Page 89 of Sirens
“You have to understand,” she pleaded. “I was young and totally naïve. I—I didn’t know what he was involved in before I married him. And once I did…” She wrestled with a rapidly closing throat. “I was just trying to protect someone I loved.”
“So youdolove me!” Chazz crowed.
“Loved,” Maggie corrected him, shooting him a withering grin. “Past tense.”
“Kinda like youlovedall them fancy-ass designer clothes and shoes I scored for you?” he said, plucking the sodden toothpick from his lips and flicking it away.
Maggie felt the blood drain from her face, her cheeks and forehead pricking as if infested with a thousand insects. “I… You… Those weregifts.”
An overpowering surge of Chazz’s sinus-melting cologne enveloped Maggie, making her head go all swimmy.
“You didn’t seem to be asking too many questions about how I afforded them on a plumber’s salary.” He leaned back against the bright red Camaro…what was most assuredly a rental car.
“They werefake,” she spat, furious at herself for the tears she felt gathering in her eyes.
Chazz’s six-o’clock-shadowed cheeks lifted in his ugliest smile yet. “Then how come you’s still wearin’ them?”
She clutched at the handbag, as if somehow holding it, owning it, would make it genuine.
McGarvey’s eyes followed Chazz’s to where her hand clung to the bag’s strap before slowly lifting to meet hers.
What she read there robbed her of breath.
Pity.
The sting of humiliation seared through her skin like wildfire.
Chazz retrieved another toothpick from his pocket and pointed it at Trent before poking it between his lips. “The difference between me and this guy is that I never minded that you was a phony,” he said. “In fact, I always thought it was kind of cute. Just like when you asked me and the guys to help you break into that asylum for that little radio show of yours. I noticed you never mentioned that when you was talkin’ to the Feds.”
Maggie felt McGarvey’s grip on her hand slacken and tightened hers.
“Please,” she said, hating the plaintive note in her voice. “You have to let me explain.”
Just then, a group of rosy-cheeked, red-hat-wearing MILFs spilled by, tossing out, “Good evening, Deputy McGarvey,” flirtatiously as they passed.
“Deputy?” Chazz burst out in his always obnoxiously loud laugh, even slapping his meaty thigh for good measure. “Holy shit. I bet you’ve been all kinds of useful to her since she’s been in town.”
“Trent,please,” Maggie said, blinking hard as McGarvey’s fingers slipped from hers. The loss shocked her more than she’d anticipated.
“Don’t feel bad, buddy,” Chazz said. “My Shortcake has never minded her fellas breaking the law. So long as they was breaking it in wayssheliked. This one has always had a thing for the bad boys, but I can see she’s upped her game with yous.”
McGarvey took a step back.
Eyes that had looked at her in with affection, flirtation, and even passion countless times over the past weeks now looked at her with questions, doubts, and, most painful of all, hurt.
“Is that why you came to Townsend Harbor?” he asked, his voice icier than the winds whipping around them. “Is that why you…why we?—”
“No,” Maggie said, pouring every ounce of the truth she felt burning in her chest into the word. “Trent, everything I’ve said about the way I feel is true.”
“Wait a minute,” Chazz interrupted, his gaze flitting between Maggie and McGarvey like he were a hungry seagull eyeing a pair of unguarded sandwiches. “Have you two been fuckin’?”
“Shut the fuck up, Charlie!” Maggie roared, letting every ounce of her rage boil to the surface.
“Like hell I will,” he said, thumping his barrel chest like an offended ape. “It was one thing when I thought you was just using him, but I oughta know who’s been keeping my wife company while I was locked up.”
Maggie clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms as she fought the urge to scream. It seemed that no matter how hard she tried to put the past behind her, it kept clawing its way back into her life, determined to drag her down with it.
“Listen, deputy,” Chazz began, his tone dripping with false sincerity, “I wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t still love this woman. She’s got her hooks in me deep. Hell, even after she turned me in, she kept some secrets to protect me. That’s how I know she still cares.”
