Maggy's Child (33 page)

Later, after she was finished with her bath, she dressed in the oversized white T-shirt Nick had given her for use as a nightgown. From its very hugeness (it hung to her knees and could easily have wrapped around her torso twice), she guessed it must belong to Link. She combed her hair, brushed her teeth with a new toothbrush she found in the cabinet, and washed out her underthings for the morrow. A pang of self-consciousness assailed her as she draped the delicate white lace panties and bra over the shower bar, because, after all, she was sharing living quarters with two
men
, even if she had known them both from earliest childhood and was madly in love with one. But she could think of no alternative, so she shrugged and put modesty from her mind. It was, all things considered, a very minor concern.

She was, Maggy realized as she left the bathroom, getting very good at putting unpleasant things from her mind. The thought faintly worried her.

Nick was waiting for her in the narrow hall, his shoulders propped against the wall. As she came out, he straightened and held out a small plastic cup with a noxious-looking green liquid in it. In his other hand was a paper cup.

“Here,” he said. “Take this.”

“What is it?” She regarded the liquid with deep reservations.

“I thought you trusted me.” He actually managed a crooked smile.

“With my life, yes. With my future, yes. With some kind of medicine, no. What is it?”

“Nyquil. It’s the closest thing to a sleeping pill we’ve got. Neither Link nor I suffer from insomnia as a general rule—but he did have a cold two weeks ago.”

“I don’t need any Nyquil.”

“You’ve had a rough day. You need to sleep. And you won’t. Don’t forget I know you, Magdalena. You have trouble sleeping at the best of times. Without this, you’ll be up all night.”

Maggy scowled at him. He was perfectly right, of course, but that didn’t make her any more reconciled to drinking his cough medicine.

“Please?” he added with a coaxing smile. Her scowl deepened, but she took the medicine cup and drank. He removed the empty plastic cup from her grasp and passed her the Dixie cup, which held water. She drank that too, with considerably more pleasure.

“Now that you’ve got me all doped up,” she said when he had disposed of both cups in the bathroom, “where am I supposed to sleep?”

“In here.” He led the way to one of the two upstairs bedrooms. It was small, with the minimum of furniture: a double-size spool bed with crisp white linens and a blue-and-white patchwork quilt, a nightstand with a blue ginger-jar lamp, a dresser with a mirror, a wicker rocking chair. Small seascapes in inexpensive gilt frames hung on the walls. All the furniture had been painted white, probably because, having been collected piecemeal, none of the original finishes matched. Simple white lace curtains adorned the window, drawn over a pulled-down white shade that provided privacy. A blue, pink, and white rag rug covered the wide pine boards of the floor.

What touched her was the state of the bed. It had obviously been freshly made up, because the used linen still lay in a crumpled pile in the hall. The sheets had been changed, the pillows plumped, and the coverings turned back for her. By Nick, whose only claim to domestic
accomplishment was cooking. He had always particularly hated making beds.

“Thank you, Nick,” she said softly, turning to face him, her heart in her eyes.

“For what?” His voice was gruff, but his hand was gentle as it rose to circle her nape.

“For taking such good care of me.”

“Anytime, baby.” He dropped a kiss on the end of her nose and released her, pushing her gently to the room. Then he ushered her over to the bed.

“Hop in,” he said.

She did, because he looked so expectant and because she was too worn out to do anything else.

“Where are you going to sleep?” As she crawled between the sheets, it occurred to her that she was probably taking his bed. Unless he planned to join her—and she didn’t think so. Not Nick. He knew she was not ready.

“With Link. There are twin beds in his room. Don’t worry. We’ve shared a room before.”

She knew that was true. As children, Nick and Link had even shared a bed, because there had been only one in their whole apartment. Their mother had slept on the couch.

Remembering, Maggy snuggled her head deep into the softness of the pillow and stretched out along the bed, feeling physically more comfortable than she had for days. Her aching rib cage had been soothed by time and the hot bath. Her stress-induced nausea had subsided, as had the niggling headache that had accompanied it. Even better, the worst pain of all, her psychic pain, had been eased. She felt relieved now that she had told Nick about that night that had haunted her for years. And her fear of Lyle and for herself and David was no longer so acute.

Nick had said to trust him, and she did. If he said she had nothing to worry about, then she would not worry.

At least, not for tonight.

With that inner vow, Maggy sighed, snuggled, and
turned onto her left side, stretching and appreciating the clean smell and cool feel of the sheets. Nick watched her all the while, his eyes hooded, his expression unreadable. When she was settled at last, he tucked the covers around her and turned off the light.

“Sleep tight, Maggy May,” he whispered and dropped a quick kiss on her mouth. Then he turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

He was barely gone before she was fathoms-deep asleep.

Hours passed. The clock in the kitchen chimed midnight, then one
A.M
. Sometime shortly thereafter, Maggy began to dream.

I
t was the same dream. The one she always had. In the farthest reaches of her mind, Maggy recognized that, knew she was dreaming, even. But it didn’t stop the full-blown terror from assailing her. She was sick with fear even as she saw herself standing on that familiar sandy shore.

A pit yawned not six feet in front of her, a gigantic, malodorous pit that belched black smoke and orange flames. Screams came from the pit, hideous screams that made her want to cringe and cover her ears.

But she did not. Instead, as she always did, she craned her neck to see what was in that pit, and with a shock that turned almost immediately to panic she realized that she was looking into hell: the screams she heard came from the souls of the lost. Endless numbers of men, women, and children held up their arms for succor that never came, and shrieked in agony as flames consumed them. It occurred to her then, with a burst of horror that was almost sickening, that she was about to become one of them: one of the damned.

She heard something behind her and glanced around. What she saw made her heart freeze in her breast. The Devil was running toward her, his pitchfork poised, to throw her into the pit with the rest. She knew if he did she could never escape. He was laughing dementedly, this red Devil complete with horns and lashing tail. But what terrified her more than anything else was his face.

It was Lyle’s face, Lyle’s pale blue eyes.

She ran. And screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

“Magdalena! Magdalena! My God, Magdalena, what is it?”

It was only as she heard those words that she realized that she was sitting bolt upright in the bed she had fallen asleep in hours before and was screaming the house down.

The bedside lamp clicked on. Nick loomed over her, shaking her awake. Link, holding a pistol that looked as if it meant business, hung back in the doorway, darting suspicious glances around the shadowy corners of the room.

“Did you see something? Are you hurt?” Nick’s questions were sharp. Maggy could tell from his pallor that she had scared him badly. His hands gripped her shoulders hard, and his gaze as it ran over her was dark with anxiety.

“It was awful,” she said thickly, still caught up in the horror of it. “Oh, God, Nick, it was so awful.”

“What was?” There was tension in his voice. Across the room, Link opened the closet door and jumped back as if he expected someone to be hiding there.

“The dream.”

“The dream?” Nick repeated, his grip on her shoulders easing as comprehension dawned. “What dream, baby?”

Blindly Maggy reached for him, feeling that she would be safe only if he held her in his arms. He bent toward her, and her hands touched bare, muscled shoulders, slid around his neck and clung, pulling him down with a strength she hadn’t realized she possessed.

“What dream, baby?” he asked again, his voice gentle, as he surrendered to her insistent tugging and sat down on the bed beside her, casting a significant glance at his brother as he did so. Link snorted and abandoned his search of the room, retreating toward the hall and closing the door behind him as he went. As the click of the latch announced that they were alone, Nick transferred his gaze to her face.

“I was so scared.” The words were muttered shudderingly
against his throat. Her hands clutched him as if she would never let him go. Pulling aside the quilt and top sheet, he came fully into the bed with her, drawing her against him, pulling the sheet back over her. His arms came around her shoulders and waist, pressing her to the long, hard length of him. The heat of his body burned all the way down her side. It warmed her, though she still shivered. But then, her shivers were not from cold.

“Can you tell me about it?” He stroked her tumbled hair soothingly.

“It’s Lyle—Lyle’s the Devil.”

“I know.” His voice was dry.

“In my dream,” Maggy insisted, her shivering intensifying as she had another vision of those demon-blue eyes. Nick’s arms tightened comfortingly around her. She wrapped her own arms around his middle as she got as close to him as she could.

“Tell me,” he said again. So she did. She poured out the jumbled story of her nightmare while he held her, stroking her hair, her shoulders, her back. When she got to the part about the Devil’s having Lyle’s face, she trembled and his grip tightened comfortingly. Maggy buried her face in the hollow of his neck as she finished, drawing a deep, shaking breath and closing her eyes.

Nick listened and said nothing, just continued to hold her, his hands never ceasing their gentle caresses.

“I’ve been having the same dream for years,” she concluded in a near-whisper, her lips moving against the warm skin of his neck. He was leaning back against her pillows now, still in a sitting position but more comfortably so, with her huddled against the length of his body. One of his arms encircled her back, while he petted her with his free hand, caressing hair and shoulder and back indiscriminately. Her arms were wrapped around his chest just below his armpits. Both of her hands clutched his bare back. “It scares me to death.”

“Remember,
querida
, I told you you didn’t need to be
scared of Lyle anymore? You’re safe from him forever-more. I’ll protect you from him now, and very soon he won’t be in a position to bother you or anybody.”

“Oh, Nick, are you sure?” Maggy wanted so badly to believe. She had thought she did believe, but in the aftermath of her terror she discovered that there had been chinks in the armor of her faith in Nick all along. After all, Lyle Forrest was a very, very powerful man. Nick was handsome, sexy, charming, strong, intelligent, and absolutely wonderful in every way, but could he really pluck the stinger from a hornet as vicious and cunning as Lyle?

Believing in his words required more than a leap of faith: what was needed was on the order of a swan dive.

“I’m sure.
He’ll never hurt you again
. Say it, Maggy. ‘Lyle Forrest will never hurt me again. Nick says so.’ ”

Maggy hesitated, her nails digging into the strong, resilient muscles of his back. But she believed in Nick’s determination to protect her, if nothing else. As she realized that, she took the plunge. Obediently she repeated, “Lyle Forrest will never hurt me again. Nick says so.”

To her surprise, she felt better as soon as she said it.

Still shivering, she huddled against him, her head pillowed on his chest. Her fear gradually lessened, leaving only a muted memory of what had been heart-thumping terror. Nick’s arms were around her, warming her, soothing her, and his hands stroked her hair.

Slowly, infinitesimally, her body began to relax. She lay against him more heavily, feeling comfortable and safe. The musky scent of him was pure man, and she breathed it in every time she inhaled. Mixed with his own natural scent was the smell of the same soap she had used, and she deduced from that that he had showered not too long before. His chest hair felt crisp against her face.

She moved her hand until it rested against the hard muscles that pillowed her cheek, twining one manicured finger in a wiry black curl. Then, and only then, did it
truly dawn on her that the chest beneath her head was naked.

Maggy frowned slightly, and sneaked a glance down his body. He had pulled the quilt around her shoulders, but hadn’t bothered to cover himself. He was clad only in a pair of white briefs, she saw. The rest of him, chest, legs, feet, everything, was completely bare.

The knowledge should have unnerved her, but it did not. After all, this seminaked man was Nick. She curled closer to the warm comfort of his body, her face snuggling deeper into the soft mat of hair as she allowed her eyes to drink their fill of him.