Maggy's Child (2 page)

Of course, Lyle claimed all the credit for the way David had turned out.

“You’ve done well for yourself, Magdalena. I’ll give you that.” Nick’s eyes ran over her. Maggy bethought herself of the nine-hundred-dollar black suede jeans she was wearing, of the real alligator belt and boots, of the ivory silk shirt, of the six-carat diamond on her finger, of the solid gold watch clasped around her wrist. The ensemble was deceptively simple to look at, but even without the jewelry it had cost more than she had once made in a year. When she’d been Magdalena Garcia. Before she’d married Lyle.

Of course, Nick had no way of knowing how expensive her clothes were, though he could hardly miss the ring, which sparkled with brilliant pinpoints of light even in the semidarkness. Maggy would have felt guilty at being caught by Nick with such material excess had the panic that now filled her left any room for a secondary emotion.

“What are you doing here?” That was the question. Maggy’s hands clenched and her mouth went dry as she waited for the answer.

Nick smiled that devastating smile at her. “Guess.”

Maggy’s gaze locked with his, and her breathing stopped. The possibilities were endless—and endlessly terrifying.

“There you are. We’ve been looking everywhere.” The light, sweet tones belonged to Lyle’s niece, Sarah Bates, who, with her best pal, Buffy McDermott, was
pushing through the crowd of people to join Maggy at the bar. Maggy glanced at her friends with a mixture of relief and fear. On the whole she was glad to have her tête-à-tête with Nick interrupted—but what would Sarah and Buffy make of Nick? What would Nick say? Surely nothing personal, now that they were not alone.

Sarah, at twenty-seven, was two years younger than Maggy, though at the moment she appeared older despite the youthfully styled fringed-denim vest and skirt she wore. She was in the midst of an ugly divorce. As a consequence she was both painfully thin and flashily red-haired, neither of which became her. It was her almost desperate need to seek out amusement that had brought the three of them to this little-known country-western bar on the Indiana side of the riverfront.

“Ooh, nice!” Buffy drawled the words as she wedged in beside Sarah and turned to look Nick up and down. Her red-lipsticked mouth pouted provocatively as she glanced from Nick to Maggy and back. “Though I gotta tell ya, handsome, you’re wasting your time with Maggy here. She’s an old married lady. But I’m available.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Nick smiled at Buffy, a very different smile from the one he had bestowed on Maggy. This was a practiced, thousand-kilowatt smile that had once left girls gasping in its aftermath. Maggy had forgotten the effect of that smile on unwary recipients, but watching Buffy’s bedazzled response brought the memories rushing back. But then, she hadn’t really forgotten. She had purposefully banished Nick and everything about him from her mind.

That was the only way she had managed to survive.

“I’m Buffy McDermott,” Buffy said, holding out a slender, perfectly manicured hand with bright red nails. “And you’re new in town.” Slim and attractive with paper-white skin, chin-length black hair, and small features accentuated by skillfully applied makeup, Buffy was used to being admired by men. Tonight, in a red silk camisole
beneath a black leather motorcycle jacket, a black leather mini, and heels, she was dressed to thrill.

Nick took her hand, laughed, and shook his head. “I’m Nick King. And I’m a Louisvillian born and bred. I’ve just been gone for a while.”

“Are you any relation to the Kings who used to live out in Mockingbird Valley?”

As Buffy spoke, Nick released her hand. Without ever taking her eyes from Nick’s, Buffy lifted her just-freed fingers to caress the soft white skin just above the neckline of her camisole. Maggy would have had to admire Buffy’s technique—if the woman hadn’t been aiming her efforts at Nick. As it was, she could only clench her teeth and remind herself that Nick was no longer hers.

“Nope. I grew up in Portland. In the projects.”

“Oh.” Buffy was momentarily taken aback, and her hand fell to her side. Portland was the worst section of Louisville. It was a dirt-poor, volatile mix of blacks and whites, and nobody with any pretensions to gentility would admit to growing up there. An involuntary half smile curved Maggy’s lips. How like Nick to tell the truth and shame the Devil!

“Then you must be a self-made man. How exciting!” Buffy made a gallant comeback after a swift, futile glance that sought to appraise the quality of Nick’s clothes. He was wearing jeans and an olive-green crewneck sweater under a brown leather bomber jacket. Typical bar-hopping garb that gave no indication as to the net worth of the wearer. Buffy clearly chose to be optimistic.

“Isn’t it?” His slow smile was calculated to set Buffy aflame, and as far as Maggy could tell, it succeeded. Buffy positively oozed sexuality in response. Maggy’s teeth clenched tighter.

“Mr. King, Mr. Casey just walked through the back door.” A nervous-sounding middle-aged man in a dark suit came up behind Nick and touched him on the shoulder.
“He’s in the manager’s office. I’m sorry to interrupt, but I thought you’d want to know.”

“You’re right, Craig. I do want to know. Ladies, if you’ll excuse me.” His eyes had grown hard, but he smiled at Buffy and Sarah before his gaze collided with Maggy’s.

“Magdalena. Stick around. I’ll be back.”

Before Maggy could decide whether that was a threat or a promise, Nick turned, and, following in the smaller man’s wake, made his way through the crowd toward a door at the very back of the room. Unable to take her eyes off his broad back, Maggy found herself fighting a wave of dizziness. Glancing almost blindly around, she discovered Sarah’s and Buffy’s eyes fixed on her. She knew it was essential that she snap out of it, that she present a normal appearance to her companions. But such poise was, at the moment, beyond her.

The door closed behind Nick, shutting him out of her sight. Awareness of the world around her returned with a jolt. The sound of laughter and the clink of glasses, the growl of a male voice singing “… call someone who cares …” over a throbbing guitar, the smell of cigarette smoke and the warm crush of bodies packed in around her assaulted Maggy without warning. Faded into nothingness by Nick’s presence, they burst upon her consciousness now that he was gone, and she felt as if she were drowning beneath the onslaught.

“Magdalena?” asked Sarah quizzically.

“Who
is
he?” Buffy breathed.

“Nobody, really. I used to know him a long time ago, before I married Lyle.” Maggy called on every inner reserve of strength she possessed to present a picture of nonchalance. What she wanted more than anything else in the world at that moment was to turn tail and run as fast as she could. But the surest way to draw attention to herself and Nick was to let her companions see how shaken she was by their encounter.

“And you still married Lyle?” Buffy snickered, clapped a hand over her mouth, and rolled her eyes in exaggerated apology without looking the least bit repentant. Her hand dropped away from her mouth, and she added with a sly grin, “Of course, even I can see that all that money does great things for Lyle’s sex appeal.”

“Buffy! That’s not nice,” Sarah chided with a quick glance at Maggy.

“I know it. Lucky for me both you and Maggy already know I’m not a nice person.” Buffy glanced at Maggy’s still-white face. “I’m sorry, Maggy. I didn’t mean anything, you know.”

“I know.” Buffy’s real consternation penetrated the cold shock that held Maggy in thrall, and she managed a smile. “It’s okay. I’m not offended.”

“He looks like a thug. A divinely sexy thug. Just looking at him was enough to give me the shivers.” Reassured, Buffy returned to the subject of Nick with a vengeance. She hitched herself up on the bar stool behind her, crossing her slim legs and leaning avidly toward Maggy. “So tell me all about him. Did he really grow up in the projects?”

The words
so did I
sprang of their own volition to Maggy’s lips, but fortunately a distraction kept them from ever being uttered.

With a nerve-jangling crash of chords the band left the tiny stage, and an announcer jumped up to grab the microphone.

“Ladies and gentlemen, or whatever y’all want to call yourselves, this here is amateur night at the Little Brown Cow. Any of you gals out there in the audience, this is your chance to strut your stuff and earn a little money at the same time. Our regulars know how this works. We get a bunch of gals to volunteer, and they get up here and start dancin’. You wanna strip, do a little bump and grind, that’s fine, we don’t object. Do we, boys?”

A majority of the men in the place clapped and yahooed vociferous approval.

The announcer resumed. “Every few minutes, we’ll eliminate a gal by having the audience clap for their favorites. Whichever gal’s left shakin’ it at the end wins two hundred dollars! Now how’s that sound? Where’s our volunteers?”

Women were laughing and squealing as some headed for and others were pushed protesting toward the stage.

Maggy, still feeling wildly disoriented, seized the opportunity with silent gratitude and glanced at Sarah. “I can’t stand this. I’ve got to get out of here.”

“I’m with you,” Sarah said with feeling, turning away from the spectacle to head for the door.

“But what about your sexy friend? If we leave, we’ll miss him,” Buffy wailed as the other two started to wriggle their way through the crush of bodies swarming to surround the stage.

Maggy heard, but pretended not to. Booming music as the dance contest started drowned out any other protest Buffy might have made as she slithered off the bar stool and followed them.

Once outside, Maggy drew in great gulps of cold night air. It was early April, and they’d been having an unseasonably warm spell, but it was almost midnight and the temperature had dropped almost thirty degrees since sundown. Behind her, the sounds of ribald revelry swelled and then were abruptly cut off as Sarah and Buffy stepped out onto the cracked sidewalk and the bar’s double doors swung shut behind them.

Tipton was waiting in the Rolls under a lone street-lamp. Seconds after Maggy spotted it, the sleek navy car purred toward her.

“Don’t bother to get out, Tipton,” Maggy said as the car stopped and the driver’s door started to open. The door continued to open as if she had not spoken. Tipton got out and reached back to open the rear door without a
word, his pale face wooden. He was a small, neat man in his late forties, as bald as an egg beneath his uniform cap. A shaggy, grizzled moustache adorned his upper lip. He was Lyle’s man all the way, and as such Maggy counted him as her enemy. Tipton was Lyle’s spy, and the reason he drove her when she went out was simple: so he could report back to his boss where she had been. Maggy pretended not to be aware of this—to admit that she knew and yet was unable to do anything about it would be to destroy what little dignity she had left—just as she pretended to believe that Tipton had not heard her request that he not get out. She knew that in any confrontation between herself and Tipton, or any of Lyle’s hangers-on, she would come out the loser. Lyle would see to that.

Sarah and Buffy, though, were blessedly oblivious of the undercurrents swirling around them as they piled into the soft-leather interior. Maggy, without so much as another glance at Tipton, slid in behind them, fastening her seat belt as Tipton gently shut the door.

“So tell us about your friend,” Buffy said when they were settled. The car had swung about in a wide circle and was just nosing onto the six-lane bridge that spanned the dark waters of the Ohio River. Glancing forward at Tipton—though there was a partition between the front and back sections of the car, and he appeared deaf, dumb, and blind to everything but the road, she had learned that it was impossible to be too cautious—Maggy silently cursed Buffy as she fought to keep her face and voice serene.

“There really isn’t much to tell.”

“Oh, that’s obvious. Especially since you’re just now starting to get some color back in your face. You were white as a ghost while you were talking to him, and when he left you couldn’t drag your eyes away. So what gives? Is he an old flame? You can tell us. We won’t tell Lyle.”

Fat chance. Buffy was an incorrigible gossip, Maggy knew. She might not tell Lyle herself, but she would tell
enough people so that word would eventually reach his ears. She had to face it: there was no hope of keeping Nick’s presence in Louisville a secret. Lyle undoubtedly already knew that Nick was in town anyway. Nick said he had stopped by the house and somehow seen David. Nothing happened at Windermere that Lyle did not know about, not even an unweeded flower garden nor a too-high grocery bill. Certainly the advent of someone like Nick would be reported to Lyle with all speed. But Nick’s mere presence, though it would anger and displease Lyle enormously, was not enough to precipitate a crisis. Not
the
crisis, the one Maggy had lived in terror of for years.

With a sinking feeling Maggy realized that too many people—two too many, to be precise—knew about her encounter with Nick at the Little Brown Cow for her to be able to keep it from Lyle. Her best course of action was to tell him about running into Nick herself, in a very casual, by-the-way style, before he heard of it through other channels.

The prospect made her palms sweat.

“Maggy!” Buffy was impatient.

Maggy took a deep, silent breath. “He’s a face out of the past, is all.”

“That’s right, you grew up in the projects yourself, didn’t you? I remember Sarah telling me about it, years ago. Was there ever a lot of gossip about Lyle marrying someone from that kind of background! Not that anyone could tell it, now, of course,” Buffy tacked on hastily.

“That’s rude, Buff,” Sarah chided her. Her voice was resigned. Outspokenness was one of Buffy’s inherent characteristics, and her friends had long since decided that it was incurable.

“It is not rude. I said no one could tell now, didn’t I? Just like no one could tell that that
hunk
came from the projects.”

“Maybe that’s because you have a few preconceptions
about the projects that aren’t necessarily true.” Maggy’s rebuke was mild. She would by far rather talk about the projects than Nick.