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,
