01 Do You Believe in Magic - The Children of Merlin (9 page)

He didn’t care about her or
anybody else. Hadn’t she had enough of the “love-’em-and-leave-’em”
type with Phil the Rat? She didn’t want to be abandoned again. And
she’d been fighting against becoming the one to abandon other
people all her life just so she wouldn’t be like her mama. Why else
stay with Elroy?

No connections.
That was
her motto. You couldn’t be either left or a leaver if you didn’t
care.

But maybe she’d been looking at
this the wrong way.
Hey, lighten up.
Hanky-panky with a
good-looking guy might be just what the doctor ordered.
Tris
seemed interested, against all odds. At least enough for a
one-night stand. Two could play his game. Didn’t mean she
cared.

Who was she trying to kid?

She was already obsessed with
Tris. Any way you looked at it, he’d be a disaster for her. She’d
be hurt when he left. And her only protection against that was
leaving first.

So
not doing
either of
those.

Yet here she was. Looking for
the West Discharge Circle.
Stupid.

There it was, behind some
construction signs. Hospital was building a new tower, even in a
down economy. Not surprising. She knew firsthand about health care
bills.

Two cars were parked in the
circle: a yellow cab and some red classic car. Tris Tremaine was
standing with one crutch under his good arm, a wheelchair abandoned
on the sidewalk. A woman in a clingy red dress to match the car was
pulling on the arm in his sling. Tris was resisting, but he was at
a disadvantage. Mama? But what mother would treat her son like
that? A mother just like Elroy, that’s who.

Maggie eased the Ford up just
inside the two cars on the circle. “Get in the car,” the woman
hissed. Tris looked about to fall. That would
so
not be
good.

“Look, whoever you are,” Tris
protested. The baritone rolled through Maggie with more force every
time she heard it. “I just want to get to the Motel Six over on
Wells. A cab is fine.” The cabby got out of his cab, looking
confused.

So the woman wasn’t his
mama.

“Your mother trusted me to take
care of you,” the woman said.

“I doubt that,” Tris said,
looking even more exasperated. “You tell Kemble to go to hell.”

Maggie stopped the truck. There
was just room enough for Tris to squeeze between the two other
cars. She leaned over and pushed open the truck door. It hit the
red car’s bumper, bringing a wince from Tris.

“If you’re looking for a ride,
you can get in,” she called.

“Butt out, whoever you are,” the
woman spat. “He’s coming with me.”

Tris looked relieved when he saw
her. “I think I’ll take you up on that offer.”

Maggie hopped out of her side of
the truck and strode over to the sidewalk. “Let me get these.” She
picked up both his bags in her left hand. “You just get yourself
in.”

“You don’t want to do this,
sweetie. I’ve got someone waiting for you that you’re going to want
to see.” The woman was almost pleading as she grabbed for Tris.

That was it. Maggie shoved the
woman’s alligator-skin chest. “Don’t mess with him. He made his
choice.”

The woman came raring back for
more.
Bet this one never had to land a right cross to her
father’s jaw
. “Come and get it, slag,” Maggie hissed.
Hope
it isn’t really his mother’s friend.

A security guard strode over
from the hospital parking lot. “There a problem here?”

“No, officer,” Maggie said,
turning on a smile. “Mr. Tremaine is trying to get into my truck so
I can take him home and this … lady is impeding his progress.”

The guard loved being called
“officer.” His chest expanded visibly. He turned to Tris. “That
true?”

“Near enough.”

“Well, then, you just let him get into
the truck.” He herded the woman back toward the sliding hospital
doors. “Nice problem to have,” he murmured to Tris on his way by.
“Two women fightin’ over you.” He glanced to Maggie and handed Tris
the crutch the woman had been holding. “You made the right
choice.”

*****

Had he? Tris hobbled over to the
open truck door. His leg throbbed and screamed at him, making it
difficult to think. Vertical wasn’t good. His ribs ached, his head
ached. His shoulder felt huge. But when he saw Maggie, he knew that
her Ford was exactly where he belonged. Maggie threw his things in
the bed of the truck, but not before examining the medicine bottles
in his discharge kit. She pocketed one vial and went round to the
driver’s door. That was one good thing about her. She didn’t
hover.

One? There were so many good
things about her that he hadn’t been able to get her out of his
mind since she’d visited Tuesday night. That was bad. He heaved
both crutches into the truck bed and pushed himself up onto the
bench seat. She levered the seat back as far as it would go. He had
to physically pull his bad leg into the truck. There was just
enough room to straighten his leg if he pushed back against the
seat and braced his foot against the front floorboard. An inch
taller and he wouldn’t have made it, but bending his knee to let
his broken leg go vertical would be excruciating. Gravity was a
pain in the neck. Or leg, as the case might be. He pulled the door
shut and leaned back, trying to breathe, eyes closed for a minute
to gather himself against the pain. He felt the truck pull
away.

When he opened his eyes, he
rolled his head to look for Maggie. The bench seat was too far back
for her. She sat on the edge to reach the pedals. And she couldn’t
wear a seatbelt. That was dangerous. Well, it wasn’t far. “There’s
a Motel Six on Wells Avenue. I called. They got a room.”

“I am absolutely
not
taking you to a motel,” she said between clenched teeth.

Thinking was an effort with his
leg throbbing. “I don’t have any place else to go.”

She gave him and “I knew it,”
look.

“Really, Motel Six is fine.”
Maybe it was where he belonged. Maybe that’s all there was ever
going to be in his life.

“So … what exactly?” she asked,
the words seeming torn from her. “You going to take pain pills and
order take-out for two months while you mope around and watch TV
until your cast can come off? Thought TV was driving you bats.”

He looked out at the parade of
strip malls. He had no idea how to answer her.

She turned left. Was she taking
him to the motel? He had no idea where he was, and as it turned
out, no idea where he was going. “Okay. You got a big family,” she
said at last. “And you don’t like them much or they don’t like you.
So what? You telling me not a single one of them would take you in
for a while, or at least look in on you if you had a place
nearby?”

That wasn’t the problem. But
showing up at the family compound all busted up and needing help
was too humiliating for words.
What’s the opposite of “prodigal
son”?
Listening to his father rant about what he should be
doing with his life, seeing in Kemble’s eyes all those smug
assumptions about him, confronted daily by his mother’s bullshit
tarot readings, their belief that they were all special. His
mother’s belief that
he
was special. Which he wasn’t. He was
a grease monkey who liked to build machines. End of story.
Somewhere out there was the real Tremaine baby who’d been changed
in the hospital for the son of a hairdresser and a mechanic.
Sometimes he wished he could trade places with that real Tremaine
baby again. But it was too late for that.

“I’m not going back in this
shape,” he muttered.

She took his evasion for an
admission that at least one member of his family would be there for
him. “Like you have a choice. I’ll take you back to the hospital
before I take you to a motel. Your family’s in LA, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’ve got a load of
mustangs to take to a camp down in Anaheim Hills. You can hitch a
ride with me.”

Ten hours in a truck with
Maggie. Torture. Heaven?

“What day is it?” he asked
suddenly, dread and hope warring in his chest.

“Thursday the sixth.”

Damn. He could still be in time
for his mother’s birthday. The gears of the universe seemed to
mesh, chunk into place and start grinding toward some purpose that
had nothing to do with what he wanted. Couldn’t have it both ways.
Couldn’t have ten more hours with Maggie unless he headed back into
purgatory with his family. He let his head sink forward on his
chest. All roads led one place, no matter how hard he’d been
running in the opposite direction. Why resist? He was now
officially going to be one broken-down, pathetic, prodigal son.

“You okay?” she asked in a small
voice.

“Yeah. Probably. Maybe.” He took
a deep breath. Maybe after he’d seen them again, he could get them
out of his system and his life once and for all. He slid a glance
to Maggie. Some little flutter of rightness batted at the
nothingness in his heart. Ten hours. “So, yeah, I’ll hitch a ride,”
he muttered. “If it isn’t too much trouble.”

Maggie looked resigned to taking
him. Not exactly encouraging. “Okay,” she said. “So we’ve got to go
back and pick up the horses. That’s three hours. Plus, you need
some lunch. We’ll stop in Fallon. That means it’s too late to start
today. I’m not doing an all-nighter just to get to LA in time for
morning traffic.” She sighed. “You better spend the night at
Elroy’s.”

Well, she
sure
wasn’t
excited about that. “I’ll get a motel in Austin. Just for one
night.”

She looked up at him with relief
and nodded. As if to change the subject, she said, “So who was the
woman at the hospital? Easy conquest?”

Boy, she sure wasn’t a member of
the Tris Tremaine fan club. It didn’t actually have any members,
even Tris Tremaine. “I have no idea,” he snapped. “She said my
mother sent her.”

“You don’t think so?”

Tris harrumphed. “Not my
mother’s type. Probably the fucking Prince of Wales.”

Maggie blinked. “Who?”

“My oldest brother. Kemble,” he
said, disgusted.

“She said there was someone
waiting for you. Maybe that’s Kemble?”

“Nah. He sent her so he didn’t
have to come.” That didn’t hurt. He wouldn’t want Kemble to see him
like this. So who
was
waiting for him? He had no idea.

“Weird.” Maggie pulled onto
Highway 80. “I mean I can see a woman coming on to you. But.…” She
coughed and pretended to look in her side mirror.

“But not in my current
condition? Maybe she wanted to play Nancy Nurse.” He wanted to see
Maggie’s reaction. Suddenly the possibility of Maggie playing Nancy
Nurse with him was.… Uh-oh. Even on enough Vicodin to float a ship?
If he wasn’t careful, he was going to have a raging hard-on all the
way to LA.

She blushed crimson. Oh, that
was very, very cute. He imagined that blush on her chest, her
breasts. He’d have to make her blush a lot more.
When have you
ever liked them cute?
Hard as nails, yes. Those starlets were
harpies. He suspected Maggie thought she was hard as nails. Her
blush said she wasn’t.

“I’m sure you have women hanging
all over you,” she said tightly, disapproving.

He hadn’t had a woman in eight
months and before he met a feisty, bull-riding girl in a diner,
he’d had no desire for one. But her assumption made him angry. His
family assumed they knew how bad he was too. He
was
what
they all assumed. Couldn’t deny that. He’d fought, drunk, done
cocaine with those starlets, and fucked anything that moved. But
maybe they pushed him into it by assuming, because after all, what
difference did anything make if they all thought the worst of him
no matter what he did? In the end his father assumed he’d half
killed a man who took a picture of him. Didn’t even give Tris a
chance to admit it, let alone tell him it wasn’t true. Probably
just assumed Tris would lie. He tried to swallow his anger.

“Yup,” he nodded, leaning back
in the seat again and closing his eyes against her. “They’re
usually just crawling all over me. Easy pickin’s.”

Let her think what she
wanted.

CHAPTER SIX

“Let me get this.” Tris reached
for the check the waitress dropped on the table before Maggie could
get it. He looked really tired. He had his leg propped up on a
chair. His crutch leaned against the seat of the booth beside him.
His shaving job was a little erratic around the scabs. But he was
still the most beautiful man Maggie had ever seen. And knew it. And
took advantage of it shamelessly by his own account.
“Easy
pickin’s,” my ass.
He had tomcat written all over him. He
fished inside the pocket of his jeans for his wallet. It made him
thrust his hips up. That little maneuver made her clench in
places….
Down, girl.
She swallowed.

“Least I can do is take care of
meals and split the gas with you,” he continued.

Maggie’s attention was drawn
back to watch him drop bills on the table. He seemed pretty flush
for a wandering tomcat biker. Oh, he probably got scrap money for
his cycle. “I’d be making the trip anyway. An extra two hundred
twenty-five pounds is a drop in the bucket when I’m hauling three
thousand pounds plus of horseflesh. You can split meals if you
want.”

“Nothing doing. Half gas and all
meals. I’m gonna be a pain in the ass, stove up like this. You
should get paid for your trouble.”

She suppressed a grin. “You?
Pain in the ass? At least with a broken leg you can’t loom.”

His smile was almost too small
to see. “You got the wrong impression.”

“Wrong impression? I thought you
were some kind of a stalker.” She sobered. “Why
did
you come
out to the sale?”

He shrugged his good shoulder.
“Nothin’ better to do.”