Some Enchanted Season (3 page)

But he wanted to be free too. She was sure of it. So, after the next few months, she intended to say good-bye—if he didn’t say it first. Another person may think that was cold and manipulative, but it wasn’t. Good-bye was simply all that was left for them to say.

While the aide loaded her suitcases onto a wheeled cart, Maggie made her way into the bathroom. After closing the door, she stared at herself in the mirror, taking stock. Her auburn hair, shaved completely in
the operating room for the surgery to remove blood clots from her brain, had grown back months before and looked much the same as ever. It completely covered the scar that arced across her scalp from front to back.

Makeup camouflaged the thinner scars on her forehead, her cheek, her jaw. Those were where her face had come into contact with various parts of the truck. The thicker, elliptical scar at the base of her throat, visible when she tugged down the neck of her sweater, marked the incision where the ER doctor had inserted the tracheotomy tube that allowed her to breathe in those first few hours.

Other than the scars, she looked like the same old Maggie. But she wasn’t. She was more afraid than the old Maggie, less confident. She felt less intelligent, less capable, less competent.

But she was more determined. She’d already proven wrong the doctors who’d said she wouldn’t survive the wreck, the others who’d said she wouldn’t recover. Now she was going to prove just how much she had recovered. She was going to declare her independence, to live her life for herself and no one else.

For the first time in far too long, she was going to be happy.

The knock at the door made her gaze shift in that direction. “Mrs. McK? They’re here,” the aide called out.

They
. The two most important men in her life. The doctor who had treated her so well these last eight months, and Ross, who had once loved her with all his heart. Whom she had once loved with all her soul.

Taking a deep breath to ease the tightness in her chest, she looked at herself again. Her face was pale, and her eyes were wide and dark. She looked afraid. Though she’d waited for this day to come, now that it was here, she wanted desperately to stay at the center, where everyone was familiar, where everyone understood her shortcomings and the reasons for them, where there were other people like her. She wanted to stay where she felt safe and protected.

There was another tap on the door. “Maggie?” That was Dr. Allen. He was being polite. There was no lock on the door—no unbreachable privacy for any of his patients, not even in the bathroom. If she didn’t answer, he could, if he wanted, simply turn the knob and let himself in.

She turned it instead.

Her large, comfortable room seemed smaller with so many people in it. She pressed her palms together and avoided eye contact. “I—I guess it’s time.” Her voice sounded breathy because she’d forgotten to breathe. She filled her lungs before gesturing toward the wheelchair. “I’m not riding in that.”

“Now, Maggie,” Dr. Allen began, but she interrupted.

“You people spent a lot of time teaching me to walk again. You’re not putting me in a wheelchair now.”

“It’s our last treat for you. Just policy, Maggie. You know that.”

She appreciated that he gave her credit for knowing simple things—some people didn’t—but it didn’t sway her. “I don’t want to feel like some—some—” She knew the word, could see it in her mind, could hear it
but only in its second meaning. Invalid. Not valid. Null. Useless. No good.

Ross broke in in his rich, powerful CEO voice that no one—not even Tom Flynn, certainly not Maggie—argued with. “Take the wheelchair away. She worked hard to learn to walk. Let her walk.”

The aide looked at Dr. Allen. He shrugged, then smiled at Maggie. “All right, Maggie. Dazzle us all. Walk out of here.”

She circled the bed and left the room for the elevator. The doctor walked alongside her, with Ross a few feet behind, the aide behind him with the luggage cart.

After recovering from the fractures that had required surgery on her left leg and right hip, she’d been walking one way or another for several months—with a walker, followed by crutches and, most recently, a cane. In the last few weeks she’d gotten around on nothing but her own two feet. But today whatever grace she had recovered was temporarily gone. Her movements felt jerky and awkward because fate or luck or whatever the hell it was couldn’t let the moment pass without reminding her how much she had changed.

But she would get stronger. However strong she needed to be to live alone, she would achieve it.

The elevator doors opened, and she moved inside with the others. The car was mirrored. By turning her head just a bit, she could see Ross’s reflection. The first time she’d ever seen him, she had been in her second year of college, and she’d thought he was the most handsome man who ever existed—black-haired, blue-eyed, with a wicked grin and more ambition, intelligence,
and sex appeal than one person should ever possess. She’d been half in love with him from that moment on, had fallen all the way in a few short weeks.

All these years later she still found him startlingly handsome. His hair was longer than he normally wore it, shorter than she normally liked it, and the expression in his eyes was guarded in a way it had never been before. He was still ambitious, intelligent, and sexy as hell, but she never saw that wicked grin anymore. She never saw him smile at all unless she happened to be looking when he smiled at someone else.

The day she’d realized that was the day she’d decided to return to college to finish the education she’d interrupted to put him through school. It was the day she’d known their marriage was past saving.

It was the saddest day of her life.

The bell rang for the first floor, and the aide stepped off first, pushing the luggage cart toward the side entrance with its automatic door. Dr. Allen accompanied Maggie and Ross through the front door and onto the veranda. When they stopped at the top of the steps, he was saying something about questions and needs and calls, but she wasn’t listening. Instead, she stared across the grounds.

It was nearing the end of November, eleven months less one day since she’d taken up residence in hospitals. The sky was overcast, and the air was chilly with a reminder that winter had arrived. It was her favorite time of year. Autumn, changing leaves, Thanksgiving, Christmas, nesting in for winter. She was a great nester.
She loved warm clothes, cold weather, hearty stews, and roaring fires.

Ross loved business meetings, eighteen-hour workdays, and takeovers. He wouldn’t adapt well to nesting, to twenty-four hours a day with her, to living in a tiny town hours away from everything important to him. He would make the effort because she, through Dr. Allen, had asked it of him, because his image of himself demanded it, but she was sure he would be glad when it was over.

So would she, she reminded herself.

“Well, Maggie.” Dr. Allen claimed her attention as well as her hand. “We’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too.”

“Take care of yourself. You can do it now.”

Smiling at his reassurance, she stepped forward and hugged him. “Thank you for everything.”

“We just helped. You did all the hard work yourself.” When she released him, he extended his hand to Ross. “Mr. McKinney.”

“Doctor.” They shook hands, then Ross looked her way. She felt it. “I’ll bring the car around—”

“No.” She tilted her face to the gray sky and smiled. “I can walk.”

She held the rail, smooth wood painted black, and took the first careful step, placing her left foot on the step, gingerly shifting her weight, bringing the right foot alongside. Ross descended easily to the bottom, then waited. He didn’t know what it was like to have to think about the mechanics of walking, to give commands and coax muscles and work and struggle so hard
for every step. He didn’t realize how incredibly lucky he was.
She
did. She was lucky to be alive.

When she reached the bottom, she slowly turned and smiled triumphantly at Dr. Allen. “Thank you.”

He smiled back. “You’re welcome.”

Buoyed with the confidence of success, she found the walk to the end of the sidewalk easier. Ross’s attention was on the parking lot, not on her, and she looked that way too. His last car, to the best her battered brain could recall, was a Jag—expensive, impressive, part of the image. There were only a dozen cars in the lot, but she didn’t see it. “Which one is yours?”

She felt him glance her way, as if startled that she’d spoken. “The Mercedes.” Then, noticing that about half of the dozen cars were Mercedes, he gestured to a midnight-dark car. “The gray one.”

The aide met them at the car. After settling in, Maggie took a quick look around. Luxury and beauty. Ross had a fine appreciation for both qualities and had worked hard to earn the fortune that enabled him to surround himself with both. Unfortunately, whatever fortune he had was never enough. The ambition she had so admired back in college had become a relentless drive to have more, always more. If he could live comfortably on a six-figure income, then he would be more comfortable with an eight-figure income. If he owned six companies, he wanted twelve. If he was a powerful, wealthy man, he wanted to be the most powerful, the wealthiest.

All she’d wanted was enough. Enough money to pay their bills, provide a comfortable house, put food on the table, and a little extra for fun now and then.
Enough to support a houseful of babies and let her be a stay-at-home mom. Just enough.

There had been a time when that was all he’d wanted too. How had they grown so far apart?

They’d left the center grounds and were several miles away before he spoke. “Do you want to stop somewhere for lunch?”

“I ate early.” She’d had her reasons. She hadn’t sat down to eat a meal with him in at least eleven months. She hadn’t eaten a meal in a restaurant in that long, hadn’t tried out her relearned skills—feeding herself, walking, talking, socializing—in public in that long. She wanted to delay the experience.

“Is there anything you need to do before we leave the city?”

“Like what?”

“Visit your friends. Pick up clothes from the house. Go shopping.” He finished with an uncharacteristic shrug, the only outward sign of the awkwardness he was feeling. It was funny, the things she knew about him when she really didn’t know him at all anymore.

“I’ve said all my good-byes.”

“So you want to go straight to Bethlehem.”

“Yes.” Though she sounded certain, she was just guessing. When Dr. Allen had asked her where she’d been happiest, she hadn’t had a ready answer. Certainly not in the mansion Ross had built. She’d hated the place from the moment he’d showed her the plans, but he’d built it anyway, and she had lived in it, but she’d never been happy there.

She’d been happy in the little two-room apartment where they’d lived when they were first married. Everything
about the place had been shabby, but they’d been wildly in love, and that had been enough. She’d been happy everyplace they’d ever lived—the drafty old house subdivided into dreary rental units, the starter house of red brick where the roof leaked above their bed, the middle-class ranch in a neighborhood crawling with kids, the stately Georgian with enough trees to screen out neighbors and kids. She’d been happy everyplace … except Ross’s place.

It was Ross who had suggested Bethlehem. He said she’d picked out the house herself, had overseen the remodeling, had made every decision. He said she’d been happy there.

Happy. In a house she couldn’t remember in a town she couldn’t remember filled with strangers she couldn’t remember.
Happy
.

It was a concept she sometimes had difficulty grasping.

After another few silent miles she asked, “Where is the Jag?”

“Home.”

“Why did you buy this car?” For years he’d had a short list of requirements when purchasing an automobile: It must have a touch of flash and a whole lot of class. He’d never bought anything even remotely resembling a family car.

“I thought it would be more comfortable for you. Once you start driving again, you can have it or pick out whatever you want.”

“I don’t have much desire to drive again,” she remarked as she gazed out the side window.

“It’ll come.”

“That’s what Dr. Olivetti said. I told her she was wrong. She said at the rates you were paying for her services, she couldn’t afford to be wrong.” She drew a steady breath, then forced out two awkward words she’d waited eleven months to say. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“All the money you paid for Dr. Olivetti and Dr. Allen, for the center and the hospital. For not letting the accident kill me. For not leaving me to recuperate alone and for not divorcing me when you had plenty of reasons.”

When he remained silent, she finally looked at him. Both hands were on the steering wheel, his fingers tightened. His knuckles were pale, his face flushed. Embarrassment over her gratitude? She didn’t think so. More likely guilt, because he’d stayed with her not out of obligation to her but to himself. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he’d been there when no one else had.

“Give me a couple more months,” she went on, hearing the casual, carefree tone of her voice and admiring it even as she hated it. “Then you’ll be free. It was almost my Christmas gift to you last year. We’ll consider it a late Christmas gift this year.” Glimpsing the startled look that crossed his face, she turned away and saw her reflection in the window smile, just barely, with bittersweet anticipation and the slightest bit of fear as she finished.

“After the holidays, we’ll file for divorce.”

Chapter Two