Maggie Cox - Passionate Protectors?

Sara’s lips parted. She didn’t even look at the jeans and tee shirt he’d found in the mini-market. ‘You want me to leave?’ she asked anxiously, her hands tightening on his arm, and he stared at her with guarded eyes.

‘I understood that was what you wanted,’ he said, stifling the sudden urge he had to beg her to stay.

Sara swallowed. ‘It’s what I ought to do,’ she admitted. ‘My staying here—well, it could put you in an awkward position.’

‘Do I look like I’m worried?’ Matt’s lips twisted. ‘It’s your decision. I’m not sending you away.’

Sara gazed up at him. ‘So—I can still stay until tomorrow?’

‘You can stay as long as you like,’ retorted Matt roughly, taking the hand resting on his arm and raising it to his lips. His mouth grazed her knuckles before seeking the network of veins at her wrist. ‘I may not approve of what you’re doing, but you’re safe here. I can promise you that.’

‘Oh, Matt.’ She brought her free hand up to his face, cupping his jaw with unsteady fingers. ‘I don’t know how I’m ever going to be able to thank you.’

‘No thanks are necessary,’ Matt told her flatly. But when he would have turned away she reached up, and pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth.

‘I’d like to stay,’ she whispered at last, drawing back. ‘For a few days at least, if you’ll let me.’ She moistened her lips. ‘But I’m going to have to let—let Max know that I’m all right.’

‘As opposed to being at his mercy?’ suggested Matt, with some bitterness, but it was a reprieve and he was grateful for it. ‘Why don’t you leave that to me? You write a note and I’ll get it to him without running the risk of his finding out where you are.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You can do that?’ She trembled. ‘But how?’

‘You don’t want to know,’ replied Matt, removing her hand from his face before temptation got the better of him. Then, at the anxious look she was wearing, ‘Don’t worry. I won’t cause any trouble. Not until I know what kind of hold he has over you, at least.’

He walked to the door, eager now to withdraw and consider his options. ‘Check out the gear. I’m going to speak to Mrs Webb. And don’t fret that she’s not trustworthy. She is. If it hadn’t been for her this place would never have become the sanctuary it is.’

Sara looked painfully vulnerable as she stood watching him leave the room. But he wondered if he wasn’t being the world’s most gullible fool for taking her in. Or for being taken in by her? he mused, wanting to restore his sense of balance. He might be judging her husband without cause. But he didn’t think he was. It might be foolish, but he trusted her.

But how the hell was he supposed to write fiction in his present frame of mind?

SARA spent the rest of the morning in her room, trying to come to terms with what Matt had told her.

Max wasn’t dead, she repeated incredulously. He was alive. The fears she’d had on his behalf had been groundless. He’d been taken to hospital, sure, but he’d been well enough to discharge himself the following morning. And since then he’d been trying to cover himself by pretending that she had disappeared, that she might have been kidnapped.

She trembled. After Matt had left her, she’d taken up a position on the window seat, gazing out at the sun-drenched cliffs and the water beyond with a feeling of disbelief. She still found it hard to accept that she was here, hundreds of miles from London; that she’d escaped. However grateful she was that Max had survived, the manner of her departure remained a constant source of amazement. How had he let her get away?

Of course, he had been unconscious at the time. He must have hit his head when he fell and for a few minutes he’d been dead to the world. Dead to her, too, she thought bitterly. She should have known it would take more than a simple fall to kill a man like Max Bradbury.

Not that she wanted him dead, she assured herself. That was too high a price to pay, even for her freedom. But if only he had been a reasonable man, a man she could appeal to. When it had become obvious that their marriage was not what he had expected, that she was not what he had expected, why couldn’t he have let her go? It was what any other man would have done; any normal man, that was. But it hadn’t taken her long to find out that Max was anything but normal.

She supposed they must have been married for about six months when he’d struck her for the first time.

She’d already learned not to contradict him, particularly if he’d been drinking. He had said some incredibly cruel things to her, things he’d said he regretted bitterly when he was sober again, and she’d believed him. The crude words he’d used, deriding her for the smallest thing, belittling her intelligence, accusing her of being something she was not, had seemed so uncharacteristic of the man she’d believed she’d married. She’d been sure that it was the alcohol that was responsible for his ungovernable rage, and for a while he’d been able to hide his real nature from her.

But then everything had changed. It had only taken the discovery that she was on first-name terms with the commissionaire who worked in the lobby of their apartment building to invoke an almost insane fury. She’d been totally unprepared for the fist that had suddenly bored into her midriff and she’d been doubled over, gasping for air and sanity, when he’d stormed out of the duplex.

Of course, he’d apologised when he’d come back. He’d made the excuse of stress at the office, of being madly jealous of any man who spoke to her, of his own uncontrollable temper. He’d sworn it would never happen again, showered her with expensive presents until she’d been convinced of his regret.

Until the next time…

But she didn’t want to think about that now; didn’t want to consider what a naïve fool she had been, or how easily Max had managed to persuade her that she was actually to blame for his outbursts. In the beginning, desperate to make her marriage work—for her mother’s sake as well as her own—she’d seized any excuse to explain his violence. The truth was, she hadn’t been able to believe what was happening to her. She’d deluded herself that once Max realised she wasn’t interested in any other man he’d come to his senses.

It hadn’t happened. The violence had just got worse and there’d been nothing she could do. Max had made it very clear that he would never let her go, and she’d had the very real fear that if she did try to free herself he would turn his anger on her mother.

She was glad now that they’d had no children. Max would have had no compunction about using them in his unequal struggle for possession. Besides which, she realised now that his jealousy would never have allowed a third person to dilute the complete submission he demanded of her.

Thrusting these thoughts aside, she got to her feet and crossed to the small pile of clothes Matt had left on the loveseat. There were jeans, which she judged might fit her very well, a couple of tee shirts, two changes of cheap underwear, the kind that was available in supermarkets, and a pair of trainers.

She pressed her lips together after she had examined the clothes, her eyes filling with tears suddenly at his kindness. This presumably was the ‘gift’ he’d brought her, only to find her cowering behind the bathroom door. She’d been so afraid of him seeing her, of him finding out what Max had done to her, but now she was glad he knew. It was such a relief to have someone she could talk to, someone who wouldn’t judge her. And, although she’d admitted nothing, she suspected Matt knew exactly what had been going on.