Through the Looking Glass Read Online Free Page A

throat and leaned back in the corner of the love seat, removing his arm from her warm thighs. He devoutly hoped he didn't look as unnerved as he felt. She had neatly—and with devastating accuracy—stripped his motives bare while becoming even more of an enigma herself. "That makes me sound like a selfish bastard, doesn't it?" he said, neither admitting nor denying what she'd said.
    "Most people are selfish; it's the nature of the beast. You have a logical mind and it's perfectly logical to think that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line."
    "Are you saying it isn't?"
    In a very gentle voice she said, "Not between people. Between people, shortcuts are usually painful."
    She was right—and he was even more surprised at himself. Did he really feel so out of control? Had he been so shaken by his confused response to her that his first instinct had been to reach for an immediate, shallow intimacy? Such an abrupt leap, assuming she had accepted, virtually guaranteed that there would be little more than a brief fling between them. Because she was right about something else; intimacy without knowledge was seldom anything but damaging.
    And he knew that.
    After a moment he said, "I apologize."
    Maggie looked faintly surprised. "I wasn't offended. I just want you to understand that I don't believe sex is a means to an end. By the time two people become that intimate, most of the questions should already be answered."
    "You're right." Gideon was mildly surprised at his own lack of defensiveness; he was, more than anything, intrigued by her insight into his motives, and disturbed by those motives themselves. "But how did you know? About me, I mean. Did it show so plainly?"
    "No. I just knew."
    Now, that was unnerving, he thought. "How?"
    "It's a knack I have," she answered serenely.
    Before Gideon could probe further, there was a thud near the door that might have been a knock, and the redhead member of the tea party, the garland of flowers still in his hair, peered in at them and spoke in an aggrieved tone with a touch of Scotland in the rhythm.
    "Maggie, love, you've got to do something about Oswald! He's taken them again."
    She turned her head to look at the visitor. "Farley, I can't teach Oswald to love bagpipes. And I can't keep him from hiding them from you. Why don't you challenge him to a poker game and bet the pipes? He always loses to you."
    Farley brightened. "That's a thought, it is indeed, love. It'll appeal to his sense of honor, what's more."
    "Of course it will. Farley, this is Gideon."
    "Hello," Farley said briefly to the other man, and then vanished from the doorway.
    Gideon told himself silently that endearments probably came naturally to Farley; it didn't mean a thing.
    Maggie apparently considered their previous conversation over, because she picked up the first-aid box and rose to her feet. She put the box away in the big wardrobe, then came back around the foot of the bed and looked at Gideon with a faint smile. "Do you want to go meet the other people you'll be putting out of work?"
    He blinked, the attack totally unexpected. Not that it was an attack, exactly; her voice remained sweet and calm. But the words... Getting to his feet, he said slowly, "You obviously know I mean to sell the carnival."
    "Yes. Natural, I suppose. Our income barely covers expenses, and we could by no stretch of the imagination be a tax write-off. You aren't carny, so you have no feeling for this life or what it means to the people involved. I understand Balthasar was such a distant connection you aren't certain how you were related to him, so no family feeling is involved."
    Gideon opened his mouth, but she was going on in the same soft, childlike voice.
    "The wagons are all antiques and will probably fetch a healthy price. Trained animals are always in demand, and those that don't perform can certainly go to zoos. We have a number of costumes and carnival games you can doubtless unload for a few dollars. You