Wicked Burn (11 page)

“What’s your play called?” she asked softly.

His eyes flickered over her bare legs. He reached for the knitted throw folded across the back of the couch. “Lie back,” he directed. When she did, he picked up the manuscript in his lap, replacing it with her feet. “
Alias X,
” he finally replied. “Do you want to see it? We’re having a run-through tomorrow night,” he said while he tucked the blanket around her.

“Are you worried I’ll get trampled by the fleeing crowd on opening night?” she murmured.

He palmed one of her thighs through the blanket. “You’ve got good legs. You’ll likely get out alive.” He smiled at her muffled snort of laughter. “You’re better off seeing it tomorrow night. No one likes to be around me on opening night. No one. Not even my mother.”

“Hmmm,” she hummed contentedly from inside her warm knit cocoon. “Godzilla’s night to rampage, huh?”

He gave her a glance of dark amusement before he briskly picked up the manuscript. Niall sensed he was finished chatting, but it didn’t feel like a dismissal. She found herself getting sleepy at the sound of his scratching pencil and the lulling sensations of his movements vibrating down into her feet.

“It’s gonna be great,” she muttered sleepily, more to herself than to him.

This time she slept without dreams.

SIX

Vic put two extra scoopfuls of coffee into the filter before he switched on the pot the next morning and headed toward the bathroom. He needed the extra caffeine. Niall’s sleeping form on the couch drew his gaze. His pace slowed and then stalled for a few seconds as he examined her. Her hair spread across a pillow and partially covered her face. The morning sunlight shimmered in the golden strands, almost making them seem alive. She looked so small huddled beneath the knit blanket. He could easily imagine how good it would feel having her soft, warm body mold against his as she slowly awakened to his touch. The fantasy was potent enough to make his cock lurch almost painfully against his sweatpants.

He forced himself to move away from her. He smiled as he turned on the shower in the bathroom. Niall hadn’t moved a millimeter since she’d fallen asleep last night. She must have been exhausted. Not too surprising after the great sex they’d had, Vic thought with a trace of smugness. He’d slept solidly himself for three and a half hours afterward—a small miracle, given Vic’s typical incessant restlessness in the weeks before an opening.

By the time he exited the bathroom door in a billow of steam ten minutes later, he felt fantastic—strong and full of purpose. As he poured himself a cup of coffee, he glanced up distractedly at the sound of someone pounding loudly on a door out in the hallway.

“Niall? Honey? Wake up!” a woman called.

Vic catiously set his cup on the counter and moved out into the hall of his apartment, ear cocked to catch the voices.

“Why didn’t she ever give us a key in case of an emergency?” the woman asked impatiently.

“She was supposed to have lived here for only two months. There wasn’t any need,” a man responded in a clipped voice. Another round of loud knocking ensued. Vic stepped back into the living room and gently brushed aside the hair from Niall’s face.

“
Niall
. Wake up, baby,” he ordered.

His mouth pressed into a hard line when she moved restlessly and then settled back into deep sleep. The people in the hall conversed in a tense tone before they started another round of door hammering that made his jaw clench in irritation.

“She’s not in there.”

Vic registered the amazed expressions on the couple’s faces when they turned around a moment later at his harsh proclamation.

Niall’s parents
, he thought immediately when he saw the woman’s face. It was like looking into a magic mirror to see how Niall would look in twenty-odd years. If that was the case, Niall was one hell of a lucky woman. The woman who stood in front of him was a knockout—more polished than Niall, less approachable, diamond-hard . . . completely flawless. Vic found himself staring at her nose, not realizing until later that he searched for what he missed—the adorable imperfection of Niall’s freckles. Her eyes—not hazel like her daughter’s, but instead a startling shade of azure—flickered over his body. Vic forced his expression into neutrality.

Great. Stellar first impression. He wore only a towel.

“How do you know Niall isn’t in there?” the tall, distinguished-looking man barked sharply. “Did you hear her leave this morning?”

“No. She hasn’t left for work yet.”

The man glanced back uneasily at Niall’s front door. “But you said—”

“I’m right here, Dad.” Vic turned at the sound of Niall’s low, sleep-roughened voice. Sunlight flooded her from behind, making the exposed skin of her legs and face look ethereally pale.

Vic didn’t need to look at Niall’s parents in the tense seconds that followed to know that they were doing the equivalent of manually lifting their lower lips off the hallway carpet. Niall’s face, on the other hand, looked like it had been carved from marble.

“Is it an emergency?” Niall asked, dread lacing her tone.

Her father recovered first from his shock at seeing his daughter half-dressed in the company of a nearly naked man. “
Yes
, Niall. It is.”

Vic tensed unconsciously at Niall’s father’s tone of voice. Something in it seemed to imply that Niall was somehow responsible for whatever the emergency was. Vic didn’t take too kindly to that insinuation, especially when he saw that whatever tiny remnant of color Niall possessed in her cheeks had faded completely.

She ducked her head as she turned. “I’ll just get my things,” she murmured.

Vic glanced back at the hostile-looking couple before he let the door close heavily with them on the other side of it. Trying to make “nice-nice” with Niall’s parents at that moment would have been a big mistake.

“I’m sorry,” Niall said a few seconds later when she came out of his bedroom. She paused as she hastily zipped her leather boot. “I don’t think I’ll be able to make your play tonight.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Vic said from the doorway of the kitchen.

She gave him a harried look of apology before she started for the door.

“Niall,” he said, garnering her attention before her hand reached the knob. He waited until her big eyes met his. “I’ll call you later this afternoon,” he added pointedly.

Her gaze shifted away from his. “
Don’t.
I mean . . . it’s not necessary. I . . . I have to go.”

Vic stood there after she left, listening. No more voices from the hallway, just the sound of Niall’s keys rattling in the hostile silence.

 

 

Niall glanced up when her father approached her in the waiting room of Covenant General Hospital. They’d done nothing but sit and wait since arriving four hours ago.

She accepted the cup of coffee that Niall Chandler Sr. handed her.
Niall
was a family name, passed on for seven generations of Chandler men. Since Niall and Alexis Chandler hadn’t supplied the required male, their baby girl had been the recipient of that particular family honor.

The original Niall Chandler had made a lasting name for himself almost two hundred years ago by building a financial empire for his descendants through several activities, the milder of which was usury and the more stringent of which would be called extortion and loan-sharking in this day and age. Niall had mixed feelings about reverting to her maiden name a year ago. She’d wanted a fresh start, but the name Chandler was associated with almost as much emotional baggage as her married name.

Almost.

For well over a century now the Chandlers had been squeaky clean in regard to their business activities. Still, the taint lingered sufficiently that Niall’s father didn’t take too kindly to his daughter’s tongue-in-cheek references to their august ancestor’s checkered past.

“You and Mom should go home,” Niall told her father quietly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Alexis Chandler said briskly. Her erect carriage hadn’t wilted in the slightest during the interminable wait. Alexis worked out for two hours every day at her health club. Her ramrod-straight posture came from a lifetime of riding horses. She rode rain or shine, every day without fail.

Niall knew firsthand just how strong her mother was, both mentally and physically. Niall herself practiced a fairly rigorous yoga routine, but she nowhere near approximated the magnitude of her mother’s fitness and energy level. During the crisis three years ago—at the frenzied heights of Matthew Manning’s trial—Alexis had been as staunch and solid as a marble pillar while Niall’s world crumbled around her to ashes.

Her mother removed the lid from the coffee cup and blew on the steaming liquid delicately. “We wouldn’t dream of leaving when a family member is in a crisis, Niall. You know that.”

“There’s nothing we can do here, Mom, least of all give comfort,” Niall said wearily. She’d sat like this in waiting rooms too many times not to feel the sense of suffocating helplessness press upon her. This was all part and parcel of the chaos of Stephen’s life, something that Niall knew all too intimately.

Her mother and father didn’t know the half of it.

“They said there was no permanent damage done,” Niall continued. “I was considering going myself.”

Alexis’s hand froze in the act of replacing the lid on her coffee. Her expression was rigid with disbelief when she met Niall’s gaze. “How can you say that? Would you really feel right about walking out of this hospital? Is it because that woman—What’s her name? Menendez?—just got here?”

Niall set her coffee cup on her knee to make it less obvious that she trembled. When would this get easier? Would it ever?

“Her name is Rose Gonzalez. She’s Stephen’s legal guardian now, Mom . . . not me,” Niall added pointedly. “I’m sorry that they contacted you this morning from Evergreen Park. You were the follow-up contact from before . . . from before Rose became his legal guardian. They must not have changed their records yet.”

“Just because you gave up the right to make his legal decisions for him doesn’t mean that you’re not Stephen’s wife, Niall,” Alexis said, her eyes glittering like a pair of cut and polished blue topazes.

Niall swallowed convulsively, keenly aware that her father listened closely to the conversation. She took a deep, fortifying breath.

“I won’t be that for long, either,” she reminded them both, even though it was her mother’s hurt, furious gaze that she met steadily while she spoke.

“Then it’s no wonder Stephen tried to commit suicide again,” Alexis said before she stood and crossed the waiting room. The full cup of coffee landed with a dull thump in the trash can.

She’ll apologize for it when she calms down
, Niall assured herself repeatedly as she returned to the waiting room after a stroll around the hospital grounds. She’d told Rose Gonzalez that she would wait to speak with her before she left, but Niall didn’t think she could wait alone in that room another second after her parents’ cold departure.

Her mother’s verbal stab had hurt for many reasons, the least of which being that what she said wasn’t true. Stephen had not in fact tried to commit suicide.

Not this time.

On this particular occasion Stephen had attempted to strangle a fellow patient at the Evergreen Park Mental Hospital and then viciously attacked the two employees who tried to restrain him. He had suffered a dislocated collarbone and several severe contusions in the altercation, which is why he’d been transferred in a heavy state of sedation to Covenant General. Although suicidal behavior was the symptom that Niall’s parents chose to focus upon almost exclusively, her husband had just as frequently become aggressive and even homicidal in the past several years.

Niall possessed firsthand knowledge of both of those particular symptoms of her husband’s psychosis.

In all fairness to her parents, Niall hadn’t always been forthcoming about Stephen’s past episodes of violence toward her. It was painful enough to learn the language of mental illness and to speak of suicide openly. But Niall doubted that many people ever became comfortable talking about how their spouse had once nearly strangled them in a drunken, psychotic rage and had threatened to do something similar countless times since then.

Rose Gonzalez’s kind, open countenance was the first thing that Niall saw when she returned to the waiting room. The Illinois State Guardian always looked polished and professional in her grooming and dress. But her round face, wide forehead, colorful clothing, and plump waistline always made Niall think of a cozy kitchen and savory smells from a bubbling pot on the stove.

Nevertheless, she was more than a little surprised when Rose gave her a searching look before she stood and hugged her tightly. Such an act of caring and generosity from a person Niall had known for less than six months made her eyes burn with repressed emotion.

“Sit down, Niall,” Rose encouraged. She watched Niall closely as she followed her instructions and then sat down next to her. “I was going to ask how you’re holding up, but I think I’ve already got my answer.”

Niall shook her head impatiently, irritated by the rogue tears that escaped her eyes. “I’ve been doing well, actually, until this latest incident.”

“I was a little surprised to see you and your parents here at the hospital,” Rose admitted gently.

Niall explained about Evergreen Park’s mistake with the emergency contact information.

“Your mother and father still think it was a wrong decision for you to give up guardianship of Stephen?” Rose more stated than asked.

Niall nodded as she swiped the back of her hand over wet cheek. “Thank you,” Niall murmured when Rose reached into her large, bright pink bag and withdrew a tissue. “They could accept the guardianship part, I think. It’s the fact that I filed for a divorce that’s really bothering them. A male heir has always been important in the Chandler family. When I married Stephen, my parents got the son they’d always wanted. They were pretty disappointed when I decided to study art instead of get my MBA and go into the family business. But then Stephen came along and they were thrilled. He worked for my father at Chandler Financial . . . not directly, of course. Stephen had his own department but . . .” Niall shrugged, not sure where she was going with her rambling. “Besides, I was brought up Catholic. They feel like I’m abandoning Stephen because he’s broken or something.”