The Doctor's Secret Child Page 6

  The pressure of his knees and the firmness of his hold on her hands continued, but it was the ease with which he touched her emotions that terrified Molly. She wanted to cradle his head to her breast; to stroke his hair and soothe away his misery. Her eyes burned with unshed tears—for those poor people who lost so much in the space of a few seconds, and for him who still carried the burden of their loss eleven years later.

  Softly she said, “Did a baby die tonight, Dan?”

  “Two did. A fourteen-year-old girl from The Flats hid in her father’s barn and tried to abort a pregnancy. She hemorrhaged to death before I could get her to the hospital.”

  “Oh, dear God!”

  The Flats, a bleak, wind-scoured stretch of land on which a scattering of farms struggled to survive, lay some ten miles east of Harmony Cove. Its residents, isolated as much by poverty as the elements, were a strange, reclusive lot, fanatical and superstitious in their beliefs, and highly suspicious of outsiders.

  “That sort of thing shouldn’t still be happening,” he said, controlled rage threading the anguish in his voice. “For crying out loud, we’re into the twenty-first century! That child had options. If she’d come to the clinic, one of us could have helped her.”

  “She shouldn’t have had to,” Molly said, understanding better than he’d ever know how trapped and helpless the poor girl had felt. “She should have been able to turn to her family first, and they were the ones who should have brought her to you.”

  “Would you have gone to your father, if you’d found yourself in the same situation at her age?”

  Completely blindsided by the question, she felt the blood rush to her face and a tremor roll over her as devastating as a silent earthquake. He noticed both, and pinned her in another disturbing glance, this one altogether too perceptive.

  “I can’t imagine being fourteen and pregnant,” she said, recklessly sifting about to mine an element of harmless fact from the quicksand of more dangerous truths crowding her mind. “The most I knew about sex at that age was what Alec Livingston tried to teach me when I was ten.”

  By sheer luck, she’d happened on something guaranteed to lessen the tension swirling between them and divert Dan’s curiosity into safer channels. Knees falling slackly apart, he leaned back in stunned amazement. “Alec Livingston tried to get it on with you when you were only ten? The dirty little creep! What did he do, lure you behind the potting shed and offer to show you his etchings?”

  “The lobster shed, actually, and he wasn’t quite that sophisticated.” At last free to remove herself from the drugging pleasure of his hold without making an issue of it, she picked up their coffee mugs and rinsed them out at the sink. “Potting sheds aren’t a common site on Wharf Street, in case you haven’t noticed. We tend to stick to more basic construction, like keeping a roof over our own heads. It’s only people like you, living on the lake, who worry about providing housing for plants.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t, Molly!” In the reflection of the window above the sink, she saw him get up from the chair and lope toward her. “You’re not wriggling off the hook that easily.”

  Feigning innocence, she said, “You want more coffee?”

  “You know damn well that’s not what I’m talking about. Exactly what sort of stunt did the Livingston boy try to pull?”

  She was wedged between Dan and the counter, hemmed in by the stove on one side, and the back door on the other. Not exactly the most romantic place in the world, but certainly one fraught with enough perilous potential that she went weak at the knees.

  His body heat entwined with hers. His breath winnowed over her mouth in a phantom kiss that left her craving the real flesh-and-blood encounter. The very pores of her skin pulsed with longing for his touch.

  She must be mad!

  Lifting her gaze to his, she said baldly, “He offered to show me what he so delicately termed his ‘pecker’ if I’d let him see my ‘dingle’!”

  She’d hoped to break the mood, and she succeeded. Dan’s body gave a sudden heave as if he were trying not to lose his lunch, except it was a burst of laughter he attempted to contain. “And how,” he choked out, turning his head aside as if he thought that could disguise his unholy glee, “did you respond?”

  “I plowed my fist in his nose as hard as I could and sent him home screaming, with blood pouring down his face. And if you’re interested in the sequel, his mother came to my father with the story of how I’d tried to lead her darling boy down the primrose path to ruin, then beaten him up when he refused to cooperate. Rotten Alec was treated like a martyr, and I was condemned for everything from fornication to assault.”

  “Oh, Molly!” He was laughing so hard, his eyes were tearing.

  “I’m glad you find it so amusing,” she snapped, recalling the injustice of it all as if it had happened only yesterday. Hussy! John Paget had roared, wielding his belt with vigor and leaving bright red welts on her leg. Slut! “But if you’d had a father like mine, you’d be laughing on the other side of your face! I know exactly how that poor girl felt tonight—alone, afraid, defenseless, with no one to take her side.”

  Abruptly sobering, Dan said, “That’s the tragedy of it. She didn’t have to be alone.”

  “Really? I don’t know how you arrive at that conclusion. Obviously she didn’t feel she could confide in her parents. And I haven’t heard you make mention of the baby’s father. Perhaps if he’d stepped forward and taken his share of responsibility for the pregnancy, there might never have been an abortion attempt to begin with.”

  “Perhaps not,” he murmured, and surprised her with a touch to her cheek; a whisper of a caress which traveled in languid seduction from the tip of her ear to the underside of her jaw. “When did you become so wise, my Molly?”

  “I’m not your Molly,” she said, but her tone carried not a shred of conviction. Worse, despite her best efforts to prevent it, her eyes fell closed, weighted by the memory of a time when she’d been all his and held nothing of herself in reserve.

  She heard his sharply indrawn breath. Sensed the awareness suddenly humming through him, as if he, too, remembered the intimacy they’d once shared. She felt his breath again on her mouth, warmer this time, and close enough that it left a faint damp cloud on her lips. And would have lifted her face for the kiss she knew was coming if another voice hadn’t defused the electricity charging the air.

  “Mommy,” Ariel croaked plaintively from the doorway, “my throat hurts.”

  Molly’s eyes flew open only to find themselves captured by Dan’s for a long, tense second. Then, with enviable calm, he stepped away and turned to speak to her daughter. “When did it start, pumpkin?”

  “Just now.” Ariel swallowed audibly and whimpered with pain. “When I woke up.”

  He swung back to Molly again. “Want me to take a look?”

  “Absolutely not!” Blind fear getting the better of the rational judgment with which she’d normally have responded to such an offer, she ducked past him to shield Ariel from his too-observant inspection. Oh, it had been a mistake to let him linger in the house; a mistake to have called on him at all! She couldn’t afford to risk his coming into contact with her child so frequently. “Don’t you dare come near her!”

  She didn’t need his raised eyebrows or calm, “I’m offering to give her a medical examination, Molly, not abscond with her,” to know that she’d overreacted and it hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  Collecting herself with difficulty, she replied, “I’m not suggesting you were. I just don’t want to take advantage of you, that’s all. You’ve put in enough hours for one day, and a sore throat is hardly a major emergency. Ariel’s a mouth breather when she sleeps and quite often wakes up like this. It’s nothing that a glass of water won’t cure.”

  “She looks a little flushed to me. Could be she’s running a temperature.”

  “Children always look flushed when they’ve been sleeping.”

  “If you say so.” He paused a moment as though unde
cided whether or not to pursue the matter, then shrugged and collected his medical bag from the table. “I can’t force you to let me examine her, but I strongly suggest you keep a close eye on her. I assume you flew here?”

  “We did.”

  “Then you must be aware that all that recycled air in those pressurized jet cabins is a breeding ground for respiratory infections. If she’s not noticeably improved by the morning, don’t fool around. Get her to a doctor—and it doesn’t have to be me, if that’s what’s holding you back. Marjorie Anderson is one of my partners and she’s excellent with children.”

  “It’s not that I don’t have confidence in you, Dan. No offence intended, really.”

  “None taken,” he said easily. “We never did talk about your agenda for Hilda and now obviously isn’t a good time to get into it, so I’ll be off. But I would like to go over whatever other harebrained ideas you’re cooking up on her behalf before you put them into practice.”

  “I already promised you I’ll call, and I will.”

  “Make it soon,” he said darkly. “Or I’ll call you.”

  She was so eager to get rid of him, she damn near slammed the door while he had still had one leg inside the house. And he’d bet money he knew why. Without saying a word, she’d given away her secret. It had to do with Ariel—and him.

  Putting two and two together and coming up with four wasn’t difficult. The flimsy web of lies she’d concocted to throw him off the scent weren’t nearly as convincing as the rank terror which sent her into overdrive whenever he came within spitting distance of her or her daughter.

  In hindsight, everything added up.

  She’d been horrified to find he was a presence in her mother’s life. Without waiting to discover whether or not he was fit to be let loose with a stethoscope, she’d threatened to have him removed from the case. She’d defended that poor child from The Flats with a vehemence out of all proportion to her involvement in the case. And she’d just about broken the sound barrier leaping between him and Ariel when he’d offered to take a look at the kid’s sore throat—scarcely something to be interpreted as an invasive medical procedure!

  Pausing next to his car, he inhaled a lungful of the sharp night air. From the corner of his eye, he saw a starched lace curtain lift at the living room window of the house he’d just left. She was watching him, wanting to be sure he didn’t decide to come back and start probing and poking around into matters best left untouched.

  Too late, Molly! The proverbial cat is out of the bag and there’s no stuffing it back in again. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

  Deep in thought, he climbed into the car and sat a moment, staring down the hill. A floodlamp on a post at the end of the dock spilled a circle of yellow light over the lobster traps piled next to the wooden shed behind which Alec Livingston had met his comeuppance with Molly.

  And now, it seemed, so had Dan Cordell. The only difference was, it had taken eleven years to catch up with him. The complications it entailed didn’t exactly enthrall him. Seeing Molly again had been disturbing enough. Until she resurfaced, he’d been happy with Summer.

  A doctor’s daughter, Summer well understood the demands of the profession. Married to her, he’d come home at night to orderly tranquillity and tasteful comfort, regardless of how late it might be. There’d be a table set with crystal and china. Fine wine and gourmet meals. Classical music playing softly in the background, and a leaping fire to brighten black winter evenings.

  Eventually there’d be children, two at the most. A boy and a girl, with perfect, healthy bodies he could hug tight and thank God for, on those days he’d tended to some undernourished sickly baby who’d never know the luxury of sweet-smelling sheets or a mother with petal-soft hands to soothe away the night fears.

  It was all there waiting for him, and the only thing he had to do was reach out and grasp it. More than that, he just had to say the word and he’d be out of the clinic and into her father’s nice, clean, white-collar practice where patients knew better than to drag a man out of bed in the middle of the night.

  Forget infections neglected so long that they required major intervention to bring them under control. Forget the chronic winter cough which became pneumonia and left a two-year-old fighting for its life. Forget botched abortions in dirty barns. The rich didn’t wait until two in the morning to call for professional help. They didn’t try to cope by themselves with ancient remedies which often made illness worse. They weren’t buried in such awe of doctors that they turned to one only as a last resort.

  He could, if he chose, abandon his commitment to the hopeless and the helpless. He could let some other idealist take up the slack for a change, secure in the knowledge that he’d done his bit for the underprivileged.

  But how to turn his back on a leggy ten-year-old with big brown eyes and long dark braids, and a smile which, one day, would steal a man’s heart and never give it back? How to bury the memories hounding him of the summer that child had been conceived?

  The fling with Molly had begun innocently enough, about a week after she’d cut her hand at the restaurant. She’d been assigned to the late shift and he’d noticed how tired she looked. But he’d noticed other things, too: the full, passionate mouth, the big, dark, defiant eyes; the lush curve of her breasts beneath the green striped tunic of her uniform, the delicious sun-kissed length of her legs exposed by the midthigh hem of the little green skirt. And his motives hadn’t been nearly as pure as he’d made them out to be when he’d offered to give her a ride home after work.

  “It’s a beautiful night,” he said, when she came out to where he sat astride the Harley at the back entrance to the restaurant. “What say we go for a spin before I take you home?”

  She eyed the bike warily and sensing she was about to refuse, he’d added, “We’ll make it short. Just out to The Point and back. Half an hour at the most. And I promise not to speed. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

  She debated a moment longer, then allowed an impish smile to slip through. Eyes flashing beneath the sweep of her lashes, she said, “Why not?”

  She climbed aboard, wrapped her arms around his waist and laughed aloud as he peeled away from the curb. Within minutes, they’d cleared the town and were headed along the winding road up the cliff to The Point overlooking the Bay of Fundy. At that hour, close to eleven, it was deserted. The sky was peppered with stars, the air still and silent except for the distant swish of the sea.

  Without waiting for him, she slipped off the bike, climbed over the safety barrier, and standing at the very edge of the cliff, raised her arms as though embracing the night. Released from the netting that was a standard part of The Ivy Tree uniform, her hair streamed down her back, black as night, smooth as water.

  Joining her, he said, “Do you always live this dangerously?”

  “I thought you said I’d be safe.”

  “You were, on the bike. Right now though, you’re dancing with disaster. Come away from the edge, for Pete’s sake. You’re giving me the willies.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “I am,” he said, taking her arm. Her skin was cool and smooth as cream; her profile, dimly illuminated by starlight, mysterious and alluring. “I don’t fancy having to face your parents and tell them you fell a thousand feet to your death.”

  “They wouldn’t care,” she said. “At least, my father wouldn’t. He’d be glad he was rid of me.”

  There’d been not a hint of self-pity in her words, just such a calm statement of fact that he, who’d never once questioned his own parents’ devotion to him, felt a pang of compassion. “Come away,” he said again, taking her by the hand and drawing her back to sit beside him on the safety rail. “You’re too young and beautiful to give in to thoughts like that.”

  “I don’t want your pity,” she informed him tartly. “There’s no need to butter me up with compliments.” But when he’d slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her to him, she leaned against him with a l
ong, suppressed sigh which belied her claim.

  The women he knew wore silk and cashmere. They smelled of Chanel or Paloma Picasso. Their nails and hair were professionally maintained. They drove European sports cars and spent part of every winter in the Bahamas.

  Molly had changed out of her uniform into a cheap cotton skirt and short-sleeved blouse. Her hair fell in an untamed swath over her shoulders. Neither it nor her skin carried any hint of perfume except the scent which he came to associate always with her: line-dried clothes, plain soap and the wild thyme he later learned she sewed into little pouches and hung in her closet. She would not have merited a second glance from the crowd he ran with, yet her unadorned beauty stirred him to a wanting different from anything he’d known before.

  He inched closer. Felt the warmth of her thigh melting against his, the side swell of her breast pressing against his ribs. When he nudged at her lips with his mouth, she lifted her face willingly and let him kiss her.

  He didn’t know quite what he’d expected. Prim bashfulness, perhaps, or the coy little games of innocence other women he’d known liked to play, pretending to be shocked by a kiss but so ready to drop their drawers that a guy seldom got the chance to do it for them. Either way, he figured he could handle it.

  For once, though, he was taken totally by surprise. Oh sure, the innocence was there, except it was the real thing. No acting, no games, just artless, unfeigned rapture. And that was what really ambushed him. Her mouth opened like a tropical bloom: sweet, hot, and fragrant with passion. Her tongue entwined instinctively with his, ingenuous and eager.

  She made a little sound deep in her throat, halfway between a sigh and a moan. He felt a flush creep over her skin. Her hands clutched mindlessly at his T-shirt; tightened into fists against his chest. And the desire circling the perimeter of his consciousness like a distant thunderstorm settled in his groin, leaving him painfully constricted in his narrow-fitting chinos.