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“I know, Dad. I’m sorry.” She was grateful that her voice sounded strong and even. “I’m fine, I promise. And it’s such a treat to see Duffy.”
“I knew he’d keep you safe.”
“That he did.”
“Maggie…” He paused and she knew he was building up to something. “I want you to come home for a visit.”
“Daddy, I want to,” she lied, “but I have eight performances a week and I…”
“Don’t you have an understudy or something? I mean, didn’t someone else have to go on for you while you were kidnapped?”
She searched her mind frantically for a viable excuse.
“And, you know, I don’t like to worry you, but I haven’t been all that well since the attack, and I’d like to know…”
She sat up and leaned forward. “What attack?”
He hesitated.
“What attack?” she repeated.
“The heart attack.”
Her first thought was that he was putting her on—manipulating her. But he’d never done that before. And since she’d lost Harry and the boys, he tried particularly hard not to worry her.
“When did this happen?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well…because I was only in the hospital a few days, and the doctor said it was just a sort of warning to be careful. So I’ve been careful.”
He’d been careful, but her kidnapping probably hadn’t done much to keep him calm.
“Okay, Dad,” she said. “I’ll come. But I have to work it out with my director.”
“I’d love that, Maggie.” He sounded relieved.
She promised to do it soon and let him know her plans. Then she hung up the phone and lay stiffly against the headboard, feeling those curious tremors coming on again.
She couldn’t go home—but it sounded as though she had to. God.
She tried to make plans—to organize things in the hope it would make the tremors go away.
In the morning she’d call her travel agent to see about getting Duffy the next flight home on the Concorde. Then she’d call the bank and see about replacing her credit cards, her driver’s license, all the things she’d lost when the kidnappers had taken her backpack from her. They were probably still somewhere on the mountain. Life was going to be very inconvenient until everything was replaced.
Then she’d call her director and see about getting a week off in July. Exhaustion overtook her despite the tremors, and she fell asleep, thinking that if she was going to go home, she’d have to do it as a star—not as the real Maggie Lawton. That was the only way she could protect herself.
SHE DREAMED OF EVERYTHING that had happened—of her and Baldy and the Thickes visiting Gerard to help celebrate his birthday. Of the argument over what to do with the Sunday afternoon, then the decision to go hiking in the park. She saw the remote uphill spot, heard Prissie’s whiny remark about the trail being too steep and rocky, then the sudden appearance of men with Uzis.
She remembered very clearly the terror she’d felt that first instant. The absolutely horrifying threat she’d felt to her life and her safety. It had taken her a moment to remember that she didn’t care whether she lived or died.
The dream proceeded just as events had happened, except that there was no rescue. The government refused to negotiate, her father never called for the now big and capable Duffy March to rescue his little girl, and the gentle and enigmatic Eduard aimed his Uzi at her and fired.
She awoke feeling the pain in her chest, gasping for air in a complete panic—the last two years of horror distilled into that one moment.
Her bedroom door burst open, and she saw Duffy hesitate in the doorway.
She said his name and reached a hand toward him, caught in a nebulous world somewhere between her dream and reality.
“What?” he asked, hurrying toward her. He sat on the bed beside her and wrapped an arm around her. “Nightmare?”
She put a hand to her stomach and held it up to show him the blood. “I’ve been shot!” she whispered. “You were…too late.”
He put a hand to where her other hand pressed against her middle to stanch the flow of blood.
Damn the shaking! But she supposed if she was about to expire from a chest wound, she had the right to tremble.
“Maggie,” he said, holding her hand up in front of her face. “You’ve been dreaming. No blood, see? You haven’t been shot. You’re fine.”
“I am not fine!” she screamed at him. “I have a hole in my chest! Right…here!” She put a hand to the terrible burning pain and realized with the sudden clarity of wakefulness that it was an old pain. It wasn’t from a bullet at all, but from a two-year-old grief she was not going to be able to survive.
And now that she’d acknowledged it, the pain became more than she could bear. It had barbs and tentacles she’d controlled by suppressing it, but they now beat her and choked her and made her cry out in anguish.
She heard herself sob.
She fought to escape, but the pain was tenacious and no matter how hard she struggled, she couldn’t get free.
DUFFY DIDN’T KNOW what to do but hold her. At first she fought him, screaming, then she clung to him and sobbed. She was wearing his sweater, and she felt slight and fragile under its folds. He wrapped his arms tightly around her as she trembled and wept, concluding that the nightmare must have triggered a response to her ordeal that somehow related to the pain of the past two years of her life.
“It’s okay, Maggie,” he whispered, rocking her in the middle of the bed. “You’re going to survive.”
“I don’t think so,” she replied, finally quieting.
“You will,” he insisted firmly.
She stopped crying and leaned against him, tired and dispirited. “Most of the time I don’t even want to,” she said.
“You have to,” he said firmly. “You still have a father, you still have friends and, from what I read, you still have quite an audience.”
She leaned slightly away from him to look into his eyes. Hers were still filled with tears. His heart bled for her.
“You didn’t tell me my father had had a heart attack,” she said, her tone mildly accusing. “I’m surprised your father didn’t write or call me.”
For a minute he didn’t know what to say. He saw a pitcher of water and a cup on her beside table and reached for it to cover up his confusion. As far as he knew, Elliott hadn’t had a heart attack. He didn’t know everything that went on in the Lawtons’ lives, but his father usually kept him up on the important things. He couldn’t imagine he would have let that slip by.
“Where’d you hear that?” he asked, pouring water into the cup and handing it to her.
“Thank you. From my father! He told me when he was trying to get me to come home.” She looked at him with sudden suspicion as she sipped from the cup. “Or, didn’t it happen? I didn’t want to go home and he might have been…”
“Ah…well, I’m not sure. My father’s always trying to protect me, too. I know he’s been worried about your dad, so it’s entirely possible.” That was partly true. His father was always worried about his friend, who, at sixty-four, took off on nebulous missions for the State Department as though he was still a man in his prime. He just wasn’t sure he was worried about Elliott’s heart.
Duffy was suddenly distracted from that puzzle when he became aware of a subtle tension in the air. The intimacy of their embrace in the middle of the bed, hardly necessary now that she was composed again seemed to be generating it.
He knew she was aware of it, too, when her eyes met his in confused surprise. Using her hands on the mattress for leverage, she pushed herself slightly away from him. He noticed for the first time the tailored white silk nightshirt she wore—and the length of slender leg it revealed.
“I…I’m going to try to get time off,” she said a little distractedly, “sometime in July.”
He stood, going to the window and pushing her draperies back. The sun was low, long shadows falling across the park. The beautiful setting made him inexplicably homesick.
“Why don’t you just come home with me?” he suggested.
She blinked, surprised by the suggestion. “I can’t do that,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m the lead in a play,” she replied, her eyes a little desperate. “Because all my credit cards are in a gully somewhere in the Pyrenees. Because…”
“I can’t imagine your boss refusing you a couple of weeks R and R after what you’ve been through. And I’ll spring for your airfare and lend you some money until you get the credit cards straightened out.”
“I can’t leave the country without my passport.” She looked satisfied with that excuse. Even proud of it. “I’ve misplaced it in the shuffle of bags and reporters and hurry.”
He spotted her things apparently thrown carelessly on a chair when she’d changed for bed last night and saw her passport pinned to her bra strap. He hooked the lacy lavender thing in one finger and held it up, the book dangling.
“I’ll make reservations for two, then,” he said. “Give your father some peace of mind and you a probably much-needed rest.”
That surprised look she’d given him a moment ago registered a little longer, then turned to annoyance. She pushed herself to her feet with a sudden, imperious expression, intended, he was sure, to put him in his place.
“Look, Duffy,” she said, tossing her hair. He guessed she probably did that onstage. It was very effective. “I’m so grateful you came all this way to see to my safety. But that’s accomplished. I’m free now and our long friendship notwithstanding, your services are terminated.”
“Now, don’t get in a huff because I caught you in a fib,” he said. “I understand why you don’t want to go home, but that isn’t healthy. And if you’re going to get on with your life, you have to get serious about dealing with reality.”
“What do you know about dealing with reality?” she demanded, anger igniting in her eyes. “You own a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, and your business has offices in five countries. Your failures and your grief are still ahead of you.”
He arched an eyebrow at the deliberate ploy to gain the upper hand.
“Not so,” he corrected amiably. “I know about loss, if not death, and, being a bodyguard, I know that hiding doesn’t defeat your enemy. It just holds him off until the next time he finds you.” Then he smiled. “And while you might have been able to order me around when I was eight, things have changed considerably. Part of the deal when your father hired me was that I take you home. So the job isn’t done until I deliver you to Arlington.”
“I’m not ready to go yet.”
He spread both arms in a gesture of patience. “Then do what has to be done and I’ll wait.”
The room suddenly exploded in heavy perfume and rolling Rs when a very short, very hefty woman hurried in, moving a little like a tank in a blue dress with white polka dots and white tennis shoes. Her permed hair was a brassy shade of red.
“Madame Lawton!” the woman exclaimed. She’d apparently been crying and continued to sob as she rolled into the room and wrapped a very surprised Maggie in her embrace.
Maggie disappeared for a moment, and all Duffy heard was a thin, high-pitched, “Eponine! I thought you were on vacation!”
“Mais oui, but I heard the news!” Eponine said, taking a tissue from her pocket and dabbing her eyes with it. “I knew you would need me! Are you all right? Did they savage you?”
“Of course not,” Maggie replied. “I’m perfectly all right. There was no reason for you to spoil your trip.”
“Oh, but I could not leave you alo—” She stopped abruptly when she noticed Duffy standing bare-chested at the foot of the bed. She looked confused at first, then, after a head-to-toe scan, apparently decided the situation was not all that complicated.
“Oh, monsieur, I’m so sorry. Madame, please forgive me.” She put her fingertips to her mouth and turned in an embarrassed circle.
“No, no, no!” Maggie emphatically denied the woman’s assumption. Eponine took a step back in surprise at her vehemence. Duffy stood his ground. “It isn’t that at all. This is an old friend of mine from home,” she said with a glance at Duffy that suggested the term friend hung in the balance.
Eponine gave Duffy a sidelong glance that spoke volumes. “Friends are the most dangerous threat to a woman’s peace of mind because they become lovers so easily.”
Maggie shook her head. “He’s almost ten years younger than I am.”
Eponine drew a dreamy breath. “Ah, madame. That is even more merveilleux.”
“It’s eight years,” Duffy corrected, “and I’ll wager I’m far more experienced. You settled down with a family while I’ve never been married.”
Annoyed that she was losing control of the situation, Maggie said irritably, “Well, what does that have to do with anything?”
“I didn’t think it had anything to do with it,” Duffy replied, “but it seemed important to you.”
“Are you hungry?” she asked in that same impatient tone.
“Yes.”
“Eponine, you may stay to fix dinner for which I’ll add an extra day on to your vacation, then you must get back to your daughter.”
Eponine winked at Duffy. “Oui, madame.”
WHILE EPONINE PUTTERED in the kitchen and Duffy went off to make phone calls, Maggie took another shower, desperate to clear her addled brain.
Her life was growing more out of control by the moment. For years she’d been experiencing this hole in the center of her world that refused to heal, then she was kidnapped like some cabin boy in a novel, held at gunpoint, rescued by the boy she used to baby-sit more than twenty years ago, and now her maid thought they were having an affair. Her and Duffy March!
And he was turning out to be a surprise. The sweet, cooperative, well-behaved little boy who’d hung on her every word was now a stubborn, autocratic, know-it-all, who seemed to forget she had a mind of her own.
She was drying her hair when there was a loud rap on her half-open bathroom door. Duffy peered around it and handed her the phone. “Picked up this call for you. David Styron?”
She gave him a cool glance and took the phone. “Thank you. David?”
“Yes, Mags.” The large voice that could be heard from the back of the balcony boomed over the phone. Maggie had to hold it slightly away from her ear. “Glen tells me that you and Baldy are both well, but in need of a break after your ordeal. The devil’s negotiated you a month’s break—with pay—starting today.”
“What?” She turned to Duffy, suspecting his hand in this, but he was gone.
“What?”
“That’s right, my love. A whole month off. You must go to Cap Ferrat or someplace equally decadent and do nothing. But don’t get too tanned now, will you, or Nancy will have trouble making you up.”
“But, David, a month seems—”
“Long, yes I know. But Glen was insistent. He and Prissie are going to Bimini. And you mustn’t worry, Sukie Darwin was really quite good as Lady Bellows last night. She’s learned a lot watching you.”
Maggie didn’t know whether to be happy or upset. The fact that one’s understudy had been “really quite good” was good and bad news. She was very much aware that the theater was filled with younger and probably more talented women who could replace her in a moment. But it was startling to hear it confirmed.
