With Her Last Breath (3 page)

While the large family kitchen behind the commercial one looked comfortable, with the muted sounds of the restaurant on the other side, Maggie preferred to eat alone.

The Alessandros’ upstairs apartment was across from hers, and that gave Maggie an odd sense of safety and homecoming.

Safety fled when Maggie noted the ancient door lock and the skeleton key. Experience told her that a chair backed into the knob and a rubber wedge beneath the door would offer some comfort, but a child could open the lock.

Her sister’s seducer had come straight into Maggie’s bathroom at home and had found Maggie soaking in mounds of scented bubbles. Furious that she’d gone to his powerful social friends, exposing the dark side of his life, using her sister, he’d wanted to prove his power over her by rape—

And after eight more months of Maggie struggling to save her marriage, Glenda was dead of an overdose. Maggie had tried everything to pull her back from the edge, and nothing had helped.

With experience, Maggie pushed back the memories that could still slither into life. She hefted the backpack filled
with Scout’s dry dog food and bowls onto a chair. “How do you like our new home?”

The small, neat, one-room apartment overlooked the picturesque Main Street. An air conditioner filled one tall window, and an aged radiator had been painted several times. The sturdy bed didn’t match the big dresser, but when Maggie tested the mattress, it was firm and good. She flipped back the worn chenille bedspread and cotton sheets and found the scent of sunshine.

Scout padded after her into the compact bathroom. “Good. A shower and no bath,” Maggie noted.

She would never take a bath again, never let herself be so defenseless…

Maggie firmly closed the bathroom door and shut out thoughts of her past. She was going to look to the future. She was going to change her life here in Blanchefleur, meet her fear of water, and get the home that she desperately needed.

In San Francisco, Brent Templeton watched the prostitute walk toward him, her generous hips swaying, that knowing, hard look on her face. In his pocket were the ropes with which he would tie her. She would serve his purposes tonight, because no one would believe a prostitute, just as no one had believed Glenda that she had once been righteous.

Except Maggie Chantel, fighting for her sister, fighting to avenge the pitiful excuse for a woman. Maggie had raised enough doubt with her constant harassment to make his heiress wife listen and eventually leave him.

Evelyn took her time arranging their divorce, her strategy perfect as she lined up the reasons for a quiet breakup, carefully extracting his name from her accounts. His ex-wife deleted his name from her insurance and made him wear the limp—the reminder that he’d failed to rape Maggie and that she’d badly injured his knee.

Oh, Maggie had described his attack perfectly to Evelyn, and his ex-wife had made him pay every day by her coldness.

Two weeks after his dog was stolen, Evelyn had delivered her final coup—papers for a quick, quiet settlement.

He’d had quite the scramble at first, trying to maintain lifestyle appearances, trying to get his old friends’ support while searching for Maggie. But without Evelyn, the doors were closed to him. Then he’d started his search in earnest for the woman who destroyed his life. Evelyn’s get-lost money didn’t last long, and when he couldn’t pay the bills for his lifestyle, he’d borrowed, and the collectors hadn’t been sweet.

He’d furnished drugs and prostitutes for his powerful friends, including attorneys and a judge, Sam Jones. Brent was an expert at moving in to use the soft underbelly of private vices and sins. He’d gotten information for blackmail, enough to push through big-money deals that weren’t supposed to happen. Once, he’d been a member of an elite club for hunters, a tightly woven group of powerful men with enough dark secrets to keep a blackmailer happy. They shied from him now, fearing for their reputations even though once he’d helped them. Blackmailing them had worked only a few times, and then they’d sent experienced muscle men after him.

Surgery could correct his broken nose, the long scar down his cheek, if only he had money. The slight paunch on his thin frame would take hours in the gym, which he could no longer afford. Gone was his Jamaican tan, replaced by a sallow, mottled complexion.

He’d wanted Maggie from the first moment he saw her five years ago. When she’d rebuffed his advances, he’d taken her sister instead, using her to prod Maggie. But the she-devil fought him and everyone else and had taken everything from him.

He would find her, and when he did, Maggie Chantel’s death would be very, very slow and painful. He’d have her first, of course, in many painful ways. She’d ruined his life, taken his pride, his home and prestige, and now the country club set laughed at him, avoided him.

All because of Maggie Chantel.

Now he had nothing left but the hatred that drove him, the need to find Maggie and see the fear in her hazel eyes, making her pay, feeling the pain. Whatever hole she’d found to hide in, he’d find her.

The hunted had become the hunter…

Later, when the woman tied to the bed cried out in pain, he was powerful again and in command. He viciously ordered her to tell him that she loved him.

Just as Glenda had.

Just as Maggie would.

D
own on the street, a car honked and Maggie snapped back to the present. With a steadying breath and shaking hands, she began unpacking.

With more to retrieve from her pickup, Maggie opened the upstairs apartment door and stepped out onto the landing.

The stairway was narrow, the varnished wooden steps firm, but worn with use. The man standing on the bottom of the stairs startled her. It was the same man—the jogger beside the road, the man on the beach from the restaurant, dressed as a cook, with a long apron over his short-sleeve black T-shirt and worn jeans. Apparently he not only promoted the restaurant, but worked in it, too.

The single bald bulb overhead hit Nick’s face, all jutting angles and planes. Head tilted down, the arrogance was there, and just that bit of anger. He held a large glass of milk. His black brows had drawn together in a scowl, his mouth hard as he faced a tall graceful blond, dressed expensively in a flowing cobalt blue silk suit. Obviously locked in a dis
agreement, the blond pressed, “You’ll call me, won’t you, Nick? It was so good between us.”

His deep voice cut through the shadows at the bottom of the stairs. “It’s over, Lorna. We dated a few times and that was it.”

Then the woman’s furious blue stare rose up the stairs to pin Maggie. She inhaled and stepped back into her apartment, softly closing the door. Maggie didn’t want to be involved in someone else’s business ever again and went to the window overlooking Main Street.

Families strolled about in the sunshine. A father protectively carried a small child across the cobblestone street while his heavily pregnant wife latched her hand to the back of his jeans. An elderly man and woman strolled along the sidewalk and stopped to admire something in an antique shop window.

Maggie turned from the peaceful scene, and her mind flipped back to the upsetting one on the beach, where she’d sensed that Nick was angry at her. At first, he was determined to push her; she’d offended him somehow.

She’d seen arrogance in the tilt of his head, and a rough intimacy in his deep tones, man to a woman, the sound of a man whose arms could frame a woman against the wall, trapping her until she didn’t want to leave. She was certain he could be charming, and by the look of the woman pressing him, he was paying for playing.

Maggie shrugged, because now another woman was calling him to task, and that was fine with her.

Caught by movement down on the street, Maggie moved aside the lace curtain. A woman in a long dress covered by a full-length black cape with a hood was just locking the door of a small shop opposite the restaurant. The wind licked at her hem, and she gathered her cape around her. The word “Journeys” in silver scrolled artistically across the shop’s window, and the woman stopped, almost as if she were frozen. She seemed wary and scanned the street, her face
narrow and pale within that shadowy hood, and then she disappeared into a side street.

Maggie wondered what had caught the woman in that moment, what had made the fear leap to her face. But it wasn’t Maggie’s purpose to understand. She’d been drained by knowing too much, trying to help…

Like books of different colors propped up side by side, the two-story buildings were narrow and had bench seats and flower boxes in front of them. Sunlight flashed in the windows of the tavern directly opposite the restaurant. While the other shops seemed well kept, the dark windows of Ed’s Place held a timeless, seedy look, probably highly sought by tourists wanting local flavor.

Blanchefleur seemed peaceful, exactly what she needed. Maggie removed her baseball cap and the band that confined her ponytail, placing them on the big sturdy dresser. She winnowed her fingers through her hair as she looked into the mirror. She looked like she felt, road miles dragging on her. If she could just stay long enough to set up a clientele, to get a little money saved for her own business…

Scout looked up from lapping water and Maggie lifted the plate’s foil, inhaling the aroma of spaghetti and garlic bread. “If there’s one thing I don’t need, it’s to be involved in someone else’s life,” Maggie said as she settled in to enjoy the meal.

She looked at the ceiling when the woman’s voice dropped the soft pleading and raised sharply. “She’s not coming back. I can make you forget Alyssa. Don’t forget that I’ve got business connections you could work years to make. Let me help, Nick.”

The answering low male rumble was indistinguishable, and then only the sound of the busy restaurant carried up the stairway.

So he’d lost his woman, had he? Maybe he deserved this woman, pushing him. But then, Nick wasn’t Maggie’s business.

She ate quietly, determined not to enter any more scenarios that didn’t concern her. The food was delicious, the sauce just spicy enough and the pasta-carbs settling in to make Maggie sleepy. She sat, propping her jogging shoes on the other chair, and decided to wait a little longer before unloading her pickup, giving time for Lorna to work on the reluctant Nick.

“Mine is really good. How was yours?” Maggie asked as Scout padded around the apartment, sniffing the unfamiliar scents. Maggie had planned to eat only a bit, saving the rest to parcel out the next day, but suddenly her plate was clean.

Scout stilled, turned, and went to sit at the door, announcing a human on the other side.

Maggie froze; she hadn’t locked the door. She forced herself to wait in silence and then the brisk knock sounded. “Yes?”

“I’m supposed to bring you this glass of milk to go with your dinner, and to check the refrigerator to see that it’s working.”

She recognized Nick’s voice and glanced at the small refrigerator doing its humming-happy thing. “It’s fine. I’ve eaten. I don’t need the milk now.”

On the other side of the door, Nick issued a tired sigh and uttered a smothered “Women.”

Scout’s look begged Maggie, who stood reluctantly, stretched, and said, “Okay. So he’s having a bad day, fending off his blond friend who wants to get married. He’s only a handyman or a cook or something doing his job and taking orders. He did steer me here and to good food. I’ll be good.”

Maggie slowly opened the door six inches and met the scent of garlic and onions. Nick’s black waves were damp, and just a drop of milk clung to his earlobe. A few more white drops beaded on his tanned throat. The damp spot on his white apron looked suspiciously like he was wearing the rest of the milk over the red spaghetti sauce stains. He held a glass of milk in one hand and a bottle of wine tucked beneath one arm.

There was too much of him, and his eyes were so black she could see herself reflected in them. The light in the landing did not soften the jut of his cheekbones, those fierce, drawn eyebrows. A muscle moved along his jaw as he studied her face, and he lifted the glass of milk, grimly prompting her. “I got detained. The first glass of milk got spilled on my head.”

Maggie had learned never to ask the whys. They were outside her life now. “The refrigerator works fine. You don’t have to come in.”

He sighed again and explained firmly, slowly. “Mom told me to.”

Since apparently everyone called the Alessandros “Mom” and “Pop” or “Dad” and they had invited her to also, Maggie dismissed any relationship. Scout was muscling her head by Maggie’s thigh, sniffing at Nick, who reached a hand down to pet her. The dog’s bulk prevented Maggie from closing the door, so she opened it wider. “Just do what you have to do—and I don’t drink.”

“The wine is a welcome gift. It’s from the Alessandro Winery, an estate red, grown on the company’s vineyard.”

Maggie didn’t like gifts; they usually came with a high price tag. When she’d set her course to avenge her sister, the gifts to make her stop were expensive and the price she needed to pay very high—her honor and her pride.

When Nick moved into the apartment, Maggie was disgusted by Scout’s flirtation with the man, bumping against him, her tail wagging happily. Maggie would have staggered with Scout’s playful leap upon her chest, but Nick didn’t. He placed the glass and wine on the table, then petted the dog. “Hi, Scout. How’s it going?”

“Sorry about that. I’ve been working with her, but she gets excited. Get down, Scout,” Maggie ordered, but the dog continued to enjoy the man waggling her head playfully as she stood, paws on his chest.

In the small apartment, Nick seemed taller, his shoulders broader. At six-foot-four and in excellent shape, he could easily overpower her. Maggie’s sense of danger leaped; no
one would hear her scream; she’d fought desperately in her own bathroom against a big, powerful man—

“You look scared, as if you’re going to jump out of that window. What’s wrong?” Nick asked quietly.

Maggie grabbed Scout’s collar and hauled her back from him. The dog plunged, dragging Maggie slightly, as she made her way back to her new playmate.

“Sit.” Nick’s voice held firm command, and Scout instantly plopped her bottom, her tail thumping on the floor. He bent to waggle her head and Scout looked at him as if he were her doggie chew treat, a perfect delectable dried pig’s ear. “Good dog.”

Great. After all those futile hours of trying to get Scout to respond to “sit,” she now obeyed a stranger. Maggie’s dog was in love. Irritated that Scout would obey Nick and not her, Maggie crossed her arms. She was road-tired, full of good food, and after she walked Scout, she’d be ready for a shower and bed. She needed privacy and quiet and not the man invading her space, challenging her, or taking control of Scout. “Do what you have to do and get out.”

Nick’s slow smile mocked Maggie’s irritation, and the set of his body said he’d move when he wanted. “Friendly type, aren’t you?”

She let that pass and stood, disgusted by the way her dog was obviously trying to make friends. With her tail wagging, Scout followed Nick to the refrigerator. He opened the door, studied the interior, and reached to adjust a knob. The refrigerator shuddered and died. “It will work better when you get some food in it.”

Maggie felt guilty. He was just a cook who took time to run and keep in shape, and he’d steered her to free food and a good place to stay at a cheap rate. She forced herself to speak. “Thanks for the coupon. The food is good.”

He closed the refrigerator door and scanned the room, noting the changes she’d made. “The best. Watch the freezer. It needs defrosting sometimes.”

“Okay. You can go now.”

Nick didn’t move. Those black eyes flickered just once beneath that heavy set of eyelashes, and she had the impression that he could only be pushed so far. “I’m supposed to help you carry up your things. Mom said your pickup looked full and you looked too tired. Had a long trip?”

Maggie didn’t answer that question. She’d learned a long time ago that small talk led to big problems, and she preferred to keep her life private. “I can manage. It sounds busy downstairs. Don’t you have something to do?”

He tilted his head as though he were settling in to take his time with her. “It’s a slow night. It gets busier a little later in the season. Have you got a thing against people helping you?”

In the past few years, Maggie had discovered a new fact of life: If people helped you, they wanted to be involved in your life, or they wanted something, and either way Maggie didn’t need the complications. “Yes, I do. You can leave now.”

“Am I making you nervous?” Both arrogance and charm were present in his deep voice, nudging her into an admission she didn’t want to make.

Maybe she was just too tired to deal with him, or maybe she was right to be wary. In either case, she wanted him gone. Maggie took a deep breath and leveled a stare at him. “Because you pointed my way to this apartment doesn’t mean you’ve got squatter’s rights. The friendly conversation is over. Now get out.”

He wasn’t budging, but the muscle moving rhythmically in his jaw said he’d taken offense. His hand opened, broad palm turned up and waiting. “Keys to your pickup.”

The calluses on his hand surprised her, but the arrogance that said he usually got his way did not.

Sensing tension, Scout moved between them. Scout’s instincts had locked onto Maggie’s fears, the way they poured from her. One movement or sound or look and the dog was on instant alert. Nick glanced down at her. “She’s protective. Any special reason?”

Maggie needed a job, not problems. And Nick looked like
a king-sized problem. “Okay, you can help. But no more questions.”

“I’m not usually interested. But if you’re in trouble, I’d rather you didn’t bring it to Mom and Pop’s.”

She resented the inference that she might bring harm to the friendly Alessandros. “I am not in any trouble. I just like to be left alone.”

“There’s usually a reason for that.” His dark eyes were too solemn, watching her. When she refused to give him any insight into her life, he said, “Okay, have it your way, but I’ve got orders to help you. Coming?”

A few minutes later, she followed him back up the stairs. Her large worn duffel bag was slung easily across his shoulder, and he carried her cardboard box, filled with mementos of Glenda and their parents—a few framed pictures, albums, a bit of inherited jewelry—beneath his other arm. Maggie lugged up the picnic cooler, placing it on the table.

Nick put the duffel bag and the box on the bed, then picked up her empty plate and fork with the air of a waiter cleaning a table for a good tip. Maggie resented the thank-you she had to give him, because she hadn’t asked for his help. “Thanks. I’m not tipping. I didn’t ask for your help, and I didn’t need it.”

His head went back as though he’d taken a slap, and those eyes narrowed, his nose flaring slightly. He nodded and then closed the door after him.

Scout tilted her head and whined softly, pinning her eyes on the closed door.

“You’re so easy. I’m the one who pays for your vet bills and dog food. There’s this thing called loyalty, you know,” Maggie grumbled as she opened the cardboard box and placed the framed photos of her family on the dresser. She ran a fingertip over the one with her sister and herself, grinning into the camera, arms looped around each other.

In another photo, Glenda’s young sons, Seth and Cody, just six and three, had sat on their mother’s lap, each kissing her cheek…and a slice of pain went through Maggie. She
missed her nephews, missed seeing them grow. She wanted them in her arms, safe and alive and warm.