Page 5 of The Maverick

“Water would be good.”

She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, then sat across from Nicky at the table. She picked up her coffee cup and took a sip, but the liquid was cold. Setting the cup back on the table, she gazed at Nick.

“How’ve you been, Rach?”

She shrugged. “I’m good. Very glad to be back home though.”

Nick leaned back in his chair and crossed his left ankle over his right knee. “How is your son? Jake, isn’t it?”

Rachel cocked her head to the right. “How do you know that? And he’s great. He’s my life.”

He shrugged. “I see your mother most Sundays. She still fixes Sunday dinner every week. I go as often as I can. She has nothing but good things to say about you and Jake. And nothing at all good to say about your ex-husband.”

“I’m happy to hear you see her so much. You know more about my family than I do.”

He lifted a dark brow. “Whose fault is that? I’m sorry. That just slipped out.”

She waved away his words. “Never be sorry for saying what you feel. I know I’m to blame. Greg wouldn’t let me leave with Jake, and I wasn’t about to leave my son with his father. He was afraid I wouldn’t come back, and he was right, I wouldn’t have. I took this long to finally work up the courage to divorce him. Now, except for following me, violating his restraining order, and breaking into my house, I don’t have to see his miserable face.” She fisted her hands and pounded them once on the table, wishing all the time it was Greg’s face, she was pounding.

“Wait. He broke in here, this house?” Nick stood and paced the small kitchen.

“Yes.” She quieted and her voice got small. “He grabbed me by the neck, and if the police hadn’t come in the back door, then I’m afraid he might have killed me.”

He stopped, reached over, and took a hand in his. “I’m going to put security people on your house. I don’t want him breaking in again.”

“Nick, you can’t do that. It’s too expensive.”

He chuckled. “I can see you haven’t been keeping up with the tech world. I designed a couple of chips that airlines now use in their navigation. And I helped design several very popular video games. I’m very wealthy, Rach. My security team will handle the particulars.”

“Your security team?”

Nick sighed. “This would have been easier if you already knew. But I guess there is no way to say this except to just say it. I’m a billionaire, Rach.”

She remembered how he liked to tease her and laughed. “Don’t tease me.”

He didn’t smile, instead he crossed his arms over his chest.

“Nick? Are you being serious?”

He lifted a brow. “As a heart attack.”

She slumped in her chair. “You are serious. I...I don’t know what to say.”

Nick kneeled beside the chair and took her left hand in his. “Let me help you, Rach. You’re still my best friend, even though we haven’t been together for ten years. I don’t ever want to go through that estrangement and lack of contact again.”

“I’m sorry, Nicky. I...it wasn’t a good time for me. I knew my marriage to Greg was over by the time Jake was born. But I wanted him so badly, and I couldn’t bear the thought that Greg might take him away. That’s when the abuse began. Whenever Jake cried, which babies are known to do, Greg would lose it and tell me to shut him up. If I couldn’t, then he took it out on me.”

She was embarrassed, but she needed to tell someone, and he was her best friend. “He put me in the hospital twice. Our neighbor, an eighty-year-old woman, took care of Jake each of those times. I don’t know what I would have done without Mrs. Bradley. She protected Jake the best she could. She took him into her apartment, she lived across the hall, rather than stay in our apartment with Greg.”

Nick’s dark brows formed slashes over his eyes and he clenched his teeth. “Your ex sounds like a real piece of work. How did you get involved with him in the first place?”

“He was one of my professors. He was older and more experienced. He wined and dined me, treated me like a princess, and I fell for it. We married the day I graduated with my Doctor of Medicine degree. I landed a job at a prestigious surgical clinic in New York City.

“Meanwhile, Greg quit teaching in order to take the Head of Surgery position at the same clinic. I didn’t know it then, but he was afraid the other doctors would hit on me, and I’d find someone better.” She laughed bitterly. “If only.”

She shifted in her chair and wrapped her hands around her coffee cup. “By the time Jake was born, I could barely leave the house because he was afraid I would leave him. He was right to be afraid. If I’d had the backbone, I would have left in a heartbeat. I didn’t manage to do it for seven years. I finally decided after the last time he put me in the hospital. Jake saw him beat me.” Rachel gazed at Nick. “I was so afraid...that Greg would turn his wrath on him.”

Nick reached over and took her right hand. “It’s over, Rach. I won’t let him hurt you again.”