But where would he be? Suddenly, she felt as distant from him as she had the first day they had come here. On the periphery of his life, a job, and nothing more. And the thought of that truly terrified her.
9
Joe could feel Maggie’s fear. Not her guilt, just her fear. It was amazing how easily he could read her. The way her green eyes would darken to the color of shadowed moss, the frown that puckered her brow. The way she caught the corner of her lower lip between her teeth and worried it absently. That was worry, concern, not guilt.
He remembered guilt. During the months they had spent together, Joe realized he had learned quite a bit about Maggie. Things he hadn’t known he had learned until this past week.
Guilt was a careful absence of expression. She had used it several times during their earlier relationship when she tried to deny that she was pushing for more—more commitment, more emotion from him. It was the way she would look down as she played with the hem of a shirt or she picked at her nails. It was the shadowed tone of her voice that deepened her accent. That was guilt.
What he saw now was fear, and it wasn’t fear for herself. It was the same fear she showed just before he took her virginity, staring up at him, her eyes dark, her teeth worrying that lower lip, that little frown between her brows. The fear of a broken heart, of putting herself in a place where she truly wasn’t wanted.
Maggie was easy to read, unlike Grant. Grant had been trained to lie—being with the DEA demanded a certain talent in subterfuge—and Grant had always done amazingly well at it. So well, in fact, that when it blended into the friendship Joe thought they had, he had never suspected.
Or maybe he had.
He remembered the uneasy feeling he had just before meeting Grant’s “fiancée.” The feeling that the other man was playing a carefully calculated game. Joe had pushed it behind him, especially after meeting Maggie. Little things, Joe admitted, that he should have taken into consideration long ago. Grant had shown brief spurts of mocking jealousy. It had made Joe uncomfortable at the time, though he had fought to ignore it. He should have never ignored it.
As he watched Maggie turn back to the coffee, he saw the sorrow in her eyes and knew he should do something, anything, to alleviate it.
She had no idea, even now, how much he did love her. Hell, he hadn’t known himself until early this morning, until the need to tie her to him for all time had overtaken him.
Primal. He had been like an animal taking his mate, and damn if he didn’t want to do it again.
He watched her, the defensive hunching of her shoulders as though expecting a blow, the careful movements as she poured her coffee. She kept her face lowered, but he swore he could feel the fear and pain radiating from her. As fiery as she could be, he knew Maggie had a core of sensitivity that was often her downfall. A sensitivity that would be breaking her heart right now. He bet dollars to donuts that her thoughts weren’t on herself, but rather on him, and how it would look to him that she had thought of a possible place Grant could have hidden the information.
Trusting might be the biggest mistake he had made in his life, as Craig obviously believed. Joe had fought trusting her, just as he had fought loving her once before. A battle he had lost, and he hadn’t even had the sense to realize it.
She lifted the coffee cup and sipped before sitting it back on the counter. She knew he was behind her, and in most people that avoidance would apply to guilt. Thankfully, Maggie wasn’t most people.
“Craig wasn’t pleased by what he saw when I came in the room,” she whispered.
Joe heard the uncertainty in her voice, the fear that Craig’s misgivings could drive a wedge between them. His track record with her wasn’t the best, and he admitted that getting past her fears wasn’t going to be easy.
“Craig is still dealing with what happened with Grant.” Hell, so was he. Out of a four-man team, only he and Craig were left. They were both still aching with the grief over Lyons’s loss, as well as Grant’s betrayal.
“Aren’t we all?” Her painful comment had him grimacing in regret.
“It’s a lesson learned,” he sighed. “I trusted Grant to the point that I never ran the required security checks on him, and I pushed back doubt when I should have followed through with it. It’s a mistake I won’t make again.”
She still didn’t face him. God, he hoped she wasn’t crying. He didn’t think he could handle Maggie’s tears; they would break his heart.
“I should have protected you better,” he finally said, his voice rough with his guilt. “I was so damned jealous of what I thought he had with you that I couldn’t bear coming around. If I had, I would have known something was wrong.”
“So you’re just going to take the blame for my marriage as well?” Her vibrant red hair rippled over her shoulders as she shook her head. “You’re a glutton for punishment, Joe. And you’re wrong. I would have never let you see the nightmare that marriage had turned into. I couldn’t have borne it.”
She sat her cup down then turned to him slowly, crossing her arms over her breasts as she stared back at him, sorrow shimmering in her eyes.
A weary smile edged his lips. “I would have known, Maggie.” He would have seen it in her eyes. She wasn’t a liar. Her emotions were always so clear in her eyes, so easy to read, that he had always been able to stay one step ahead of her in their previous relationship. “I would have known and I would have gone crazy with it.”
“Because you loved me?” The doubt in her voice was clear.
“Because I loved you, because I’ve always loved you,” he amended. “Because no matter how hard I’ve tried, you were a part of me. I knew, without seeing you, that something was wrong. For two years I avoided that house and I avoided you, and that’s not like me. And I couldn’t understand why I avoided it. I think a part of me always knew.”
Admitting that was like cutting out his own heart. He had let her down in a way so fundamental that it ached through ever portion of his being. It was bad enough that he had let her go, but he hadn’t made certain she was safe.
“Grant was very good at his lies,” she whispered, rubbing her hands over her arms as though to ward off a chill. “He fooled us both.”
Yes, he had, and Joe would never forget that lesson. It didn’t mean he was going to let Maggie pay any more than she already had.