listened with a mixture of anger and sadness as Nick tonelessly described his incarceration. The psychologists said he had completely disassociated himself from his imprisonment and would have to make peace with it in his own time. For now, though, he held the emotions at arm’s length.
The lawyers moved on to the night of Nick’s rescue. He didn’t have a lot to say about it other than his door opened and a man named Jagger Holtz let him out, and Holtz and Laura led him to safety.
The lawyers left alone the events to follow Nick’s rescue—his weeks in a hospital recovering from various illnesses and malnutrition, his paranoia, the long silences, his difficulties with crowds and open spaces. None of that would help AbaCo’s case, apparently.
Then the lawyers attacked the veracity of Nick’s whole story, claiming it was entirely too far-fetched to be true, doing their damnedest to trip him up or get him to contradict himself. The only evidence he had of this supposed capture of his was a grainy video that could just as easily have been faked, and they demanded to know why he had it in for AbaCo.
She was ready to explode herself by the time Nick surged up out of his chair. “Why do I have to withstand this sort of character assassination? I’m the victim here! And now you make me a victim a second time!”
Carter nodded soberly. “You are correct. It’s the nature of our legal system that the victim often endures outright assault in the courtroom. That’s what we’re here to prepare you to face.”
Nick shoved a hand through his hair. “Why exactly do I have to testify?”
“Because AbaCo will try to convince the jury that the video is faked. The government has to have your direct testimony that the events on the tape are real.”
“Other people were there that night. Why not put my rescuers on the stand?” He sent Laura a quick, apologetic look, no doubt at the notion of dumping this mess into her lap. Not that she minded. She’d love to say a thing or two about AbaCo to a jury.
Carter grinned. “AbaCo won’t touch Laura with a ten-foot pole. She’s a former government agent, which gives her credibility, and they bloody well don’t want to give her a chance to vent her righteous fury in front of a jury…. The mother of your child alone and frantic for years? Oh, no. Way too damaging a story for AbaCo.”
He omitted the part where the government prosecutors wouldn’t put her on the stand because she’d illegally obtained most of the information that led to Nick’s rescue. They’d rather not open up that can of worms for AbaCo to pry into.
After his outburst, Nick settled into stoic silence, refusing to respond to any of the leading and obnoxious questions the lawyers threw at him. No matter what they tried, they couldn’t shake him. Laura was proud of him, but she didn’t like the way he was hunching into his chair, physically withdrawing into himself. He was approaching overload but too macho to admit it.
Thankfully, Ellie woke up and gave Nick the excuse he clearly needed to call a halt for the day. Laura gathered up their fussing daughter apologetically and adjourned to the minivan to nurse and change her.
Nick came outside a few minutes later and stopped by the van to tell her to drive carefully. With troubled eyes, she watched him guide his sporty BMW out of the parking lot. A worrisome, brittle quality clung to him.
Ahh, well. She would make that all go away tonight. The nanny had instructions to entertain the kids for the evening, leaving her and Nick to enjoy a romantic dinner by themselves in the master suite. Smiling, she turned out of the parking lot and pointed the minivan south toward the rolling hills of Virginia’s horse country and home.
Nick drove like a man possessed. Heck, maybe he was possessed. What madness was this to subject himself to cross-examination under oath with as many secrets as he clearly had to hide?
If Laura ever found out he wasn’t who he said he was …
She couldn’t find out. Period. He had too good a thing going, they had too good a thing going, to let anyone mess it up. As appealing as revenge against the bastards who’d held him captive might be, it was a no-brainer that his family came first. He’d made that choice months ago, and he’d had no reason to regret it since.
Someone honked at him. He jerked his attention back to the highway and the traffic streaming along it. He could do this. He could hold himself and his life together. One day at time. One hour or one minute at a time if that’s what it took. The only honest and good things in his life were Laura and the kids. He wasn’t about to lose them.
As the city turned into suburbs and the suburbs into open countryside, his jumpiness increased. After all that time in a shipping container, he’d have thought he would love nothing more than big, blue skies and broad horizons stretching away into infinity. But it turned out the exact opposite was the case. He’d become so used to living in a tiny, mostly dark space that anything else seemed strange and scary.
The panic attack started with sweaty palms and clenching the steering wheel until his knuckles hurt. Then his forehead broke out in a sweat, and an urge to crawl under a blanket in the backseat nearly overcame him.
As Laura’s estate came into view, he stopped the car and parked by the side of the road. He had to pull himself together before he got home and scared her or the kids. He hyperventilated until he saw spots before he managed to slow his breathing. He concentrated on Adam’s laughter, on Ellie’s tiny perfection, on Laura’s warm brown eyes looking at him with such love it made his heart hurt.
Gradually, his pulse slowed. He mopped his forehead dry. There wasn’t anything he could do about his sweat-soaked shirt, but hopefully Laura would put it down to the grilling earlier from the lawyers. Relishing the car’s smooth purr, he put it into gear.
After keying in his security code he drove through the tall iron gates, as always enjoying the bucolic sight of Laura’s prized horses grazing in manicured pastures behind freshly painted oak fences. As he pulled into the six-car garage, he was relieved to see that Laura’s van wasn’t inside yet.
Mumbling a greeting to Marta, the housekeeper, he hurried upstairs to take a shower. The enclosed shower stall with its rain-heads and steam jets soothed away the last remnants of his panic attack. When he emerged from his dressing room/walk-in closet, he heard Laura cooing to Ellie in the nursery. She was a great mom. It added a whole new dimension to the courageous woman who’d rescued him and spent the past year saving his soul.
He poked his head into the nursery. “Anything I can do to help?”
Laura smiled up at him. “I’m afraid you lack the proper anatomical equipment to provide what Ellie wants at the moment.” He gazed at his daughter’s silky, dark head nestled against the pale globe of Laura’s breast. He might have missed Adam’s babyhood—another outrage to lay at his kidnappers’ feet—but he was savoring every minute of Ellie’s.
“Dinner will be ready in a half hour,” Laura murmured. “I’ve asked Marta to serve it in our rooms.”
He nodded and retreated to the other end of the hall to play with Adam. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to sleep with Laura. Far from it. She was as generous and adventurous in bed as she was in life. It was just that he was still rattled from the interrogation, panicked that his past was about to rear its ugly head and ruin all of this perfection. What had happened during those lost years to make him hide his identity, even from the woman he loved?
“Daddeeeeeee!”
