He’d caught an unexpected glimpse of her bare feet, though. The toenails were painted a wild purple—a startling surprise.
Except for those wild toenails, she looked beyond vulnerable. Frail. As if a slap would beat her down.
Maguire’s father hadn’t slapped her. At his death, Gerald Cochran had left her fifteen million dollars. What should have been an incredible gift had turned into an incredible burden—and there was precisely the problem. The doctors didn’t get it. Lawyers certainly didn’t get it. No one in Carolina’s hard-working, middle-class family had any prayer of getting it.
That money could destroy her. Maguire knew it too well. In less than two months, it almost had.
“Mr. Cochran.”
Henry again. Maguire stood, catwalked up the aisle, past the leather seats and galley to the cockpit, and then strapped himself into the copilot’s chair.
He’d hired Henry four years ago. Henry was barely thirty, but he had an old man’s face, bassett-hound eyes and forehead wrinkles of worry that were already set in. Maguire always figured Henry came out of the womb an old soul, probably never had a childhood, and for damn sure never stepped on a crack in the sidewalk. But those weren’t bad character traits for a pilot and man Friday. Henry had turned into one of the few people Maguire could trust.
“Everything on track?” Maguire asked easily.
“Should be landing by eight. Washington time, of course. Weather patterns look good.” Henry lived for flying, yet his expression was as somber as mud.
“But.” Maguire knew there was one coming.
Henry shot him a darting glance. “Even for you, sir, this is a little unusual.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“I’m not questioning you. You know that. It’s just that this is so …”
“Unusual,” Maguire supplied, when it was obvious Henry couldn’t think of another word to put out there.
“Yes. The lady there …” Henry shook his head. “I just don’t quite understand how we’re going to communicate with her if she can’t hear.”
“Beats me. We’ll figure something out.”
“You don’t think it’s slightly, say, illegal. To just take her out of that place without her permission?”
“She was having a breakdown, Henry. Because of what my father did. There was no conventional way to make this right. There’s no one in her regular life who has a clue what she’s trying to cope with. You think I should have walked away?”
“I wouldn’t presume to say, sir.”
“Well, I didn’t have that option. I couldn’t walk away. There was no one else who could make this right. This upended my life, too, you know, not just hers.” He sighed. “Try to relax, Henry. If I get taken off to prison, I’ll make sure you’re not implicated.”
“That wasn’t my concern, sir.”
“Once you get a serious night’s rest, I want you to fly back to South Bend. I have a list of things you need to do. We’re going to set up a communication base so her friends and family have an email address for her, a cell phone just for those communications. I’ll deal personally with any and all lawyers. But her place is going to need some maintenance. She’ll be with me for several weeks—”
“Several weeks?“ Harry tugged at his button-down collar.
“Maximum. I’m hoping no more than two weeks, but we could have to extend it to three. Which is why I need you to get back to her place as soon as you’ve rested up from this flight. Nothing huge to do, just details. See if she has plants to water, empty her fridge of perishables. Call me with a list of personal items in her medicine cabinet, cosmetics, medicines, that kind of thing. Put her heating at a nominal temperature—sixty. Like that.”
“No problem.”
“I don’t know what mail she’ll have come in. If there are bills, I want you to pick them up, route them to me. Personal mail, forward. Catalogs or junk, just heap up. This is too much to be telling you off the cuff. I’ll give you a list when you’re ready.”
“You don’t need me at the lodge with you?”
“I could. But when she wakes up, first thing she’s going to freak about is all the personal life she’s left hanging. So we have to take care of that, number one. Beyond those obvious life details, I won’t know more than that until she wakes up and starts talking.”
“Sir?”
“Henry. Quit doing that careful ‘sir’ thing. Whatever’s bothering you, just get it off your chest before you drive me nuts.”
“Yes, sir. What if she wakes up and wants to go home? What if she doesn’t want to stay with you?”
“Henry.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Of course she won’t want to stay with me. She doesn’t know me from Adam. But it’s my problem to build her trust. To make this work. Not yours.”
“Yes, sir.”
Maguire sighed. “What’s the ‘but’ now, Henry?”
“It’s just… she’s young. And very, well, pretty. Very pretty.”
“Henry.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Have I ever struck you as the kind of man who’d take advantage of a wounded woman?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you noticed that I have any lack of attractive women in my life?”
“No, sir.”
“And here’s the punch line, Henry. I kidnapped her. That means I have the power over the situation. And that means there’s no way I’d touch a hair on her head. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If I were burning in hell, Henry. If she begged me. If she were my last chance to have sex in my entire life. Some things are plain wrong, and the line here is crystal clear. While she’s under my care, she couldn’t be safer.”
“Got it, sir.”
“Now, are there any more questions, or can I go back and catch an hour of shut-eye?”
“Absolutely no questions, sir.”
About every three months or so, Henry revealed a sense of humor. Otherwise it was like having an old-fashioned aunt around, always underfoot, worrying whether he had an umbrella in the rain, whether he’d eaten, whether he was hot or cold or tired. Damn good employee. But exhausting sometimes.
Maguire headed back, grabbed a blanket from an overhead bin and dropped into the oversize lounge chair closest to her. He considered turning on the tube, or switching on his computer, or opening his briefcase. Instead, he found himself staring at Carolina again.
Everything about her was soft. Skin. Hair. Mouth. There wasn’t a single hint of toughness in her.
He could well believe she’d risked her life to save his little brother, even though Tommy was a relative stranger to her. He could well believe she wouldn’t think, before leaping in, to help someone else.
He couldn’t imagine her being tough enough, resilient enough, to handle the pressure that had been heaped on her in the last two months. She’d never had the training for it, the upbringing that could have prepared her.
His father, so typically, had impulsively left her a gift that was supposed to be generous and wonderful. It would never have occurred to Gerald that he’d thrown a young woman into the deep end with no life raft in sight.
Maguire