The Doctor's Secret Child Read online

  She was tiny, coming only to his shoulder, and possessed of the quiet, understated beauty which only the rich ever seemed to acquire. “I hope your little girl’s not hurt,” she said with genuine sweetness. “She took quite a fall, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m sure she’s perfectly fine,” Molly replied, snatching Ariel out of Dan’s reach and knowing she sounded about as charming as a black widow spider on the hunt. “Come along, Ariel. Your grandmother’s waiting for us.”

  But Hilda hadn’t spent most of the last two days practicing spinning the wheels on her chair for the sheer fun of it, and she wasn’t waiting for anyone. “Dr. Cordell!” she cooed, waving to catch his attention before Molly could prevent her, and rolling across the polished floor in a burst of speed which had Yvonne Cordell shying away like a nervous thoroughbred. “Guess you never expected to see me here, now did you?”

  Excusing himself from his party, Dan came to where Hilda sat beaming with delight and Molly stood with what she feared was a sickly grimace plastered on her face.

  “Glad to see you out and looking so well, Hilda,” he said, oozing just the right blend of charm and concern. “Don’t overdo it, though, okay? I’d hate to have you suffer a relapse.”

  “I haven’t felt this well in longer than I can remember,” she confided. “My Molly’s given me a new lease on life.”

  “Has she?” His gaze rested briefly on Molly, then flickered away indifferently. “That’s good to hear.”

  Unsure whether to feel relieved or insulted at being so summarily dismissed, she said, “Don’t let us keep you from your family and friends, Doctor.”

  “I won’t,” he said, turning away. “Enjoy your evening.”

  “You were almost rude to that sweet man,” her mother chided, curls bobbing in the breeze as Molly fairly raced to get her in the dining room before anything else untoward occurred. “What’s gotten into you, Molly?”

  “I don’t like him.”

  “Why ever not? What’s he ever done to you?”

  Dear heaven, Momma, she thought distractedly, if you only knew! “Nothing,” she replied, then heaved another sigh of defeated exasperation as the maitre d’ stepped forward to greet them.

  “Hello, Molly,” Alec Livingston crowed, an altogether too knowing smirk on his doughy, freckled face. “I heard you were back in town.”

  “It’s Alec from down the street,” her mother supplied helpfully. “You remember him, don’t you, Molly?”

  “Oh, yes.” Would that she could forget!

  “He used to pull your braids when you were Ariel’s age.”

  He used to do other unpleasant things, too! “I remember, Mother,” she said, tempted to grind her heel down hard on his instep. Fixing him in a cold stare instead, she settled for, “Show us to our table, please.”

  “Sure thing, Molly. Is it just you and your ma and the little girl?”

  “That’s why I reserved a table for three.”

  His insolence almost palpable, he led the way to a table at one side of the fireplace and slapped down three menus. “Just checking. Thought maybe your husband might be here, as well.”

  As if word hadn’t spread the length and breadth of Wharf Street that she’d come back with no visible sign of a father for the child she’d brought with her!

  Dan and his group showed up in the doorway just then and for once Molly was almost grateful to see him. At least it spared her having to stomach any more of Alec Livingston’s snide remarks. Just about falling over himself, he rushed to attend to the new arrivals.

  “Good evening, sir, madam,” he gushed in plummy tones, bowing to the senior Dr. Cordell and his wife as if they were of royal lineage. “Such a pleasure to welcome you and your guests to the Cranberry Room again. If you’ll follow me please, I have your table waiting.”

  His obsequious deferral to them stood in glaring contrast to his blatant lack of respect toward Molly. But then, wasn’t that the way he’d always been—belligerent from the cradle and never happier than when he was bullying someone he perceived to be weaker than him, and a fawning bootlicker to anyone with clout or social prestige? And shouldn’t she be used to such treatment on her home turf by now?

  Hiding behind her menu, Hilda eyed her curiously and whispered, “You don’t like him, either, do you?”

  “I detest him,” Molly said, making no attempt to lower her voice. “He is beyond contempt. What do you fancy for dinner, Mother?”

  But Hilda was too occupied putting two and two together and coming up with five, to care about food. Glance swinging furtively from Molly to Ariel to Alec, she said in a shocked voice, “Oh, Molly! Is he…you know who?”

  “Good grief, no! Never in a month of Sundays!” So exasperated she was ready to scream, Molly rolled her eyes and decided she’d opt for room service in future, if this was any indication of what dining in public entailed. “Honestly, Mom, give me credit for having some taste! Let’s try to forget he exists, shall we, and decide what we’re going to order for dinner?”

  If Summer epitomized cool, calm serenity, Molly represented fire and fury about to erupt. Magnificent in a cherry-red pant suit with a gold choker necklace at her throat, all she needed was a spear in one hand to complete the picture of a warrior princess about to do battle with her enemies. Sadly she appeared to view him among their number.

  “You know, Daniel, it’s untoward to allow your patients to intrude on your personal time and you really shouldn’t encourage the kind of familiarity that woman displayed,” his mother declared, clearly having noticed the way his glance kept straying to the table on the other side of the fireplace. “Those people are not our type.”

  Sure both Molly and her mother must have heard, Dan felt a flush of annoyance run under his skin. “They’re my type,” he snapped. “I’d be hard-pressed to make a living without them.”

  “Doesn’t have to be that way, son,” Henry Winslow boomed. “There’s room for your name on the letterhead in my office whenever you’re ready to take me up on my offer.”

  “Perhaps after we’re married, but not now, Daddy,” Summer said softly. “Dan is very committed to the Eastside Clinic, and I’m sure his patients are as devoted to him as he is to them.”

  “His father was dedicated, too, darling,” Yvonne said, the frozen distaste in her expression melting into warm approval as she swung her gaze from Molly to Summer, “but he never permitted his patients to forget their place, which is more than can be said for the management here at the Inn. I never thought to find myself sitting down to dine with patrons whom, for want of a better word, I’m forced to describe as commonplace. That young woman,” she decreed, surveying Molly over the top of her half-glasses, “needs to teach her hooligan child some manners if she seriously expects to take her out in public. The girl almost knocked me off my feet and didn’t even have the grace to apologize.”

  The upsurge of emotion his mother’s latest broadside evoked took Dan completely by surprise. Rage mingled with pain, and he was hard-pressed not to create a scene which would have embarrassed everyone, including himself. Choked, he said, “She’s just a kid, for Pete’s sake!”

  “So were you, once. But you never behaved as she did.”

  A fat lot you know, Mother! he thought. My sins were a hell of a lot worse than tripping over my own feet and I was years older than my daughter at the time.

  Summer, sensing his anger, laid a placating hand over his. The diamond he’d given her winked in the candlelight. “Never mind, Dan,” she murmured. “It’s not important.”

  “Exactly,” Nancy Winslow chimed in. “We’re here to celebrate Yvonne’s birthday, so can we please forget about people who bear no relevance to the occasion, and just concentrate on having a good time?”

  But it was important, damn it, and Dan did mind—more deeply than he’d ever have guessed. It took a major toll on his self-discipline not to pound his fist on the table and bellow, “That’s my child you’re dismissing as irrelevant, and the mother and grandmot
her of my child you’re rejecting as being of no account!”

  At liberty to do no such thing, he wrestled instead with the sobering realization that he was no longer in charge of the events shaping his life. Meanwhile, the conversation around him turned to more agreeable topics, and the unpleasantness was forgotten as if it had never arisen. And while, in the past, he might not have condoned such an attitude, he wouldn’t normally have let it get under his skin to the extent that it did now.

  These were, after all, the kind of social situations to which he’d been born and bred. One didn’t allow inconsequential irritations to spoil one’s pleasures. And there was little doubt that the prevailing opinion at his table was that Molly and her entourage were about as insignificant as gnats.

  Only Summer seemed sympathetic to his mood, and that merely compounded his problems. Because if he’d learned nothing else from the heated exchange just ended, it was that keeping his connection to Ariel a secret was out of the question.

  He hadn’t been there to bandage her scraped knees the first time she fell off a bike, or comfort her when she woke up from a bad dream, or sit up the whole night when she had croup. But he’d be damned if he was going to remain silent while others criticized her. He couldn’t and he wouldn’t.

  He owed it to himself and to Ariel to establish beyond any doubt that he was her father, and if that meant confronting Molly a lot sooner than he’d anticipated and run the risk of her hightailing it back to the West Coast, it was a chance he was prepared to take.

  The drawback was, the fallout would hurt Summer. And that was the last thing he wanted, because she didn’t deserve it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AFTER her mother and Ariel were in bed, Molly relaxed in a hot bath for half an hour, then slipped into the red satin robe, put her feet up in the sitting room, and settled down to watch a movie on TV. But neither the figures on the screen nor the words coming out of their mouths could displace the humiliation which had turned dinner into a farce.

  Bad enough that she’d had to suffer through a dozen subtle displays of affection between Dan and his fiancée. Not once during their two-month affair had he flaunted their relationship before the whole world. Instead they’d sneaked around, meeting in the alley behind The Ivy Tree after dark, or in some out-of-the-way spot beyond the town limits. And only once had he been foolish—or cruel—enough to subject her to his family’s scrutiny.

  At seventeen, she’d convinced herself that he’d wanted to keep their association secret for her sake, to spare her reputation. It was why he often took her to a motel some fifty miles down the coast. Then, one night, they’d fallen asleep after making love, and not woken until nearly three in the morning. When she got home, she’d climbed over the woodshed roof and in through her bedroom window, only to find her father waiting for her, his leather belt swinging from one hand.

  She hadn’t cared. What she and Dan shared had made it all worthwhile. Their lovemaking had been the stuff that poets wrote about; something which had transcended the ordinary and lifted her beyond her father’s tyranny. For years afterward, she’d comforted herself with the notion that if Dan had been the kind to settle down, it would have been with her.

  At twenty-eight she knew differently. He was capable of entering into as deep and lasting a commitment as any other man. But it had to be with the right kind of woman, one he could parade in public. And if, in some backwater, not-very-bright corner of her mind, Molly hadn’t been willing to recognize the fact before, she’d certainly had it rammed down her throat tonight.

  Add to that the insulting behavior of the other women in his party, and it was small wonder that, when at last their main course had been cleared away, she did her best to talk her mother into having dessert and coffee brought to the suite, on the grounds that she was looking a bit worn.

  “But I feel better than I have in months,” her mother had protested.

  “Even so, Dr. Cordell’s right,” she’d argued, just about gagging on having to speak his name, let alone support anything he’d said. “You shouldn’t overdo things on your first day out. And regardless, I want Ariel to get an early night tonight because I know she must be tired.”

  Hilda glanced past the dining room’s open double doors to the lobby where Ariel had her nose pressed up against the cabinet holding the dolls. “She doesn’t look tired to me.”

  “It was nearly ten before she got to bed last night, and she’s not used to keeping such late hours.”

  “It’s only just after eight now, and her tutor doesn’t come in on Sundays, which means she can sleep in as long as she wants tomorrow, so what’s this really all about, Moll?” Hilda had eyed her narrowly. “Are you ashamed because I used the wrong knife to butter my bread?”

  “Oh, Momma, as if I care about that!” At her wit’s end, Molly had rested an elbow on the table and clapped a hand to her forehead. “If you must know, I’ve had about all I can stomach of Alec Livingston’s smirking face, and as for the Cordell entourage at the next table…!”

  “What’ve they done to us, beyond minding their own business and leaving us alone to enjoy ours?”

  Was her mother really so naive that she couldn’t read what lay behind the glances directed their way? Or notice how, when Molly caught them in the act, the older women in particular quickly lowered their eyes and allowed superior little smiles to accompany remarks uttered with such undisguised amusement that a person would have to be both blind and stupid not to recognize it?

  She didn’t care for herself. She’d been hurt and humiliated often enough before and lived to tell about it, but it broke her heart to have her mother and daughter ridiculed. So when Ariel had come back into the dining room and, at Dan’s urging, skipped blithely over to speak to him, Molly’s maternal instincts, already tuned in on high, switched to red alert.

  Just one disparaging word, she’d thought, returning in full measure Yvonne Cordell’s offended glare, just one sneer, you despicable old witch, and I’ll rip your throat out!

  Unaware of the drama being played out behind his back, Dan had poked a playful finger in Ariel’s ribs and said, “So how’s the sore throat today, pumpkin?”

  She giggled and caught at his hand. “All better. It was better the next morning.”

  Say “Thank you,” Molly tried to telegraph, her heart hammering. Don’t give them the chance to tell you have no manners.

  But Ariel wasn’t in receiving mode. “You’re nice,” she said, leaning trustingly against Dan’s knee. “If I get sick, will you make me better?”

  “I sure will, sweetie,” he’d promised, tucking her braids behind her shoulders and picking a loose hair off her dress as casually as if he’d been doing it all her life. “Anytime you need me, I’ll be there. You make sure you remember, I’m only ever as far away as a phone call.”

  The adoration in the gaze Ariel turned on her father had struck a fateful blow to Molly’s conviction that she could pull off her deception. Already, with only a moment here and there snatched in passing as they went about their separate business, Dan and Ariel had connected like two magnets, and unless something was done to break it, the bond between them could only grow stronger.

  Unable to tolerate another minute of the whole bizarre dining experience, she’d called out, “Ariel, come along, please. We’re leaving.”

  “But, Mommy…!”

  “Right now, Ariel!” Past caring that the brittle ring in her voice and the edge of hysteria in her behavior was raising eyebrows at the Cordell table, Molly jumped up, grabbed her purse and spun her mother’s wheelchair away from the table so abruptly that Hilda’s neck snapped back with the suddenness of it.

  “How was dinner?” Dan had asked mildly, as Molly trundled her cargo past.

  “Not up to my expectations!” she snapped, and fairly raced the wheelchair across the room.

  “Leaving so soon?” Alec Livingston snickered as she approached the door.

  “What does it look like?”

  “I wa
s hoping you’d stick around until things quieted down some and we could have a bit of a chat.”

  “I can’t imagine that we have anything to talk about.”

  He’d shrugged his beefy shoulders. “I don’t know about that, Moll. You and I go back a long way. Why don’t we meet for a drink some night before I start work? We could catch up on each other’s news and I could show you pictures of my wife and kids. I married Lexie MacGregor, in case you didn’t know. Remember her?”

  Indeed, yes! The eldest of nine, with carrot-red hair, freckles, eyes so pale a blue they were almost colorless and a permanently runny nose, she’d been the bane of Molly’s existence in grade school. Heaven help the offspring of such a couple!

  “Bring any pictures of your husband with you, Moll?”

  “None that I care to share with you,” she said, the malice behind his question not escaping her. “Charge our meal to Suite 104, please.”

  “So it’s a suite these days, is it?” he’d leered, feigning awe. “A far cry from Wharf Street, I must say, but it’s nice to see that bagging a few bucks hasn’t changed you. You’re still the same old Molly Paget, despite it all.”

  And to think she’d deluded herself into believing she could outrun her past!

  The couple on the TV screen clung together in a darkened house, horrified gazes trained on a body lying on the floor. Creepy organ music swelled in the background, and it took Molly a moment to realize that the repeated knocking she heard had nothing to do with the story being enacted but was coming from the door to her suite.

  Robe swirling around her bare feet, she crossed the small foyer and, not caring that she sounded about as welcoming as the matron of a women’s penitentiary, barked, “Yes? Who is it?”

  “Bellhop, ma’am. Floral delivery for Ms. Paget.”

  “I didn’t order flowers.”

  “Courtesy of management, ma’am.”

  Why would management send her flowers at this time of night? Skeptical, she peeped through the spy hole in the door and found the view in the corridor outside blocked by a huge bouquet of stargazer lilies. Reassured, she slid back the dead bolt and opened the door. “Put them over there,” she said, gesturing to the hall table set against the far wall of the foyer.