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

Before he heard her, Cliff caught a fresh whiff of her perfume. When he turned, she was a few paces behind him, two glasses in her hand. She watched him steadily with a curiosity she didn’t bother to hide. He learned something more about her then as she stood with her eyes on his face and the sun at her back. She was the most alluring woman he’d ever met, though he’d be damned if he knew why.

Maggie approached him and offered a glass of frosty tea. “Want to hear my ideas?”

The voice had something to do with it, Cliff decided. An innocent question, phrased in that sultry voice, conjured up a dozen dark pleasures. He took a slow sip. “That’s what I’m here for,” he told her with a curtness he’d never shown any potential client.

Her brow lifted at the tone, the only sign that she’d noticed his rudeness. With that attitude, she thought, he wouldn’t have the job for long. Then again, he didn’t strike her as a man who’d work for someone else. “Indeed you are, Mr….?”

“Delaney.”

“Ah, the man himself.” That made more sense, she decided, if his attitude didn’t. “Well, Mr. Delaney, I’m told you’re the best. I believe in having the best, so.” Thoughtfully, she ran a fingertip down the length of her glass, streaking the film of moisture. “I’ll tell you what I want, and you tell me if you can deliver.”

“Fair enough.” He didn’t know why her simple statement should annoy him any more than he could understand why he was just noticing how smooth her skin was and how compelling were those large velvet eyes. Like a doe’s, Cliff realized. He wasn’t a man who hunted but a man who watched. “I’ll tell you up front that my company has a policy against destroying the natural terrain in order to make the land into something it’s not. This is rough country, Miss Fitzgerald. It’s supposed to be. If you want an acre or two of manicured lawn, you’ve bought the wrong land and called the wrong landscaper.”

It took a great deal to fire up her temper. Maggie had worked long and hard to control a natural tendency toward quick fury in order to block the label of temperamental daughter of temperamental artists. “Decent of you to point it out,” she managed after three long, quiet breaths.

“I don’t know why you bought the place,” he began.

“I don’t believe I’ve offered that information.”

“And it’s none of my business,” Cliff finished with an acknowledging nod. “But this—” he indicated the property with a gesture of his hand “—is my business.”

“You’re a bit premature in condemning me, aren’t you, Mr. Delaney?” To keep herself in check, Maggie took a sip of tea. It was cold, with a faint bite of lemon. “I’ve yet to ask you to bring on the bulldozers and chain saws.” She ought to tell him to haul his buns into his truck and take off. Almost before she could wonder why she didn’t, the answer came. Instinct. Instinct had brought her to Morganville and to the property she now stood on. It was instinct that told her he was indeed the best. Nothing else would do for her land. To give herself a moment to be sure she didn’t do anything rash, Maggie took another sip from her glass.

“That grove there,” she began briskly. “I want it cleared of undergrowth. It can’t be enjoyed if you have to fight your way through thorns and thickets to walk in it.” She shot him a look. “Don’t you want to take notes?”

He watched her, consideringly. “No. Go on.”

“All right. This stretch right here, in front of the porch—I imagine that was a lawn of sorts at one time.” She turned, looking at the knee-high weeds. “It should be again, but I want enough room to plant, I don’t know, some pines, maybe, to keep the line between lawn and woods from being too marked. Then there’s the way the whole thing just sort of falls away until it reaches the lane below.”

Forgetting her annoyance for the moment, Maggie made her way across the relatively flat land to where it sloped steeply down. Weeds, some of them as tall as she, grew in abundance wherever the rocks would permit. “It’s certainly too steep for grass to be practical,” she said half to herself. “But I can’t just let all these weeds have their way. I’d like some color, but I don’t want uniformity.”

“You’ll want some evergreens,” he said from behind her. “Some spreading junipers along the bottom edge of the whole slope, a few coming farther up over there, with some forsythia mixed in. Here, where the grade’s not so dramatic, you’d want some low ground cover.” He could see phlox spilling and bumping over the rocks. “That tree’s got to come down,” he went on, frowning at the one that leaned precariously toward her roof. “And there’s two, maybe three, on the rise behind the house that’ve got to be taken down before they fall down.”

She was frowning now, but she’d always believed in letting an expert set the plan. “Okay, but I don’t want you to cut down anything that doesn’t have to be cleared.”

Maggie could only see her own reflection in his glasses when he faced her. “I never do.” He turned and began to walk around the side of the house. “That’s another problem,” Cliff continued without checking to see if she was following. “The way that dirt wall’s eroding down from the cliff here. You’re going to end up with a tree or a boulder in your kitchen when you least expect it.”

“So?” Maggie tilted her head so she could scan the ridge behind her house. “You’re the expert.”

“It’ll need to be recut, tapered back some. Then I’d put up a retaining wall, three, maybe four, foot high. Crown vetch’d hold the dirt above that. Plant it along the entire slope. It’s hardy and fast.”

“All right.” It sounded reasonable. He sounded more reasonable, Maggie decided, when he was talking about his business. A man of the land, she mused, and wished again she could see beyond the tinted glass to his eyes. “This part behind the house has to be cleared.” She began to fight her way through the weeds and briars as she talked. “I think if I had a walkway of some kind from here to the lane, I could have a rockery … here.” A vague gesture of her hands indicated the spot she had in mind. “There’re plenty of rocks,” she muttered, nearly stumbling over one. “Then down here—”

Cliff took her arm before she could start down the slope on the far side of the house. The contact jolted both of them. More surprised than alarmed, Maggie turned her head.

“I wouldn’t,” Cliff said softly, and she felt a tiny trickle, an odd excitement, sprint up her spine.

“Wouldn’t what?” Her chin automatically tilted, her eyes challenged.

“Walk down there.” Her skin was soft, Cliff discovered. With his hand wrapped around her arm, he could touch his fingertips to his thumb. Small and soft, he mused, enjoying the feel of his flesh against hers. Too small and soft for land that would fight back at you.

Maggie glanced down to where he held her. She noticed the tan on the back of his hand; she noticed the size and the strength of it. When she noticed her pulse wasn’t quite steady, she lifted her gaze again. “Mr. Delaney—”

“Snakes,” he said simply, and had the satisfaction of seeing her take two quick steps back. “You’re almost sure to have some down in a spot like that. In fact, with the way this place is overgrown, you’re likely to have them everywhere.”

“Well, then—” Maggie swallowed and made a herculean effort not to shudder “—maybe you can start the job right away.”

For the first time, he smiled, a very slight, very cautious, curving of lips. They’d both forgotten he still held her, but they were standing much closer now, within a hand span of touching. She certainly hadn’t reacted the way he’d expected. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d screeched at the mention of snakes, then had dashed into the house, slamming and locking the door. Her skin was soft, Cliff mused, unconsciously moving his thumb over it. But apparently she wasn’t.

“I might be able to send a crew out next week, but the first thing that has to be dealt with is your road.”

Maggie dismissed this with a shrug. “Do whatever you think best there, excluding asphalt. It’s only a means of getting in and out to me. I want to concentrate on the house and grounds.”

“The road’s going to run you twelve, maybe fifteen, hundred,” he began, but she cut him off again.

“Do what you have to,” she told him with the unconscious arrogance of someone who’d never worried about money. “This section here—” She pointed to the steep drop in front of them, making no move this time to go down it. At the base it spread twenty feet wide, perhaps thirty in length, in a wicked maze of thorny vines and weeds as thick at the stem as her thumb. “I want a pond.”

Cliff brought his attention back to her. “A pond?”

She gave him a level look and stood her ground. “Allow me one eccentricity, Mr. Delaney. A small one,” she continued before he could comment. “There’s certainly enough room, and it seems to me that this section here’s the worst. It’s hardly more than a hole in the ground in a very awkward place. Do you have an objection to water?”

Instead of answering, he studied the ground below them, running through the possibilities. The truth was, she couldn’t have picked a better spot as far as the lay of the land and the angle to the house. It could be done, he mused. It wouldn’t be an easy job, but it could be done. And it would be very effective.

“It’s going to cost you,” he said at length. “You’re going to be sinking a lot of cash into this place. If you’re weighing that against resale value, I can tell you, this property won’t be easy to sell.”

It snapped her patience. She was tired, very tired, of having people suggest she didn’t know what she was doing. “Mr. Delaney, I’m hiring you to do a job, not to advise me on real estate or my finances. If you can’t handle it, just say so and I’ll get someone else.”

His eyes narrowed. The fingers on her arm tightened fractionally. “I can handle it, Miss Fitzgerald. I’ll draw up an estimate and a contract. They’ll be in the mail tomorrow. If you still want the job done after you’ve looked them over, call my office.” Slowly, he released her arm, then handed her back the glass of tea. He left her there, near the edge where the slope gave way to gully as he headed back toward his truck. “By the way,” he said without turning around, “you overwatered your pansies.”

Maggie let out one long, simmering breath and dumped the tepid tea on the ground at her feet.

Chapter 2 (#ulink_cd572e98-21a9-53ea-9d28-a6afca822d2c)

When she was alone, Maggie went back inside, through the back door, which creaked ominously on its hinges. She wasn’t going to think about Cliff Delaney. In fact, she doubted if she’d see him again. He’d send crews out to deal with the actual work, and whatever they had to discuss would be done via phone or letter. Better that way, Maggie decided. He’d been unfriendly, abrupt and annoying, though his mouth had been attractive, she reflected, even kind.

She was halfway through the kitchen when she remembered the glasses in her hand. Turning back, she crossed the scarred linoleum to set them both in the sink, then leaned on the windowsill to look out at the rise behind her house. Even as she watched, a few loose stones and dirt slid down the wall. A couple of hard rains, she mused, and half that bank would be at her back door. A retaining wall. Maggie nodded. Cliff Delaney obviously knew his business.

There was just enough breeze to carry a hint of spring to her. Far back in the woods a bird she couldn’t see sang out as though it would never stop. Listening, she forgot the eroding wall and the exposed roots of trees that were much too close to its edge. She forgot the rudeness, and the attraction, of a stranger. If she looked up, far up, she could see where the tops of the trees met the sky.

She wondered how this view would change with the seasons and found herself impatient to experience them all. Perhaps she’d never realized how badly she’d needed a place to herself, time to herself, until she’d found it.

With a sigh, Maggie moved away from the window. It was time to get down to work if she was to deliver the finished score as promised. She walked down the hall where the wallpaper was peeling and curled and turned into what had once been the back parlor. It was now her music room.

Boxes she hadn’t even thought of unpacking stood in a pile against one wall. A few odd pieces of furniture that had come with the house sat hidden under dustcovers. The windows were uncurtained, the floor was uncarpeted. There were pale squares intermittently on the walls where pictures had once hung. In the center of the room, glossy and elegant, stood her baby grand. A single box lay open beside it, and from this Maggie took a sheet of staff paper. Tucking a pencil behind her ear, she sat.

For a moment she did nothing else, just sat in the silence while she let the music come and play in her head. She knew what she wanted for this segment—something dramatic, something strong and full of power. Behind her closed eyelids she could see the scene from the film sweep by. It was up to her to underscore, to accentuate, to take the mood and make it music.

Reaching out, she switched on the cassette tape and began.