Free The Unforgiven by Patricia MacDonald Page A

to leave their mother?”
    “Aw, Sadie,” Ned protested. “It’s just a matter of a couple of days.”
    “I said not yet,” the old woman insisted. “When they’re ready.”
    “I can wait a few days,” Maggie soothed her. “I’vewaited this long. I’ll come back whenever you say.”
    Sadie sniffed but seemed satisfied with this compromise. “You got to take care of him,” she warned.
    “I will,” Maggie promised.
    “Did you ever have a dog before?” Sadie asked.
    “No, I haven’t,” Maggie admitted.
    “Why not?” the old woman demanded.
    Maggie looked at her guiltily. “Well, I…”
    “Maggie never had the space before,” Jess interceded. “She used to live in an apartment.”
    Surprised by his response, Maggie suddenly remembered that that was the lie she had told him. Sadie chewed over the piece of information suspiciously.
    “Well, I guess we’d better be going,” said Maggie. “Let you get back to your cleaning.” She edged past the couple in the doorway and down the path. “Thank you so much.”
    “That dirt’s not going away on its own. That’s for sure,” Sadie complained.
    Jess caught up to Maggie in the Wilson driveway. “Hey, you were in an awful hurry to get out of there.”
    “I didn’t want to give Sadie a chance to change her mind,” she said.
    “She’s a slippery customer, all right,” Jess laughed.
    “I got a puppy,” Maggie exulted.
    “Keep it down,” Jess warned her. “You’re not safe until we’re out of the driveway.”
    “Weren’t they adorable?” Maggie cried.
    “They were. Yours especially.”
    Maggie threw her arms around his neck and squeezed him. “Thank you, thank you.”
    Jess wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to him. “I’m glad you’re happy,” he whispered.
    Maggie pulled back, embarrassed by the impulsive embrace. Jess held onto her. His lips followed and met hers. His kiss was short but insistent. When he drew back, her lips felt as if they had been stung. They wanted to be stung again. Instead, she pushed his shoulders away lightly with her palms. “We’d better go,” she said.
    “That kiss will be all over the island,” he agreed wryly, glancing back at the Wilson farmhouse.
    Jess charted a meandering route back to Maggie’s, which included a stop for clam rolls down by the Clearview landing and a tour of some of the narrow dirt roads that wound surreptitiously through the island forests. The sun was already sinking into the ocean as they wended their way back toward Liberty Road.
    The salt breeze ran through Maggie’s hair like fingers and the rays of the sun, although weak, warmed her elbow as the car sped along. She turned her face from the window and studied Jess. He smiled at her.
    “Glad you came?” he asked.
    “Very.”
    “I was thinking about you last night.”
    “You were?”
    “Well, I was thinking about asking you to come look at the puppies today, and go for a ride, but I was worried that you’d had enough of the office for one week, and maybe that included me.”
    “No,” she admitted. “Not you.”
    “Owen Duggan called me this morning, by the way. He printed up those negatives last night, and he onlylost about three shots. He asked me to tell you not to be concerned about it.”
    “That was thoughtful of him,” said Maggie, recalling for an instant the quizzical look on his face as he had shaken her hand, as if he were trying to place her. She tried to shake off the disturbing impression.
    “The first week is always a little rough, Maggie.”
    “I know,” she said after a pause.
    “How’s the hand?”
    Maggie flexed her fingers gingerly. “Better. It’s okay.”
    “I still don’t know how that happened,” he said.
    “I just wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing.” For a moment she remembered Tom and Grace’s scornful laughter as she stood in the corridor, and Evy’s fleeting look of amusement. She could picture Owen Duggan’s negatives curling under the heat