Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Things didn’t look promising when they got to the police station. The Sergeant at the front desk gave a whoop and came around, and the back pounding and hand shaking began. Great, just peachy, Maggie thought. Could this night get any better?
“What brings you here, Nick?” Sergeant Mulvaney asked with a smile. “I assume the good counselor is staying out of trouble,” he teased, looking at Maggie.
“I guess that depends on who you ask, John,” Nick replied. “This little lady is Maggie Cassidy and she wants to talk to an officer. I’m not too sure what it’s about, but I’m very interested. Who’s on duty tonight?”
“That would be Detective Rory O’Malley. Let me ring through to him.”
Maggie’s shoulders sagged in defeat. Was everyone conspiring against her?
Of every police officer in the city, she had to get the only one she didn’t want to talk to.
She loved her brother with all her heart, but he was the one person who would take this much more seriously than it probably was.
Rory was every inch a cop, from the top of his coal black hair to the tips of his shoes, and every bit of the six foot four inches in between.
Rory took everything seriously. He was former Special Forces, and despite his seemingly congenial disposition, he had a mind like a steel trap.
Everything was weighed, measured, and stored away for future reference.
Nothing escaped his notice, and he was a wizard in all things cyber.
Even though he was part of a large close-knit family, it always seemed as though there was something he wasn’t sharing—something just under the surface, if you could only figure it out.
Her mother called him Black Irish, and with his piercing blue eyes it wasn’t hard to understand why.
Physically, he was the oldest and strongest of the siblings.
Rory was still unmarried, but not for lack of every girl in their neighborhood trying to snag him.
Privately, Maggie had always thought that most of her high school girlfriends had used their friendship as a way to get to Rory.
It never worked of course, but even today she had a couple of friends who would love to use their relationship as a springboard right into Rory’s massive arms.
As Rory came down the hallway, he was already assessing the situation. He hadn’t seen Nick Kord in over fifteen years, but the minute he set eyes on him he suspected he was Jason’s father. The resemblance was simply too striking to be a coincidence.
Maggie had her back to him, and every few seconds he could see her reach back and rub her bottom. Interesting. When Nick looked at her and raised his eyebrow, she immediately stopped.
Has little Miss Maggie finally met her match, he wondered.
Rory had liked his brother in law and was genuinely sorry to lose him, but Maggie had run that show, even though she would never admit it.
She did what she wanted, when she wanted, and Jim never said boo.
If she had wanted to ride naked through the streets like Lady Godiva, Jim would have said, “All right, honey, have a good time.”
“How are you, Nick? Good to see you,” Rory said reaching them and shaking Nick’s hand firmly.
“I’m good, Rory, good to see you too,” Nick replied and meant it.
“What brings you here, Cupcake?” he asked with a grin, knowing she hated the nickname, and sliding his arm around her shoulder for a quick squeeze.
“Bad judgment,” she replied, trying to turn and walk away.
Nick grasped her arm and turned her in a complete circle till she ended up nose to chest with her brother.
“She has a problem and seems reluctant to discuss it. I was hoping we could find a little room where we could talk and get to the bottom of this.”
“No problem,” Rory responded taking a hold of Maggie’s other arm. “We’ll use my office. John, hold my calls unless it’s an emergency.”
Maggie wasn’t sure if her feet actually touched the floor on the way to her brother’s office.
With one Neanderthal on each side of her, she had very little choice in the matter.
Once seated behind his desk, Rory was all business except for the name Cupcake Cassidy he scrawled across the top of his legal pad.
Maggie yelped when Nick’s hand came down firmly on her knee, preventing her from giving her brother the swift kick he deserved.
“All right, let’s have it,” Rory ordered, and before she knew what happened she spilled out the entire story.
Refusing to meet either of their eyes, Maggie started with Jack Harley’s threats and the assault at work.
She softly told about being followed, the hang-up phone calls, and tonight’s most frightening episode with the drive by and Jack actually getting out of his car across the street.
By the time she was finished and raised her head, Rory’s blue eyes were hard as glass, and he had a tic in his jaw.
She didn’t even want to look at Nick, but she could hear him cracking his knuckles.
“What did Mason say about this? You did tell him?” Rory questioned as he picked up the phone and dialed a number. “I need a warrant,” he informed whoever answered on the other end.
“Well, not exactly… ” Maggie stated, squirming on her chair.
“What the hell does that mean?” Rory thundered. With a quick, “I’ll call you back,” he slammed down the phone.
Maggie jumped up and tried to get past Nick, but quickly changed her mind when he rose and looked down into her eyes. Oh, this is so not good, she thought, sinking gently back onto her chair.
“I told Mason,” Nick said tightly. “As soon as I found out what had gone on, I was on the phone. Mason fired him the next morning, and we thought that was the end of it.” Nick continued, still standing and running a hand through his hair in frustration.
“Neither one of us knew anything about the other incidents,” he finished, glaring at Maggie.
“If we had, it probably wouldn’t have gotten this far. ”
“Maybe not,” Rory replied, “but you never know. There are a lot of men out there who get off on terrorizing women. This asshole may be one of them. I’ll get a warrant, and we’ll pick him up as soon as we can find him.
This is stalking and possibly a felony, so hopefully we’ll be able to put him away for a while.
In the meantime, you have three choices, Cupcake.
You can go stay at Ma’s; I’m sure you’d enjoy that,” he grinned.
“You can hang around here until one and go home with me, or you can go home, but Nick stays with you. What’ll it be? ”
Nick took his seat and waited for her answer.
“I’m pretty sure I’ll be all right on my own,” she told them, not really happy with any of her options. “I have a gun, and I’m almost positive I can figure out how to load it.”
Dead silence greeted her statement; then all hell broke loose.
“Where did you get a gun?” Rory roared, jumping up and rounding his desk.
“For the love of Christ,” Nick shouted, on his feet in a split second.
Sandwiched between the two irate men, Maggie rethought her decision. Apparently, neither of them realized how forward thinking she was in wanting to be able to protect herself.
“Never mind. I’ll go home. I don’t want to upset the kids, and Ma won’t sleep a wink if she hears about this,” Maggie told him, picking up her purse and moving toward the door now that Nick had decided to let her pass.
“Maggie, you are not to touch that gun under any circumstances,” Rory ordered her. “Please tell me you have it locked in a safe place,” he pleaded, his face pale.
“Geesh, of course I do. Do you think I’m an idiot? It’s in the safe, although now that I think about it, I might not be able to use it anyway. I can’t seem to remember the combination and have been meaning to call a locksmith.”
Rory sighed with relief and shook his head. What could he say, the woman was a menace. Meeting Nick’s eyes over the top of her head, he could see that they were on the same page.
“Okay, stay close to her, Nick. She thinks she’s tough, but she didn’t get the name Cupcake for nothing,” he added grinning.
Maggie gave him her best shot in the stomach, but he’d been expecting it, and all she did was hurt her hand. Rory laughed and patted her on the head.
“I’ll give you a call as soon as we pick him up,” Rory told them, trying to keep it light as they went down the hall, but when he turned around the look on his face was feral.
* * *
The ride home was spent in complete silence.
Nick’s temper simmered, and Maggie tried not to fidget.
She had no idea how she was going to get out of this one, and rather than say something that would cause the pressure cooker beside her to blow, she kept her mouth shut.
Not an easy task for someone who had a tendency to babble when she was nervous, and tonight she was far beyond nervous and approaching terrified.
Nick couldn’t remember ever being this furious.
The weekend he’d come home from school unexpectedly was close though.
Fifteen years was a long time, but to him it was like yesterday.
Cutting through the back yard to surprise her, he’d been the one to get the surprise.
The girl he loved was crying in Jim Cassidy’s arms. Nick couldn’t hear everything, but he very quickly got the gist of it.
“I don’t know how to tell him,” Maggie sobbed to Jim. “It will ruin all his plans.”
“There, there, honey,” Jim told her, gently holding her and patting her back. “He’ll understand. You’ll see; everything will be all right.”
Nick did understand, all too well, at least he thought so at the time. Maggie, the only woman he could imagine marrying, was in love with someone else. He cut all ties with Maggie that day.
Nick returned to school and every letter she sent him was returned unopened.
Finally, she gave up and married Jim Cassidy, Nick never knowing that she was pregnant with his child.
He still wouldn’t know he had a son, if it hadn’t been for Mason asking him to deliver a message to Maggie on New Year’s Eve.
Jumping to conclusions had not served him well, and he was determined to give Maggie the benefit of the doubt, even though he had a pretty good idea what tonight was really about.
Oh, he was royally pissed about both Jack Harley and the fact that Maggie had kept important details from him.
If he or Mason had known that Jack’s harassment had continued, it wouldn’t have been a problem for long.
Jack would be in jail, or worse, and the way he was feeling it probably would have been the or worse.
It was Maggie’s behavior prior to their trip to the police station that really concerned him. She had obviously been terrified, and he was certain that wasn’t an act. But asking for a spanking? That was about as out of character as she could get.
He knew his little Maggie, and there was no way on God’s green earth she would voluntarily lay across his lap and ask to have her butt roasted.
In hindsight, he was pretty sure he knew exactly what she had done and why.
What he had interpreted as her love and trust, she had seen as a fifty-percent-off sale.
Unfortunately for her, she was dead wrong.
Spankings were cumulative in his mind. The more trouble you got into, the harder the punishment.
He’d already busted her ass once today for lying.
If she thought for one minute she could stick a few more lies in her basket of bullshit and tie it all up with a pretty ribbon, she was in for a nasty surprise.
Maybe not tonight; tonight he had other plans, and he knew she was scared and sore.
He did love her with all his heart and never wanted her to think he was cruel or unfair.
Lies of omission, however, were still lies, and that is exactly what she’d done by keeping Jack’s threatening behavior to herself.
There was no way he’d let her get away with it.
Nick had handled too many divorce cases not to know the damage that lies, secrets, and deceptions could do to a marriage, and he was determined to make an honest woman of Maggie in more ways than one.