At the Edge of the Sun (Maggie Bennett 3)

Pulling the covers around her chilled shoulders, she looked at him, and didn’t like what she saw. He was fully dressed except for his jacket and tie. It was the old Randall. Distant, elusive, a faint shadow of mockery in his chilly eyes and thin, unsmiling mouth. The tumultuous passion of Christmas Eve might never have happened.

“Ian’s back,” he said without preamble, his voice steady.

“Nice for Holly,” Maggie observed, struggling to fight off the sense of confusion that was threatening to smother her.

“Yes,” said Randall.

The silence lengthened and grew. He couldn’t look at her, wouldn’t meet her gaze. He kept those shadowed eyes of his on the snowy canal scene outside the window, and Maggie bit back her frustration.

“Does he know anything?” she asked finally.

“Who?”

“Ian. You said he was back.”

“I didn’t see him. Signor Tonetti told me he spent the night in Holly’s room.”

“Oh.”

Randall turned from the canal and focused on a spot just above her left shoulder. “Do you want some coffee?” he inquired politely. “There’s some already made.”

Maggie sat there and counted to ten and then suddenly it began to make sense. What had he said last night? That he was tired of her hating him in the morning. Tired or not, that was what he was expecting, what he had steeled himself for.

Slowly Maggie rose from the bed. It was too cold to prance around naked, so she drew the slightly tatty green brocade bedspread around her shivering body and advanced on him, a stern expression on her face.

He watched her approach with narrowed, wary eyes, clearly not sure how to react. She stopped in front of him, glaring down.

“Randall,” she said with deceptive calm. “To quote an old song by the Shangri-las, when I say I’m in love you’d best believe I’m in love.” She dropped down into his lap, pulling the bedspread around them.

For a moment he didn’t move, he just looked at her as if she were out of her mind. Then his long, hard hands caught her arms and pulled her against him, sliding under her breast and across her smooth, naked skin with a deft sureness that left her momentarily breathless.

“Oh, yeah?” he murmured, and the chilly distance had melted away.

“Yeah,” she said, biting his earlobe. “You’re mine now, Randall. You’re going to have to get used to being pawed and molested at all hours of the day and night.” She dropped her hands down to the telltale bulge beneath his thin leather belt.

“I’ve unleashed a monster,” he said lightly, but she couldn’t miss the thread of relief in his voice.

“You have indeed.” She kissed him full on the mouth, and his tongue met hers, jousting sweetly. When she finally pulled away she was breathless and trembling. “Come back to bed, Randall,” she whispered. “We can have coffee later. Besides, you’re going to need a big breakfast.”

“I am?”

She smiled demurely. “You’re going to need your strength.” And she kissed him again.

Christmas brunch was an odd sort of affair. The four of them met in Signor Tonetti’s crowded dining room at a little before noon, with absurdly sheepish expressions on their faces and the shadows of an energetically spent night beneath their eyes.

They were oh, so polite, Maggie thought, stifling a grin as she sipped her blessedly strong coffee. Ian and Holly kept making the most nonsensical conversation, mostly consisting of “more coffee?” “pass the sugar,” and “try the preserves.” The subject of Ian’s nonexistent army commission never came up, and Maggie assumed Holly and he must have hashed it out the night before. Among other things. The two of them sat in blissful silence, sharing the occasional embarrassed grin.

Randall was just as bad. He must be an adherent to the rule of if you can’t say anything bad about a person, don’t say anything. He sat there, brooding into his coffee, answering in monosyllables, his hand on her knee beneath the linen tablecloth.

“So what’s next?” Holly said brightly when she’d managed to wolf down an astonishing amount of sweet buns. “Anybody know where Flynn’s gone to?”

“I know,” Ian rumbled, his green eyes downcast. “Not that it makes any difference because I don’t know where the hell Cul de Sac is.”

“I do,” Randall said, all trace of abstraction leaving him. He drained his coffee, setting it down with a snap on the china saucer. Three pairs of eyes turned in his direction, but he was taking his time now, pouring himself another cup and adding an unexpected lump of sugar.

“I thought you drank your coffee black?” Maggie questioned irrelevantly.

“I do. Today I need the sugar.” His smile was just this side of a grin.