MacKenzie's Lady (13 page)

T
he essence of a good friend is the ability to know when to ask questions and when to offer silent support. When she came home from the hospital to find Holly curled in a ball on the sofa, her face streaked with tears, Maryann didn't ask for explanations. With gentle insistence, she chivied the smaller woman into a warm shower and then a soft cotton robe. She ignored Holly's mumbled protests and sat her down in front of a bowl of canned chicken soup, all but spoon-feeding it into her.

Once Holly had something in her stomach, Maryann led her off to bed. Holly swore she could never sleep. Maryann agreed but said that she would feel better in bed, and Holly didn't have the energy to argue the point.

Maryann turned out all the lights except one near the bed and sat down in a comfortable chair, a cone of crochet cotton and a half-finished tablecloth in her lap.

"You don't have to baby-sit me," Holly protested.

"Who said I was baby-sitting? The place has been empty the past few weeks. I'm just enjoying the company." She began to crochet, adding a motif to the delicate cobweb in her lap.

"How long have you been working on that thing?" Holly stifled a yawn.

"Almost a year."

"What are you going to do with it when it's done?" "Put it in a drawer and start another one. I don't do it to have the finished product; I just enjoy making it. There's something very soothing about the rhythm that you pick up."

"Hmm." Holly's eyes followed the silver hook as it slid through a loop and pulled a strand of ecru cotton after it. "Mac and I broke up." Her voice was flat. All the emotion had been drained out by an afternoon of weeping.

"What happened?" The hook never paused and Holly found it difficult to pull her eyes away from the flash of steel.

"He lied to me."

"You haven't been totally honest with him," Maryann pointed out.

"I know. But that wasn't intentional. At least not at first."

"And Mac lied intentionally?"

"The whole thing was one big lie. It was all part of a job he was working on. The fact that I thought I was in love with him was just a big fat bonus." Her words dripped bitterness, and Maryann's eyes skimmed over her friend, seeing the pain that lay beneath.

"I'm sorry it didn't work out."

"So am I."

Holly lay back against the pillows and closed her eyes wearily. She was so tired. Three solid hours of crying had left her with a sore throat, eyes that burned and an empty space inside where all her emotions had been.

She opened her eyes again. "I think I'm pregnant." The crochet hook stilled and Maryann's eyes swept up to Holly's face, worried but unsurprised. "Have you seen a doctor?"

"No, but I don't really need to, at least not to have it confirmed. I'm ninety-nine percent sure already."

"How do you feel?"

"Before this afternoon, I felt wonderful. Now I don't feel anything at all."

"Did you tell Mac?"

"Of course not." Holly stirred, her eyes restless. "I was too busy throwing him out of my life. I'm not going to tell him, either," she added defiantly, anticipating the other woman's next question.

Maryann returned her attention to her crocheting. "Doesn't seem quite fair, but it's your business."

"What he did to me wasn't fair, either," she muttered broodingly.

"So turnabout's fair play?" Maryann arched one brow to emphasize her doubt.

Holly flushed. "It's not really that. I just don't want to see him again. And I certainly don't want to share my baby with him."

"It's none of my business, but it seems to me that the more lies you tell, the more tangled things become. Mac lies to you, you lie to Mac. Pretty soon, it's difficult to separate the truth from the lies."

"I know you're right. I should tell him but I just can't." She rubbed her hand across her forehead. "I feel so tired and worn and angry. I just can't stand to see him again." Her voice rasped with exhaustion. "I just can't," she whispered.

"All right."

The room was quiet, with only the sound of late-evening traffic breaking the stillness. The two women were silent for several minutes, each wrapped in thought. The crochet hook caught the light with each smooth movement.

"Have you given any thought to what you want to do now? Are you going to stay here?"

Unspoken between them was the thought that Mac would come looking for her. Holly had thought of little else once the tears had ceased. Remembering the look on his face when she left him, she wanted to put some distance between them.

"I don't want to stay here. I can't go stay with my parents, not until I've decided what to tell them."

"What about James?"

Maryann's auburn head was bent over her crochet so she missed the flash of pain that went over her roommate's face. The mention of her brother brought back one horrible scene in vivid detail.

"No. I don't want to go to James. He's busy with his job right now and he'd demand all kinds of explanations. Besides, I don't want to leave the country."

The other woman nodded as she lifted her head and let her hands fall idle. "I don't think that would be a good idea. One of the nurses at the hospital comes from Michigan. Her parents are going to Africa for the summer and they've been looking for someone to house-sit their home. They wanted Nancy to do it, but she doesn't want to leave L.A. right now. They were pretty upset about it. They seem to think that it's her duty to drop everything and run home to baby-sit their mansion. I'd tell them to buzz off, parents or no. But Nancy's agonizing over what to do.

"If she could provide them with a respectable house sitter with impeccable references, it would solve her problems and their problems and your problems all at once."

Holly hadn't thought she had any tears left, but she had to blink back moisture as she looked at Maryann's slightly freckled features. "It sounds perfect. Mac couldn't find me even if he wanted to."

Maryann was kind enough to keep her doubts about that to herself. She folded up her crocheting and got to her feet. "Good. I'll call Nancy in the morning but I don't think there'll be any problem. You can probably be on your way in a couple of days."

"The sooner, the better," Holly muttered fervently. "What would I do without you?"

Maryann turned in the doorway and gave her a cynical smile that failed to conceal the warm friendship. "Probably a lot worse."

Dear Holly,

I suppose you're enjoying weather intended for human beings. Something under a thousand degrees with perhaps an occasional breeze to keep things bearable? The weather here has been beautiful, if you happen to be a Venusian native who doesn't need water to survive.

One of the other nurses bought a sunlamp so that she could get a tan without spending hours in the blazing sun. She left it with me while she went to Mazatlan for two weeks and I succumbed to temptation and tried it. Suffice it to say that I burned portions of my anatomy that were never intended to see sunlight. Serves me right for bowing to the current myth that a tan is essential to beauty. I suppose you're sprawled out in the sun feeling smug as you read this. I knew there was a reason we shouldn't be friends.

I'll try to write more later. Right now I'm rushing off on a hot date with a ninety-year-old doctor who thinks the discovery of penicillin is still big news. We're going to have lunch together and he's going to catch me up on the latest techniques.

Drop me a note when you get a chance.

Love, Maryann

❧

Holly folded the letter with a smile. Maryann knew her too well. She stretched her legs out on the lounger and closed her eyes, letting the sun pour over her. She'd make it a point to answer the letter tonight. There was nothing on television and she owed her parents a letter, too.

And James. She hadn't written to James since she got to Michigan a month ago. Maryann had forwarded a letter from him almost two weeks ago and it still sat on the desk, looking at her reproachfully each time she saw it.

From James her thoughts skipped inevitably to Mac. The two had become inextricably intertwined in her thinking. Thoughts of one led to the other, and she resented it. Part of her screamed that she had to warn her brother, to let him know that he might be in danger. But her fingers always fell short of dialing the phone. What could she say? She didn't really know anything. Mac had said they were trying to prove him guilty or innocent, but she didn't have any idea what he stood accused of.

And much as she hated to admit it, there was a little part of her that said that telling her brother what little she did know would be a betrayal of Mac. Consciously she insisted that she owed Mac no loyalty, but the conflict held her back. She tapped Maryann's letter idly against the arm of the lounger. She couldn't put it off any longer. If she didn't warn James and he fell into some trap, she would never forgive herself.

If Holly had hoped that the overseas phone call would answer all her questions, she was disappointed. James seemed at first stunned, then furious, then oddly wary. She was thankful that he didn't question her sources but worried by his unaccustomed preoccupation. She would have expected him to demand details of exactly how she had come by the information.

She put down the phone, feeling more uneasy than ever. James was hiding something. She could hear the reserve in his voice. He had asked why she was in Michigan when earlier she'd told him she'd be spending the summer in California, and she had muttered her excuse about taking care of the house for a friend. He had accepted that without question, which was unlike him. Being almost six years her senior had given him a lifelong conviction that he had the right to the details of her life.

She ran her hands lightly up and down her arms as she left the desk and crossed to the French doors that opened onto an expanse of green lawn. It was twilight, and she could hear the crickets starting up their evening chorus. The air was still, with just a tiny breeze rustling through the leaves of a nearby tree. The dusk still carried a lingering warmth from the sun but Holly felt chilled, even in the soft cotton sweater she wore over her jeans.

What if James was guilty of whatever crime Mac was investigating? She tried to push the thought away but it refused to disappear. She couldn't deny that her beloved older brother was capable of an occasional streak of ruthlessness but she couldn't believe he would do anything illegal. Even if he was tempted, surely he would never risk his entire career.

❧

Holly was no closer to an answer a month later. Two months in Michigan hadn't given her the peace of mind she had been seeking. By mid-August she was restless and edgy, and by the end of the month she felt lonely and desperate. She pounced on Maryann's letters, reading them over and over again. She devoured any tidbit about mutual friends. But what she hungered for most was news of Mac. The problem was that she had made Maryann promise not to mention his name. She hadn't wanted to know if he'd come looking for her. So she reread the letters, trying to read between the lines.

When she had left Los Angeles in such a hurry, she'd had every intention of forgetting Mackenzie Donahue. She would erase him from her mind as if he'd never existed, and she hoped that all the hurt would go with him. Two months later, she had to admit that things hadn't worked out quite like that.

She opened the refrigerator and peered listlessly inside. She had to eat something, if only for the baby's sake. She pulled out a package of sliced roast beef and set it on the counter. A roast beef sandwich would be simple and nourishing.

Holly's hands came to rest on the bulge of her stomach and her eyes softened dreamily. Would it be a boy or a girl? She'd told the doctor she didn't want to know ahead of time. There was a certain delicious tension in the wondering.

Her baby would be a little girl with her heart-shaped face and Mac's eyes or a little boy with Mac's stubborn chin and those brilliant eyes. Funny, she was so sure that the baby was going to inherit Mac's eyes.

She layered the roast beef lavishly on whole wheat bread and poured herself a huge glass of milk. What would Mac say if he could see her now? Would he be pleased about the baby? She swallowed a bite of sandwich that tasted like sawdust and doggedly took another bite.

Two months had given her a different perspective on things and she found that her rage and pain had greatly mellowed. It still hurt to think that he had used her, but some of the things he had said during that horrible scene had taken hold. If James was being investigated by the agency Mac worked for, it was logical that someone would be assigned to see what she knew. If it hadn't been Mac, it would have been someone else.

Did it make it better or worse that it had been Mac who took the assignment? The betrayal hurt more because she cared about him. She had a sudden memory of Mac's face and she knew that he hadn't done what he had without paying a heavy price for it.

Holly got to her feet and rinsed off her dishes. The problem was that she was still in love with him. No matter how much she wanted to hate him, she loved him. And she hurt for him. She winced, remembering his face when she had told him that she'd been using him so that she could get pregnant. She'd hurt him badly with that.

She left the kitchen and climbed the stairs, her movements slow and heavy. Coming to Michigan had been a childish reaction. It wasn't quite as bad as running away to join the circus but it ranked a close second. She had spent two months rattling around in the huge old home and she'd had nothing to do but think.

In some ways it had been good for her. She'd gained distance from the situation, distance that enabled her to see that the faults had not been all on Mac's side. She should have told him right away about the possibility of a pregnancy. Her talk about not worrying him had been a way for her to avoid taking responsibility for her actions.

She undressed and crawled into bed, snapping off the light. Looking up at the darkened ceiling, she swallowed hard against tears. She'd had a right to be angry when she found those files, but had it been her own guilt that made her react so violently? She could have asked for a rational explanation instead of blowing up and saying things that should never have been said.

The truth was, she loved Mac and, no matter what he had done, she couldn't stop loving him. She might hate his career and the things he did for that career but she still loved him. She threw an arm across her eyes, blotting the tears. She felt so alone.

Holly cried herself to sleep and woke up the next morning with eyes that burned, a headache and a thorough disgust with herself. She was behaving like a girl of eighteen instead of a woman of twenty-eight, mooning around and crying when she should have been putting her life back together.

A long shower did a lot to restore her physically though the headache lingered. She fixed herself a hot breakfast and ate every bite of it before carrying a glass of orange juice onto the brick patio and sitting down. A huge elm tree shaded the patio, filtering the sun into dappled patterns on the brick.

She drew a deep breath and forced her shoulders straighter. She had lost a great deal: Mac was gone as surely as if he had died. That last look he had given her had contained something very close to hatred. And she couldn't even blame him. No matter how justified her anger, the things she had said to him had been vicious. He had used her, but it hadn't been by his choice.

Okay, she had counted the losses; now it was time to look at the positive side. She rested her palm against the roundness of her stomach and felt peace steal over Ny. She was carrying a child, Mac's child. If Mac was lost to her, she still had this and it was no small thing. In a few months she would hold a tiny baby that would forge an unbreakable link with Mac, even if he didn't know about it.

Holly smiled, absorbing the pleasure of that thought. She could never look on her relationship with Mac as a loss when she held this precious gift. Mac was part of the past, and no matter how much she wished that things could be different, she knew he would stay there.

The decision faced and made, Holly found the next week, if not happy, at least not miserable. She began to look toward the future, avoiding thoughts of the past with almost grim determination. She had to make plans for the new school year that was to start in just a couple of weeks and she had to calculate when she would have to take maternity leave.

Financially, the picture was brighter than it was personally. She had a few thousand dollars in savings, money that her grandfather had left her that she had kept aside as an emergency fund.

All in all, the future looked reasonably good. No future could look wonderful without Mac, but once the baby was here maybe she wouldn't miss its father so much. And if she repeated that often enough, she just might come to believe it.