by Angel Payne
His head descended lower, as if the weight of the memories was too much to bear. I stayed standing. I understood his pain, but I was angry and ready to fight—to battle for us, for what we’d built. I was not going to walk away just because he said it was time, or thought it would be too dangerous to stay.
“I do know,” I rasped. “I was right there, too, remember?”
He didn’t look up. “But it was my mother, Margaux.”
That stung, but I clenched for composure. “And that makes a difference…why?”
“You don’t even like your mother. In fact, you hate the bitch.”
“Michael, I never knew my mother. Are you referring to the woman who liked keeping me around as her show pony?”
“You know what I meant. So, what would you even know about what I’m going through right now?”
It sucked the anger right out of me. Or perhaps punched it out, with the force of pure shock. It was a cheap shot, taking me so completely off guard that I plopped down in the seat beside him. He’d really gone there. As the realization took hold, a mixture of hurt and anger welled tears into my eyes, stingy shitheads that had me rolling my eyes back, fighting them from tracking down my cheeks.
“Though that was completely unnecessary and a low blow, it’s also true. I don’t know exactly what it must have been like. But you know what, Michael? I’ve come to care about Diana…very much. And more than that, I love you.” I lifted a hand to his hunched shoulder. Even now, I wasn’t able to help myself. I needed the contact. I needed him. “I love you. And watching you suffer and not being able to help? That’s breaking my heart more than enduring all this myself.”
His muscles coiled as the words left me. Through one silent moment, they remained that way. Another. Finally, he gave me a word. One.
“No.”
“No,” I echoed. “No…what?”
“No.” He stood, but didn’t look back. “I’m sticking to my decision.” I’d never heard such steel in his tone before. “It’s over—for us. For—all of it. I’m calling Doug and ending his investigation immediately. I want all of his team off the case. I’ll pay them whatever is owed outside of the retainer. You shouldn’t be stuck with the bill on that, it wouldn’t be right.”
“It wouldn’t be—” I couldn’t move beyond sputtering it. Not right? Because doing this to me—to us—was?
“Then I’m moving my stuff out of the condo.” He rolled on through his speech as if I hadn’t spoken. Time for being ghost Margaux again. “I need to get away from you as soon as possible, so the target gets lifted off your back. It’s the only way you’ll be safe.”
“Safe? What the hell? Michael, you’re being ridiculous!”
“Mom is going to need me out at the farm for a while as she’s recovering, anyway—maybe longer. A nurse can stay with her during the days when I’m gone. I’ll commute to downtown on the days Aequitas absolutely needs me.” He spread his arms, bracing hands up against the window frame, never looking more breathtaking—or alone. “Now that Dec knows he can get to me in more private ways than court, maybe now he’ll drop the charges so I can get back to work.”
I found the fortitude—perhaps just the fury—to stand again. “How the hell can you be so matter of fact about all of this? So—so heartless?”
His shoulders rippled with more tension. “I’m just doing what I have to—what I need to, to keep you safe. It’s the most important thing. It’s the only thing.”
“Damn it!” It was pitiful and full of loose, ugly tears. I still didn’t care. Plenty of people cried in hospitals. For once, I actually looked like everyone else. “God damn it! I love you, Michael! Doesn’t that matter? I thought…I thought you loved me.”
“I—” He stopped himself with a vicious growl. “It just can’t matter anymore, princess. Our time…it was beautiful. But it’s run out.”
“It’s—” I whirled, beginning to pace. “You think I’m going to accept that, asshole? ‘It was beautiful’? Are you kidding me? Fuck you, Michael. Fuck you.”
He swept a hand up, harsh and dismissive. “Don’t come back here after you leave today. I’ll keep Andre updated about Mom and he can tell you if you need to know, but we need to stop all communication at once. It’s not safe for you. They probably have the phones tapped.”
“The phones—” I choked and even laughed, unable to finish. “Do you hear yourself? You sound completely paranoid!”
“No. I sound completely practical. I sound realistic. I’m not putting anything past him now, Margaux. A woman is fighting for her life right now because of that monster. I won’t watch it happen to you, too. I…can’t. Please. Just please don’t argue with me anymore.”
I stared at him, tears running freely, leaving hot tracks in their wake down my cheeks. “You’re breaking…my heart.”
“There’s nothing more I can do. I need to know you are safe. I will sacrifice a thousand lifetimes of my own happiness for that, baby. My own heart and soul.”
For a moment, I confronted exactly that in his gaze, darkened to gold fire. His heart, his soul, his pain…reached out and connected with mine once more.
The last time.
No. No.
“This isn’t over, Pearson.”
“I’m afraid it is.”
I pushed past him as I stormed from the waiting room, not making contact with anyone else—even Andre—who’d waited in the hallway. He fell in silent step beside me, knowing better than to request a play-by-play of what had just happened.
I had my cell out before we left the building. It powered up as I waited for Andre to get the car and I glared at it with growing impatience. After one speed dial push, it started to ring through. With every passing second, the awful lump built again in my throat. I hated calling Claire again like this—hated it—but I’d vowed only weeks ago to reach out to my family when there was a crisis.
This was a crisis if ever there was one.
“Hey, sweetie. What’s going on?”
“I need you.”
“Oooohhh kaaayyy.”
“I’m serious.” I held the phone away for a second to get a grip on my sob. “I’m about to lose my shit and I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Oh, hell,” Claire muttered. “You really are about to—what’s wrong?”
I ordered my lungs to take in air. If I blurted everything now, there’d be no end to my breakdown. All the tabloids needed was one observant, loose-lipped hospital employee—or worse—to tip them off about an overwrought Margaux Asher in the carport. “Can you meet me at my house? Can you just get there? I’ll come get you if I have to.”
“It’s fine. I got my keys back after a few promises and favors were paid forward.”
“Oh, God,” I groaned. “Not now. Please. For the sake of my sanity, Claire, not now.”
“Take it easy, girl. I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Will you be all right until then?”
Define all right.
“Yeah,” I replied, anyway. “But Claire? If you’re into praying and shit? You might want to throw one up for Michael’s mom.”
She let out a gasp. “Diana? Why?”
“She’s had—an accident—of sorts.”
“What? How? Where?”
“She’s—she’s in really bad shape. I’ll explain more when I see you. Drive carefully, please.”
Andre pulled the BMW up. I slid into the back seat while hitting End on the call. After that, I didn’t want to even look at my phone, knowing it wouldn’t contain a single call or text from Michael. I threw it down on the leather seat and let out a big huff.
Andre turned a knob in the front console. My favorite Mozart filled the car. I gave him a soft smile in the mirror. “Thanks.”
“No problem. You need anything else?”
“Shit.” It was the best answer I had. “Is there any liquor in here?”
“No, but I can stop somewhere.”
“It’s okay. Claire’s on her way to the Cortez. Can you just tak
e me home?”
“We’ll be there in no time.”
I laid my head back and tried to evaluate what had happened in the past ten hours. My life had changed irrevocably and I felt like a bystander. Me, Margaux Asher, the woman who held life firmly by the balls and called all the shots, was watching it all circle the drain—helpless to do anything but absently hum along to Elvira Madigan, as its swelling sadness turned into the song of my shattering heart.
Chapter Thirteen
Michael
“Michael Adam Pearson! Stop this goddamn nonsense immediately!”
I grinned. What a difference three weeks could make.
“Did you hear me, you little shit?”
My smirk flourished into a chuckle, but I didn’t relent my hold, continuing to carry Mom up the front steps before settling her into the porch swing. “Potty mouth, young lady,” I chastised.
“Shut. Up.” Mom fumed and tugged her jacket tighter. The weather had whipped from late fall to early winter over the last few days, biting a distinct chill into the afternoon. If the clouds hovering over the ridge moved in overnight, we’d even get a snow dusting.
I unlocked the door then latched the screen open with the top slider. “You know that stuff doesn’t strike the fear of God into me anymore.” Not since the crack of Declan’s belt had taken its place as the herald of horror in my life.
She flashed a smirk of victory. I let it slide, knowing it would transform back into a glower the second I picked her up again—not that she intended to make the task easier. “Stop it. Stop it. I can walk ten steps into my own house, Michael Adam!”
“Still not working.” I half-sang it, unable to resist a wider grin. If Mom was this feisty, she was starting to feel better. Joy washed in like I’d chugged a twelve-pack in twenty minutes. The difference between the Diana Pearson I’d watched over in the hospital three weeks ago and the spitfire who batted at my chest right now was black and white.
No. Not black and white—yet. We weren’t completely in the white. Things were a pleasant tone of gray, like the mist in the orchard just before the morning sun finally burned through. The light was coming, just not yet. Mom’s lung was recovering well, though her ribs still ached by dinnertime each day. While her face wasn’t so swollen, many of her bruises were taking a while to heal.
Emotionally, we took each day by the minute—sometimes, when memories got rough, in smaller increments. There were bright spots, though. Many came for Mom courtesy of Carlo. The man was clearly smitten with my mother and I was psyched as hell. He’d visited her nearly every day in the hospital, despite his responsibilities here. Now that she was home, he stopped by three or four times a day. She lit up like a Christmas tree when he was around, serving as a good balance for the glowers she reserved for me—at least when it came to the subject of Margaux.
Her reaction to my decision was an eerie replay of what Margaux had dished in the hospital waiting room, including the barrage of profanity and the angry crying. The cussing, I could take—but her tears, beyond unexpected, were another torture. Talk about an equilibrium burner.
My reaction had become that of any guy dealing with guilt, bafflement, fury and fear at once—by sulking in the orchard for a couple of long hours, despite storming out of the house with no jacket at four in the afternoon.
I’d slunk back in with balls frozen and temper chilled, greeted by Mom’s hug and a cup of hot cider. It was her version of a tenuous truce and I’d readily accepted. The shot of brandy she’d snuck into the drink wasn’t a bad touch—and helped with confronting the new facts of my life after the time machine dumped me back in reality.
Number one, I had to set Margaux free. No more knightly lip service—I had to suck it up, grieve for what was lost then move the hell on, even if it gave me a damn ulcer. Not like I wouldn’t be destroying my stomach on bachelor food for the rest of my life. I was done with considering the big show, commitment-wise. Margaux Corina Asher had been it. My one. It’d be unfair to subject any woman to the comparisons I’d inevitably make to her, and the sliver of my heart, if that, they’d earn for their effort. My soul was already officially off-limits.
Number two, it was time to figure out a real plan for the water rights on the spring. Even if Declan had a bullet in his brain tomorrow—and that was a huge, hopeful-as-hell if—there was a good chance that someone else in that nouveau mafia group knew about the spring by now, too. We had to confront the disgusting idea that the water was too valuable to be ignored now. Getting ahead of the curve and controlling the process by which the drilling happened might save most of the jobs on the farm. Those employees whose jobs we couldn’t preserve could be retrained for the new project. Nobody knew this land and its capabilities better than the people who’d been devoted to it their whole lives.
Number three, it was time to play a few rounds of Where’s Declan? Unbelievably, I was the one pushing to figure out where he’d run off to. Correction—disappeared off the face of the map to. As I suspected, the asshole dropped the charges from the night at the Del Coronado before Mom was even discharged—though the friendly visit I expected from the guy after that never happened. Almost three weeks later, I was still walking around like an idiot in a horror movie, afraid of my own shadow, wondering when he would slither back in like the worm he was.
Because of that, I’d thrown myself another curve ball and actually called Doug Simcox again. The first time had been as I’d promised Margaux, to terminate his services and call off his team, but this time, my motive was different. I re-hired them for long-distance observation—and not-so-long-distance protection, if the situation called for it—of the woman I loved.
A recipe for my own heartbreak? Maybe. Probably. As sick as it made me to think it, I’d probably pushed the two of them closer together. But a more important certainty gripped me. Andre couldn’t watch over her all the time. During the rare times he wasn’t around, nobody would take her safety more seriously than Doug.
I need to know you are safe. I will sacrifice a thousand lifetimes of my own happiness for that, baby. My own heart and soul.
I grimaced.
Nothing like being a man of one’s word.
Thump.
The sound wrenched my thoughts back to the moment—and the sight that deepened my scowl.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I rushed to Mom, scooping an arm under her waist. She grabbed my shoulder with the force of a drowning woman, betraying how much my action must’ve hurt, though she made no sound except a tight grunt.
“Getting my ass back into the house.” She accepted my support for the dozen steps it took to get inside and onto the couch. “Since someone was clearly checked out of the picture.”
Irritation tightened my jaw. “I wasn’t checked anywhere.”
She spurted a laugh. “Baby, you were so checked out.”
“You want chicken pot pie or pasta for dinner? I’ll steam some of that broccoli I picked up this morning, too.” A change of subject was my only way off her cart this time.
Or maybe not.
“Michael.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me down next to her. “We need to talk.”
Attempting to yank away was useless. The grip she’d just applied to my shoulder now trapped my hand. “About steaming broccoli? Because right now, that’s all I want to discuss, Mom.”
She huffed and tugged, forcing my gaze to hers. It wasn’t easy. The left side of her face was still a marble of purple and yellow, the deeper bruises taking longer to heal. “Margaux-”
“Isn’t a subject open for discussion.”
She scowled. “Damn it, I’ve been good about this.”
“Good?” I scoffed. “Glaring at me a dozen times a day like one of my hands is a hook and I made the Lost Boys walk the plank?”
“Better that than breaking that girl’s heart.”
“At least her heart’s alive.”
“Pssshh.”
She released me to wave her hand. I knew a good a
dvantage when it came. In two seconds, I was back on my feet, finding a convenient excuse to move away, ripping her velvet blanket off the rocking chair.
“You know how paranoid you sound, right?”
I threw a glower over my shoulder. “Are you comparing notes with her or something?”
Her head dropped. She started twisting the ring on her left ring finger, never removed since the day Dad had put it there. Had she always done that? My speculation was cut short by her fresh snort and angry side-eye. “Common logic doesn’t need bedfellows, honey. Neither does the truth. You’re being Chicken Little—that’s a plain-faced fact.”
“Says the sky herself?”
“What’s that supposed to—”
“Have you looked in the mirror lately, Mother?” I spread open the blanket with a sharp snap. “Or even tried to take a deep breath?” Wrapped it around her with determined tucks. “You were beaten to within an inch of your life. That’s a fact.”
“And we haven’t heard word one from Declan since,” she argued. “If he was even the one behind it.”
“If he was—” Incredulity turned the rest into a stunned but humorless laugh. “Okay, Chicken Little officially calls Pollyanna on her shit. No, wait. You’re not Pollyanna. You’re that airhead princess, the one who trusts the old hag in the forest then bites the apple and kills herself.” I threw up my hands. “News alert, Mom. Carlo won’t be able to wake you up with a kiss.”
A blush assaulted her face. “Carlo and I are none of your business.”
I chuckled. Her mortification was actually endearing. “You’re right. Just like Margaux and I are none of yours.”
She grumbled, loosening all the places I’d just tucked in. “Big stubborn shit.”
I bussed her forehead. “Little stubborn shit.”
“Get me my e-reader,” she snapped. “I need to rinse this anger off with a little Carly Phillips.”
