Night Moves: the classic story from the queen of romance that you won’t be able to put down

“The weeds have taken over,” Louella said with her back to the room.

Maggie’s brows lifted and fell as she wondered what to do next. “Yes, well, Cliff Delaney was out this afternoon to take a look around.”

“Cliff.” Louella’s attention seemed to focus again as she turned back. The light coming through the uncurtained windows made her seem more pale, more insubstantial. “An interesting young man, rather rough-and-ready, but very clever. He’ll do well for you here, for the land. He’s a cousin of the Morgans, you know.” She paused and seemed to laugh, but very softly. “Then, you’ll find many Morgans and their kin scattered throughout the county.”

A cousin, Maggie mused. Perhaps he’d been unfriendly because he didn’t think the property should’ve been sold to an outsider. Resolutely, she tried to push Cliff Delaney aside. He didn’t have to approve. The land was hers.

“The front lawn was lovely once,” Louella murmured.

Maggie felt a stirring of pity. “It will be again. The front’s going to be cleared and planted. The back, too.” Wanting to reassure her, Maggie stepped closer. Both women stood by the window now. “I’m going to have a rock garden, and there’ll be a pond where the gully is on the side.”

“A pond?” Louella turned and fixed her with another long stare. “You’re going to clear out the gully?”

“Yes.” Uncomfortable again, Maggie shifted. “It’s the perfect place.”

Louella ran a hand over the front of her purse as if she were wiping something away. “I used to have a rock garden. Sweet william and azure Adams. There was wisteria beneath my bedroom window, and roses, red roses, climbing on a trellis.”

“I’d like to have seen it,” Maggie said gently. “It must’ve been beautiful.”

“I have pictures.”

“Do you?” Struck with an idea, Maggie forgot her discomfort. “Perhaps I could see them. They’d help me decide just what to plant.”

“I’ll see that you get them. You’re very kind to let me come in this way.” Louella took one last scan of the room. “The house holds memories.” When she walked out into the hall, Maggie went with her to tug open the front door again. “Goodbye, Miss Fitzgerald.”

“Goodbye, Mrs. Morgan.” Her pity stirred again, and Maggie reached out to touch the woman’s shoulder. “Please, come again.”

Louella looked back, her smile very slight, her eyes very tired. “Thank you.”

While Maggie watched, she walked to an old, well-preserved Lincoln, then drove slowly down the hill. Vaguely disturbed, Maggie went back into the music room. She hadn’t met many residents of Morganville yet, she mused, but they were certainly an interesting bunch.

The noise brought Maggie out of a sound sleep into a drowsy, cranky state. For a moment, as she tried to bury her head under the pillow, she thought she was in New York. The groan and roar sounded like a big, nasty garbage truck. But she wasn’t in New York, she thought as she surfaced, rubbing her hands over her eyes. She was in Morganville, and there weren’t any garbage trucks. Here you piled your trash into the back of your car or pickup and hauled it to the county dump. Maggie had considered this the height of self-sufficiency.

Still, something was out there.

She lay on her back for a full minute, staring up at the ceiling. The sunlight slanted, low and thin, across her newly purchased quilt. She’d never been a morning person, nor did she intend to have country life change that intimate part of her nature. Warily, she turned her head to look at the clock: 7:05. Good heavens.

It was a struggle, but she pushed herself into a sitting position and stared blankly around the room. Here, too, boxes were piled, unopened. There was a precariously stacked pile of books and magazines on decorating and landscaping beside the bed. On the wall were three fresh strips of wallpaper, an ivory background with tiny violets, that she’d hung herself. More rolls and paste were pushed into a corner. The noise outside was a constant, irritating roar.

Resigned, Maggie got out of bed. She stumbled over a pair of shoes, swore, then went to the window. She’d chosen that room as her own because she could see out over the rolling pitch of what would be her front yard, over the tops of the trees on her own property to the valley beyond.

There was a farmhouse in the distance with a red roof and a smoking chimney. Beside it was a long, wide field that had just been plowed and planted. If she looked farther still, she could see the peaks of mountains faintly blue and indistinct in the morning mist. The window on the connecting wall would give her a view of the intended pond and the line of pines that would eventually be planted.

Maggie pushed the window up the rest of the way, struggling as it stuck a bit. The early-spring air had a pleasant chill. She could still hear the constant low sound of a running engine. Curious, she pressed her face against the screen, only to have it topple out of the window frame and fall to the porch below. One more thing for Mr. Bog to see to, Maggie thought with a sigh as she leaned through the opening. Just then the yellow bulk of a bulldozer rounded the bend in her lane and broke into view.

So, she thought, watching it inch its way along, leveling and pushing at rock and dirt, Cliff Delaney was a man of his word. She’d received the promised estimate and contract two days after his visit. When she’d called his office, Maggie had spoken to an efficient-sounding woman who’d told her the work would begin the first of the week.

And it’s Monday, she reflected, leaning her elbows on the sill. Very prompt. Narrowing her eyes, she looked more closely at the man on top of the bulldozer. His build was too slight, she decided, his hair not quite dark enough. She didn’t have to see his face to know it wasn’t Cliff. Shrugging, she turned away from the window. Why should she have thought Cliff Delaney would work his own machines? And why should she have wanted it to be him? Hadn’t she already decided she wouldn’t see him again? She’d hired his company to do a job; the job would be done, and she’d write out a check. That was all there was to it.

Maggie attributed her crankiness to the early awakening as she snatched up her robe and headed for the shower.

Two hours later, fortified with the coffee she’d made for herself and the bulldozer operator, Maggie was on her knees on the kitchen floor. Since she was up at a barbaric hour, she thought it best to do something physical. On the counter above her sat her cassette tape player. The sound of her score, nearly completed, all but drowned out the whine of machinery. She let herself flow with it while words to the title song she’d yet to compose flitted in and out of her mind.

While she let her thoughts flow with the music she’d created, Maggie chipped away at the worn tile on the kitchen floor. True, her bedroom had only one wall partially papered, and only the ceiling in the upstairs bath was painted, and there were two more steps to be stripped and lacquered before the main stairway was finished, but she worked in her own way, at her own speed. She found herself jumping from project to project, leaving one partially done and leaping headlong into the next. This way, she reasoned, she could watch the house come together piece by piece rather than have one completed, out-of-place room.

Besides, she’d gotten a peek at the flooring beneath the tile when she’d inadvertently knocked an edge off a corner. Curiosity had done the rest.

When Cliff walked to the back door, he was already annoyed. It was ridiculous for him to be wasting time here, with all the other jobs his firm had in progress. Yet he was here. He’d knocked at the front door for almost five minutes. He knew Maggie was inside, her car was in the driveway, and the bulldozer operator had told him she’d brought out coffee an hour or so before. Didn’t it occur to her that someone usually knocked when they wanted something?

The music coming through the open windows caught his attention, and his imagination. He’d never heard the melody before. It was compelling, sexy, moody. A lone piano, no backdrop of strings or brass, but it had the power of making the listener want to stop and hear every note. For a moment he did stop, both disturbed and moved.

Shifting the screen he’d found into his other hand, Cliff started to knock. Then he saw her.

She was on her hands and knees, prying up pieces of linoleum with what looked like a putty knife. Her hair was loose, falling over one shoulder so that her face was hidden behind it. The deep, rich sable brown picked up hints of gold from the sunlight that streamed through the open door and window.

Gray corduroys fit snugly over her hips, tapering down to bare ankles and feet. A vivid red suede shirt was tucked into the waist. He recognized the shirt as one sold in exclusive shops for very exclusive prices. Her wrists and hands looked impossibly delicate against it. Cliff was scowling at them when Maggie got too enthusiastic with the putty knife and scraped her knuckle against a corner of the tile.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, swinging the door open and striding in before Maggie had a chance to react. She’d barely put the knuckle to her mouth in an instinctive move when he was crouched beside her and grabbing her hand.

“It’s nothing,” she said automatically. “Just a scratch.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t slice it, the way you’re hacking at that tile.” Though his voice was rough and impatient, his hand was gentle. She left hers in it.

Yes, his hand was gentle, though rough-edged, like his voice, but this time she could see his eyes. They were gray; smoky, secret. Evening mists came to her mind. Mists that were sometimes dangerous but always compelling. That was the sort of mist she’d always believed had cloaked Brigadoon for a hundred years at a time. Maggie decided she could like him, in a cautious sort of way.

“Who’d be stupid enough to put linoleum over this?” With the fingers of her free hand, she skimmed over the hardwood she’d exposed. “Lovely, isn’t it? Or it will be when it’s sanded and sealed.”

“Get Bog to deal with it,” Cliff ordered. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

So everyone said. Maggie withdrew a bit, annoyed by the phrase. “Why should he have all the fun? Besides, I’m being careful.”

“I can see that.” He turned her hand over so that she saw the scrape over her thumb. It infuriated him to see the delicacy marred. “Doesn’t someone in your profession have to be careful with their hands?”

“They’re insured,” she tossed back. “I think I can probably hit a few chords, even with a wound as serious as this.” She pulled her hand out of his. “Did you come here to criticize me, Mr. Delaney, or did you have something else in mind?”

“I came to check on the job.” Which wasn’t necessary, he admitted. In any case, why should it matter to him if she was careless enough to hurt her hand? She was just a woman who had touched down in his territory and would be gone again before the leaves were full-blown with summer. He was going to have to remember that, and the fact that she didn’t interest him personally. Shifting, he picked up the screen he’d dropped when he’d taken her hand. “I found this outside.”

It wasn’t often her voice took on that regal tone. He seemed to nudge it out of her. “Thank you.” She took the screen and leaned it against the stove.

“Your road’ll be blocked most of the day. I hope you weren’t planning on going anywhere.”

Maggie gave him a level look that held a hint of challenge. “I’m not going anywhere, Mr. Delaney.”

He inclined his head. “Fine.” The music on the tape player changed tempo. It was more hard-driving, more primitive. It seemed something to be played on hot, moonless nights. It drew him, pulled at him. “What is that?” Cliff demanded. “I’ve never heard it before.”

Maggie glanced up at the recorder. “It’s a movie score I’m composing. That’s the melody for the title song.” Because it had given her a great deal of trouble, she frowned at the revolving tape. “Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

It was the most simple and most direct answer he’d given her thus far. It wasn’t enough for Maggie.

“Why?”

He paused a moment, still listening, hardly aware that they were both still on the floor, close enough to touch. “It goes straight to the blood, straight to the imagination. Isn’t that what a song’s supposed to do?”

He could have said nothing more perfect. Her smile flashed, a quick, stunning smile that left him staring at her as though he’d been struck by lightning. “Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what it’s supposed to do.” In her enthusiasm she shifted. Their knees brushed. “I’m trying for something very basic with this. It has to set the mood for a film about a passionate relationship—an intensely passionate relationship between two people who seem to have nothing in common but an uncontrollable desire for each other. One of them will kill because of it.”

She trailed off, lost in the music and the mood. She could see it in vivid colors—scarlets, purples. She could feel it, like the close, sultry air on a hot summer night. Then she frowned, and as if on cue, the music stopped. From the tape came a sharp, pungent curse, then silence.

“I lost something in those last two bars,” she muttered. “It was like—” she gestured with both hands, bringing them up, turning them over, then dropping them again “—something came un-meshed. It has to build to desperation, but it has to be more subtle than that. Passion at the very edge of control.”

“Do you always write like that?” Cliff was studying her when she focused on him again, studying her as he had her land—thoroughly, with an eye both for detail and an overview.

She sat back on her haunches, comfortable now with a conversation on her own turf. He could hardly frustrate her in a discussion of music. She’d lived with it, in it, all her life. “Like what?” she countered.

“With the emphasis on mood and emotions rather than notes and timing.”

Her brows lifted. With one hand, she pushed back the hair that swept across her cheek. She wore an amethyst on her finger, wine-colored, square. It caught the light, holding it until she dropped her hand again. As she thought it over, it occurred to her that no one, not even her closest associates, had ever defined her style so cleanly. It pleased her, though she didn’t know why, that he had done so. “Yes,” she said simply.

He didn’t like what those big, soft eyes could do to him. Cliff rose. “That’s why your music is good.”

Maggie gave a quick laugh, not at the compliment, but at the grudging tone with which he delivered it. “So, you can say something nice, after all.”

“When it’s appropriate.” He watched her stand, noting that she moved with the sort of fluidity he’d always associated with tall, willowy women. “I admire your music.”

Again, it was the tone, rather than the words, that spoke to her. This time it touched off annoyance, rather than humor. “And little else that has to do with me.”

“I don’t know you,” Cliff countered.

“You didn’t like me when you drove up that hill the other day.” With her temper rising, Maggie put her hands on her hips and faced him squarely. “I get the impression you didn’t like me years before we met.”

That was direct, Cliff decided. Maggie Fitzgerald, glamour girl from the Coast, didn’t believe in evasions. Neither did he. “I have a problem with people who live their lives on silver platters. I’ve too much respect for reality.”

“Silver platters,” Maggie repeated in a voice that was much, much too quiet. “In other words, I was born into affluence, therefore, I can’t understand the real world.”

He didn’t know why he wanted to smile. Perhaps it was the way color flooded her face. Perhaps it was because she stood nearly a foot beneath him but gave every appearance of being ready to Indian-wrestle and win. Yet he didn’t smile. Cliff had the impression that if you gave an inch to this lady, you’d soon be begging to give a mile. “That about sums it up. The gravel for the lane’ll be delivered and spread by five.”

“Sums it up?” Accustomed to ending a conversation when she chose, Maggie grabbed his arm as he started to turn for the door. “You’re a narrow-minded snob, and you know nothing about my life.”

Cliff looked down at the delicate hand against his tanned muscled arm. The amethyst glowed up at him. “Miss Fitzgerald, everyone in the country knows about your life.”

“That is one of the most unintelligent statements I’ve ever heard.” She made one final attempt to control her temper, then forgot it. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Delaney—” The phone interrupted what would have been a stream of impassioned abuse. Maggie ended up swearing. “You stay there,” she ordered as she turned to the wall phone.

Cliff’s brows lifted at the command. Slowly, he leaned against the kitchen counter. He’d stay, he decided. Not because she’d told him to, but because he’d discovered he wanted to hear what she had to say.

Maggie yanked the receiver from the wall and barked into it. “Hello.”

“Well, it’s nice to hear that country life’s agreeing with you.”

“C.J.” She struggled to hold down her temper. She wanted neither questions nor I-told-you-sos. “Sorry, you caught me in the middle of a philosophical discussion.” Though she heard Cliff’s quick snort of laughter, she ignored it. “Something up, C.J.?”

“Well, I hadn’t heard from you in a couple of days—”

“I told you I’d call once a week. Will you stop worrying?”

“You know I can’t.”

She had to laugh. “No, I know you can’t. If it relieves your mind, I’m having the lane fixed even as we speak. The next time you visit, you won’t have to worry about your muffler falling off.”

“It doesn’t relieve my mind,” C.J. grumbled. “I have nightmares about that roof caving in on your head. The damn place is falling apart.”

“The place is not falling apart.” She turned, inadvertently kicking the screen and sending it clattering across the floor. At that moment, her eyes met Cliff’s. He was still leaning against the counter, still close enough to the back door to be gone in two strides. But now he was grinning. Maggie looked at the screen, then back at Cliff, and covered her mouth to smother a giggle.

“What was that noise?” C.J. demanded.

“Noise?” Maggie swallowed. “I didn’t hear any noise.” She covered the mouth of the receiver with her hand when Cliff laughed again. “Shh,” she whispered, smiling. “C.J.,” she said back into the phone, knowing she needed to distract him, “the score’s nearly finished.”

“When?” The response was immediate and predictable. She sent Cliff a knowing nod.

“For the most part, it’s polished. I’m a little hung up on the title song. If you let me get back to work, the tape’ll be in your office next week.”

“Why don’t you deliver it yourself? We’ll have lunch.”

“Forget it.”

He sighed. “Just thought I’d try. To show you my heart’s in the right place, I sent you a present.”

“A present? The Godiva?”

“You’ll have to wait and see,” he said evasively. “It’ll be there by tomorrow morning. I expect you to be so touched you’ll catch the next plane to L.A. to thank me in person.”

“C.J.—”

“Get back to work. And call me,” he added, clever enough to know when to retreat and when to advance. “I keep having visions of you falling off that mountain.”

He hung up, leaving her, as he often did, torn between amusement and annoyance. “My agent,” Maggie said as she replaced the receiver. “He likes to worry.”

“I see.”

Cliff remained where he was; so did she. That one silly shared moment seemed to have broken down a barrier between them. Now, in its place, was an awkwardness neither of them fully understood. He was suddenly aware of the allure of her scent, of the slender line of her throat. She was suddenly disturbed by his basic masculinity, by the memory of the firm, rough feel of his palm. Maggie cleared her throat.

“Mr. Delaney—”

“Cliff,” he corrected.

She smiled, telling herself to relax. “Cliff. We seem to’ve gotten off on the wrong foot for some reason. Maybe if we concentrate on something that interests us both—my land—we won’t keep rubbing each other the wrong way.”

He found it an interesting phrase, particularly since he was imagining what it would feel like to run his hands over her skin. “All right,” he agreed as he straightened from the counter. He crossed to her, wondering who he was testing, himself or her. When he stopped, she was trapped between him and the stove.

He didn’t touch her, but both of them could sense what it would be like. Hard hands, soft skin. Warmth turning quickly to heat. Mouth meeting mouth with confidence, with knowledge, with passion.

“I consider your land a challenge.” He said it quietly, his eyes on hers. She didn’t think of mists now but of smoke—of smoke and fire. “Which is why I’ve decided to give this project quite a bit of my personal attention.”

Her nerves were suddenly strung tight. Maggie didn’t back away, because she was almost certain that was what he wanted. Instead, she met his gaze. If her eyes weren’t calm, if they’d darkened with the first traces of desire, she couldn’t prevent it. “I can’t argue with that.”

“No.” He smiled a little. If he stayed, even moments longer, he knew he’d find out how her lips tasted. That might be the biggest mistake he’d ever make. Turning, he went to the back door. “Call Bog.” He tossed this over his shoulder as he pushed the screen door open. “Your fingers belong on piano keys, not on putty knives.”

Maggie let out a long, tense breath when the screen door slammed. Did he do that on purpose, she wondered as she pressed a hand to her speeding heart. Or was it a natural talent of his to turn women into limp rags? Shaking her head, she told herself to forget it. If there was one thing she had experience in, it was in avoiding and evading the professional lothario. She was definitely uninterested in going a few rounds with Morganville’s leading contender.

With a scowl, she dropped back to her knees and picked up the putty knife. She began to hack at the tile with a vengeance. Maggie Fitzgerald could take care of herself.

Chapter 3

For the third morning in a row, Maggie was awakened by the sound of men and machinery outside her windows. It occurred to her that she’d hardly had the chance to become used to the quiet when the chaos had started.

The bulldozer had been replaced by chain saws, industrial weed eaters and trucks. While she was far from getting used to the early risings, she was resigned. By seven-fifteen she had dragged herself out of the shower and was staring at her face in the bathroom mirror.

Not so good, she decided, studying her own sleepy eyes. But then she’d been up until two working on the score. Displeased, she ran a hand over her face. She’d never considered pampering her skin a luxury or a waste of time. It was simply something she did routinely, the same way she’d swim twenty laps every morning in California.

She’d been neglecting the basics lately, Maggie decided, squinting at her reflection. Had it been over two months since she’d been in a salon? Ruefully, she tugged at the bangs that swept over her forehead. It was showing, and it was time to do something about it.

After wrapping her still-damp hair in a towel, she pulled open the mirrored medicine-cabinet door. The nearest Elizabeth Arden’s was seventy miles away. There were times, Maggie told herself as she smeared on a clay mask, that you had to fend for yourself.

She was just rinsing her hands when the sound of quick, high-pitched barking reached her. C.J.’s present, Maggie thought wryly, wanted his breakfast. In her short terry-cloth robe, which was raveled at the hem, her hair wrapped in a checked towel and the clay mask hardening on her face, she started downstairs to tend to the demanding gift her agent had flown out to her. She had just reached the bottom landing when a knock on the door sent the homely bulldog puppy into a frenzy.