forearms, squeezing for both emphasis and support. “And I buried Jerry nearly two years ago. That was another part of my life, C.J., and has nothing to do with this. This is home. I don’t know how else to explain it.” She slid her hands down to his, forgetting hers were smeared with earth. “This is my mountain now, and I’m happier here, more settled, than I ever was in Los Angeles.”

      He knew he was beating his head against a wall, but opted to give it one more shot. “Maggie.” He slipped an arm around her shoulder, as if, she thought ruefully, she was a small child needing guidance. “Look at that place.” He let the silence hang a moment while they both studied the house on the rise above. He noticed that the porch was missing several boards and that the paint on the trim was peeling badly. Maggie saw the sun reflecting off the window glass in rainbows. “You can’t possibly be serious about living there.”

      “A little paint, a few nails.” She shrugged it away. Long ago she’d learned that surface problems were best ignored. It was the problem simmering under the surface, not quite visible, that had to be dealt with. “It has such possibilities, C.J.”

      “The biggest one is that it’ll fall down on your head.”

      “I had the roof fixed last week—a local man.”

      “Maggie, I’m not at all convinced there are any local men, or women, within ten miles. This place doesn’t look fit for anything but elves and gnomes.”

      “Well, he might’ve been a gnome.” Her sense of fun spurred her on as she stretched her back muscles. “He was about five foot five, stocky as a bull and somewhere around a hundred and two. His name was Bog.”

      “Maggie—”

      “He was very helpful,” she went on. “He and his boy are coming back to deal with the porch and some of the other major repairs.”

      “All right, so you’ve got a gnome to do some hammering and sawing. What about this?” He swept his hand around to take in the surrounding land. It was rocky, uneven and overgrown with weeds and thickets. Not even a dedicated optimist could’ve considered any part of it a lawn. A burly tree slanted dangerously toward the house itself, while thorny vines and wildflowers scrambled for space. There was a pervading smell of earth and green.

      “Like Sleeping Beauty’s castle,” Maggie murmured. “I’ll be sorry in a way to hack it down, but Mr. Bog has that under control, too.”

      “He does excavation work, too?”

      Maggie tilted her head and arched her brows. It was a look that made anyone over forty remember her mother. “He recommended a landscaper. Mr. Bog assures me that Cliff Delaney is the best man in the county. He’s coming by this afternoon to take a look at the place.”

      “If he’s a smart man, he’ll take one look at that gully you call a road leading up here and keep on going.”

      “But you brought your rented Mercedes all the way up.” Turning, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate that or the fact that you flew in from the Coast or that you care enough to be concerned. I appreciate all of it. I appreciate you.” She ruffled his hair, something no one else would’ve gotten away with. “Trust my judgment on this, C.J. I really do know what I’m doing. Professionally, my work can’t do anything but improve here.”

      “That’s yet to be seen,” he muttered, but lifted a hand to touch her cheek. She was still young enough to have foolish dreams, he thought. Still sweet enough to believe in them. “You know it’s not your work I’m worried about.”

      “I know.” Her voice softened, and with it her eyes, her mouth. She was not a woman who guided her emotions, but one who was guided by them. “I need the peace here. Do you know, this is the first time in my life I’ve gotten off the merry-go-round? I’m enjoying the solid ground, C.J.”

      He knew her well and understood that there was no moving her, for the moment, from the position she’d taken. He understood, too, that from birth her life had been ribboned with the stuff of fantasies—and of nightmares. Perhaps she did need to compensate, for a time.

      “I’ve got a plane to catch,” he grumbled. “As long as you insist on staying here, I want you to call me every day.”

      Maggie kissed him again. “Once a week,” she countered. “You’ll have the completed score for Heat Dance in ten days.” With her arm around his waist, she led him to the end of the uneven, overgrown path where his Mercedes sat in incongruous splendor. “I love the film, C.J. It’s even better than I thought it would be when I first read the script. The music’s all but writing itself.”

      He only grunted and cast one look behind him at the house. “If you get lonely—”

      “I won’t.” With a quick laugh, Maggie nudged him into the car. “It’s been enlightening discovering how self-sufficient I can be. Now, have a nice trip back and stop worrying about me.”

      Fat chance, he thought, automatically reaching in his briefcase to make certain his Dramamine was there. “Send me the score, and if it’s sensational, I might stop worrying … a little.”

      “It is sensational.” She backed off from the car to give him room to turn around. “I’m sensational!” she shouted as the Mercedes began to inch around. “Tell everyone back on the Coast that I’ve decided to buy some goats and chickens.”

      The Mercedes stopped dead. “Maggie …”

      Laughing, she waved at him and backed down the path. “Not yet … but maybe in the fall.” She decided it was best to reassure him, or else he might get out and start again. “Oh, and send me some Godiva chocolates.”

      That was more like it, C.J. thought, and put the car in gear again. She’d be back in L.A. in six weeks. He glanced in his rearview mirror as he started to drive away. He could see her, small and slender, still laughing, against the backdrop of the overgrown land, greening trees and dilapidated house. Once again he shuddered, but this time it wasn’t from an offense of his sensibilities. This time it was from something like fear. He had a sudden flash of certainty that she wasn’t safe there.

      Shaking his head, C.J. reached in his pocket for his antacids as the car bumped noisily over a rock. Everyone told him he worried too much.

      Lonely, Maggie thought as she watched the Mercedes bump and wind its way down her excuse for a lane. No, she wasn’t lonely. She was as certain as she’d ever been about anything that she’d never be lonely here. She felt an unexpected sense of foreboding that she shrugged off as ridiculous.

      Wrapping her arms around herself, she turned in two slow circles. Trees rose up out of the rocky hillside. The leaves were hardly more than buds now, but in a few weeks they would grow and spread, turning the woods into a lush cover of green. She liked to imagine it that way and to try to picture it in the dead of winter—white, all white and black with ice clinging to the branches and shimmering on the rocks. In the fall there’d be a tapestry outside every window. She was far from lonely.

      For the first time in her life, she had a chance to put her own stamp on a place. It wouldn’t be a copy of anything she’d had before or anything that’d been given to her. It was hers, absolutely, and so were any mistakes she made here, any triumphs. There’d be no press to compare this isolated spot in western Maryland with her mother’s mansion in Beverly Hills or her father’s villa in the south of France. If she was lucky, very, very lucky, Maggie thought with a satisfied sigh, there’d be no press at all. She could make her music and live her life in peace and solitude.

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