Blush(55)

Daisy’s shoulders remained hunched, hands tightly clasped in her lap. “No, miss. Thank you for the tea, but Marcel needs me to help him outside.” Muddy brown eyes rose to meet Mia’s. “If you don’t have work for me inside . . .”

“Daisy, is Marcel hitting you?” Mia said flat out.

Daisy looked appalled at the suggestion. “Marcel loves us. He’d never hurt us.”

It was a lie. Mia didn’t need a psychology degree to tell when someone was prevaricating, and in the brief moment when Daisy lifted her head to make eye contact, the bruise on her check, badly disguised by sweated-off, wrong-color makeup, was so pronounced that Mia felt a wash of fury rush through her at the obvious lie. The other woman didn’t have a black eye, yet—but her lids were swollen, that eye bloodshot.

“Daisy, come and stay here with me,” she said with quiet urgency. “You and Charlie. He can’t hurt you here.”

Daisy’s fingers clenched and unclenched. “You don’t know me. Or him.”

I’ve seen bullies in three-piece suits wearing that exact same look on their faces before they rip into a weaker opponent. Fists or wiles. A bully was a bully. Mia covered the other woman’s hands with her own and said gently, “I don’t need to know you to want to help you.”

Daisy abruptly pushed away from the table, and Mia’s hand dropped to her own lap. “My hands are dirty, I’ll wash them outside. I have to go.”

“If you change your mind about me helping you, will you come to me?”

“I’ve been married for ten years. Marcel is a good man. He loves us.” Back stiff, she walked to the door, then turned. Every tense line of her thin body showed that she was braced for something unpleasant. She dragged her gaze up to Mia’s face with obvious effort. “Are you going to fire us?”

“No! Of course not.”

Daisy’s shoulders relaxed some. “Thank you, Miss Mia.”

A few minutes later, Mia watched her crouch gingerly to pick up the shrub clippings off the ground. Latour was nowhere in sight.

“He’ll hit her again,” Cruz told her grimly, coming to stand behind her chair. He didn’t touch her, but she felt the heat of his body and instinctively leaned back, her hair brushing his belly. He smelled of clean sweat and paint. It was an awesome smell, manly and industrious, and it made her girl parts want to dance.

“Well, I’m going to figure out a way to make the son of a bitch stop.”

He placed his hands on her shoulders, and the weight and strength was strangely comforting. “You can’t stop a man like that with threats, and you can’t harbor them here. Offering her help will only make it worse for her in the end. He’ll find her and the kid and take them back home, then he’ll teach them not to run sniveling to someone else for help.”

Mia turned her head to look up at him. “Are you talking from experience?”

His eyes grew hollow, dark. “My father whaled on my mother for years. He was a bully and a coward, but no one could stop him from getting to her. Not that anyone really tried, but no one would have been a roadblock. He did whatever the fuck he wanted with impunity.”

She got to her feet. Her heart, already pounding uncomfortably from the conversation with Daisy, beat harder at his shuttered expression. Mia put her hand over his heart and felt the solid, steady flub-dub beneath her fingers. Looking up, she met his dark gaze. “Did he ‘whale’ on you, too?”

“Until I got big enough to stop him from fucking with both us.” He shifted so her hand dropped away. Mia curled it into a loose fist at her side.

“You mentioned your mother left when you were very young . . . ?”

“She didn’t leave. She died when I was fourteen. I could never prove it, but I think he beat her to death, then shoved her over the balcony to the pool deck to cover his tracks.”

The coldness in his voice made the small hairs on her body stand up. Was her young son the one who’d found her?

“God—”

“Had fuck-all to do with it. Not sure where He was when she needed Him.”

Filled with empathy he wouldn’t appreciate, Mia merely said, “Did the authorities suspect him?”

“His best friend was the police commissioner, and he played golf with three senators. He knew their mistresses and their under-the-table deals, so no. They didn’t ‘suspect’ him. I was the only one not fooled by the face he showed to the world. He supported a dozen charities, and was a big supporter of the police and firemen’s funds. He was a sick fuck, and bad to the bone.”

Oh, Cruz. She’d never heard anyone tell such a gut-wrenching story with such an impassive expression on his face. Her heart hurt for him, and tears stung the back of her eyes. “Is he still alive?”