Maggy's Child (25 page)

What had kept her in bed for three days was not the flu. He wanted to see her for himself, make sure she was essentially all right and check out how bad the damage was. Then he was going to make sure it never happened again. Whatever it took.

“If you come, I won’t see you.”

“Oh, I’m coming, Magdalena.” His tone was gentle but inexorable. “You can either see me, or call the cops to come meet me at your front steps and haul me off to jail. That’s the only way you’re going to get rid of me without telling me in person to go.”

“I’m not dressed, Nick!”

“So get dressed,” he said grimly, and pushed the disconnect button.

Link was frowning at him. “We got a meeting at the Gait House in less than an hour.”

“Cancel it.”

“It’s with those dudes from Lexington, man. Everything’s all set up.”

“To hell with that! I said cancel it.”

“Shit,” Link said and picked up the phone. Seconds later he was explaining to someone that his brother was in bed with the flu. Nick was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he didn’t even wince at the wimpy excuse.

“Didn’t you ever learn to take no for an answer, little brother?” Link asked as he hung up after telling whoever was on the other end that they’d call to reschedule. “From what I could hear, Magdalena don’t want to see you.”

“He’s been knocking her around. That bastard’s been knocking her around.”

“What?” Link cast him an incredulous look.

“You heard me.”

“Son of a bitch!” Link’s face slowly reddened. He glanced at his brother. “You sure?”

“Pretty damn sure. Step on it, would you?”

“You got it.”

For a little while both men were silent. Then Link flashed Nick a look. “She didn’t say so, did she? Maybe you got it wrong.”

“Maybe. I don’t think so.”

“You gonna beat the crap out of him?”

“What do you think?”

“Hell, yes.” Link sounded almost cheerful suddenly as he pulled off the exit marked River Road. “You need any help, you let me know.”

“I won’t. But thanks.”

“Anytime, little brother. With pleasure. Any asshole that hits on our baby girl’s gonna have to answer to me.”

“My sentiments exactly.”

They didn’t speak again as they drove alongside the Ohio. When they reached Windermere’s driveway, Nick was surprised to find that the gates were open. He and
Link exchanged glances. Link shrugged, and pointed the Corvette up the hill.

When they emerged from the trees onto the flat ground at the top that served as the formal lawn, the first thing that caught their attention was the dozen or so fancy cars parked around the circular part of the driveway just in front of the house.

“Don’t look like none of them belong to cops,” Link said with a fleeting grin.

“Nope.” Nick had been thinking the same thing.

The cars were all parked on the left side of the pavement with two wheels in the grassy circle, so there was room for Link to pull the Corvette past them right up to the foot of the front steps. Both of them got out.

“Hey, at least we’re dressed for payin’ calls on rich folks.” Coming around the trunk of the car, Link glanced down at himself, then over at his brother.

Until that moment, Nick had forgotten they were both wearing suits.

“Yeah,” he said, and with Link behind him headed up the steps toward the imposing front door.

T
hank God Lyle had barely touched her face. The yellowing bruises on her right cheekbone and above her right eye had been easily covered with makeup and were invisible even under close scrutiny. Reassured on that point, Maggy turned away from the elaborate gilded mirror that hung on the yellow-silk-covered wall of the front sitting room. The cut on her head where he had kicked her was hidden beneath her hair, which was brushed into shining waves around her face. The bruises on her neck where he had strangled her were concealed by the high ascot tie of her white silk blouse. Her loose-fitting navy cardigan covered the slight swelling over her ribs, where the damage from his fists and feet was the worst. Tight navy pants gave the illusion that she had nothing to hide. As Maggy completed this mental inventory of her appearance, she grew increasingly confident that Nick wouldn’t find a visible sign of what Lyle had done to her. Still, she clasped her fingers together and twisted them as she walked to one of the big windows overlooking the driveway. Nick knew her so well, and he already suspected. Would he somehow be able to sense what he couldn’t see?

A bright red Corvette was just pulling up to the top of the drive. Maggy knew that it was Nick’s, though she had never seen his car before. None of the Forrests’ acquaintances would drive something that flashy, and, anyway, Nick had always wanted a red Corvette. At the memory,
the ghost of a smile just touched her lips before vanishing. It belonged to another girl, another lifetime. It was not hers to enjoy.

She had to convince Nick that he must go away, now, today, and not come back.

If she didn’t, the price she would have to pay would be unbearable. It would break her heart.

Her throat ached with unshed tears as she watched him slide out the passenger side door and stand up. It was a gorgeous spring day, all blue skies and shining sun and grass that was newly green. Bright yellow daffodils and scarlet tulips vied for position around the tinkling fountain in the grassy center of the drive. Through the window she could see Nick clearly. He was dressed, most improbably for him, in a charcoal-gray suit with a gleaming white shirt and maroon tie. With his black hair combed into smooth waves and his bronzed cheeks freshly shaved, he looked like an impossibly sexy banker, or lawyer. He also looked very familiar, and very, very dear. The ache in her throat intensified. For an instant the pain that attacked her heart and soul far exceeded anything her body had endured.

But she could not cry. She would not cry. Crying did no good at the best of times, and just now, when Nick was taking the front steps two at a time, it would be a disaster. Not for nothing had she been a Forrest for twelve long years, she thought with a deliberate lifting of her chin and stiffening of her spine. If it had done nothing else for her, it had taught her the fine art of self-control.

The doorbell rang. She turned away from the window, crossing nervously to stand before the marble fireplace at the opposite end of the room from the door. The green velvet upholstery of the small wing chairs on either side of the hearth beckoned, but sitting was a chancy proposition. She could sit with relative ease, if she held on to the chair arms for support, but the soreness in the muscles
over her rib cage made her movements tellingly stiff when it was time to stand up.

“Mrs. Forrest is in here.”

She heard Louella’s voice, stiff with disapproval, an instant before one half of the double doors opened. Nick was deep in the doghouse with Louella after three days of persistent phone calls and his final less-than-tactful message, and the thought of him suffering her black looks was vaguely funny. Thus Maggy had a small smile playing around her mouth when Nick strode into the room.

He stopped short at the sight of her, his eyes running comprehensively over her. What he suspected was there in his face, in the grim set of his mouth, in the aggressiveness of his stance. But she was confident that there was nothing for him to see, no way he could
know
, and thus she was able to face him coolly.

Link was behind Nick, half a head taller, impossibly broad. Funny, she’d been so blinded by Nick that she hadn’t even noticed Link getting out of the car or coming up the steps. But his presence at what should have been a private meeting told Maggy something: Nick’s suspicions were so strong that he had come prepared to take Lyle apart.

If only it were possible. But it was not. Lyle wasn’t even here, and if he had been she still couldn’t allow it. There was David to consider.

Her heart quivered at the thought.

For David’s sake, she had to play her role brilliantly. Why did it seem so impossible? She’d played it many times before.

But never with Nick. Nick, who knew her so well …

Louella still hovered in the doorway, clearly uncertain about whether or not to leave Maggy alone with two such unprecedentedly pushy visitors. Maggy caught her eye and nodded. Louella sniffed and closed the door.

“So I’m telling you to your face: go away,” Maggy said
to Nick as soon as the three of them were alone. The best defense was a good fast offense, as she had learned the hard way when she was a little girl. Head up, eyes unflinching as they met his, she was as coldly unwelcoming as it was possible to be. She didn’t move from her stance beside the fireplace. If her fists were clenched, he would never know it because they were thrust deep into the pockets of her cardigan.

“Whatever happened to ‘Hello, come in, sit down’?” Far from being intimidated, Nick moved toward her with the prowling intensity of a cougar. Though it was bright outside, the early-afternoon sun struck the house in such a way that the room they were in was murky with shadows, which was one reason why she had chosen it. His eyes gleamed green through the soft gloom as they roamed every inch of her face and body, searching for visible evidence that he would not find.

“You said if I told you to your face to go to hell, you’d do it. So I’m telling you: go to hell.” She yielded not an inch.

He was close, by then, standing in front of her looking down at her almost quizzically.

“You know how much I hate to hear you swear,” he said, a faint glimmer of humor softening his face, which until that moment had been set in unremittingly harsh lines. “I ought to wash out your mouth.”

Maggy pursed her lips, thrown for a moment by this unexpected flicker of levity in the face of a situation that she considered deadly serious. “Why do you insist on making this difficult? I’m telling you I don’t want you here. Please leave and don’t come back.”

“You almost sound like you mean it.”

“I
do
mean it! What do I have to say to convince you? Shoo, scram, beat it, take a hike!”

“He hurt you, didn’t he, Magdalena?”

She had not expected a full frontal attack. The very gentleness of his question was almost her undoing.

“No! I mean, I don’t know what you mean! You said you’d go away!”

“I lied,” Nick said, coming closer until he practically loomed over her, his eyes searching every millimeter of her exposed skin with frightening intensity. The fireplace behind her gave her no room to retreat.

“Get out of my face, you pigheaded bully!” Cornered, she lashed out.

“Tell me the truth, Magdalena. This is me, Nick. I’m on your side, remember?” His hands came up to grasp her head, burrowing deep into the heavy fall of hair behind either ear as he tilted her face so that, short of closing her lids, she had no choice but to meet his gaze.

The pain as his fingers encountered the laceration in her scalp was so sudden, so unexpected, that Maggy was taken by surprise: she yelped and jerked her head from his grasp.

Their eyes met. For a moment neither of them said anything, just stared at each other in a kind of mutually horrified comprehension.

The thought that ricocheted through Maggy’s mind was
There’s no point in lying now
. What he knew was there in his face, in the immobility of his stance, in his suddenly suspended breathing.

Then, “Come here,” Nick said grimly, reaching for her.

“Don’t!” Hopeless as it was, her every instinct screamed at her to resist. His hands cupped her shoulders, pulled her close.

“Don’t be a fool, Magdalena.” Nick’s voice was impatient and tender at the same time as he dealt with her stiff resistance with the minimum of necessary force. Link, looming up behind him, scowled down at Maggy over his brother’s shoulder.

“Let him look, baby girl.” Belying his expression, Link’s words were soft. “We both love you, remember?”

She did remember, and the remembrance was what
sapped her strength at long last. She had no will to resist as Nick carefully searched through her hair, parting it at last to expose the cut that she knew must be awful to look at, long and jagged and discolored. It had bled profusely, so profusely that before Lyle had left her he’d thrown her a towel and ordered her to wrap it around her head so she wouldn’t bleed all over and ruin the expensive carpet.

“Would you look at this,” Nick said to Link. Link looked, and the brothers exchanged grim glances.

“Where else did he hurt you,
querida
?” Nick let her hair drop back into place. Like his voice, his hands were very gentle.

“It doesn’t matter. Really.” It was all she could do to hold on to her composure. Now that Nick knew, she felt weak suddenly, as if her skeleton had turned to jelly. And she knew why: with one of the deepest, darkest secrets of her life suddenly out in the open, the steely resolve that had enabled her to hide so much all these years was draining away, as if her strength of will were a container that had unexpectedly sprung a leak.

“It matters to me.
You
matter to me.”

She did. She had no doubt about that. It was there in his face, his voice, his hands. She felt shaky suddenly, as the emotions she had battled for years to control broke for the surface. At last someone knew, and cared, what she had suffered.