The Doctor's Secret Child Read online

  His legitimate outrage diluted by laughter, he said, “I should put you across my knee and paddle your rear end!”

  “Try it, and you’ll be even gladder you’ve got a daughter, because there won’t be any more healthy little sperm swimming out of your gene pool!”

  It was the kind of threat which cowed most men, leaving them shrunk into pitiful impotence. In his case, it brought about the opposite effect. The feel of her in his arms—alive, tempestuous, hot-blooded—sent a jolt of awareness blasting to his groin.

  The moon had risen over the water, casting enough light for him to see her big dark eyes flaming with passion. He could feel the quiver of excitement pulsing through her blood, telling him she was as conscious of him as he was of her, and equally wanting.

  Caught squarely between defeat and desire, he slammed her up close to his body and buried his mouth against hers. The taste of her, hot and sweet, took him back more than a decade, to a time when the frenzy of the moment was all that mattered. Even with the iron-hard grip of winter chilling the air, he could smell wild flowers in full bloom, and the smooth, exotic scent of sun-kissed skin.

  Desire as raw and untamed as the Atlantic tides swept over him, robbing him of the discipline and moderation he thought he’d perfected, and leaving him straining against her with the unashamed, unchecked fervor of a teenager.

  She hadn’t bothered to do up her coat. With rough impatience, he pushed it open and found her breasts, her hips, the alluring cleft between her thighs. She was wearing wool, a dress with a soft, full skirt which molded willingly to her shape. Beneath, silk slithered over her skin, whispering an invitation no red-blooded man could resist.

  And all the time, her tongue danced with his, and she made little eager sounds deep in her throat, and she touched him as no one but she had ever touched him, skimming her long, clever fingers down his torso to cup him with deep and intimate knowledge. Toying with him until he thought he’d explode.

  Teetering on the brink of madness, he lifted his head, searching for a place—a concealing corner of the building behind them, a boathouse, a heap of lobster traps, anything that would shield them from view—and found only the inhospitable remains of late-winter snow and a neat row of cottages lining the lane leading down to a small fishing pier at the other end of the bay.

  “There’s a motel,” he began hoarsely, a flicker of memory conjuring up the image of a long, low building set amid a clump of white birch about a mile further down the coast.

  “How long?” she said, reading his mind.

  “Five minutes, if we hurry. Ten at the most.”

  “Take me there,” she breathed. “Quickly…!”

  Piling into the car with her and keeping one arm snaked around her in order not to lose the thrilling warmth of her body pressed against his, he sped along the twisting road. Ahead, perched on a jutting point in the next curve of the shore, the motel’s red neon Vacancy sign shone like a beacon.

  Engrossed in a TV sitcom, the clerk in the office barely glanced up as cash changed hands and keys slid across the counter. Equally impervious to anything but the urgency clawing at them, Dan hustled Molly into the blessed privacy of their assigned unit.

  By then, cooler heads should have had time to prevail. The painful ache of arousal should have abated enough that he’d at least have exercised normal precautions. But enforced delay had merely sharpened the hunger, for her as well as him.

  With the drapes drawn and the bedside lamp turned low, they tumbled onto the mattress, hands and mouths feverishly exploring…seeking…finding. Buttons and zippers snapped open, outer clothing lay discarded wherever it happened to fall. The touch of skin to skin, the musky fragrance of sex, the damp velvet petals of her flesh opening for him, were all that mattered.

  Stripped of conscience and uncaring of consequence, his control held together more by divine intervention than anything a mere man could be expected to summon, he drove into her. Once, twice…strokes as deep and strong as eternity. And then, as the fine line between reason and madness scorched to oblivion, he thrust again and again, fiercely, furiously, lost to anything but the primal need to mate until, in a great blinding rush, he climaxed.

  For long moments after, they lay together, bound by a tangle of limbs and the racing thunder of two hearts caught in the undertow of spent passion. The very atmosphere pulsed with heat.

  At length he lifted his glance to the clock on the night table and because he felt he must, said, “It’s late. I should take you home.”

  “Why?” she drawled huskily, her eyes gleaming, passion-dazed pools in the flushed oval of her face.

  He’d been tempted plenty in his thirty-six years, but never in all that time had anyone seduced him with the utterance of one simple word sliding over his nerve endings like raw silk.

  Stunned by the speed with which his body rose to the challenge, he crushed her mouth to his again, in a quick, hard kiss. Heard her sighing breath of reproach when he pulled away to strip off what remained of their underclothes.

  Determined to show a little more finesse this time, he led her by the hand to the bathroom. Turning on the shower, he waited until the water ran hot, then pulled her with him into the stall and soaped her body.

  She was beautiful all over. Despite the savage bite of winter, her skin retained the glow of apricots ripened in the summer sun. Her hips swelled sweetly below her tiny waist. Her bosom stood proud and firm.

  Enthralled by her loveliness, he thumbed away the cloud of lather clinging to her breasts so that the dusky rose nipples lay bare to his gaze. “Did you nurse her?” he asked huskily.

  “Yes,” she sighed, her head falling back on a fracture gasp of pleasure. “Until she was nine months old.”

  “Was it an easy birth?”

  “No. She was a forceps delivery.”

  He traced a finger over the smooth, flat contour of her belly and slipped it between her thighs. “I’d never have guessed. You’re as tight as a virgin.”

  Letting out an inarticulate cry, she covered his hand and guided him to the swollen bud hidden between the folds of her flesh. “Touch me,” she begged, as hot water cascaded around them. “Love me the way you used to, Dan.”

  Dropping to his knees, he parted her legs and found her with his tongue. She came almost immediately, her fingers knotted in his hair, her knees buckling, her body jerking spasmodically.

  With the music of her cries still echoing around the shower stall, he reached up to turn off the water. Wrapping her in a towel, he carried her to the bed. “Again!” she whimpered, clawing at him as he flung back the covers. “Oh, please, Dan, again…now!”

  “This time,” he said, poised above her as she lay on the plain white sheet, “I will love you as you deserve to be loved.”

  A rash promise, he soon discovered! To touch her, to kiss her, to feel her quiver and undulate against him, and not be pushed to the brink, demanded more stamina than he possessed. Too soon, he was inside her again, with her long, lovely legs wrapped around his waist and her mouth blooming under his.

  Her body clenched with the first faint tremor of orgasm. Trapped in a rhythm too hypnotically alluring to withstand, he moved with her and let ruthless nature have its way.

  She contracted around him again, gave a sharp, delirious gasp, and arched beneath him in a series of wrenching shudders. And he was lost, finished, any notion of prolonging either her pleasure or his slipping beyond his grasp.

  The distant thunder of completion spiraled to a roar and swept him beyond all the recognizable landmarks by which he charted his existence. Just then, and for the first few moments following, he could have died a fulfilled and happy man.

  But life had a cruel way of surging back, of reminding a person that for every action, there was a reaction; for every stolen pleasure, a guilty price. As his blood slowed and sanity reclaimed its rightful place, he rolled to one side and stared at the ceiling.

  A terrible heaviness filled his chest; the kind he felt when a patie
nt came to him for help he was powerless to give. Some things couldn’t be undone, and what he’d let happen that night was one of them.

  As though she sensed his thoughts, Molly turned her head and looked to where he lay beside her. “Well, Dan,” she said softly, her gaze fixed on his face, “where do we go from here?”

  It was the sort of direct and justified question he’d learned to expect from her—and one for which he couldn’t begin to formulate a response, at least not yet. Too much had happened in too short a time. Big, life-altering stuff. And he needed to come to terms with it before he shot off his mouth.

  He started to tell her so, but she’d seen his hesitation and correctly interpreted its cause. “I guess I just got my answer,” she said stiffly. “Thanks for nothing!”

  “Don’t presume to read my mind, Molly.”

  “Why not? It’s an open enough book. Tell me, was a roll in the hay for old times’ sake worth what it’s now costing you?”

  “What just happened had nothing to do with old times, and you know it. Tonight was about the here and now. About you and me. And it’s not something I can slough off as being of no reckoning. But nor was it something I had planned, so don’t ask me to give you pat solutions until I’ve had time to process the ramifications.”

  “Oh, shut up!” she spat, leaping off the bed and scrambling into her clothes. “Save your mealymouthed bafflegab for someone who cares.”

  “You care, Molly. You’d never have come here with me if you didn’t. You wouldn’t have kissed me the way you did, and you sure as hell wouldn’t have let me kiss you, let alone make love to you.”

  If she’d discovered she’d just had sex with a troll, she couldn’t have looked more disgusted. “Then more fool I! I guess I’m one those people who never learn.”

  More fool both of us, for ever having deluded ourselves into believing we could spend time alone and keep our hands off each other, he thought gloomily.

  Whatever it was that had drawn them together in the first place had lost nothing of its appeal. Neither the passage of time nor the sobering effects of maturity and life experience could weaken its force.

  It was all she could do look at herself in the mirror and not vomit. When was she going to learn?

  The pitiful fact was, she never would. And if there had ever been any doubts on that score, she’d laid them to rest with a vengeance. To have fallen under his spell again, when she already knew the hefty price for making such a mistake! To have gone with him to a motel!

  Two near-sleepless nights had gone by since then, and still her face burned at the memory. He hadn’t even used a credit card to secure the room. Just like any other man sneaking around behind his wife’s back—even if, technically, he wasn’t yet married—he’d left no record of the transaction. Had probably signed himself in as Joe Blow, if truth be known. Cash and anonymity for a tumble between the sheets with a woman who’d never be good enough to be seen on his arm in public, but who could rev up his engines in ways his ultraconservative fiancée didn’t dream existed.

  “There are names for women like you,” she whispered at the face staring back at her in the bathroom mirror, “and they’re not pretty. Try ‘slut’ on for size, and see how you like the fit! Or ‘whore’—that one’s got a nice old-fashioned, hell-and-damnation ring to it. Your father would like that one, Molly Paget. He’d consider it custom-made for you.”

  “Mommy,” Ariel called out, pushing open the door, “you’ve got a phone call.”

  Praise heaven! Any diversion was better than dwelling on this latest disaster. “Who is it, sweetheart?”

  “Auntie Elaine. She said to tell you she’s just checking in and that you made a bundle, whatever that means.”

  “She’s talking about the last quarter’s profits, sweetheart,” Molly said, and hoped that was the only bundle in question, since, yet again, she and Dan had gone at it like frantic rabbits in the motel and forgotten about contraception.

  “Oh.” Ariel regarded her solemnly. “Are you sad, Mommy? You look sad.”

  She looked like a walking corpse! Would that she was as impervious to pain as one! “I’m just tired. I got home very late the other night, and still haven’t caught up on my sleep.”

  Stop being such a damned fool and get in the car! Dan had bellowed, cruising beside her as she tramped down the deserted road.

  I’d rather walk barefoot over red hot coals.

  For crying out loud, Molly, it’s below freezing out here and we’re miles from home. Use your brains for once!

  I think we’ve established I don’t have any. If I did, the need for this conversation wouldn’t have arisen in the first place.

  You’re asking to catch pneumonia.

  No way. I’m not giving you another chance to maul my chest!

  He’d muttered something under his breath—an obscenely graphic reference to what they’d just done in the motel room—and slammed the car to a stop. Trying to talk reasonably with you when you’re in this mood is a waste of time, he’d said, grabbing her behind the knees and slinging her over his shoulder as if she were a sack of potatoes.

  She’d have kicked him. Done lasting and excruciating injury to his precious crown jewels, if he hadn’t caught her by surprise. But by the time she’d reached that stimulating conclusion, he’d literally stuffed her in the back seat of the car and taken off again at such dangerously high speed that, for once, she’d let discretion have the last word.

  Revenge, she’d decided, could wait for another day. The odds of winding up mutilated in a mangled wreck, just for the pleasure of reaching over and throttling him with her scarf, weren’t worth the risk, even if it was no less than he deserved!

  “I’ll speak to Auntie Elaine in here,” she told Ariel, flopping down on the bed. “You go hang up the phone in the sitting room and when I’m done, we’ll order whatever you want for breakfast from room service.”

  She lifted the receiver and could have wept at the sound of Rob’s mother’s voice, coming as clearly across the miles as if she were only next door. How many times over the years had Molly turned to her for advice, for help, for consolation? And how differently might her life have turned out if Elaine hadn’t been the personnel manager who’d interviewed her for the big Seattle department store where’d she’d taken her first job after running away from home?

  “I miss you, Elaine,” she said, after they’d covered all the business they had to deal with. “And I miss Rob.”

  “We all do, my lamb, but that’s not the only reason you sound so low. It’s Dan, isn’t it?”

  Molly let out a hopeless sigh. “You know me too well.”

  “Have you fallen for him all over again?”

  “It’s worse than that. He knows about Ariel.”

  “I’m not surprised. When you told me he was your mother’s doctor and coming in and out of the house pretty much at will, I had the feeling the secret wouldn’t remain secret for very long, and I have to say, Molly, I don’t see that as necessarily being a bad thing.”

  “You don’t know the half of it!”

  “I can guess,” Elaine said drily. “I haven’t known you all this time without picking up on the fact that you never got him out of your system. But you were a girl before, and he wasn’t much more than a boy. You’ve changed since then, and you have to give him the chance to show you that he’s changed, too.”

  “Some things—some people can’t change.”

  “He’s a doctor when you never thought he’d amount to anything but a playboy with no morals and more money than sense. He’s working out of a cash-strapped clinic and on call pretty much seven days a week when he could just as well join a practice where someone else picks up the slack every time he feels like playing golf or partying. So don’t tell me people can’t change because he’s proof that they can. And you owe it to my sweet Ariel not to run away again until you’ve explored the wider dimensions of your relationship with him.”

  “It’s not that easy, Elaine.”<
br />
  “I didn’t say it would be. The issue is whether or not Ariel’s worth the trouble of finding out if the dynamics of who you and Dan are can work, this time around.”

  If only Molly could be as sure! “Days like this, I’d give a lot to be on the receiving end of one of your hugs,” she said, forcing the words past the lump in her throat. “I’m scared, Elaine.”

  “Don’t make me laugh! You’ve got great instincts and more guts than any other ten people I know. Trust your feelings, my lamb. They won’t let you down.”

  The compassion and wisdom which made Elaine such a beloved friend, plus the strength which had helped her survive a broken marriage and the pain of losing her only son to AIDS, came across the phone line now, loud and clear. Only she could have spoken so bluntly and still be heard.

  Within seconds of her call ending, the phone rang again. As soon as Molly identified herself, Dan’s voice cut in.

  “Don’t hang up on me,” he warned.

  Chilled by the unfamiliar edge in his voice, she said, “I wasn’t planning to.”

  “That’s good. I want to see you, Molly, some place private. There are issues we have to settle and I don’t want to be disturbed until we’ve reached agreement on how to go about that.”

  “If you’re talking about a motel room again—!”

  “I’m not. So if you’re concerned I’m going to try to jump you the minute we’re alone, you’re worrying for nothing. I never mix business with pleasure—and this meeting, I assure you, is all about business.”

  “All right,” she said, despising the little stab of regret his assurance created. “Where and when?”

  “Anytime after five this afternoon. Where is up to you.”

  “I was planning to stop by the house later on. We could meet there. It’s private enough.”

  And safe. Even Dan Cordell couldn’t tempt her to forego moral rectitude in that place, not with her father’s ghost lurking in every corner!

  “Fine,” he said brusquely. “I’ll see you there between five and a quarter after.”