Desperado

“Yes,” Travis said, clearing his throat. “But Red did it without using his fists.”

“Asset or not, he’d better watch his step.”

Maggie ate her chili quietly, listening to the byplay with amusement but without commenting. She noticed June giving her curious looks, followed by curious looks at Cord. Maggie wondered what June had noticed that she hadn’t.

Cord could have told her, although he wouldn’t. Davis had paid just a little too much attention to Maggie. Cord didn’t like it. Until now, Davis had been one of his favorite employees.

“Cord said you were a widow,” Travis said suddenly, smiling at Maggie over his chili spoon. “Wasn’t your husband Bart Evans from Houston?”

Maggie stiffened. “Yes.”

“Dad...” June said abruptly, trying to ward off trouble.

Her father waved a hand at her. “I’m not being nosy, but I knew him, is why I mentioned it. That was when he was living with his second wife,” he recalled, totally oblivious to the discomfort he was causing Maggie. He sighed, fingering his spoon. “Her name was Dana,” he added with a faint smile. “She was pretty and sweet, never hurt a living soul.” His face hardened. “He put her in the hospital.”

Cord actually flinched. He knew Maggie had gone rigid. He scowled at Travis. “He did what?”

Travis winced when he saw the turmoil he was responsible for in his dinner companions. “Gosh, I’m sorry! I didn’t think...”

“He put his wife in the hospital?” Cord was relentless. “How?”

Travis sent an apologetic glance at Maggie, who was white and totally without appetite now. “He beat her senseless because she burned the bacon,” he continued. “It wasn’t the first time, but it was when she finally confessed it. I made her tell a police officer, and her husband was arrested and charged with domestic abuse. He denied it, of course, and then he apologized to Dana and tried to get her to come back to him,” he added angrily. “But I wasn’t having that. Men who abuse women don’t stop. I took her to a good lawyer and we convinced her to file for divorce. She wouldn’t even take a settlement. She was such a good person.” He put down his chili spoon with painful deliberation. “She had a stroke two months later that left her paralyzed on one side and unable to function alone ever again. They said it was probably from the beating she took, but nobody could prove it. He had a great lawyer.”

Cord felt sick to his stomach. He’d suspected Evans might have hit his second wife. He’d never suspected that sort of violence. And what had Maggie gone through? He stared at her with muted anger. She’d never told him anything about this, and she certainly knew about it.

“I’m sorry,” Maggie told Travis unexpectedly. “I know that she’s still in the nursing home.”

Travis’s intake of breath was audible. “You do?”

She nodded. “When my husband...died—” she almost choked on the word “—I had his estate split between his two ex-wives. There was more than enough to keep Dana in comfort for the rest of her life—even enough to hire the best specialists in stroke management. I don’t guess you know that she can speak now, and she’s relearning other skills as well—reading and writing, too. I don’t know that she’d remember you, but I imagine she’d enjoy company. She has no family.”

Cord was shocked. He’d not only just learned what Maggie had done with her wealthy late husband’s fortune, but even more surprising news.

“You go to see her?” Cord asked.

She nodded. “Frequently. From what was left of his estate, after I split it between his ex-wives, I funded an outreach program for abused wives that helps them with money to finish their education or learn a technical trade.”

“Good out of evil,” Travis said, and his eyes warmed as he looked at Maggie. “You’re a winner, Miss Barton. A real winner.”

“It was a way of making amends for him. Maybe he wasn’t a bad person when he started out in life,” she said. “Some people just snap, in different ways. He had a drinking problem that he wouldn’t admit.” She shrugged. “Later it turned to a drug problem he wouldn’t admit. He was self-destructive.”

“He was a potential murderer,” Cord said coldly, without knowing how close to the truth he really was.

Maggie didn’t look at him. She couldn’t afford to let him see how accurate that guess was.

“He was,” Travis agreed surprisingly. “Dana told me that his first wife had a hip injury from a beating that left her crippled, as well. She moved out of state to get away from him.”

Maggie smiled. “I found her in Florida. She was working in a home for elderly women and coaching a volunteer baseball team at the facility. It was a real hit. She can’t run, but she can still bat.” She glanced shyly at Cord. “She’s using her share of the money to found a baseball camp of her own for retired people. I hear she’s got an ex-vice-president and two ex-governors on one team.”

Everybody laughed. But Cord was looking at her with different eyes. This was a facet of Maggie that she’d never let him see. She did her good works without telling anybody. He’d always assumed that she lived on her inheritance from her late husband. It had come as a surprise to find her having to work for a living at all. Amy had left them a little money, but she’d lost the bulk of her fortune to bad investments long before she’d died. He’d often wondered if that wasn’t why Maggie chose investment as a career.

Now he could see how caring a person she really was. Bart Evans had left an estate worth a fortune. He couldn’t imagine a woman who would willingly give up that kind of money out of the goodness of her heart. Until now.

“She went through enough, like poor Dana did, to deserve something good in her life,” Travis said, watching Maggie. “But you kept nothing for yourself. Why?”

Maggie lifted her coffee cup in numb hands and sipped at the cooling liquid. “I wanted nothing of his.”

Travis’s eyes narrowed. “Your memories must be pretty bad, too.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t look at him. But her fingers trembled as she put her cup down. Something exploded inside Cord.

He tossed his napkin down impatiently, got to his feet and pulled Maggie to hers. “You can have your cherry pie later. I want to talk to you,” he said, nodding to the others as he took her hand and led her away to his office.