The Newcomer. Margot Dalton

I was still working in the family business then. It was soon after my mother died, and I came here in the line of duty. But once I was here, I couldn’t seem to leave.”

      “It’s a long way from Scotland.”

      Doug laughed. “Moira and I were just talking about the same thing. In many ways the landscape in the Hill Country is similar to the place I grew up, you know. But there’s more sunshine here.”

      “It sounds like you really love Texas.”

      He considered her words for a moment, sipping his drink. “Not so much as I love the town,” he said at last. “This is the first place I’ve ever felt truly at peace with the world. Crystal Creek and my hotel…” He waved his hand at the comfortable room, the flickering glow on the hearth. “It’s home to me, Maggie.”

      She felt a sudden tug of uneasiness, and a deep, painful feeling of guilt over what she was doing in Crystal Creek.

      “What is it?” he asked, watching her intently.

      She sipped her drink, avoiding his glance. “I don’t know what you mean.”

      “You have a very expressive face. And just now, you look troubled.”

      “Troubled?”

      He reached out to touch her forehead with a gentle hand. “Whenever you frown, you get this lovely wee line between your eyebrows.”

      She ducked away from his hand and shifted awkwardly on the padded bench.

      “Look, Doug,” she said with forced casualness, “don’t keep watching me so closely, all right? I’m not used to it.”

      His eyebrows arched in disbelief. “You’re not used to a man watching you? That’s hard to believe, for a woman like you.”

      She stared at him, genuinely surprised. “You’re kidding.”

      “About what?”

      “I’m quite an ordinary person, Doug. And when you get to know me, I’m not even all that nice,” she added with another pang of remorse.

      “I’ll be the judge of that,” he said with a gaze so warm that she felt the color rise in her cheeks again.

      “Now it’s your turn,” he told her after an awkward silence.

      “Me?”

      “What’s the story of your childhood? Did you grow up in California?”

      She shook her head. “Terry and I were raised on a farm in Ohio. We didn’t move to California until we were adults.”

      “I see. And what took you from Ohio to the Golden Coast?”

      She thought about the question. “Well, mainly the fact that we had a patron who sponsored our college education out there. Like you, we’d lost both our parents by the time we reached our late teens.”

      “I’m sorry,” he said with genuine sympathy. “That’s a hard road, I know.”

      “But our situation was the opposite of yours,” Maggie said. “Our mother died of ovarian cancer when I was seven and Terry was five. Our father did such a wonderful job of raising us on his own,” she added with a fond, faraway smile. “He worked all day on the farm, and then at night he was a mother to us as well, doing laundry and packing school lunches.”

      “I never knew what it was to have a loving father,” Doug said. “I can’t even remember mine.”

      “Daddy was our hero. And then when we were in our mid-teens and his life was starting to get a little easier, he was killed in a tractor accident on the farm.” Her eyes stung with unshed tears. “It was just a careless mistake,” she said, swallowing hard. “He took a shortcut up an incline behind the barn, and the tractor flipped over on him. He was pinned there all alone for most of the day. By the time we got home from school and found him, it was too late.”

      “I’m so sorry, Maggie.”

      Doug covered her hand with his own and waited for her to compose herself.

      “Do you look like him?” he asked, clearly trying to set her at ease again. “You and your brother are not at all alike.”

      Maggie hesitated, surprised by how easy it was to talk with this man. These were topics she almost never spoke about, even with people she’d known for a long time.

      “Actually,” she said, “I was adopted. My birth mother was a high-school girl from Cincinnati. She was sixteen years old, an honor student and a talented musician. When she got pregnant, her family forced her to carry the baby to term.”

      “And that baby was you,” he said, his voice rough with emotion.

      “Yes, it was me.”

      He released her hand, and she was almost sorry. Again she marveled at how comfortable she felt, wrapped in this semilit intimacy with a man she barely knew, talking about the most emotional parts of her life.

      “My adoptive parents wanted a baby for years before I came along,” she said in a low voice. “They made me feel so loved and wanted. It was part of the family history, how they got the call about the baby and they were so excited, packing up the little clothes they’d been saving all that time, and driving to Cincinnati to get me. I was nine days old when they took me home.”

      Doug smiled, his face so warm and tender that Maggie had to fight the urge to reach out and lay a hand on his cheek.

      “So what about your brother?” he asked. “Was he adopted, too?”

      Maggie laughed and shook her head. “No, it was one of those classic cases. They’d been married ten years when they got me, and never been able to conceive. But a little over a year after I arrived, my mother got pregnant. They were so happy. Terry and I have been good pals all our lives.”

      “So you had a nice childhood, happy and loved on a farm in Ohio.”

      “Yes,” she said. “I really did.”

      “I’m glad to hear it. I like to think about you growing up like that.”

      The physical attraction between them had grown almost palpable. Maggie was afraid that if she stayed with him any longer, he’d invite her to his room and she wouldn’t be able to resist.

      And that would be a huge mistake, something she certainly couldn’t afford at this point.

      “Well,” she said with false brightness, “thanks for the drink and the nice conversation, Doug. It’s getting late, and I’d better head upstairs.”

      He didn’t press, though his eyes burned a deeper green as he watched her get to her feet.

      “Good night,” he said courteously. “I’ll see you in the morning. Do you think we can do some more work on those computer programs?”

      “I should be free in the morning,” she said.

      “That’s great.” He raised his glass in a quiet salute. “Until then, Maggie.”

      Her knees felt suddenly weak. As she headed for the door, every part of her body was conscious of him watching her leave.

      MAGGIE WAS UP early the next morning, drying her hair in the bathroom. A knock sounded on the door and she padded through the sitting room in her terry-cloth robe to admit a skinny young man in blue overalls, carrying a metal tool kit and a big spool of wire.

      Dundee pressed by the man’s legs, then stepped daintily into the room and looked around with a proprietary air.

      “Phone jacks and new lines,” the young man said curtly, moving past Maggie into the room. “Doug said you could tell me where they should go.”

      “Phone jacks!” Terry said in delight.

      He sat at the round table in the sitting room, where he squinted at the flip-up screen of his