Maggy's Child (26 page)

Nick knew. Nick cared.

Of their own accord, her hands fluttered up to touch her ribs, her neck.

“Did he hurt you there? Can I unbutton your blouse?”

Maggy was too beset with emotions to do more than nod. She was trembling all over, and her knees felt weak. Nick’s hands very gently pulled her blouse from the waistband of her pants. When he started to undo her buttons from the neck down, Link, like the gentleman no one would ever guess that he was, turned his back.

“He tried to choke her.” The bluish marks on her
neck where Lyle had wrapped his fingers and squeezed elicited that, which was addressed to Link. Then, as Nick’s fingers continued downward and the full purple-and-yellow splendor of her battered rib cage beneath her delicate lace bra was exposed, he swore, viciously. The single word he used was succinct, ugly, and very filthy. Maggy had never, ever heard him use it before.

“What is it?” This came from Link, who still had his back turned.

“He beat the crap out of her.” Nick’s voice was near normal, but his face was not: it was awful. Murder was there in his eyes, in the set of his jaw, in the sudden ashen shade of his skin. Maggy had never seen him look like that in her life, and it scared her. She reached up and took the two edges of her blouse from his grasp, pulling it closed. Their eyes met.

“Where is he?”

There was no doubt whom he meant. Maggy’s gaze dropped, and she tried to fasten her blouse, but her hands shook so much that she couldn’t force the first button through its hole.

“Where is he, Magdalena?” The terrible gentleness was more frightening than any amount of cursing and threats would have been.

“He’s gone. He left early Sunday morning, for three weeks. And he took David.” Her voice broke as she said her son’s name. “They’re looking at boarding schools abroad. Lyle said that if I don’t get rid of you and start behaving myself, he’ll put David in boarding school as early as June and make sure I never set eyes on him again till he’s grown.”

“That son of a bitch.” Link whipped around at this, face apoplectic, fists clenched.

“He can’t do that.” The more reasoned response came from Nick, elicited by the heartbreak that feature by feature claimed Maggy’s face. Her bottom lip quivered, her cheeks crumpled, her eyes filled. When he pulled her
close she went unresistingly. Enveloped by the solid strength of his arms, the warmth and never-forgotten scent of him, the security of him, Maggy leaned her forehead against his chest like a tired child. He spoke into her hair. “Don’t worry, baby, he can’t do that. I give you my word. You trust me, don’t you? He can’t do that.”

“Lyle Forrest can do any damned thing he wants,” Maggy said bitterly into the soft silk of his tie, and to her amazement felt a gush of hot tears spring from her eyes like erupting geysers.

She heard the opening of the door behind her, but she didn’t dare look around. Denied for so long, the tears would not be stopped. They flowed like torrential rivers, complete with sobs that shook her body and helpless, grasping hands that clung to Nick’s shirt.

“I must have left my glasses in here …” a woman’s fretful voice said. Nick, looking over Maggy’s head, stiffened even as the voice broke off in surprise. Maggy pictured how they must appear to anyone who saw them: herself, the young Mrs. Lyle Forrest who wasn’t quite one of
them
, you know, blouse awry, weeping bitterly in the arms of a tall, dark, tough-looking stranger, while another, equally tough-looking stranger stood guard. The juiciness of it would entertain Louisville’s high society for weeks to come—but she couldn’t even bring herself to care.

For the first time in twelve years, her defenses were all gone.

“To hell with this,” Nick muttered. Then, to her surprise, she was swung off her feet and up into his arms. Holding her so that her face and the unbuttoned state of her blouse were hidden against his chest, he carried her from the house.

He was running down the stairs with her, his tread as light as an acrobat’s, when she happened to catch a glimpse, over his shoulder, of the stunned group who crowded through Windermere’s front door to watch. Her
mother-in-law, of course, and Lucy, with their bridge group. Maybe twenty women altogether, all appearing absolutely stunned, all wide-eyed and openmouthed.

Then Link opened the door of the Corvette, and Nick slid in with her cradled on his lap. The door slammed shut. Seconds later Link was beside them, the engine was engaged, and the Corvette purred down the drive.

M
aggy couldn’t help it. She cried all the way to their destination. With her face buried in Nick’s shoulder and sobs racking her, she had only the vaguest sense that they were crossing the bridge into Indiana, then following numerous twisty back roads that led God knew where. Not that she was worried. She trusted Nick with her life, and more.

“Shh, now, it’s all right.” Nick crooned soothing phrases in an endless variation in her ear as he cradled her against him, but still she wept bitterly. He and Link might have exchanged a few words, but if they did the sense of them went over Maggy’s head. All she could do was cry.

When the car stopped at last, Nick slid out with her in his arms without ever once turning loose of her. Which was a good thing, because Maggy continued to sob against his shoulder, her arms wrapped around his neck as though she would never let him go. One of his arms cradled her back; the other was beneath her knees.

“Clear ’em all out, would you?” Maggy heard Nick say to his brother, who had opened the car door for them and still stood there holding it as Nick spoke to him over Maggy’s bent head.

Link’s reply escaped Maggy, but apparently it was in the affirmative, because Nick turned and walked across the grassy yard with her without saying anything more. Maggy got just a fleeting impression of an ancient two-story farmhouse, sadly in need of another coat of white
paint, and perhaps three or four strange men poring over a map on the front porch. They all looked up with identical surprised expressions as Nick came up the shallow flight of stairs. But something, the look on his face or the fact that he carried a helplessly sobbing woman in his arms, prevented them from saying anything to Nick, or at least anything that she could hear. Link must have followed right behind Nick, because the door magically opened for them without any impediments to slow them down. It closed again just as magically. She was borne through a shadowy hall before Nick reached what seemed to be the living room and sank down in a shabby, overstuffed chair with her on his lap.

Cuddled close to him, Maggy sobbed and gulped and wheezed for maybe another ten minutes before the storm began to subside. Nick held her the whole time, murmuring things like “Shhh, baby” and “Hush, now” while he gently stroked her hair and her back.

When it was over, Nick still held her. She lay against him like an exhausted child, body spent and limp, eyes closed. Then she must have fallen asleep, because when she next became rather groggily aware of her surroundings, the room, which had been filled with dusty-looking sunlight, had grown dark. Through an uncurtained window behind the chair, she could see that it was dusk outside.

She was still on Nick’s lap, her face burrowed into the space between his neck and shoulder, her left arm draped around his neck, her right curled between them, her body utterly relaxed. His arms curved around her, holding her against him.

Slowly, exquisitely, Maggy absorbed the details of her position as she came fully awake. Nick’s shoulder was broad and strong beneath her head. Against her ear, she could hear the steady beating of his heart. The smooth cotton of his shirt covered a chest that was wide and solid and radiated heat. Linked around her waist, his arms were
thick with muscle, as capable of defending her as they were of comforting her. Beneath her bottom, his thighs felt reassuringly substantial. He was a strong man, she thought, a man capable of caring for his own. And she was his. She always had been.

Curled against him, Maggy thought,
I’ve come home
. The realization shook her.

She stirred, sat up, and discovered that he was watching her.

As she blinked at him, he stubbed out the cigarette he had been smoking and smiled at her, his eyes tender. His head rested back against the faded floral upholstery, and his body felt heavy and relaxed beneath hers. She thought he looked tired.

“Better?” he asked, and she nodded. With any other man, she would have felt the need to apologize for crying all over him. But this was Nick. He would get no apology, because it was unnecessary: he was her twin soul. Apologizing to him would be like apologizing to herself.

“You must be uncomfortable,” she said. “I feel like I’ve been asleep for hours.”

“About three,” he confirmed. “If the chimes in the kitchen are anything to go by, it just turned six o’clock.”

“You could have woken me, or at least put me down. There’s a couch right here.” And there was, just to the left of the chair, an enormous piece of furniture covered in ancient gold velveteen. For all its apparent age, it looked comfortable enough.

“I could have. If I’d wanted to, I would have.”

“Where are we?” Settling back against him with as little self-consciousness as if he’d been a chair, she glanced around the room.

“Starlight, Indiana. Link and I’ve been staying over here. We’ve rented this farm.”

“Oh.” She felt lazy, almost boneless, as if her strength had drained away with her tears. Her ribs ached, but the pain was nothing compared to what it had been, and she
could ignore it. “Remember when we were kids, we always wanted to live on a farm?”

“I remember.” He smiled a little. With the back of her head resting against his shoulder, she couldn’t really see his face, but she caught the reminiscent curving of the near side of his mouth. His jaw and cheeks were dark with five-o’clock shadow. The roughness of it scraped lightly against her temple as he turned his head. “Your big ambition in life was to feed the chickens every morning.”

“It was a nice, simple ambition, you have to admit.” She sighed as reality began to rear its ugly head. “Too bad I didn’t stick to it. I’ve really made a mess of things.”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed.” His arms tightened around her, but not too tightly, probably because he didn’t want to press her bruised ribs. Despite everything, Maggy felt absurdly safe in his hold.

“I wish I was as sure of that as you. You shouldn’t have carried me off like that. That was Lyle’s mother’s bridge club, for goodness’ sake, and you can bet the story’s already all over town.”

The shit’s going to hit the fan
was what she didn’t say, because she didn’t want Nick to scold her again for swearing. At the moment, she wasn’t in the mood to annoy Nick.

“So? You’re getting a divorce.” It was a flat, blunt statement that left no room for argument.

Maggy said nothing. She could feel him tensing.

“Damn it, Magdalena, you can’t even be considering going back to that bastard! I forbid it, do you hear?”

Despite everything, that made her smile. “You always were bossy.”

His arms dropped away from her waist. Watching his hands grip the arms of the chair until his knuckles turned white, Maggy guessed that he had released her because he could no longer trust himself to keep his hold on her gentle. Beneath her back and thighs, she could feel his body stiffening with anger. So much for not wanting to
annoy him. She didn’t even have to say a word to do it, because he knew what she was thinking. He knew her too darned well.

Her head still lolled against his shoulder, and she turned it just in time to watch bright scarlet color creep high into his cheekbones and the tips of his ears. That, in her experience, meant Nick was starting to get really, really mad.

“I’ll give you a choice,” he said, his gaze sluing down to her face. “You get a divorce, or you get widowed. It’s as simple as that.”

“Nick,” she said gently, “there’s David.”

“To hell with David!”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “Don’t ever, ever say that. He is my son.”

“And you’re his mother,” Nick said through gritted teeth. “How do you think he would feel if he could see what his father did to you? Do you think he’d want you to be beaten black and blue? If the tables were turned, if, in order to stay with you, David had to endure a vicious, violent man using him as his own personal punching bag, what would you want him to do?”

There was a pause. Maggy had never thought of it quite like that before. “That’s different.”

“Like hell it is.”

It was a measure of Nick’s agitation that he was starting to swear freely. He did so only when something really upset him. Swearing, especially in front of women, wasn’t usually one of Nick’s vices. He didn’t like to hear her swear, either. When they were kids, she used to get a kick out of memorizing the most colorful bits of profanity that came her way, just so she could use the words on him and watch him get mad.

“It’s not usually this bad. He’s only beaten me up like this once before, years and years ago. When David was little. Sometimes he’ll slap me if I do something he doesn’t like, or punch me once or twice, or twist my wrist like he did the other day, but nothing as severe as
this in years. He much prefers to control me through fear.”