Maggy's Child by Karen Robards Read Free Book Online Page A

measuringly down at her.
    “A million dollars or I show the pictures and tape—oh, yes, that’s a videotape of your whole performance—to Lyle? Interesting thought, that.”
    “I—I can’t get a million dollars. I don’t have access to that much. Nowhere near it.”
    His gaze met hers, and he smiled, a slow, lazy, taunting smile.
    “I bet Lyle could get it, if I threatened to send copies of everything to the local movers and shakers. TV might even be interested. I can just see your little dance ending up on something like A Current Affair , can’t you? With the appropriate blackouts over strategic areas of your anatomy, of course.”
    “You son of a bitch.”
    “You know how I always hated to hear you swear. I still do. Maybe I ought to up the ante for every cussword that comes out of your mouth.”
    “Go to hell!”
    “Watch yourself, Maggy May, this could get expensive.”
    “Don’t you dare call me that!” The once-familiar endearment stung her like the flicked end of a bullwhip.
    “In my experience, blackmailers can call their victims anything they want.”
    “Oh, so you have experience? Is that how you make a living these days, blackmailing innocent people like me?”
    “I’d hardly call you innocent, Magdalena. Not then, and not now.”
    Maggy could feel a hot rush of fury rising inside her. It was a familiar, if long forgotten, sensation. In her teen years she had been renowned throughout the mean streets of Louisville’s west end for her fiery temper. She and Nick had once fought like two angry cats swung together in a sack. Since marrying Lyle, the fight had been systematically knocked out of her.
    “How much do you want?” She was quivering with shock and outrage and pain. That Nick could do this to her, Nick whom she had once loved with a fierce wild tide, was unbelievable. No, it was very believable. After all, hadn’t she learned the hard way that no one was what he or she seemed, and that even the best-known, most trusted person had as many unfathomable layers as an onion?
    “What would you say if I told you that I wasn’t after money?”
    A suggestive glint in his eyes told Maggy what he meant. She laughed, the sound forced and high. “Sex? Is that what you want? Fine. Go ahead, lover. Throw me down on the ground right here and now and get your rocks off. It’s a cheap price to pay to get you the hell out of my life again.”
    His eyes narrowed, darkened. “That’s my Maggy May. Foulmouthed and bullheaded.” Taut mockery curled his mouth while his arm tightened around her waist, drawing her up on her toes as he pressed her even closer against him. Maggy didn’t bother to struggle—she knew from experience that Nick, when seriously annoyed as he was at that moment, possessed the strength of two ordinary men—but she glared up at him with all the rage she had kept stored inside her for the last dozen years. His brows twitched together as he absorbed her expression, and then he bent his head to kiss her.

O nly he didn’t. Maggy, rigid, hating, her arms wedged between them holding him slightly at bay, braced herself for nothing.
    Nick let her go and stepped back.
    “The pictures and tape are a gift,” he said, folding his arms across his chest and watching her like a dog at a rabbit hole. “The negatives are inside the envelope. They came into my possession from someone who did indeed intend to use them to blackmail you, my dear Mrs. Forrest. Luckily for you, I bought them—and they weren’t cheap—before anyone else could see them, and now I’m giving them to you, no strings attached.”
    Maggy stared up at him for a moment, too dumbfounded to speak. She had behaved abominably, and she knew it. But she had forgotten how to trust anyone, even Nick.
    “Why?” She thrust her hands into the pockets of her anorak, all at once desperately cold.
    “Why not?” The words were flippant.
    “That’s not an answer.”
    “It’s all you’re going to get.”
    “Nick …”