Some Enchanted Season (2 page)

As he’d expected, Tom took the words as a challenge. “I can handle it.”

“I know.” Next to him, Tom was one of the better deal makers—or breakers, as suited his purpose—around. He was smart, tenacious, quick to understand the intricacies of business, and, like Ross, he was driven. He’d created himself out of nothing, had chosen a slot and shaped himself to fit it. There was nothing Tom couldn’t achieve—except, perhaps, a satisfying personal life.

Again, like Ross.

“I just don’t see the point in these changes. Do you really think you’re going to spend twenty-four hours a day playing nursemaid to Maggie?”

“She doesn’t need a nursemaid.”

“She doesn’t need
you
. But the company does.”

Ross opened his briefcase and began removing folders. Tom was right. Maggie didn’t need him. There was a time when she had, when no one or nothing was more important to her than he was, but that time was long past. She’d grown used to being alone, to rarely having his complete attention. She’d learned to entertain herself, to fulfill her emotional needs elsewhere, to live without him, and he’d done the same.

But she needed
someone
. After eight months of intensive therapy, Dr. Allen was releasing her from the rehab center today. He’d recommended that she complete her recuperation someplace familiar, someplace where she’d been happy. Ross hadn’t been able to think of one place that met both requirements. His house here in the city was familiar, but she hadn’t been
happy there, and so he’d chosen Bethlehem, where she had been.

Dr. Allen had suggested that she go with some
one
familiar as well. She’d had her fill of strangers poking, prodding, examining, and treating her. Now she wanted someone she knew with her, and he was the only candidate.

The doctor had made it clear before asking Ross that they’d explored other options and come up empty-handed. There was Maggie’s mother, who’d disowned her for marrying Ross sixteen years ago. Janet Gilbert had wanted more for her only child than marriage to a poor bastard with big dreams that, she was convinced, would never amount to anything but heartache. He’d proved her wrong a few million times over, but it hadn’t mattered. Janet had never forgiven Maggie.

As parents went, Frank Gilbert was an even bigger disappointment than Janet. He’d run out on his family when Maggie was barely six and, at the urging of his new young wife, broken off all contact with his first family. Maggie hadn’t seen him since she was ten, although a child support check had arrived every month like clockwork until her eighteenth birthday. That month Frank had prorated the check and removed himself completely from her life.

There had also been the possibility of asking a friend to help out, but it was a hell of a favor to ask. After all, Maggie’s friends had families and responsibilities of their own.

So that was how Ross had gotten selected to spend
the last few months of Maggie’s recuperation in Bethlehem with her.

He could have refused, could have said he was too busy, too vital to the company to take up residence five hours away, and it would have been mostly true. But was two or three months of his time so much to ask considering their sixteen years together? Considering that the responsibility for the sorry state of their marriage rested on his shoulders?

Considering that the bulk of the responsibility for her near death also rested on his shoulders?

“No one would blame you if you refused to go,” Tom said.

He
would blame himself, though, and he carried too much guilt already. “I want to go. I want to do this for Maggie.” It wasn’t much of a good-bye gift, but it was the best he could manage. “The decision to turn the business over to you was mine, not Maggie’s. I know myself, Tom. It’s all or nothing. If I try to work while I’m there, I’ll end up leaving Maggie alone all the time. That’s not what she needs, not what the doctor had in mind.”

“But you’re going to leave her alone in a few months anyway.”

The words were quiet, empty of emotion, harmless little sounds that carried no accusation, but he felt the indictment anyway. No condemnation, but he still felt damned.

After a few moments, he returned to his work. He offered no response, neither confirmed nor denied Tom’s assertion. He hadn’t discussed his plans with anyone, hadn’t even fully thought them out.

He’d made the decision a year ago. After the holidays, he’d planned to file for a divorce that would have been far more civil than the marriage had become. Years before, he’d given Maggie a fair share of the business, back when the deal hadn’t been worth the paper it was written on, but now it was worth millions. She would have gotten more money on top of that, would have taken with her a fortune in jewels, another in art.

She would have lived the rest of her life in luxury, and he would have been free to pursue what was important to him—business. A friendship or two. Maybe a relationship with a woman who hadn’t learned to hate him, who didn’t resent the hell out of the attention he gave his work.

But he’d put the decision out of his mind soon after making it. How could he think about divorce when the doctors hadn’t expected Maggie to live? Make plans to be free when she hovered in a coma between life and death? Be so callous and selfish while she struggled to relearn all the skills robbed of her—little ones like feeding and dressing herself and major ones like walking and talking?

If only they’d spent last Christmas Eve the way they’d spent most evenings—apart. If only he hadn’t angered her, if only she hadn’t left the house, been on that road …

Regrets, he’d learned in the last eleven months, were pointless. He couldn’t change the past. Because of him, Maggie
had
left, she
had
been on the road, and because of it, she was still his wife. His responsibility.

And for that reason, he was accompanying her to Bethlehem.

Deliberately he changed the subject. “You’ll have to make an effort to get along with Lynda while I’m gone. I would hate to replace her, so don’t harass her into quitting.”

“I think I could replace her quite easily,” Tom said with a scowl. “Any idiot walking down the street would probably do just fine.”

If Tom was Ross’s right hand in running the business, Lynda Barone was his left, and if there was one thing she certainly was
not
, it was an idiot. And one thing she definitely was was a major annoyance in Tom’s life. The two barely managed civility most of the time. Often they regressed into outright hostility. Maggie had once commented that sometimes such hostility between a man and a woman was a screen for something personal, intense, sexual.

But, as they’d learned in their own relationship, sometimes hostility was simply hostility.

“Maybe I’ll send Lynda to Japan to work on the deal from their end,” Tom muttered. “That should keep her busy for a few months.”

“If you did, she’d come back speaking fluent Japanese and have the consortium insisting on doing business solely with her.” Ross glanced at his watch. He had an eleven-thirty appointment with Dr. Allen. It was time. “If you have any problems that truly require my attention, call me. Otherwise … I’ll see you in two to three months.” He closed his nearly empty briefcase, smiled a smile he didn’t feel, and offered a hand to his lawyer.

Muttering something about damned principles, Tom shook hands, then Ross left the office. He took
the elevator from the twenty-first floor to the open top tier of the three-level parking garage. The city was even colder and grayer than it had looked from his office. It had been a mild winter so far, but they would get snow soon. Probably while he was in Bethlehem, where he could get snowed in for days, with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

With no one for company but Maggie.

He shook off the apprehension that settled over him, put his briefcase in the trunk with his luggage, and got into the car.

He knew the way to the rehab center in his sleep. When the hospital had done all they could for Maggie, Tom had researched the options and selected the Allen-Ridley Institute as the next best step. Located on a twenty-acre tract in a Buffalo suburb, it looked more like a gracious old hotel than a rehabilitation hospital. The main building sprawled across a lawn that was emerald green in summer and neatly groomed even in winter. The broad veranda, lined with rockers and wicker planters, was a welcoming place to spend a sunny afternoon.

All the chairs and planters were empty today.

He followed the veranda to the front, where double doors in the center led into a lobby that was an elegant parlor. The patients’ rooms could pass for any well-appointed bedrooms, and the dining room was truly a dining room, with cherry tables, chandeliers, paintings on the walls, china cabinets in the corners. Only the therapy rooms indicated that the center was a high-tech facility.

A young secretary showed him to Dr. Allen’s office.
He’d been there many times before—had sat in this leather chair and listened to the doctor’s assessment of Maggie’s condition, had heard reports of improvements and regressions, had been cautioned, warned, and encouraged.

A week ago, when the doctor had called him in to arrange Maggie’s release, his future had changed—once again—in this room.

“Today’s the day,” Dr. Allen said after a perfunctory greeting. “Do you have any questions before we meet Maggie?”

Ross shook his head. They had talked at length the previous week about the minimal care she required. His role in the next few months wasn’t loving husband welcoming home his fragile wife but, rather, a companion on hand in case something went wrong. She was able to do much for herself, but some questions about her abilities could be answered only away from the controlled environment of the center. Answering those questions was the goal of the next few months.

At the same meeting, the doctor had gone over her remaining impairments in detail—a mild expressive speech disorder. The various symptoms of post-traumatic syndrome—headaches, sleep disorders, personality changes. Residual problems with the hip she’d broken, particularly with extended weight bearing. Difficulty climbing stairs, trouble concentrating, dizzy spells.

And the amnesia. Much of her memory of the year preceding the accident was spotty. The months immediately prior were missing altogether. When or if those memories would return, according to the doctor, was
anyone’s guess. If she hadn’t been in the accident, if the amnesia were the only problem, he would presume that she would make a complete, or nearly complete, recovery.

But the accident changed things. There had been bleeding in and swelling of her brain, causing some damage, and she’d been in a coma for weeks. Still, the doctor had thought that being in Bethlehem would be good for her, that it might jog loose forgotten memories.

Ross wasn’t proud of it, but he wouldn’t mind if those memories stayed unjogged awhile longer. At least for the next few months they were together.

The doctor had told him everything he possibly could, except how he and Maggie were going to get along. They were two people who had once been in love, had once been intimate, who had watched their love die. And now there was only awkwardness. Distance. One stranger with another.

“This will be a period of adjustment for Maggie,” Dr. Allen said. “She’s going to find out just how independent she can be—what she’s capable of and what she’s lost. There will be the temptation to do things for her, but don’t give in until she’s proven that she can’t complete a task.”

 … 
how independent she can be
 … That was the big question. Would she be able to manage alone, or would she require a live-in companion? At the end of these few months, they would know.

“I would recommend that she continue to meet with a psychiatrist for a time,” the doctor continued. “At least until we see how well she adjusts to being
away from the center. Dr. Olivetti, her psychiatrist here, has recommended a doctor in Bethlehem by the name of Grayson. Maggie’s first appointment should be within the next week or so. Have I raised any new questions?”

When Ross shook his head, the doctor slid a stack of forms across the desk for him to sign, then rose from his chair and smiled out of habit. “Let’s go get Maggie, Mr. McKinney.”

M
aggie McKinney watched from her seat on the bed while an aide did a final sweep of the room. “Looks like that’s it, Mrs. McK,” the young woman said with a bright smile. “Everything’s packed, and your husband’s on his way up with Dr. Allen to pick you up. You must be so excited.”

Excited? Yes, that was part of what she was feeling. When they’d wheeled her in there eight months earlier, she’d been afraid she would be stuck there forever. She’d been unable to perform the simplest tasks—couldn’t pick up a fork, couldn’t talk worth a damn, couldn’t walk two steps. She’d lost her dignity and her independence and had been unable to imagine winning them back.

But she was almost there. The next two months would prove how much she had regained. They would prove that she could live alone, that she could make a life for herself.

That she had no further need of Ross.

The words still had the ability to stir an ache deep inside. There’d been a time when not needing Ross in
her life had been utterly inconceivable—a time when he’d
been
her life. That time was long past now, but the regret wasn’t. The sorrow wasn’t.

And even if their marriage was over, she owed him so much. It was his money, his forceful personality, and his steadiness—along with her own damn hard work—that had gotten her through the past eleven months. From the first day, she’d gotten the best care his money could buy, the special treatment he had imperiously demanded.

And he had stood by her. Her parents had let her down, and so had her friends, but Ross had been there week after week, when she couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t even get her thoughts in logical order. He, and the endless hard work, had been the one constant in her life, and she was grateful to him.

Of course, she knew why he’d spent all that money and made all those visits to her both at the hospital and the rehab center. While he was a decent man, he was also an image-conscious man. He’d worked hard to present the perfect image, both professionally and privately. He’d had to stand by her, like it or not, until she could stand on her own.