ently, he brushed a finger over the scar above his eye. Laura's glance flickered at the movement, then held steady.
"He outweighed me, but I was young and fast, and I'd already had my share of dirty fights. I beat the hell out of him. And I kept beating the hell out of him even when he was down and bleeding and unconscious and I couldn't feel my own hands pounding into his face. I'd have killed him, Laura, that's a fact. I'd have beat him until he was dead and I wouldn't have looked back."
She couldn't envision it, wasn't equipped to. But she thought she could understand it. "You were protecting your mother."
"Started out that way, but then I just wanted him dead.
I wanted to make him dead. That was inside me. I would have finished him if she hadn't stopped me. And while I was kneeling over him, while she was holding a hand to her face where it was bleeding and bruised, she told me to get out."
"Michael."
"She told me I had no right to interfere. She said a lot of things along those lines, so I got out and left her with him."
"She didn't mean it." How could a mother, any mother, turn on her own child? It was impossible to absorb. "She was upset and afraid and hurt."
"She did mean it, Laura. At that moment she meant every word. Later, she changed her mind. She got rid of him and pulled herself together. She got together with Frank. But by then, I was gone, and I've never really been back. Do you know where I went that night I left home?"
"No."
"I went to Templeton House. I don't know why. It was just there. Mrs. Williamson was in the kitchen. She fussed over me, cleaned me up. She talked to me, and she listened to me. She fed me cookies." On a long breath he rubbed his hands over his face. He hadn't realized so much of that night was still inside him. "She probably saved my life. I don't know what I would have done if she hadn't been there. She told me I had to make something out of myself. Not that I had a choice, or that here were my options, just 'Boy, you've got to make something out of yourself.'"
"She's always had a soft spot for you, Michael." And he deserved one, she thought now. He deserved comfort and care and understanding. Poor, lost boy.
"She was the first woman I ever loved." He plucked up another shaft of hay, and to kill the urge for a cigarette, chewed the tip. If he'd had a glimmer of Laura's description of him, he wouldn't have been amused. He'd have been appalled.
"Maybe the last woman," he added. "She told me to go over to the stables, and she went up and got Josh. He and I sat in this place and talked all night. All fucking night.
Every time I talked about doing something crazy, he'd steer me back with that cool lawyer logic of his. The next day I signed up. I stayed here in the stables until I shipped out."
"Here? You stayed here? Josh never said anything about it."
"Maybe he understood client confidentiality even then. He always understood friendship. Mrs. Williamson brought me food. She and Josh were the only ones I ever wrote to while I was gone. She was the one who sent me word that my mother had kicked Lado out. I guess Mrs. Williamson went to see her. I never asked."
He shook it off, grinned. "You know, her cookies were my claim to fame on ship. Once a month this box would come, full of them. Once I was losing my shirt in a poker game and anted up her—what do you call them—snicker-doodles. 1 walked away flush."
"She'd like hearing that." Taking the chance, she reached over the mare's neck and touched his hand. "Anyone Mrs. Williamson takes under her wing deserves it. She recognizes fools, and she doesn't suffer them. You're a good man, Michael."
He studied her, saw his advantage in her eyes. "I could let you think that and get you into bed quicker." Then he smiled. "I'm not a good man, Laura, but I'm an honest one. I told you what I've only told two other people in my life because I figure you ought to know what you're getting into."
"I've already decided, for a variety of reasons, that I'm not getting into anything."
"You'll change your mind." He shifted, winked cockily. "They all do."
And the horse's water broke in a gush that soaked the bedding. "Zero hour," he snapped, nerves jangled. "Keep to her head."
Laura jolted back. The fatigue, the almost dreamlike state she'd drifted into while he was talking now burst into an adrenaline rush.
The first flood of fluid didn't alarm her. It was a natural process, just as the mare's plaintive whinnies were part of the whole. A process she had shared in, and one, though the mare's eyes rolled in fear and pain, that Laura knew she longed to experience again.
Laura buckled down to the task at hand, following Michael's terse orders without question and issuing some of her own.
"Here it comes. Hold steady, Darling. Almost over." He knelt in blood and birth fluid, laboring as hard as his mare, and those long, thin forelegs appeared. "I've got to give her a hand here, turn it some." Where was the damn head? "You got her?"
"Yes, I've got her." Sweat dripped into her eyes. "Do it. She's exhausted."
"It's coming." He got a grip on the slippery, gleaming limbs and reached inside the birth canal to rotate and ease. There, lying along the forelegs, was the head. "Come on, Darling, just a little more. Just a little more."
"Oh, God." Now there were tears mixed with the sweat on Laura's face as the foal slid out. "There he is."