Paint It Black (16 page)

“He’s already here.” Cougar accepted the box and glanced toward the banquet room. “Somewhere. So much for the surprise.”

“Give this to him. Tell him I’m sorry, but something came up. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

Cougar frowned. “Okay, but… are you sure you’re all right?”

“Positive. Now I mean it. Go,” I said, and left him standing there.

I slipped through the gathering crowd. A teenage boy held the door open for me, and I half-staggered outside, gulping in the cold night air and fighting the queasiness that pitched my stomach. I fumbled for my keys and tried to remember where I’d parked.

Footsteps slapped the pavement behind me, closing in fast. Exasperated, I whirled. “Cougar, I said—”

Grady snarled at me in the glow of the streetlight. “Cougar? Is that who you’re all dressed up for?”

“What are you—how did you know I was here?” I asked.

“I followed you. I knew that with Abby out of the way, you’d make plans with whoever you’re sleeping around with—”

“Me?” I took a step toward him, but changed my
mind when I caught a whiff of Jack Daniels. Jack made Grady mean. I turned to leave.

“Don’t walk away from me!” he screamed.

CHAPTER
9

H
e shoved me hard in the back. Caught off guard, I pitched forward. Asphalt bit into my palms and knees as I skidded forward and smacked headfirst into a car.

I think I blacked out for a second, because the next thing I knew, someone was yelling and I was mostly on my feet, leaning against a dirty Taurus. I opened my eyes in time to see Grady take a swing at my head.

Due more to the dizziness than reflex, I fell again and he missed. He seized a fistful of my hair and tried to haul me back up, but I’d curled into a fetal position. He didn’t have the leverage to move me.

With a howl, he launched a kick at my ribs. Color exploded behind my eyes, and I gasped for breath. I couldn’t find my purse, and I had the horrible thought
that I was going to die right there, in the parking lot of a building filled with armed officers.

“Here’s what I think about your divorce.” He hurled something at my head, and I watched the paper wad bounce off the tire. Then I saw a black Stamford loafer rear back for another shot at my ribs.

Grady slammed into the Taurus. Bill wretched Grady’s arm behind his back and smacked him into the car again. “You’re under arrest for assault of a federal officer!” he yelled. “Necie, are you okay? Linda, check on Necie. You have the right to remain silent—”

While Linda scrambled toward me, I heard a commotion behind her and looked up. Tucker, Ubi, and some guy I didn’t know had their arms locked around Cougar, trying to hold him back. He was dragging them all, shouting curses at Grady.

“Bill, get him out of here,” Tucker pleaded, his face red with exertion. Cougar surged forward and nearly broke free.

Bill handcuffed Grady and shoved him toward his Expedition. Sirens screamed around the corner, and Bill reversed directions, prodding Grady toward the sound. I watched them load Grady into a squad car.

I jumped when Cougar fell on his knees beside me. He grasped my face in his hands.

“Necie, are you okay?”

His eyes were wide and glassy, his face pale even in
the amber glow of the streetlight. I nodded, then burst into tears.

He hugged me. “Shhh, it’s all right. It’s all right.” He tilted my face toward the light and scowled. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”

“Get back, get back,” Linda told the crowd, and moved to stand in front of us. To Cougar she said, “An ambulance is on the way. They’re caught in traffic.”

“No!” I said, and tried to push myself upright. “No ambulance.”

The crowd seemed to edge closer. I couldn’t take the whispering and staring anymore. “Get me out of here,” I begged Cougar.

Instantly, he stood. “Kim!” he yelled. “Kim!”

She materialized through the crowd, and he tossed her his keys. “I’m taking Necie to the hospital.”

She snagged the keys in midair. “Go. Take care of her.”

Instead of helping me stand, Cougar scooped me up in his arms. I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face against his shoulder. I heard Linda cancel the ambulance on the radio. Tucker hurried ahead of us to open the car door, and Cougar gently deposited me in the seat.

“Where are your keys?” he asked.

“My purse …”

“I’ll get it. Tuck, stay with her.”

Linda had already started our way with it. She handed it to him, and he passed it to me. The crumpled divorce papers poked out of the side pocket. Tucker squeezed my hand and kissed my forehead.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “We won’t let him hurt you again.”

He shut the door. Cougar climbed into the driver’s seat and cranked the engine. He said nothing as we roared away, merely stared straight ahead with a grim expression on his face and clutched the wheel with white-knuckled hands.

“I’m okay,” I said, though my head was pounding. “I don’t want to go to the hospital. Abby’s coming home—”

“Necie, he
assaulted
you. We need to make sure you don’t have a concussion or something.” He glanced at me. “What the hell happened, anyway?”

“I filed for divorce.”

Cougar’s gaze snapped back to me, his lips parting in surprise. A horn blared and he nearly clipped a Trans Am before jerking back into the correct lane.

“I need to go home, Cougar.”

He flipped on the turn signal and swerved into a BP parking lot. He twisted in the seat and motioned me forward. I winced when he pressed around the lump on my head.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two.”

He snatched a pen from the dash and made me track it as he moved it in front of my face.

“Where else do you hurt?”

“My knees. My ribs.”

He gave my knees a cursory examination, then reached for my sides. I’d be lying if I said my body didn’t jolt to awareness when his hands gently pressed and prodded below my breasts. I might’ve had the crap beaten out of me, but I wasn’t dead yet.

“Please,” I said. “I need to go home. Abby will be there soon.”

Cougar shot me another long, hard look, then he sighed. We pulled back onto the road, this time heading in the opposite direction.

We arrived at my house fifteen minutes later. Cougar offered to carry me inside, but I didn’t want the neighbors to see that. I might as well have taken him up on his offer, though, because I found I couldn’t put weight on my left ankle. Cougar stooped, allowing me to wrap an arm around his shoulder, and I hopped to the front door like a wounded crow.

“You got a first-aid kit?” Cougar asked when I hobbled inside.

“Bathroom.” He glanced past me, and I realized he’d never been inside my house. Without asking my permission this time, he swept me in his arms and carried me upstairs.

“There,” I pointed him toward the master bath.

Cougar kicked the lid to the commode shut and plopped me atop it.

“First-aid kit is under the sink.”

Cougar popped open the kit and began laying supplies on the sink. “Do you have a camera? We need to document your injuries.”

“Uh, yeah. Three doors down, on the left. There’s a digital camera on the computer desk.”

He retrieved it and snapped probably a dozen shots. He lowered the camera, pausing long enough to shove a stick of gum in his mouth. “Take off your dress.”

I gave a startled laugh.
“Excuse
me?”

Cougar frowned and tossed me the short white robe hanging on the linen closet door. “I’m serious here. Need to get a shot of your ribs, too. You’re bound to have a bruise there, as hard as that bastard kicked you.”

When I hesitated, he said, “Come on. Leave your underwear on. I’ve seen you in a bikini before. Same difference. I’ll think professional thoughts …” He smiled and cracked his gum. “Mostly.”

I laughed, mostly out of pure panic, and he turned his back to give me some privacy. Whether it was because my hands were shaking, or where they were stiffening, I couldn’t grasp the back zipper.

“Cougar, could you … help?”

I lifted my hair and hopped around to present him
with my back. The floor creaked when he took a step toward me, then his warm breath tickled my neck. My heart seemed to thump with every click of the zipper.

“Okay,” he said, releasing me. “Not looking.”

I shrugged the dress from my shoulders and let it fall to the floor. I slipped on the robe, thankful that, at least, I had on my good underwear. “You can turn around now.”

“Let’s see what we’ve got.” He carefully peeled open one side of the robe. When he saw the ugly purple and red welt, he let loose a stream of obscenities and trailed his fingers over it. I shivered.

“Necie, we probably need to get this x-rayed.”

“Um-hmm,” I said, then snapped back from la-la land. “No. It’s not broken or anything.”

“Could be cracked.”

“Could be, but what could they do for that anyway?”

Cougar took one more picture and laid the camera on the back of the toilet. Then he pulled my robe closed and tied it. I sat back down, and he knelt in front of me. The troubled look on his face made my chest constrict.

“Look,” he said. “I need to know one thing. The reason you’re divorcing Grady…” He grazed his thumb across my swollen lip. “Is it because of this? If I find out he’s been hitting you—”

“No.” I gave a mortified laugh. “This is only the icing on the cake. First, it was his drinking, then I found
out he’d been unfaithful… all this OJ stuff is new.”

Cougar winced. “Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”

“So much has been going on. And it’s just… humiliating.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of. He does.” Cougar shook his head. “But I’ll tell you one thing. He’ll never hurt you again. Now …” He gave me a strained smile. “Let’s check out those knees.”

I held my breath when his long, tan fingers slipped beneath the lacy edge of my stocking and rolled it down. I flinched when he tried to pull it past my knee. Dried blood stuck the nylon to the raw wound, and it felt like he took another strip of flesh when he gave it another tug. He pulled it free and pitched it at the wastebasket.

I sighed. “Huh. Shows what Tori knows. Eighteen-dollar hose doesn’t last any longer than a pair of dollar ones.”

“What?”
Cougar grinned.

“Never mind. Ow. Ouch!” I said when he pulled the other stocking free. It looked like a sad, raggedy snake hanging over the side of the trash can. Cougar placed my bare feet on his thighs and began cleaning my wounds.

After taping the last piece of gauze in place, he rested his hands on top of my feet and waggled his eyebrows. “You got any place else that needs fixing? I’m kinda getting into this playing doctor thing.”

I giggled and he winked. Then he grabbed the
windowsill to pull himself up. The cell phone clipped to his pocket played “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.”

“Excuse me.” He flipped it open and wandered to the hallway. “Hello? Yeah. She’s okay. No, we’re at her place. She didn’t want to go to the hospital. Bunch of scrapes and bruises, but—”

I left him talking and hopped my way to the bedroom to pull on some clothes. No way I wanted Elizabeth to pull up and catch me half-naked with Cougar.

He rapped on the door while I tugged a T-shirt over my head.

“You okay in there?”

“Yeah.” I tightened the drawstring on my shorts and hopped back to open the door.

“That was Linda,” he said, eyeing me. “They’re all worried about you, and cussing me for not taking you to the doctor.”

“I need to be here. My mother-in-law is supposed to be bringing Abby.”

He frowned. “I forgot to check that ankle.”

“Ah, it’s okay.” I wrinkled my nose. “But the next time I get in a fight, I’m wearing my Keds.”

Cougar gave me a sad smile, then leaned to kiss my forehead. I closed my eyes, suddenly very conscious of his proximity and the fact that we were standing about three yards from my bed.

He cleared his throat. Embarrassed at the route my
thoughts were taking, I limped past him to the safety of the hallway. Or so I thought. Once again, Cougar lifted me off my feet.

“You don’t have to carry me,” I said, jolted by the feel of his big, warm hands on the back of my bare legs.

“And you don’t have to act so tough all the time. Not around me.”

Touched, I rested my cheek against his shoulder. That was nice to hear tonight. Cougar had seen me at my best and my worst, and he liked me anyway. Like I’d been looking at it through the wrong end of the telescope, I suddenly saw just how guarded my marriage had been. I’d never really felt free to be myself with Grady, not even in the beginning. He always made me feel like I was lacking somehow, and his attempts to take care of me came off as attempts to control me. I didn’t get that vibe from Cougar.

When I was with him, I felt safe from everything and everyone except myself.

After placing me on the couch, Cougar flopped down beside me and pulled my feet into his lap. He inspected my ankle with the same diligence he had my ribs. “Well, it’s not swollen, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to get some ice on it.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he silenced me with a finger shake and a frown, propped my foot on a throw pillow, and wandered into the kitchen. Closing
my eyes, I tilted my head back on the sofa arm and listened to him rattle around in my freezer.

He startled me when he touched my face. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

I blinked at him. He leaned over me, close enough to kiss, and for a moment, I thought about doing just that. Then a long, auburn hair brought me crashing back to reality. Casually, I peeled it off his shirt and let it fall to the floor. Grady must’ve hit me harder than I thought. I’d forgotten that the second prettiest girl in New Jersey was waiting for Cougar at home.

“I’m fine,” I said, a little louder than I intended.

Cougar backed off and held up his palms. “Sorry.” With a sheepish grin, he said, “You and Angel have made me a nervous wreck. I’m turning into my mother.”

I smiled despite myself. He winked, lifted my foot, and resumed his seat.