legs. He turned back the covers at the head of the bed, stacked one pillow on top of the other and gently eased Maleah down until her head rested on the double pillows.
“I’ll be right back,” he told her.
A few minutes later, he returned with a warm, damp washcloth and his shaving kit. He sat on the edge of the bed and tenderly washed her hands. And then he took out a tube of salve from his kit and rubbed the soothing cream into the shallow nicks her nails had made in her palms.
She lifted her hands, one at a time, inspected them and said, “Thank you. I didn’t realize what I was doing. I was just trying so damn hard not to fall apart.”
He leaned down, kissed her forehead and said, “I know, Blondie. I know.”
“I’m all right. Really. I’m just a little shell-shocked.”
He set his shaving kit on the floor, dumped the washcloth on top of it, and then turned his attention back to Maleah. “Tell me what you want right now. Tell me what you need.”
“What I want and what I need aren’t the same,” she told him. “I want to forget everything Browning said to me, every question he asked, every innuendo, all the memories he made me dredge up from my childhood. I want to pretend that I didn’t let all those horrible memories make me feel the way I did when I was a child and a teenager. Helpless. Frustrated. Frightened.” She grabbed Derek’s hands and curled her fingers around them. “What I
“Then talk to me. Let’s dig up those roots and burn them to ashes.”
“If anyone had ever told me that I’d be asking you, of all people, to be my father confessor, I never would have believed it,” she said, the corners of her mouth lifting in an almost smile.
He eased his hands from her death grip, tapped her playfully on the nose, and then sat down beside her. He focused on her eyes. “Anything you say will stay between the two of us for as long as we live. You already know my ugly secrets. You know that I despise my own mother, my money-grubbing, social climbing mother who drove my weak, spineless father to drink and eventually to suicide. And she’s never felt guilty about it a day in her life. And you know that when I was young and stupid, I did some pretty awful things. You know that I’ve killed people.”
He took her hands in his and held them so loosely that she could easily pull away. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel trapped by his superior male strength.
“Nothing you ever did could be half as bad as what I did.” He lifted her right hand, kissed it, then lifted the left and kissed it.
She pulled her hands out of his and eased up into a sitting position, her back against the headboard. “When my father was alive, we were all so happy. Mama and Daddy and Jackson and me. Then my father died when I was just a little girl. And my mother, my weak, lonely, needy mother, married a monster.”
“My mother was married three times, but both of my stepfathers were decent guys. I sort of felt sorry for them. If anyone was a monster in those marriages, it was my mother.”
“Nolan Reeves was a sadist.” Maleah clutched the sheet on either side of her hips. “He abused my mother every way a man can abuse a woman—physically, sexually, emotionally, mentally. And he beat Jack unmercifully for years, until Jack got big enough to stand up for himself. I think by the time Jack left home and joined the army, Nolan was halfway afraid of him. He wasn’t as mean to Mama for a couple of years before Jack left. But then, later, when Jack was gone . . .”
Derek circled her wrists, moved his hands downward and opened her clenched fists. He held her hands. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
“When I was thirteen, I saw them,” Maleah said. “I saw my mother running from Nolan. She was naked, her body and face were bloody and bruised and . . .” She gulped several times. “He caught her and threw her on the floor and . . . and . . .”
Derek squeezed her hands tenderly.
“I didn’t do anything. I just stood there in my bedroom door, frozen to the spot and scared out of my mind,” Maleah told him. “I closed the door, got back in bed and covered my head with a pillow so I couldn’t hear her crying while he raped her.”
Tears trickled down Maleah’s cheeks.
“You were a child, even at thirteen. There’s nothing you could have done.”
“I know that. As an adult, I know. But on an emotional level, that thirteen-year-old girl blames herself for not trying to stop him.” Her gaze locked with Derek’s. “He . . . he told me that if I ever interfered in what was a private matter between my mother and him or if I ever told anyone our family’s private business, he would kill Mama and me.”
Derek pulled her gently into his arms and held her. She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. And while she cried, he tenderly stroked her back and whispered reassurances.
“That’s it, honey. Let it all out. I’m here. I’ll take care of you. No one can hurt you.” More than anything, he wanted to take away her pain. If he could, he would suffer it for her.
During their flight from Knoxville to London on the Powell jet, Meredith had, thus far, kept to herself as much as possible. Her escort, Saxon Chappelle, had not pressed her to carry on a conversation, not even when they had eaten a meal together. She greatly appreciated how considerate he was. From the moment he had shaken her hand and said, “Please, call me Saxon,” she had sensed that he was a good man. She instinctively trusted him and felt at ease around him, neither of which was true when it came to a great many people.
She suspected that he had been told enough about her so that he knew when she touched him she would be able to “read him” to a certain extent. And that’s why he had immediately shaken hands with her, to reassure her, to let her know he was a decent human being.
Even when she couldn’t see Saxon and wasn’t touching him, she occasionally could pick up on his fleeting thoughts, flashes of memory, and even his feelings. And the same held true for the pilot and co-pilot. Saxon loved his mother and worried about her. A young girl named Poppy kept slipping in and out of his thoughts. She was his niece and he worried about her, too.
Meredith wasn’t sure if it was the pilot or the co-pilot who kept thinking about women. Their breasts. Their legs. Their hips. Kissing them. Fondling them. She had deliberately shut out those sensual thoughts. They were far too personal and absolutely none of her business. It wasn’t that she wanted to invade other people’s privacy. She didn’t. But she couldn’t help it. For as long as she could remember, she’d had “the gift.” Her Granny Sinclair had had the “second sight,” too, and people in their small Louisiana town had called her a witch. Some people even accused her of practicing Voodoo. It had been Granny who had learned about Dr. Meng and made plans to send Meredith to the woman who was now her mentor. She’d been seventeen when Granny died and old lawyer Dupree had read Granny’s will.
“She wants you to go to London,” Mr. Dupree had told her. “To a doctor over there, some woman named Yvette Meng. She managed to set aside money for your plane ticket and enough for you to live on for at least a year, if you live frugally.”
In the six years since she had become one of Dr. Yvette Meng’s proteges, Meredith had progressed from a frightened, awkward, hostile and misunderstood girl to a cautious, curious, often outspoken woman who was still, on occasion, quite awkward, especially around the opposite sex. Men were not attracted to her. She wasn’t pretty. She was short, plump, and plain. And covered in freckles. Her hair was carrot red, wild and curly and untamable. The best she could do with it was pull it back into a ponytail. And even if a man could get past her lack of beauty, he would certainly be put off by her ability to read his mind.
But she couldn’t actually read minds.
She sensed thoughts.
And when she touched someone, she could feel what they were feeling.
Yvette had told her that she had never known anyone whose “gifts” were as varied or as strong as Meredith’s were.
“You are very special,” Yvette had told her. “Once you learn to harness and control your abilities, there is so much good you can do.”
And that was why she was on the Powell jet, heading to London, straight into the arms of a man she feared.
