Save My Soul (4 page)

It was one word, but she wanted to cradle him to her chest in celebration. “Good, because I'd do it again. I save things. When I was little, my mother and I rescued a crow from the side of the road, and we nursed it back to health. He stunk and made too much noise. But when we released him in the canyon, and I watched him fly above the trees, my heart exploded.” She patted Carlos's cheek. “I'm going to get you to fly again, and that's a promise.”

The water trickling down his face wasn't from the lake, and she instinctively swiped at the tears. “Do you meditate?” She pushed off the scratchy wood and sat, pulling her knees to her chest.

He followed her with his eyes.

“Meditation is like prayer,” she said, patting the pier. “Sit by me, and we can pray together.”

He didn't move.

Maggie refused to be discouraged. She folded her legs into a pretzel with opposite ankles resting atop opposite inner thighs. Straightening her back, she dropped her shoulders and softened her forehead. Her tongue pressed loosely to the roof of her mouth. Her lips parted slightly, and her hands rested palm up on her knees. She let her gaze linger on the glossy water and distant trees before her lids slipped closed and her mind emptied in search of something strong enough to save them both.

Jordon didn't tread lightly. He preferred the opposition to see him coming and quake in their shoes. But the vision on his pier stopped him cold, and when he moved forward again, his feet barely touched the composite decking.

As he walked closer, Maggie came into clearer view. He saw the bumps of her spine stacked one on top of the other, perfectly perpendicular to the faded planks she sat upon. Her squared-off shoulders rounded at the edges, and he followed the long line of her arm to the barest glimpse of knee where an upturned hand rested. He swept his gaze back over her arm and shoulder to her graceful neck, supporting a head full of black velvet hair.

He tried to swallow, but struggled with the mindless motion.

When he was a few feet away, he saw her eyes were closed as she sat in a traditional pose for meditation. He didn't feel the least bit compelled to roll his eyes, which may have been a first. On the contrary, if he weren't dressed in a two-thousand-dollar Versace suit, he'd drop to the pier beside her and share the peace. For a moment, he wallowed in the emergence of foreign feelings, but then darkened when he thought about the chaos that would destroy his peace the minute Maggie opened her mouth.

He knew his words would come out rough — maybe even startle her — so he quieted as much as possible. “What the hell happened?”

Her eyes stayed closed as she brought her hands to her chest in prayer formation and mouthed something he couldn't understand. When she turned to face him, all he could see was a head wound the size of a golf ball above her brow.

The uneasy impulse to touch her forehead lifted his hand, but he shoved the wayward limb into a pocket instead. “Did you get that here?”

“No.” She pulled the edges of her skirt over bare knees and unfurled to stand, moving like an over-sexed ballerina. When she stretched her arms into the air, her tank lifted over the milky skin of her flat belly.

Jordon adjusted an unwelcomed movement below his Louis Vuitton belt and blasted an exhale through his nose. “Are you going to tell me what happened here or do I have to guess?”

The gruffness returned, but by then he was too distracted to care. His gaze, having dropped to her chest, stuck on two dark, hard circles poking against her flimsy shirt.

He shrugged out of his jacket and stepped forward, pressing the silk lining to her back and yanking the peaked lapels over her breasts.

“I'm fine.” She wiggled to shed the jacket.

“You're not fine. You're cold. Trust me. I can tell.” He returned his hands to his pockets, feeling rather chivalrous.

Her brown eyes widened, and he realized how disproportionate they were to her long, lean face. Round and bright, they looked almost cartoonish. Once again, he thought of Betty Boop. But this time, his twisted brain took the thought a step further. Betty Boop — naked.

It had been a long day, long enough to turn classic children's television into porn. His face bunched with wrinkles of disgust.

“I'll wear it because it's painfully obvious you're as uncomfortable with the human body as you are with spirituality. But for my peace of mind, let me tell you … I could have this conversation completely naked and not think twice about it.”

Jordon's peace of mind shattered. “I don't give a flying fuck what you are or aren't wearing. Just tell me what happened.”

Maggie lifted her face to the early-November sun and filled her lungs so deeply a flood of fresh air landed in his gut. “Carlos jumped into the lake, and I pulled him out.” Her voice reeked of calm, like she rescued sinking souls every day.

“You overreacted.” Jordon knew the kid had issues, but suicidal thoughts weren't among them.

“No such thing when it comes to a client's safety,” she huffed.

He tried to imagine the scene he'd missed. It didn't make sense. “Maybe he wanted to swim.”

“In a hooded sweatshirt and construction boots?”

Jordon refused to believe Carlos was beyond fixing, but a familiar heaviness sat on his chest. He reached a hand to his heart and scratched at the discomfort, knowing it wasn't physical. His physician had proclaimed him healthy as an ox.

Maggie let the jacket slide off her shoulders, and handed it to him as she passed. “I'm going to check on him again, but you need to make arrangements for someone to stay with him fulltime, or he'll have to be admitted. He can't be left alone.”

Jordon wasn't a PhD, but he knew a thing or two about the inner workings of men. First, physical health — as it related to appearance — was always more important than emotional health, at least in the circles he frequented. And second, only a man could feel certain sadness and basic lust near simultaneously.

Without much thought to her parting words, Jordon watched her walk away. Her bright skirt bounced against her backside. For narrow hips, they sure swung with enthusiasm.

A lump filled his throat right before a lump filled his pants.

“Maggie, don't you want to know why I'm here?” He let her believe he planned to stay in New York while she conducted her assessment. It was easier that way. As it was, he sensed her hesitation over being here hadn't waned.

She cut across the lower tier of the deck, running her hand along the rope railing. “I know why you're here, Mr. Kemmons. You're checking up on the flake you hired, because you doubted she could handle the job. Well you're right. Bravo,” she called, emphasizing the words with a little hand clap. “Find someone else for the job. And … you can call me Dr. Collins.”

Jordon would do nothing of the sort. He'd call her whatever he damn well wanted to call her. And at the moment, it was all he could do not to call her back.

• • •

Maggie wandered through the house, until she came across the room where Carlos was sleeping. Once again, she stayed by his side until she was positive he wasn't faking sleep to avoid talking, and then she dragged her suitcase to a bathroom in the main hall.

She changed out of her wet clothes and thought about the current situation. Carlos jumped in the lake. Jordon showed up after all. And Maggie hid in a bathroom, trying to decide how to deal with a confused twenty-year-old and a dark man who scared the living light out of her.

A strange sensation lingered in her chest ever since Jordon said her name on the pier, and her head hurt again. She leaned over the vanity to the mirror and studied the red bump on her forehead that turned blue at the edges. The rest of her head hurt, too, not only because of the localized pain from before.

Her stomach grumbled, and Maggie smoothed a palm over her belly. No wonder her head hurt. The last thing to cross her lips had been a stack of gluten-free crackers in Chicago's O'Hare Airport.

She'd been looking forward to a quiet evening of room service in order to build up enough emotional and mental strength to call Crystal for details about what ultimately happened with Paul. So much for quiet. Now Maggie had to haul her empty stomach and humungous headache out of this bathroom to face Jordon Kemmons.

Maggie emerged from the bathroom with a scowl on her face, but her misery didn't last long. Through windows and sky lights, the setting sun blanketed the house in a comforting orange glow. After setting her suitcase in the foyer, she clicked her heels across the wood floors to a gourmet kitchen where a single light glowed above the Viking range, spilling onto marble counters and tiled backsplash. Her stomach rumbled again.

She could hardly be expected to have an intelligent conversation in her current state, so she fought feelings of overstepping her boundaries and reached for the handle of the stainless steel refrigerator, opening the door. Meat, milk, eggs and cheese. Two lone pieces of fruit sat on the top shelf next to a half-full jar of pickles and a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew. She peeked into the vegetable crisper and crinkled her nose at wilted lettuce and carrots blackened with age. Without a better option, she closed her hand around the least offensive piece of fruit, a marked-up Granny Smith's apple.

After picking some bruises from the surface with her green-painted finger nails, Maggie rinsed the apple until it shined. She snatched a bottle of spring water from a smaller, glass-door refrigerator and headed in search of Jordon. When she didn't find him in the communal areas of the house, she suspected he was busy behind a closed door, hopefully securing her replacement.

Sparkling lake beckoned from enormous windows stretching the full width of the dining room and living room. It wasn't an ocean view, but the scene conjured similar feelings of peace and awe. She slid a glass door open and filled her lungs with crisp evening air, tinged with the soft scent of fish and grass, dirt and wood.

Her gaze fell to the spot where Carlos jumped, and a chill picked at her arms. Why did he do it? What was he trying to accomplish? Death? Attention?

“Will you be joining me for dinner?”

The apple dropped, splitting at her feet. Maggie looked to the broken fruit and then to the man sitting in the shadows. His large body rocked back in a patio chair, and his long legs crossed at the ankles, propping on the edge of a stone table. He'd traded the expensive suit for a pair of athletic shorts that gathered dangerously high on his powerful thighs. She glanced at his large hands resting on his flat stomach, atop a red T with a black swoosh stretching across his thick chest.

As Maggie bent for the apple, the talisman bounced against the inside of her shirt.
You can never have too much knowledge and understanding.
The ghost of Crystal's words carried on the wind. But Jordon wasn't the kind of man Maggie needed to know or understand. Every nerve ending warned her to stay away and yet the same intense curiosity and lust for life that pulled Crystal into chaos, tugged at Maggie.

“Did you hear me?”

She grabbed the apple and reminded herself to breathe. “Yes, I did, but I'm just going to eat this apple.”

Jordon looked at the smashed fruit in her hands and a sort of smile touched his full lips. “Good luck with that.”

The near-smile made her feel itchy and overheated. Why she felt that way begged for analysis, but she pushed the wayward thoughts from her mind in favor of a more appropriate topic. “I checked on Carlos. He was sleeping.”

“Or pretending to sleep so he can ignore you.” Jordon looked from her to the watery backyard.

Maggie watched him watch the water. Maybe he seemed softer because his eyes weren't challenging her or burning black as coal from this perspective.

She stepped toward the table. “As a mental health professional I'm obligated to intervene when a client is a risk to self or others.”

Jordon's nose twitched but otherwise he remained the picture of calm. “Carlos is not at risk, unless you consider obsessively watching HGTV and reruns of
American Idol
harmful to one's health.”

“He jumped into a lake fully clothed, and he stayed underwater long enough for me to worry. Now, in the end he climbed the ladder on his own, so there's ambiguity there, but there's also enough desperation in the act to make me take notice. He needs constant supervision until we know for sure.”

“You can take one of the guest rooms. I'll have my secretary cancel your hotel reservation.”

The words wrapped like a noose around her neck and blocked the air to her lungs.

“What?” Jordon badgered. “I hardly think that's asking too much. Besides, you'll be compensated.”

No amount of money in the world could calm her nerves over staying under the same roof as a client. “Can't his family stay with him?”

The smooth skin around Jordon's wide mouth wrinkled. “He refuses to see them. I offered to fly him home or fly them here. His post-season performance was atrocious, and he's embarrassed. Baseball's a big deal where he's from.”

“I'm not so sure this is about baseball. What about financial or personal problems?”

“If Carlos's money was a mess, I'd know. Financial management is serious business to my firm.”

“What about personal life?”

“No idea. He doesn't talk to me about his private life — never has. The more I push, the more he clams up.”

Maggie smiled. She couldn't help the expression. People amazed her. They missed the “big picture” all the time. “Carlos is intimidated by you.”

Jordon slid his hands over his stomach to cup his elbows and set his square chin in defiance. “That's ridiculous.”

“News flash, Mr. Kemmons; you're scary. Your body language reveals arrogance and unyielding thought. Physically, you're an imposing man. You rarely smile. You rarely laugh. And you seem to judge people based on outdated, egotistical assumptions. It makes sense a troubled young man would display silence in the face of your pushing.”