Maggy's Child (39 page)

She would face the music when she had to, and not one second before. After twelve years of misery, was such a brief respite too much to ask of life?

So Maggy smiled at Nick, rather tremulously but still a smile, and answered, “The question’s about twelve years late, but the answer’s yes.”

His eyes narrowed. He straightened away from the beam and was in front of her in two lithe strides. His hand came up to cup her chin, tilting her face up to his. He studied her face with sober attention, as if he could see through her flesh and blood and bone to the thoughts inside. The notion scared her. But she did not shrink away, did not by so much as a flicker of an eyelash reveal her inner turmoil. Instead, hoping to distract him, she caught both sides of his flannel collar to pull his face down to hers.

“I’ll marry you as soon as I’m free,” she promised, going up on tiptoe to press a soft kiss to his hard mouth. It was not a lie, she consoled herself. She meant every word.
She would marry him—with great joy—
when
she was free, and if he still wanted her.

She would not allow herself to consider that both the
when
and the
if
were very big qualifying words.

He kissed her thoroughly, then let her go.

“I suppose you realize this means you’ll have to get rid of the rock,” he said.

For a moment Maggy was bewildered. Then she followed his gaze, which was fastened on her hand. The huge diamond that was Lyle’s mark of possession glittered even in the muted daylight of the loft. She was so accustomed to its presence that she had forgotten it was there.

“We could always pawn it,” she offered with a mischievous glimmer. In the old days pawning things had been a way of life. Usually, but not always, they’d managed to retrieve the hostaged item before it was irretrievably lost.

Nick grinned but shook his head. “Not permanent enough. You might change your mind.”

“Oh, you want something permanent?” An idea began to take shape in Maggy’s mind. “I’ll show you something permanent.”

Pulling the ring and its matching wedding band from her finger, she scooped up a handful of hay and entwined the coarse strands through the tiny golden circles. Then she twisted more hay around the jutting stone of her engagement ring to make sure it was thoroughly covered, and took the two steps needed to bring her to the edge of the loft.

“Watch,” she said, beckoning. Nick frowned, clearly mystified, but he obediently moved to stand beside her, looking down at the sea of cows below.

“Here, cow, here, cow.” When several of them looked up, including—she thought—the one that had snapped up the falling hay earlier, Maggy let the twist of hay containing her rings drop.

Take that, Lyle
, she thought with grim satisfaction as
she watched the hay’s downward trajectory. Then—snap!—a cow caught the prize, rings and all.

“That’s permanent,” Nick said as the cow began to chew.

“I’m glad to get rid of them.” Her hand felt curiously light without the rings that she had scarcely taken off for twelve interminable years. Maggy had never before realized just how much they had weighed her down.

A thought hit her. She looked at Nick with consternation. “You don’t suppose swallowing those rings will hurt the cow, do you?”

“Nah.” Nick glanced down at the animal in question and then grinned at her. “But you’re going to make somebody’s day. They’re beef cattle, you know. Can you imagine finding a prize like that in your quarter pounder?”

“That’s awful!” Maggy said, referring to the cows’ eventual fate rather than the prospect of her rings ending up between the halves of a bun.

“That’s life. It’s a tough world.”

Nick took her left hand, and studied the twin bands of pale skin on her ring finger for a moment. Then he carried her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to the place where the rings had been. Still holding her hand, he lifted his head to meet her eyes over it. “I’ll buy you another diamond. Just as big. I promise.”

Maggy shook her head. “I don’t want one. I don’t care about diamonds anymore.” She moved toward him, freeing her hand, and wrapped her arms around his waist. Pressing her lips to the vee of bronzed skin just above the open collar of his shirt, she murmured, “I just care about you.”

Nick hugged her, rocking her gently back and forth, then tilted up her chin so that he could drop a kiss on her soft lips.

“It’s official, then. We’re engaged.” He grinned suddenly. “Give me twenty-four hours to arrange a hit on
your husband, and we’ll run off to Indianapolis and get married.”

“That’s not even funny.” Maggy pushed herself out of his arms. “Don’t even joke about it. You wouldn’t …?” It was a question that she answered herself. “No, you wouldn’t.”

Nick might murder Lyle with his bare hands in a rage, but he wouldn’t hire someone to do the job for him. That was Lyle’s style, not Nick’s.

Nick laughed. “Trust me, Magdalena, everything’s going to work out fine. Now
I’m
hungry. What do you say we go get lunch?”

“But the cows …”

“Watch this.” He swung down the ladder, stomping his feet noisily against the rungs. To Maggy’s surprise, the beasts closest to the ladder moved placidly away, allowing him to reach the ground.

“Come on.” He held up his arms to her. With some trepidation she glanced at the large animals jostling each other not two feet behind Nick. But they didn’t appear to have attacking him on their minds—in fact, they barely seemed to be aware of his presence—so she turned her back on them and climbed swiftly down.

He lifted her the last few feet to solid ground. Then, catching her hand, he pulled her toward the open door, casually slapping the rumps of the few cows that did not move aside.

“You’re
good
at this,” Maggy said with some indignation, remembering how she had feared they were stuck in the loft.

“They’ve trapped me up there before, when I’ve gone to paint. Every time they see a person go into the loft, they must think it’s time to eat. Mr. Clopton—he’s the man who feeds them—throws their hay down from up there.”

“I see.” That explained why they were so eager to devour any dropped hay.

Maggy and Nick were out in the sunshine by this time. The chickens still scratched and pecked around the barnyard. The fat red one, spying Maggy, waddled toward her, making soft clucking noises as if encouraging largesse.

“Sorry, bud, fresh out,” Nick told it, and, opening the gate, pulled Maggy through to safety. He closed the gate again, entwined his fingers with hers, and hand in hand they walked to the house.

The next few days were, for Maggy and Nick, as idyllic as any honeymoon. Link, expressing loud disgust with what he termed their sickening billing and cooing, returned to the farmhouse only in time to fall into bed each night, taking himself off again early every morning. Maggy barely saw him, though Nick would roll out of bed early to exchange a few words with his brother before he left. Maggy knew that Link was covering for Nick in some way that had to do with his work, but she didn’t worry about it. There was so much else to think about, primarily sex.

She liked sex, she discovered. In fact, she more than liked it: she loved it. For some reason, telling Nick about the unspeakable thing that Lyle and Ham had done to her seemed to have robbed the act of its terrible power. The mental block that she had feared would cripple her for life had crumbled away. With Nick, she was not only unafraid of sex, she was eager for it, and that she attributed directly to the healing power of love.

She was wildly, crazily in love with him. And he with her.

They made love anywhere and everywhere. In bed, on the couch in the living room, on the kitchen floor, in the shower standing up with Nick’s back pressed against the wet tile wall and Maggy’s legs wrapped around his waist. They made love until Nick was worn out and Maggy had dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep. They made love until the box of rubbers Nick had bought was empty, and he had to run back to the drugstore for more. They
made love until they were both satisfied—temporarily. And then they made love some more.

For Maggy it was a time of revelation. For the first time as an adult, she was exploring her own sexuality. Always before, when Sarah or Buffy or some of the other women in the crowd Maggy ran with moaned about not getting enough sex, saying that they were horny and they’d just die if they didn’t do it soon, Maggy had felt nothing but disgust. They could have been speaking a foreign language, for all the comprehension she’d had of what they were talking about.

Now she knew just what kind of itch her friends had been so eager to scratch. It was a delicious, delightful secret that she was ready to share only with Nick.

One night, sitting up in bed wearing a saucy smile and nothing else, she told Nick that he made her horny. Clad only in a towel, fresh out of the shower he had shared to such good purpose with her, he looked at her as if he couldn’t believe his ears. Then he roared with laughter, dropped the towel, fell on her willing body, and proceeded to take care of the problem very thoroughly indeed. She only hoped the wildly creaking bedsprings hadn’t been audible to Link.

Making love with Nick was a soul-shattering experience every time. Ten-minute quickies on the front seat of the pickup were as rousing in a different way as hours spent exploring each other’s body in bed. Maggy had never dreamed she could feel the way he made her feel. He played her like a virtuoso with a prized violin, and she couldn’t get enough of it. She had only to look at him, or he at her a certain way, to feel her body start to heat. She craved his kiss, she craved his touch. She craved him.

Why? Oh, he was sexy, of course. Whoever invented the term must have been thinking of Nick. Everything about him, from the midnight waves of his hair to his sleepy green eyes to his wicked smile to his football player’s body, made her heart beat faster. Just thinking
about him made her go all liquid inside. But the real reason was that she belonged to him, and he to her. They were together again, Nick and Magdalena, Magdalena and Nick.

It started to rain sometime during the week—Maggy was so preoccupied with Nick that she never noticed exactly when—and the weather stayed bad. The rain fell incessantly, until the yard was a muddy quagmire and the barnyard was a veritable river. But since she and Nick spent most of their time in bed, Maggy welcomed the rain. The sound of it hitting the roof and windows was cozy, and the chill that accompanied the rain gave her an excuse to snuggle close to Nick’s big naked body in bed.

Not that she needed an excuse.

On her second Sunday morning at the farm, when Nick rolled out of bed early, she missed him so much that his absence woke her. For a little while she lay there alone, but the bed without him in it was so lonesome that she couldn’t bear it. He would be in the kitchen, she knew, sharing a cup of coffee with Link, and she decided to get dressed and join them. She was so far gone in love that Link’s teasing didn’t even embarrass her any longer. And Link would tease when she came padding down to the kitchen after Nick.

Romeo, Link had taken to calling his brother. It annoyed Nick, but Maggy thought it was kind of cute.

She ran a brush through her hair, pulled on Nick’s white terry-cloth robe that was lying across the foot of the bed for that very purpose, and headed downstairs.

It was a dark, gray morning, seeming earlier than the ten o’clock that the alarm clock by the bed had claimed. Rain still fell in a gentle curtain beyond the windows. So much had fallen over the past few days that a smell of dampness permeated the house.

As she had known they would be, Nick and Link were in the kitchen. The light was on. Maggy could see the
yellow pool of it on the dark wood of the hall floor as she descended the stairs. She could hear their voices, too.

Link was saying, “… Gonna have to move fast. The powers that be ain’t happy that you’re shacked up here with a woman. The shit’s gonna hit the fan when they find out she’s Forrest’s wife.”

“That’s too damned bad. She’s not going back.” Nick’s voice was hard.

“I wasn’t suggesting that. You know I’m as fond of the baby girl as you are—well, not that fond, but close. But you gotta admit, it makes for a tricky situation. That’s why I’m sayin’ that we gotta move fast.”

Maggy slowed and then stopped altogether a few feet outside the kitchen door, her eyes widening as she listened.

There was a pause before Nick replied. “All right. We’ve got everything we need. Forrest and the kid have a flight booked home next Saturday. We could hit him at the airport—no, too many people around. We’ll hit him the following morning, Sunday, at Windermere.” Maggy couldn’t see Nick’s face, but she recognized the grim smile in his voice as he added, “If we go in around nine o’clock, he’ll even be up and dressed. For church.”

Link chuckled. “That’s damned poetic.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Nicky—” Link hesitated, and when he continued his voice had a more serious tone to it. “Maybe I should handle this without you. With the way things are between you and Magdalena, it kinda looks like a personal vendetta on your part against Forrest.”

“Does it?” Nick spoke almost ruefully. “Maybe it is. My inclination, when we go in there, will be to shoot the son of a bitch right between the eyes.”

Maggy gasped, her hand flying to cover her mouth. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“That’s why—” Link broke off.

“Magdalena, is that you?” Nick’s question was sharp.

Maggy, shaken, stood rooted to the spot for a second longer. As she heard the scrape of chair legs across the floor, she stiffened her spine, her lips clamped together, and her eyes blazed. Then she marched into the kitchen.

Both men were on their feet, and Nick was in the act of coming around the table to investigate the sound in the hall. When he saw her, he stopped, and started to smile. Until he got a good look at the expression on her face.

“You want to tell me just what the hell you two are talking about in here?” she demanded fiercely.