Maggie Cox - Passionate Protectors?

Or perhaps she’d simply hated the life she’d lived there, she acknowledged bitterly. Like his Rolex watch, his Armani suits and his Bentley, she had been just another of Max’s possessions. The only difference had been that he had treated his watch, his clothes and his car rather better than his wife.

Her hip throbbed, reminding her that she ought to check and see that it hadn’t started bleeding. The skin had been seriously scrubbed in places, and it wouldn’t be the first time that she’d had to repair the damage. But this time she didn’t have a convenient wardrobe of clothes to change into, and she could imagine Matt’s reaction if he saw blood on her dress.

Lifting the hem of her skirt, she examined the injury, noticing that the skin was badly inflamed. But that was because of the way Matt had carried her, and she could hardly blame him for trying to save her life.

Nevertheless, there was a faint trace of blood oozing from the point of her hip and she clicked her tongue in frustration. Now what was she going to do? She didn’t carry any adhesive plasters in her haversack. Perhaps she’d find some in the bathroom cabinet. It was the kind of thing people did keep in case of emergency.

Holding her skirt to her waist, she got up from the bed and limped into the bathroom. Then, clutching her dress in one hand, she reached up to the cabinet with the other.

‘Sara?’

It was Matt’s voice and she panicked. He mustn’t see her like this. All right, so he probably knew about Max’s accident, but there was no need for him to witness her humiliation. If he chose to call the police she couldn’t stop him. But she could hold onto her dignity until then.

Pushing the bathroom door to with her uninjured hip, she called weakly, ‘What do you want?’

‘Can I come in?’

Sara breathed a little more easily. She’d thought at first that he was in. ‘Why?’ she asked, suddenly remembering what he’d said about Mrs Webb. ‘I don’t need any assistance.’

‘I’m not offering any,’ he replied, his voice louder now. ‘I’ve brought you a gift.’

A gift!

Sara blinked. What kind of gift could he have brought her? Some more of his old clothes? Or perhaps he wanted to show her the newspaper where he’d read about her? That seemed infinitely more likely.

‘I—just leave it on the bed,’ she called, deciding there was no point in expecting him to go away without achieving his objective. ‘I’ll be out in a minute.’

There was silence for a moment, and then she heard Matt’s voice just outside the bathroom door. ‘What are you doing?’ he exclaimed. ‘Is your hip all right?’

Sara trembled. ‘It’s fine,’ she insisted. ‘What do people usually do in the bathroom?’ She closed the door of the cabinet, just in case he came to investigate, but that was a mistake. She had evidently dislodged the items inside and a tube of hair gel came clattering down into the basin in front of her.

‘What the—?’ Without more ado, the bathroom door was forced open, and Matt stood on the threshold staring at her with bleak horrified eyes. ‘For God’s sake,’ he exclaimed, staring at her injury. ‘Did I do that?’

‘As if.’ Sara managed the contemptuous rejoinder with amazing composure. But then, realising that her lacy briefs left very little to his imagination, she allowed her skirt to fall and sagged against the basin. ‘I had a fall before I came away.’

Matt gave a disbelieving snort. ‘You do a lot of falling in your house, don’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’ Sara stared at him with confused eyes.

‘Your husband,’ he stated flatly, his eyes still fixed on the spot her skirt had now hidden from his gaze. ‘He fell, too. What a coincidence!’

Sara’s shoulders slumped. ‘You don’t know anything about it.’

‘No.’ Matt agreed. ‘But I’m willing to listen if you want to tell me. I’m not jumping to conclusions here, but a simple fall wouldn’t have caused that mess.’

‘It did.’ Sara was desperate. ‘It was an accident. I didn’t mean it to happen. And that’s the truth.’

Matt’s brows drew together. ‘Hey, I’m not accusing you of anything,’ he protested. His eyes darkened. ‘I’d guess it had something to do with your running away, right?’

‘If you say so.’ Sara spoke wearily. ‘So what now? Are you going to turn me in?’

Matt eyes sought hers. ‘Turn you in?’ he echoed blankly. ‘You talk as if you’re a criminal. The last I heard, running away isn’t a capital offence.’

‘Running away?’ She repeated his words barely audibly. ‘But you said you knew about—about Max having a fall.’

‘So?’

‘So—so what did it say about how they found him? Did it tell you the way he—he died?’

‘He’s not dead!’ Matt spoke harshly now. He stared at her. ‘Why would you think he was?’ He shook his head. ‘He apparently had the presence of mind to call the emergency services before he passed out. He spent the night in hospital and discharged himself yesterday morning. That’s when you were reported missing. According to the article I read, your husband’s afraid you might have been kidnapped.’

MATT wouldn’t have believed Sara could get any paler, but she did. Every scrap of colour drained out of her face, leaving her unnaturally pallid. The circles around her eyes stood out in sharp relief and her mouth worked in silent consternation.

‘You’re—you’re lying,’ she got out at last, and he wondered why, if she’d believed her husband was dead, the news that he wasn’t should have such a shattering effect.

‘Why would I lie?’ he reasoned, becoming anxious in spite of himself. ‘Sara—’

‘Max calls me Victoria,’ she said dully. ‘You must know that.’ Then she slid to the floor in a dead faint.

It was the second time he’d had to pick her unconscious body off the floor. Not that she weighed much. She felt wholly insubstantial in his arms. How long was it since she’d eaten a decent meal? he wondered. In the last twenty-four hours she’d only picked at her food, and he suspected her weakness was due in part to hunger.

So, why? Why had she been starving herself? Why had she run away? And how had she sustained such an ugly bruise on her hip? As Matt carried her into the bedroom and laid her on the bed his mind buzzed with a jumble of questions. The most obvious explanation was fear. But what was she afraid of?

He straightened and stood looking down at her. He wished he could believe she was a spoiled wife who had grown bored with her pampered existence and decided to give her husband a wake-up call. Could she really have been that self-indulgent? Somehow he didn’t buy it.

Her eyelids were fluttering and, realising that in a short time she was going to be wide awake and denying everything he was thinking, Matt came to an abrupt decision. Hoping she wouldn’t object too much, he took the hem of her skirt and drew it up to her waist.

He was shocked again by the sight of the ugly lesions on her hip, but he knew he didn’t have time to examine them more closely right now. Instead, he slipped his arm beneath her and eased her dress out of the way.

She began to protest now as consciousness returned, trying to push his hands away without any success. Matt wasn’t listening to her. Horror had replaced his concern and he sank down onto the bed beside her in speechless disbelief.

There was barely an inch of her torso that didn’t bear the scars of injuries old and new. Some bruises were obviously more recent than others, the colours ranging from stark black and blue to a jaundiced yellow or brown. She’d been beaten, and beaten badly, and Matt wanted to take the man who’d done this to her and wring his cowardly neck.