The Doctor's Secret Child Read online

  Much later that evening, after the senior Cordells had left and Dan had returned from taking Ariel back to the Inn, he and Molly sat side by side on the back porch with only a candle and the faint prick of stars to light the scene.

  “Your mother’s right, you know,” Molly said, staring out to the black expanse of the lake. “Words, by themselves, aren’t enough.”

  “Some words are,” he said. “Words such as ‘I love you.’ They can be the most healing words in the world. I love you, my Molly.”

  “No,” she said. “You feel sorry for me, and responsible for Ariel. But that doesn’t add up to love, and your saying it does won’t change my mind about leaving here.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Leave, then. Run to the other ends of the earth, if you think it’ll change anything. But it won’t. I’ll follow you. If Seattle is home for you, it’ll become home for me.”

  “You belong here, Dan. You’re the jewel in this town’s crown—the good doctor, the fine, upstanding man every eligible woman wants to marry.”

  “I’m also a fighter. I’ve fought to save lives, to promote health, to care for the sick—and I’ll fight to the death to hold on to the woman I love.”

  “I’m not that woman,” she said. “You don’t need someone like me. Your mother was right this morning. Public opinion matters.”

  “You’re all I need,” he said, so fervently she almost believed him. “And I don’t give a rip about public opinion. You are what matters. What we share is what matters. I want to be your husband. I want to lie beside you at night and see your lush, beautiful mouth bloom with passion under mine, and those gorgeous eyes turn heavy with desire when I take you in my arms.”

  “You don’t—”

  “Yes, I do!” he said, with a catch in his voice. “I want to feel your heart racing against mine. Make you pregnant. See you grow heavy with another child of mine. Watch you hold my son to your breast, catch your glance across a roomful of people and know that the message in it tells me you want to be alone with me. You were a little part of my past. I want you to be all of my future. I’m a better man because of you. I need you, Molly, and I do love you.”

  She was sobbing before he was even half-finished. “I want to believe you,” she wailed. “But I’m afraid.”

  “Not you,” he murmured, hauling her out of her chair and onto his lap. “Listen to me, my lovely. A man and a woman get together for a season, a reason or a lifetime. At first, with us, it was for a season. And I admit, when I first asked you to marry me, it was for a reason. But now, I’m asking you for a lifetime. You’re my lodestar, Molly. You give me direction and purpose.”

  “Oh!” she wept, hiding her face against his neck as all the sharp-edged hurt washed away in a great flood of tears. “I must look such a mess!”

  “No,” he said, lifting her head so that his mouth hovered over hers. “Even now, you look beautiful because, to me, you don’t know how to look any other way.”

  She could have drowned in the kiss with which he sealed those words. “I love you, Dan,” she said, for only the second time in her life. “I always have. I always will.”

  “Then say you’ll stay here and build a life with me. Marry me.”

  “Yes,” she said, the very real possibility that happy endings were not just for other people finally coming home to roost. “Yes, on both counts.”

  He took her upstairs then, and made love to her. Brought her home to him in the most enduring way that any man can claim his woman.

  “Eleven years ago I couldn’t offer you anything,” he told her. “This time around, I’m promising you forever.”

  It was all she’d ever wanted.

  Him. Forever.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-8337-8

  THE DOCTOR’S SECRET CHILD

  First North American Publication 2003.

  Copyright © 2002 by Kathy Garner.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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