One Last Weekend by Linda Lael Miller Read Free Book Online

untouched.
    â€œLook,” Teague said, making an obvious effort to hold on to his temper, “if the car bothers you so much, I’ll sell it.”
    She looked up. “You’d do that?”
    Before he could answer, a vehicle rattled into the driveway alongside the house, backfired a couple of times, and clunked its way to a reverberating silence.
    â€œMadge is here,” Teague said. And he smiled.
    In the next moment, a knock sounded at the back door.
    Sammy gave an uncertain woof and slowly raised himself to all four feet.
    Teague went to the door.
    â€œGot your water and propane and all that camping stuff,” Madge boomed out. “It’s an extra ten bucks over and above what you already paid me if I gotta unload it.”
    Teague chuckled. “Come in and have coffee with Joanna,” he told Madge. “I’ll unload the truck.”
    â€œDon’t mind if I do,” Madge thundered as Teague stepped back to let her pass. She was a tall, burly-looking woman, well into her sixties and clad in her usual bib overalls, flannel shirt, and rubber fishing boots. Her broad face was weathered by years of wind and salt-water spray, her gray hair stood out around her head, thick and unruly, and her smile was warm and full of genuine interest. She leaned to pat Sammy on the head once before he followed Teague outside.
    â€œHello, Madge,” Joanna said, already filling a mug from the coffeemaker. “Have you eaten?”
    â€œHours ago,” Madge proclaimed. “Not a bit hungry. That was some storm we had last night, wasn’t it? Nils and me, we thought it would take the roof right off our cabin.”
    Nils was Madge’s live-in boyfriend. He worked on the fishing boats in Alaska in season and ran the printing press when he was home. He was a good twenty years younger than Madge and was known to write her long, poetic letters when he was away.
    â€œSit down,” Joanna invited, handing Madge the steaming mug.
    â€œBest stand,” Madge said. “Sit down too much, and these old bones might just rust enough so’s I can’t get up again.”
    Joanna chuckled. As colloquial and homey as Madge’s speech was, she wrote like the seasoned journalist she was. Joanna particularly enjoyed her column, which contained everything from political diatribes to recipes to local gossip. “Not likely,” she said.
    â€œGood to see you and Teague out here together,” Madge went on, narrowing her eyes speculatively. “The way I heard it, you two were on the outs. On the verge of divorce.”
    â€œMadge Potter,” Joanna said, as a disturbing possibility dawned, “don’t you dare write about us in that column of yours!”
    â€œWell, I wouldn’t name names or anything like that,” Madge promised before taking a noisy slurp of her coffee. “’Course, if I said anything about that sports car, everybody’d figure it out. Stirred up a lot of interest around here, I can tell you, when Teague showed up driving that flashy rig with that redhead—”
    Madge gulped back the remainder of the sentence, but it was too late.
    â€œRedhead?” Joanna asked, mortified, furious, and totally blindsided, all at once.
    â€œOops,” Madge said.
    Teague appeared in the open doorway at just that moment, a propane jug under each arm. He looked from Madge to Joanna, connecting the dots, and the color drained out of his face.
    â€œI guess I’d best be going,” Madge announced and hastened out. Seconds later, her old truck roared to life and rumbled away.
    â€œYou were here—on the island—with a redhead?” Joanna asked, her voice deceptively mild.
    Slowly, Teague set the propane tanks down. Sammy slithered between Teague and the door frame and headed for the living room, ears lowered and tail tucked, like a canine soldier hearing the whistle of approaching mortar fire.
    â€œIt wasn’t what you