Maggy's Child (19 page)

“So you’re saying you don’t love me anymore.”

He would never believe her if she denied it outright.

“I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is that I do love you: as a very dear old friend. And that’s all.”

Nick looked at her without speaking for a moment, his expression impossible to read. Unable to hold his gaze for more than a few seconds, Maggy turned her eyes to the dark Indiana shoreline slipping past, on the pretext of watching where they were going. In reality, she hardly saw anything, so focused on Nick and his response was she.

“Bullshit,” he said.

Surprise brought her gaze back to him. His jaw was set
hard, his eyes gleaming green as they met hers. He looked tough, aggressive, and utterly disbelieving. Her teeth clamped together, and her chin came up. She would not let him rattle her. He had always been good at that.

“Believe what you like.” She did her best to feign indifference.

“You already admitted that you don’t love
him.
”

For a moment, she silently cursed her loose tongue. Then she thought,
I couldn’t have pretended otherwise. Not with Nick
.

“So? Does that mean that I automatically have to love you?”

“You’ve always loved me. From the time you were a little bitty girl. You’ve never stopped. You never will.” His voice held cool certainty.

“You always were a conceited thing. Still think you’re God’s gift to women, do you?” The glance she shot him was withering.

“Sometimes.” A teasing grin flickered over his face. “Remember how mad you used to get? When we were teenagers, and I started seeing other girls? You’d throw a hissy fit every time I went out. You’d punch me and kick me and call me everything in the book when you caught me, then stomp off in a rage. Once you even followed me, and slapped the girl I was with. What was her name? Melinda something?”

“Melissa Craig,” Maggy said icily, not realizing how telling her perfect recall of the busty blonde was until it was too late. She bit her tongue, wishing she could stuff the words back into her mouth.

“Ah, yes. Melissa.” He sighed reminiscently. “Sixteen years old and already a thirty-six double D. And hot as a firecracker.”

“She was a slut.” Maggy couldn’t help it. The memory of Melissa Craig hanging all over Nick was still enough to make her blood boil.

Nick grinned wickedly. “You were just jealous because
she was a thirty-six double D and you hadn’t even started to bud.”

“I was only fourteen! And I wasn’t jealous! I was trying to save you from her! I didn’t want to see you make a terrible mistake.”

“From the viewpoint of a sixteen-year-old boy, Melissa Craig was not a terrible mistake. She was sex on the hoof.”

Maggy sniffed. “That’s all you care about.”

Nick shook his head. “Even then, it wasn’t
all
I cared about. If it was all I cared about, I would have had sex with you. Don’t think the thought didn’t occur, with you making goo-goo eyes at me all the time. But you were too young, and I cared about you too much. I wouldn’t have done it. I
didn’t
do it.”

“You did.” Maggy could have bitten her tongue off as soon as the words left it. She didn’t dare look at him after that.

Still, she could feel it as Nick’s focus on her face sharpened. “You were grown-up by then. I held out as long as I could. And, believe me, the last couple of years were sheer hell. You deliberately tried to drive me nuts, didn’t you? Seeing you do your little belly dance was the last straw. I realized then that you weren’t a little girl anymore, and I might lose you if I didn’t stake my claim. So I did.”

Maggy took a deep breath as memories threatened to swamp her.

“I don’t want to talk about it, all right?” Her eyes shifted away from him, to sweep the dark, rolling water as the boat cut through it.

“We had great sex. The best I’ve ever had.”

Every muscle in her body tightened. Her gaze swung back to his face. “Is that what you want from me? More
great sex
?” Her voice mocked him bitterly.

He shook his head. “If that was all I wanted, I would have taken you up on your very interesting suggestion of
the other day. Remember? You offered to let me throw you down on the ground and get my rocks off on you right there and then.”

“Oh, shut up.” Maggy’s face was red.

“I came back for
you
, Magdalena, not sex. Great or otherwise.”

“Then you’re wasting your time.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Don’t you care that you’re causing trouble for me? With Lyle? He hates you, you know.” There was a hint of desperation in her voice.

“Yes, I know.” If he recognized her despair, he did not take pity on her and abandon the topic. “Just what did you tell him about me, Magdalena, to make him hate me so?”

Maggy’s lips compressed, and with the best will in the world her eyes flickered away from his face. “Not a lot.”

“He obviously knows we were once lovers. He wouldn’t hate me so much otherwise.”

“Yes,” Maggy said. “He knows that.”

“Not a wise revelation to make on your honeymoon, I wouldn’t think. Or did you tell him later? You certainly didn’t have time before.”

Maggy gritted her teeth. “What makes you think I told Lyle at all? He could have found out on his own. He could have had me investigated, and found out that way.”

“That’s possible,” Nick said with a shrug. “But you’re too honest not to have told him about us. Did you tell him how much in love we were, or did you only tell him about the sex? In one of those let’s-reveal-our-previous-bed-partners conversations that always turn out to be a mistake?”

“I don’t have to answer that.” She was angry suddenly, and the look she sent him showed it.

“Does he know you married him for his money?” Nick was relentless. When she disdained to reply, he
thought for a second, then answered the question himself. “Of course he does. He’s an asshole, but he’s not stupid.”

Again Maggy said nothing. Nick continued in a musing tone. “So the question is, why did he marry you? You were young, and beautiful, but hardly his type. Unless he fancied some great sex himself. Was that it?”

“Go to hell.”

“What happened to spoil it, I wonder? Did having sex with a man older than your dad become too much of a chore? Or did he lose interest in you?”

“My marriage is none of your damned business.”

“Don’t dodge the question, Magdalena. I want to know what happened.”

“I want a lot of things I’m never going to get.”

Nick studied her for a moment. “When did it start to go bad, baby? Was it soon?” His gentled voice was almost her undoing.

“I am not going to discuss my marriage with you.” Again she fought the urge to crumple, to give up and tell him the whole story. Then the fat would be in the fire, indeed, she reminded herself fiercely. Nick would never let her go back to Lyle—unless she told him
everything
. He very well might then, because he would probably hate her forever after that.

“Is it the money? Is that why you won’t leave him?”

“No!” Nick’s relentlessness was goading her into too-hasty replies. And he knew it, damn him, just as he knew her. It was the effect he was hoping for, to get at the truth. “Well, yes. Partly.”

“Partly?” The breath Nick drew in was audible. “I have money now, Magdalena. Not as much as he has, but enough. I’ve done well over the last twelve years. I could keep you in comfort. And the boy, too.”

“His name is David.”

“All right, David. You don’t have to be afraid that I wouldn’t welcome him. I would.”

Hearing Nick say David’s name was almost more pleasure
than pain despite the circumstances. Maggy thanked God for the darkness that kept Nick from reading the more subtle nuances of her thoughts as they flickered across her face. He knew her so well that he might guess.… He must never guess.

“Nick—” Maggy took a deep breath and tried again. “Nick, I can never leave Lyle. Please just—accept that, for all our sakes, would you?”

He was silent for a moment. Tearing her eyes from him, peering upriver to see if she could spot their destination, Maggy hoped against hope that her flat statement would be enough to persuade him to let the subject drop. Of course, she should have known better. She did know better.

“Now, that’s a curious choice of words,” he said. “You can never leave him. Not that you won’t, not that you don’t want to, but that you can’t. Are you afraid of him?”

That hit so close to home that Maggy flinched. Terrified that Nick might see and correctly add two and two to guess something of what she had been through over the past twelve years, she hurried into speech, hoping to throw him off the scent.

“No, of course not!”

“Now why doesn’t that convince me, I wonder? Does he hurt you, Magdalena? If so, all you have to do is tell me. Believe me, he won’t do it again.”

His voice was so soft that Maggy felt a shiver run down her spine. Nick would murder Lyle with his bare hands if he ever learned the truth. Nick had always taken care of his own.

Only she wasn’t his any longer. She had to convince him, and herself, of that.

“Nick.” She took a deep breath. “It’s not the money and it’s not that I’m afraid of Lyle. It’s more complicated than that.” She hesitated, and decided to go for a partial truth. “It’s David. David worships Lyle.”

“So? Lyle would still be his father. The boy could continue to see him.”

Maggy shook her head. “Lyle would fight for custody. And he would probably win. Every judge in Kentucky is his friend. If I left Lyle, I would in all likelihood lose David. I couldn’t bear that.”

“I always knew you’d be a hell of a mother.” The words, uttered after a brief pause, were grudging.

Maggy’s breath caught in her throat. She was afraid to look at him.

There was another, longer, pause. Maggy eased the rudder over, heading toward the center of the river as the distance between their boat and the barge lessened. It was never wise to get caught between a barge and the shore. The barge’s wake was enough to push a craft as small as
The Lady Dancer
into the rocks.

“So tell me about him—David.”

The question was unexpected. Maggy glanced over at Nick, and hesitated a moment. Then she said slowly, “He’s—a great kid.” She took a deep breath, then continued. Why shouldn’t she tell Nick something, just a little something, about David? “He does well in school, and everybody likes him, and he’s handsome and funny—oh, and he is a wonderful artist! You should see some of his paintings! His teachers say he has a really exceptional talent.”

“He must get that from the Forrests, then. As far as I recall, you couldn’t draw so much as a stick figure.”

“No, he didn’t get it from me.” Maggy’s voice was constricted.

“You love him a lot.” It was a statement, not a question.

“He’s the joy of my life.”

“I’m glad you’ve had him, then, all these years. I would hate to think of you without anything to bring you joy.” Nick’s gaze searched her face. “You’ve been unhappy, haven’t you?”

“Sometimes.” The admission, massive understatement though it was, was such a relief that Maggy felt it leave her like a weight lifting off her soul.

“You did it for the money.” It was a flat statement.

Maggy barely hesitated. “Yes.”

“I understand. Offered the same chance, I probably would have done the same thing myself.”

“Thank you for saying that.” She managed a small smile at him. For a moment neither of them said anything else. Then Nick spoke softly.

“The day before you ran off with him, we’d had a fight, remember? A real humdinger. I brought you a present—a winter coat, because you didn’t have one—and you looked at it and started screaming that I had stolen it and was going to end up in prison like my brother and you wanted more out of life than to be hooked up with a hood like me. Your reaction floored me. I’d brought you lots of things before, and you’d never questioned where they came from. Hell, you knew.”

“Yes, I knew,” Maggy agreed softly, remembering the scene in vivid, excruciating detail. It had been a beautiful coat, fine black wool with a dyed-to-match fox collar and cuffs, and a label from an exclusive store. She’d known instantly that it had cost the earth. She’d also known that Nick, who had worked construction when there was work and done whatever he could, legal or not, to earn a buck when there wasn’t, was not able to afford a coat like that. He’d stolen it, just as he had stolen lots of things for her in the past, and one day he was going to get caught stealing and go to prison like Link. But, although she had tried her best, he could not be brought to understand that. Presenting the coat to her, he had been cocky in the way a young man is cocky, proud of himself and his gift and eager for her to try it on despite the raging summer heat. She had taken one look, thrown the coat in his face, and followed it with her shoe and harsh words.

He continued: “So I came over the next night to see if
you were over your little snit. You weren’t there, but your father was sitting at the table, guzzling Jack Daniel’s and crying. You know how he always used to cry about your mom when he drank? That’s what I thought he was doing. It took me about twenty minutes to pry out of him that you weren’t home because you’d run off to Indianapolis to marry some rich guy he had never even met. That was why he was crying.”

Nick glanced at her to see if she would say anything, but Maggy couldn’t. She had heard the story of Nick’s questions and his rage from her father. In her mind’s eye she had pictured the scene a thousand times.…

When she remained silent, Nick went on. “I went nuts when your father told me that. I couldn’t believe it. When I finally did, I jumped in my car and hightailed it for Indianapolis as fast as I could go. The damn thing threw a rod fifty miles out of Louisville. No way was it going another inch. I hitched the rest of the way. It was after midnight when I got there. I knew that if your old man had his facts straight I was too late. I thought you might be spending your wedding night in a hotel in the city. I went to a couple of them, raised hell when they wouldn’t let me look at their registers. Finally one of the managers called the cops, and I got arrested. I was in jail for a week, on a charge of disturbing the peace. I didn’t have any money for bail.”