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

Two hours later, fortified with the coffee she’d made for herself and the bulldozer operator, Maggie was on her knees on the kitchen floor. Since she was up at a barbaric hour, she thought it best to do something physical. On the counter above her sat her cassette tape player. The sound of her score, nearly completed, all but drowned out the whine of machinery. She let herself flow with it while words to the title song she’d yet to compose flitted in and out of her mind.

While she let her thoughts flow with the music she’d created, Maggie chipped away at the worn tile on the kitchen floor. True, her bedroom had only one wall partially papered, and only the ceiling in the upstairs bath was painted, and there were two more steps to be stripped and lacquered before the main stairway was finished, but she worked in her own way, at her own speed. She found herself jumping from project to project, leaving one partially done and leaping headlong into the next. This way, she reasoned, she could watch the house come together piece by piece rather than have one completed, out-of-place room.

Besides, she’d gotten a peek at the flooring beneath the tile when she’d inadvertently knocked an edge off a corner. Curiosity had done the rest.

When Cliff walked to the back door, he was already annoyed. It was ridiculous for him to be wasting time here, with all the other jobs his firm had in progress. Yet he was here. He’d knocked at the front door for almost five minutes. He knew Maggie was inside, her car was in the driveway, and the bulldozer operator had told him she’d brought out coffee an hour or so before. Didn’t it occur to her that someone usually knocked when they wanted something?

The music coming through the open windows caught his attention, and his imagination. He’d never heard the melody before. It was compelling, sexy, moody. A lone piano, no backdrop of strings or brass, but it had the power of making the listener want to stop and hear every note. For a moment he did stop, both disturbed and moved.

Shifting the screen he’d found into his other hand, Cliff started to knock. Then he saw her.

She was on her hands and knees, prying up pieces of linoleum with what looked like a putty knife. Her hair was loose, falling over one shoulder so that her face was hidden behind it. The deep, rich sable brown picked up hints of gold from the sunlight that streamed through the open door and window.

Gray corduroys fit snugly over her hips, tapering down to bare ankles and feet. A vivid red suede shirt was tucked into the waist. He recognized the shirt as one sold in exclusive shops for very exclusive prices. Her wrists and hands looked impossibly delicate against it. Cliff was scowling at them when Maggie got too enthusiastic with the putty knife and scraped her knuckle against a corner of the tile.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, swinging the door open and striding in before Maggie had a chance to react. She’d barely put the knuckle to her mouth in an instinctive move when he was crouched beside her and grabbing her hand.

“It’s nothing,” she said automatically. “Just a scratch.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t slice it, the way you’re hacking at that tile.” Though his voice was rough and impatient, his hand was gentle. She left hers in it.

Yes, his hand was gentle, though rough-edged, like his voice, but this time she could see his eyes. They were gray; smoky, secret. Evening mists came to her mind. Mists that were sometimes dangerous but always compelling. That was the sort of mist she’d always believed had cloaked Brigadoon for a hundred years at a time. Maggie decided she could like him, in a cautious sort of way.

“Who’d be stupid enough to put linoleum over this?” With the fingers of her free hand, she skimmed over the hardwood she’d exposed. “Lovely, isn’t it? Or it will be when it’s sanded and sealed.”

“Get Bog to deal with it,” Cliff ordered. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”

So everyone said. Maggie withdrew a bit, annoyed by the phrase. “Why should he have all the fun? Besides, I’m being careful.”

“I can see that.” He turned her hand over so that she saw the scrape over her thumb. It infuriated him to see the delicacy marred. “Doesn’t someone in your profession have to be careful with their hands?”

“They’re insured,” she tossed back. “I think I can probably hit a few chords, even with a wound as serious as this.” She pulled her hand out of his. “Did you come here to criticize me, Mr. Delaney, or did you have something else in mind?”

“I came to check on the job.” Which wasn’t necessary, he admitted. In any case, why should it matter to him if she was careless enough to hurt her hand? She was just a woman who had touched down in his territory and would be gone again before the leaves were full-blown with summer. He was going to have to remember that, and the fact that she didn’t interest him personally. Shifting, he picked up the screen he’d dropped when he’d taken her hand. “I found this outside.”

It wasn’t often her voice took on that regal tone. He seemed to nudge it out of her. “Thank you.” She took the screen and leaned it against the stove.

“Your road’ll be blocked most of the day. I hope you weren’t planning on going anywhere.”

Maggie gave him a level look that held a hint of challenge. “I’m not going anywhere, Mr. Delaney.”

He inclined his head. “Fine.” The music on the tape player changed tempo. It was more hard-driving, more primitive. It seemed something to be played on hot, moonless nights. It drew him, pulled at him. “What is that?” Cliff demanded. “I’ve never heard it before.”

Maggie glanced up at the recorder. “It’s a movie score I’m composing. That’s the melody for the title song.” Because it had given her a great deal of trouble, she frowned at the revolving tape. “Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

It was the most simple and most direct answer he’d given her thus far. It wasn’t enough for Maggie.

“Why?”

He paused a moment, still listening, hardly aware that they were both still on the floor, close enough to touch. “It goes straight to the blood, straight to the imagination. Isn’t that what a song’s supposed to do?”

He could have said nothing more perfect. Her smile flashed, a quick, stunning smile that left him staring at her as though he’d been struck by lightning. “Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what it’s supposed to do.” In her enthusiasm she shifted. Their knees brushed. “I’m trying for something very basic with this. It has to set the mood for a film about a passionate relationship—an intensely passionate relationship between two people who seem to have nothing in common but an uncontrollable desire for each other. One of them will kill because of it.”

She trailed off, lost in the music and the mood. She could see it in vivid colors—scarlets, purples. She could feel it, like the close, sultry air on a hot summer night. Then she frowned, and as if on cue, the music stopped. From the tape came a sharp, pungent curse, then silence.

“I lost something in those last two bars,” she muttered. “It was like—” she gestured with both hands, bringing them up, turning them over, then dropping them again “—something came un-meshed. It has to build to desperation, but it has to be more subtle than that. Passion at the very edge of control.”

“Do you always write like that?” Cliff was studying her when she focused on him again, studying her as he had her land—thoroughly, with an eye both for detail and an overview.

She sat back on her haunches, comfortable now with a conversation on her own turf. He could hardly frustrate her in a discussion of music. She’d lived with it, in it, all her life. “Like what?” she countered.

“With the emphasis on mood and emotions rather than notes and timing.”

Her brows lifted. With one hand, she pushed back the hair that swept across her cheek. She wore an amethyst on her finger, wine-colored, square. It caught the light, holding it until she dropped her hand again. As she thought it over, it occurred to her that no one, not even her closest associates, had ever defined her style so cleanly. It pleased her, though she didn’t know why, that he had done so. “Yes,” she said simply.

He didn’t like what those big, soft eyes could do to him. Cliff rose. “That’s why your music is good.”

Maggie gave a quick laugh, not at the compliment, but at the grudging tone with which he delivered it. “So, you can say something nice, after all.”

“When it’s appropriate.” He watched her stand, noting that she moved with the sort of fluidity he’d always associated with tall, willowy women. “I admire your music.”

Again, it was the tone, rather than the words, that spoke to her. This time it touched off annoyance, rather than humor. “And little else that has to do with me.”

“I don’t know you,” Cliff countered.

“You didn’t like me when you drove up that hill the other day.” With her temper rising, Maggie put her hands on her hips and faced him squarely. “I get the impression you didn’t like me years before we met.”

That was direct, Cliff decided. Maggie Fitzgerald, glamour girl from the Coast, didn’t believe in evasions. Neither did he. “I have a problem with people who live their lives on silver platters. I’ve too much respect for reality.”

“Silver platters,” Maggie repeated in a voice that was much, much too quiet. “In other words, I was born into affluence, therefore, I can’t understand the real world.”

He didn’t know why he wanted to smile. Perhaps it was the way color flooded her face. Perhaps it was because she stood nearly a foot beneath him but gave every appearance of being ready to Indian-wrestle and win. Yet he didn’t smile. Cliff had the impression that if you gave an inch to this lady, you’d soon be begging to give a mile. “That about sums it up. The gravel for the lane’ll be delivered and spread by five.”

“Sums it up?” Accustomed to ending a conversation when she chose, Maggie grabbed his arm as he started to turn for the door. “You’re a narrow-minded snob, and you know nothing about my life.”

Cliff looked down at the delicate hand against his tanned muscled arm. The amethyst glowed up at him. “Miss Fitzgerald, everyone in the country knows about your life.”

“That is one of the most unintelligent statements I’ve ever heard.” She made one final attempt to control her temper, then forgot it. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Delaney—” The phone interrupted what would have been a stream of impassioned abuse. Maggie ended up swearing. “You stay there,” she ordered as she turned to the wall phone.

Cliff’s brows lifted at the command. Slowly, he leaned against the kitchen counter. He’d stay, he decided. Not because she’d told him to, but because he’d discovered he wanted to hear what she had to say.

Maggie yanked the receiver from the wall and barked into it. “Hello.”

“Well, it’s nice to hear that country life’s agreeing with you.”

“C.J.” She struggled to hold down her temper. She wanted neither questions nor I-told-you-sos. “Sorry, you caught me in the middle of a philosophical discussion.” Though she heard Cliff’s quick snort of laughter, she ignored it. “Something up, C.J.?”