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

Maggy hesitated, searching his face. The features were the same as those of the boy she had loved: the thick straight black brows, the slightly crooked nose with the small bump on its bridge from where it had been broken that fateful night, the broad cheekbones and square chin. Even the elusive dimple on the right side ofhis mouth was the same. But there were differences, too: lines of experience at the corners of his eyes, a hardness that was new, a certain cynicism in the set of his jaw and in the gleam of those bright hazel-green eyes. He was indubitably Nick, her Nick, but he had changed, inside where it didn’t much show. But then, of course, so had she. “I owe you an apology.”
    “You do—but don’t bother. I like you better spitting fire than being reasonable. Brings back old times.” He glanced around, his attention attracted by the sound of the dogs barking as they galloped toward them through the trees. “Don’t forget to pick your present up off the path before someone else comes across it.”
    “Nick …” But it was too late. He was already striding away. He glanced over his shoulder as she called after him and touched his hand to his brow in a salute.
    “Happy birthday, Maggy May,” he said, and then he vanished like a shadow through the trees.
    Maggy stared after him, feeling her battered heart threatening to break anew. Ah, Nick. How she had loved him. So much that it hurt to remember. And how like him, to appear out of nowhere after twelve years of silence and tease and mock her and drive her crazy even when he meant to do her a good deed. She should have known he meant her no harm. Somewhere deep in her heart she thought she had known it, but she had forgotten how to listen to her heart.
    Seamus and Bridey burst through the undergrowth like a pair of bounding moose and leapt on her with doggy ecstasy.
    “Down, guys!” She staggered under the onslaught, patting them, glad of their boisterous advent because it distracted her from thoughts of Nick. Now that he had done what he had come to do, would he vanish from her life for another twelve years?
    The prospect made her want to wail like an abandoned child.
    “Enough of that!” she said aloud, pressing her lips firmly together and forcing her mind to focus on the purely practical, the here and now. She had learned long ago that it was dangerous to give in to maudlin reflection. If she allowed herself to dwell on the negative aspects of her life, she would be forever in tears, and that would do no one any good, least of all David or herself.
    As Nick had reminded her, she had to gather up the tape and pictures and negatives and get rid of them before someone found them and gave them to Lyle.
    Lyle would use them against her. Maggy knew he would use them against her. She didn’t know precisely how, but she knew him well enough to know that he would.
    He might even be cruel enough to show them to David.
    At the thought, Maggy shuddered and hurried to retrieve the incriminating evidence. Everything was where it had fallen, still scattered across the path, and she scooped the items up without looking at the pictures again, shoving them back inside the ripped package and then tucking them inside her anorak with a hasty, guilty glance around. It would be like Lyle to have spies even here.
    But now she was letting herself get paranoid. There were no eyes to see nor tongues to tattle so early in the morning in Windermere’s own woods.
    She had to get rid of the pictures and negatives and tape.
    Standing up, Maggy hesitated, chewing her lip as she considered the problem. Despite her agitation, a tiny glimmer of amusement flickered across her face as the thought came to her that she was pondering the question that must once have tormented Richard Nixon: to burn or not to burn an incriminating tape? But in her case at least, a bonfire of sufficient size to consume every scrap ofevidence beyond redemption would be sure to attract the very attention she