“You realize your name will be splattered with a fresh load of mud?”

“I don’t care,” Molly declared.

“I do,” Dan replied.

“Why?” she said, a strange flutter breezing over her.

He reached out and cupped his palm against the side of her neck. “Because I care about you, whether or not you believe me. And right now you need me.”

She’d needed him for years! He was the reason she’d never found passion with another man. He was the cause of all those sleepless nights, all those secret tears. But she’d rather die than tell him so. “No, I don’t,” she said, shying away. “I’m used to coping on my own.”

“It’s okay to ask for help, Molly. We all need other people some of the time.”

“Except you.”

They’re guaranteed to raise your pulse!

Look for the newest title in this new series.

The Passion Treatment

by

Kim Lawrence

#2330

Available only from

Harlequin Presents®

The Doctor’s Secret Child
Catherine Spencer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

THE house looked smaller, poorer even, than she remembered, but the dark blue sedan parked on the snowplowed road in front was new and expensive. Still, never for a moment would Molly have expected it would belong to Dan Cordell. It was too conservative, too practical. Not his sort of accessory at all. He was the Harley kind—hell on two wheels and the devil be damned.

The voice that greeted her as she swung open her mother’s front door, though, was exactly his: dark and smooth as black silk. “So you finally deigned to come back,” he said.

Molly wondered if the shock she felt ravaged her face as mercilessly as it violated her body. “Of course I did,” she said, clutching the door knob desperately in the hope that its cheap metal digging coldly into her palm would distract her from the painful lurch of her heart. “My mother, I’m told, has been injured and needs someone to help her recuperate, so there was never any question but that I’d come back.”

He shrugged, as though he didn’t believe her, and nodded at Ariel. “And she…?”

Molly had known it was a question she’d have to answer, but not so soon and never to him. He must never guess. “Is my daughter.”

“That much I already figured out.” Just a trace of the smile which, once, had lured her to forget every sense of decency her puritanical father had tried so hard to instill in her, touched his mouth. “What I was going to ask is, what’s her name?”

“Ariel,” she said, drawing her beloved child closer, as if doing so would protect her from ever having to know the truth of who he really was.

His gaze, as startlingly blue and direct as ever but softened now with a compassion it hadn’t possessed eleven years before, settled on Ariel. “It’s a very pretty name,” he allowed. “Just like its owner.”

Though Ariel smiled with pure delight, fear pinched Molly’s heart. What if her own searching for a trace of those aristocratic Cordell genes hadn’t been as thorough or impartial as she liked to think, and he saw in the child a resemblance to himself which Molly had missed? What if some sort of preternatural flash of insight told him he’d just met his own flesh and blood?

Before he could make the connection, she pushed Ariel toward the kitchen at the end of the narrow hall. “Go see what’s in the refrigerator, sweetheart. We might need to make a run to the corner store before we do anything else. Look for milk and bread and eggs and juice—you know, the kind of thing we always have on hand at home.”

He watched Ariel’s long legs cover the distance and Molly braced herself, sure unkind destiny had finally caught up with her. But, “I didn’t know you’d be bringing your family with you, Molly,” was all he said, shrugging into the sheepskin-lined denim jacket he’d flung over the coat stand.

“And I didn’t know you had a key to my mother’s house,” she replied sharply, the rush of adrenaline inspired by fear seeking escape in outrage. “Or did you break in?”

As if her finding him there to begin with hadn’t been shock enough, he answered, “I’m your mother’s doctor, and old-fashioned enough to believe in making house calls.”

Molly’s mouth fell open. Dan Cordell, whose chief pastime eleven years ago had been trolling for women and collecting more speeding tickets than any other well-to-do layabout in town, a doctor? Old-fashioned? “Of course you are!” she scoffed, taking in his blue jeans and off-white fisherman’s knit sweater. “And I’m Anna, former governess to the King of Siam’s many children.”

“On the contrary, Molly. You’re the absentee daughter so ashamed of her parents that she chose to forget they existed once she hooked up with a rich husband, so let’s not try to confuse truth with fantasy.”

He could dish out insults as easily as he’d once doled out charm. The chill of his disapproval cast an even longer shadow than that of his six-foot-three-inch frame backlit by the cold mid-March sun filtering weakly through the window behind him. But it lost something of its sting with his reference to her marital status.

Caught between a burst of hysterical laughter and outright scorn, she almost squeaked, Rich husband? Who thought up that fairy tale? but brought herself under control enough to reply coolly, “Let’s not indeed! Assuming you’re telling the truth for once and really are her doctor, how do you rate my mother’s condition?”

“Poorly enough that I don’t want her trying to move around without assistance. A fall out of bed or down those steep stairs could finish her off. Even before the accident, she was in bad shape.”

“Bad shape how?”

He subjected Molly to a brief, clinical inspection, sweeping his glance from her glove-soft leather boots to the cashmere sweater showing above the fur-trimmed collar of her coat. “I find it depressing that you even have to ask. If you—”

“If I weren’t such a pitiful excuse for a daughter, I’d already know why,” she cut in. “Well, don’t let the clothes fool you, Doctor! Underneath, I’m still that shameless, unruly Paget girl whose parents deserved better than to be saddled with a child marked by the devil.”

“Those are your words, Molly, not mine.”

“They are the words which drove me out of town before I turned eighteen, and they were whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear. I imagine they’ll find new life now that I’ve returned.”

“Is that why you stayed away all these years? Because you felt you didn’t belong?”

She bit back a sigh, unwilling—unable—to tell him the truth: that after he’d grown tired of her and their clandestine summer fling, she discovered she was pregnant; that she was afraid her father would half-kill her if he found out; that she had no one to turn to because her mother hadn’t had the courage to defy her husband’s iron-fisted rule and help her. And that she hated all of them for what it had cost her.

“Never mind me,” she said. “I asked you about my mother. I know my parents’ car was hit by a train at a railroad crossing, that my father was killed instantly and my mother left seriously injured. I’d like to know the extent of those injuries and if she’ll recover from them.”

Something flickered in Dan’s eyes, a fleeting expression almost like regret. “You’ve changed, Molly. You’re nothing like the girl I used to know.”

“I certainly hope not!”

“You’ve lost your sweetness.”

“I’ve lost my juvenile illusions, Doctor. And if you’re still hanging on to yours, I’m not sure you’re fit to be in charge of my mother’s care. Which brings up another point: why isn’t your father taking care of my mother? He’s been our family doctor for as far back as I can remember.”

“He retired last year, so if it’s a second medical opinion you’re after, you won’t get it from him. But I’ll be happy to refer you to someone else, though if it’s a specialist you’re after, it’ll mean looking farther afield than Harmony Cove. I’ve already consulted the only orthopedic surgeon and respirologist in town, and both concur with my lowly family practitioner’s opinion.”

“I just might do that.” She tapped her booted foot on the worn linoleum and hoped he’d read it as a sign of impatience rather than the nervousness it really depicted. When she’d heard that Dr. Cordell had suggested social services contact her, it had never occurred to her that it was the son who’d assumed the mantle of medical expertise, and the idea took some getting used to. “Meanwhile, I’d appreciate a straight answer to a question you seem anxious to sidestep. How is my mother—and don’t bother to sugarcoat your reply. If she’s not going to recover or she’s likely to be left a permanent invalid, say so.”

His mouth, which once had inspired her to a passion so all-consuming that even now, eleven years later, the memory still sent a flush of heat through her belly, tightened grimly. “Prolonged use of steroids to treat her asthma have left her with secondary osteoporosis. Couple this with age, poor diet and general disregard for the maintenance of good health, and you’re looking at a woman whose ribs are so fragile that too energetic a hug could, quite literally, prove bone-crushing. The impact from the collision left her with a fractured hip which is being held together by surgically implanted steel pins. It’s possible she’ll become ambulatory again. It’s unlikely she’ll do so without the aid of a walker. It’s possible her bone health can be improved, but only marginally and only if she takes her prescribed medications. But she’s forgetful and depressed. I don’t think she’s particularly interested in getting well. I’d even go so far as to say she wants to die. Is that direct enough for you, Molly?”

Direct enough? Dear heaven, she was quivering inside from an up swell of shock and pain so acute they almost cost her her self-control. A great bubble of grief rose in her throat, as unexpected as it was inappropriate. “Quite,” she said, and yanked open the front door. The cold Atlantic wind slapped her in the face and she welcomed it. It restored her faster than any amount of tea or sympathy. “Thank you for stopping by.”

He took his time doing up his jacket and closing his black leather medical bag. “Your eagerness to see the back of me is premature, my dear. I want to be sure you understand your mother’s limitations and have some idea how to keep her comfortable before I turn her over to your tender mercies.”

She swept him a scornful glance. “The social worker who contacted me gave a very thorough picture of what to expect. I hardly need a prescription to change linen or empty a bedpan.”

“I doubt you’re as well-prepared as you think. It’s been years since you saw your mother, and you’re going to be shocked at the change in her. You might want to have me stick around for moral support, if nothing else.”

“No. I prefer to assess her state of mind and body without your breathing down my neck the whole time, so unless there’s specific medication or treatment—?”

“Both,” he said, “but the public health nurse stops by twice a day to take care of all that.”

“Then if I have any other questions, I’ll speak with you—or another doctor—later in the week.”

He regarded her levelly a moment. “You’ll have questions, Molly, make no mistake about that. And until or unless your mother elects to have someone else take over her case, you’ll address them to me. Furthermore, you’ll do it tomorrow. Make an appointment for midmorning. I’m not in my father’s old office. You’ll find me in the Eastside Clinic, down on Waverley Street, next to the old seamen’s union building. Cadie Boudelet from next door will sit with Hilda while you’re gone.”

“What makes you so sure you know Cadie Boudelet will make herself available? She and my mother were never that close in the old days.”

“Because she’s practically been living here ever since Hilda was discharged from the hospital.”

“She must have her hands full, doing that and minding everyone else’s business!”

“Well, someone had to step in and act the Good Samaritan, and you didn’t seem in any particular hurry to volunteer for the job.”

She closed her eyes because she couldn’t bear the censure she saw in his. When she opened them again, he was striding down the path, his shoulders bent into the wind, his dark head flecked with snowflakes. Not sparing her another glance, he climbed into his car, and drove down the hill toward the harbor.

From where she stood, Molly could see the lobster traps stacked by the sheds, and one or two hardy souls repairing fishing nets spread out on the paved area next to the docks. In another three months the snow would be gone and spring would color the scene in softer hues. The tourists would arrive in droves to exclaim over the picturesque sight of the lighthouse on the rocks jutting out at the end of the quay, and the petunias spilling down to meet the pavement from flower boxes nailed to the side of the wooden lobster shack.

Strangers would click their cameras and run their video film, and tell each other Harmony Cove was the prettiest darn town on the eastern seaboard. But right now, the entire scene was overlaid with gray misery relieved only by a slick of newly fallen snow on the steeply sloping roofs of the little houses lining the street.

She hated every last miserable stick and stone of the place. They brought back too vivid a reminder of the people who lived inside those houses—of their narrow-minded, judgmental outlook, their willingness to believe the worst of others, their certainty that the way they’d done things for the last hundred or more years was the only way, and that they were right and anyone who thought or acted differently was wrong.

Closing the door, she turned back to the hall just as Ariel came out of the kitchen. “We don’t need to go shopping, Mommy. The refrigerator’s full of food.”

“Maybe, but most of it’s probably been sitting there for weeks and should be thrown out.”

“No. The milk and eggs are fresh. I looked at the date on the cartons.”

If she said it was so, it was. Ariel might be only ten and still a little girl in most respects, but having only one parent had forced responsibility on her a lot sooner than other children her age. She’d been just four the first time she’d said, Don’t forget we have to take out the garbage today, Mommy. Sometimes, when things went wrong—and it happened often in those early years—Ariel had stepped into the role of comforter as easily as if she, and not Molly, were the parent.

Remembering, Molly tweaked one of her daughter’s long dark braids and held out her hand for a high five. “You’re such a little woman! What would I do without you?”

It was a question she asked often but today, for the first time, it took on somber new meaning. If Dan ever learned the truth and took Ariel away from her, how would she go on living?

Pushing aside the thought because it simply was not to be entertained, she tucked an arm around the child’s waist. “Let’s take your bag upstairs and go say hello to your grandmother. Maybe meeting you for the first time will cheer her up.”

The stairs loomed ahead, dark and steep, evoking in Molly memories of being banished to her tiny room when she was even younger than Ariel. The house had seemed full of threatening shadows then; of hidden monsters waiting to leap out and punish her for sins she never fully understood. Now, perhaps for the first time, she saw the place for what it really was: a desperately stark box as severe and confining as the man who’d once ruled it with an iron fist.

The door to her parents’ room door stood ajar. Pushing it wider, Molly peered inside and was immediately swallowed in another blast from the past. The same plain brown linoleum covered the floor. The thin beige curtains at the window were as familiar as the black iron bedstead hulking in the corner with a plain wooden cross hanging above it, on the wall.

Never had her father carried her from her own bed and snuggled her between him and her mother to chase away a bad dream. Not once had she been invited to climb in beside them for a morning cuddle or a nighttime story. In her child’s mind, that room had been as spartan as a prison cell, and looking at it now through an adult’s eyes, she saw nothing to change that perspective.

Aware that she was no longer alone, the woman half-reclining against the pillow shifted, raised one flannel-clad arm weakly, then let it flop down again. “Cadie, is that you?”

Shocked by the feeble voice, Molly stepped closer and saw that Dan had not exaggerated. Hilda Paget had never been a big woman but injury, illness, and a lifetime of hardship had reduced her to little more than a bag of fragile bones held together by loose skin.

Blinded by a wash of grief and guilt beside which the years of resentment and anger seemed suddenly pointless, she said, “No, Mom, it’s me.”

“Molly?” Again, the woman moved, this time trying to lean forward, but the effort cost her dearly and she sank back with a grunt of pain. But her eyes burned holes in her sunken face. “Child, you shouldn’t have come! People will start talking all over again.”

Swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, Molly bent to press a kiss on her mother’s cheek and stroked the limp hair away from her brow. “Let them. I’m here to take care of you, and that’s the only thing that matters.”

“But I already have someone. The nurse comes by twice a day, and Cadie from next door stops in every morning and again at night, and does a bit of shopping when I need it. And Alice Livingston brings me soup at noon.” But despite her protests, she clutched at Molly’s hands as if she never wanted to let go. “How did you know I was in trouble, Moll? Who told you?”

“The hospital social worker, abetted by your new doctor. Why weren’t you the one to call me, Momma? Did you think I wouldn’t care that you’ve been hurt or that I’d turn my back on you when you needed help?”

“I knew how much you hated it here, and what it would cost you to come back again.”

“I still hate it here. I probably always will.”

“Then why put yourself out for a woman who never looked out for you the way a mother should?”

“Because you are still my mother, and now that my father’s gone…”

She didn’t finish the sentence; didn’t add, “there’s nothing to keep me away,” because there was no need to hammer the point home. John Paget had chased her from the house so often, wielding whatever came to hand and cursing her at the top of his lungs the entire time, that there wasn’t a soul in that dismal neighborhood who didn’t know how deep and abiding the antagonism between father and daughter had been.

Many was the hour she’d shivered in the bitter winter cold, with nothing but hand-knit slippers on her feet and a thin sweater to protect her from the wind and the snow; many the summer night that she’d hidden in the wood shed behind the house until she’d deemed it safe to venture to her room again.

Yet for all that people had seen and heard, they’d shown her not a shred of pity. Instead they’d stood in their doorways and shaken their sanctimonious heads as yet another family fight erupted into the street. Poor John Paget, plagued with such a hussy, and him with only one leg, poor soul! Wild, that’s what she is. Born that way and she’ll die that way. Tsk!

No doubt when they heard she was back, they’d lurk around the cemetery, waiting to catch her dancing on his grave. As if she’d expend the energy! She was glad he was dead, and if anyone asked, she wouldn’t compromise her integrity by denying it. He’d been a monster and the world was well rid of him.

“Don’t think I haven’t paid for what I let happen when you were little,” Hilda Paget said, the suffering in her eyes provoked by hurts which went deeper than those afflicting her broken body. “It’s haunted me that I turned a blind eye to the way your father treated you. It would serve me right if you left me now to rot in this bed.”

“What, and live down to everyone’s worst expectations of me? Give them the chance to nod their heads and say, I told you so? Not likely!” Molly laughed, doing her best to make light of a past she couldn’t change. “Sorry, Momma, but I’m here to stay for as long as you need me, and I haven’t come alone.”

Her mother’s glance flickered to Ariel hovering near the door. Her voice broke. “You brought your little girl to visit me? Oh, Moll, I never thought to see the day!”

The yearning in her mother’s eyes, the pathetic gratitude in her voice, ripped holes in Molly’s heart. Steeling herself against the onslaught of emotion, because she knew Ariel would dissolve into tears if she saw her mother was upset, she beckoned to the child. “Come and be introduced, sweetheart.”

With more composure than any ten-year-old had a right to possess, Ariel came to lean lightly against the side of the bed. “Hello, Grandma. I’m sorry you got hurt when your car was hit by a train.”

Tears pooled in Hilda’s eyes. “Dear Lord!” she quavered, wrapping her bony fingers around Ariel’s small hand. “Dear Lord, you take me back near eighteen years! You’re the image of your momma when she was your age, child, the living image. So pretty, so fine. Look at those big brown eyes and that lovely hair, Moll! She’s all of you, and nothing of me, thank God!”

What she didn’t come right out and say was that Ariel had inherited John Paget’s looks. Not wishing to draw attention to such an unwelcome fact, Molly squeezed Ariel’s shoulder and said, “Go unpack your bag and leave your grandma to rest while I see what I can put together for dinner, honey, then we’ll have a picnic up here. That okay with you, Mom?”

“Can’t think of anything I’d like better.” Hilda was tired, no question about it, and her breathing labored, but her smile shone out like a beacon in the fog. “Don’t think I ever had a picnic in bed before. Don’t think it was ever allowed when your father was alive. Guess maybe I’ve got more to look forward to than I thought, yesterday at this time.”

How she made it out of the room and downstairs before she fell apart, Molly didn’t know. Choking on emotion, she took refuge behind the antlered coatrack while she groped in her pocket for a tissue. But mopping her eyes did nothing to silence the accusations ringing in her head.

It’s a bit late to shed tears now, Molly Paget. You were the only thing to stand between that poor woman in the bed upstairs and her bully of a husband, yet you walked out and left her to fend for herself when you knew she didn’t have it in her to stand up to him. You’re a pitiful excuse for a daughter and deserve every word of criticism and disapproval ever cast at you. How would you feel if Ariel grew up to abandon you the way you abandoned your mother?

Destroyed, that’s how! Because Ariel was the most important person in the world to Molly.

But Hilda had had a husband, and what he thought and wanted and decreed had always carried the day, no matter how harsh or unreasonable his demands. If living with him had become too burdensome, all she’d had to do was pick up the phone. It wasn’t as if Molly had disappeared without trace. From the day she left home, she’d kept in touch with her mother through letters. But those she received in return had been infrequent and stilted, as though her mother begrudged having to reply at all. The last had been sent eleven months ago and short enough that Molly could recall it almost word for word.

Dear Molly, Hilda had written. Our winter has been hard. The kitchen pipes froze twice last week and the price of fish is very high. Cadie Boudelet’s new grandchild came down with bronchitis, poor little thing. The Livingstons had a chimney fire last week and nearly burned the house down. Our TV broke and we have decided not to get another because there’s never anything worth watching, so I try to get to the library once a week. I sold four quilts at Christmas which brought in a bit of extra money. It started snowing at the end of November and hasn’t stopped since and here we are in April already. Your father hardly ever leaves the house because he’s afraid of falling on the ice. Hoping this finds you and your little girl well, I remain your loving Mother.

Typically there was no question about their life. No spark of interest in Ariel’s doings and only the most cursory inquiry about her health. The apparent indifference had fueled a decade-long resentment in Molly which she’d been sure nothing could undo. But the unguarded joy on her mother’s face when she realized who it was standing at her bedside left that resentment in tatters, and had Molly questioning her assessment of those sparse, uninformative letters.

Suddenly she saw the loneliness written between the lines; the utter emptiness of a woman who’d given up hope of the kind of affection which tied families together. The recognition left her awash in yet another wave of guilt.

“But, I’m here now, Momma,” she whispered, stuffing the sodden tissues back in her pocket and fumbling her way down the darkened hall to the kitchen. “And I’ll make up for the past by seeing to it that whatever future you’ve got left is the best I can make it.”

Nothing in the kitchen had changed. The same old refrigerator, past its best when Molly had been a child, still clanked along in the corner. The same two-burner stove stood on the far side of the sink. What was surely the world’s ugliest chrome kitchen set—table topped with gray Formica, chair seats padded with red plastic—filled what floor space was left. The only new addition was the calendar thumbtacked to the wall near the back door, and even it looked exactly like its predecessors, except for the date.

Small wonder her mother showed no interest in getting well. A caged hamster racing endlessly on its treadmill led a more interesting and varied existence.

There was canned tomato soup in the cupboard, and in the refrigerator a block of cheese, some butter, a jar of mayonnaise, and half a loaf of bread. Molly found the cast iron frying pan where it had always been, in the warming drawer below the oven, and set to work. She might have come a long way from the days when she’d worn hand-me-down clothes, but the lean years in between had taught her to make a nourishing meal out of whatever she happened to have on hand. Hot soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, with tea on the side, would serve for tonight.

The kettle was just coming to a boil and she was turning the sandwiches in the frying pan one last time when the back door shot open and sent a blast of cold air gusting around her ankles. But it didn’t compare though to the chilly glare of the woman who came in with it.

Cadie Boudelet never had been one to smile much, but the drawstring of disapproval pulling at her mouth gave new definition to the term “grim-faced.” “I heard you were back,” she announced balefully. “Bad news travels fast in these parts.”

“Lovely to see you again, too, Mrs. Boudelet,” Molly said, unsurprised to find nothing had changed here, either. The Boudelets and every other neighbor had viewed her as an outcast ever since she turned ten—a Jezebel in the making, with the morals of an alley cat in heat already in evidence—and a warm welcome would have left her speechless. “Is there something I can do for you, or did you just stop by to be sociable and say hello?”

“Hah! Still got the same smart mouth you always had, I see.” Cadie slammed an enameled casserole dish on the table and crossed her arms over her formidable breasts. “I brought your ma a bite for her supper, so you can throw out whatever you’ve got cooking there—unless you were making it for yourself, which is likely the case since you were never one to think of anybody’s needs but your own.”

Sorely tempted though she was to dump the contents of the casserole over the woman’s self-righteous head, a brawl on her first night home would hardly further her mother’s recovery, Molly decided. So steeling herself to restraint if not patience, she wiped her hands on the dish towel she’d tied around her waist and said, “I understand you’ve been very kind to my mother since she came home from the hospital, and for that I’m grateful. But now that I’m here, you need go to no more trouble on her behalf.”

“No more trouble? Girl, a load of it walked in the door when you decided to set foot in town again, and all the fancy clothes and city airs in the world can’t hide it. Just because you snagged yourself a rich husband don’t change a thing and you’d have done your ma a bigger favor by staying away. She don’t need the aggravation of your being here when she’s got all she can do to deal with your daddy’s passing.”

Just how unwisely Molly might have responded to that remark was forestalled by the sound of the front door opening and footsteps coming down the hall. A moment later, Dan Cordell appeared in the kitchen.

“Good grief!” she exclaimed, exasperated. “Doesn’t anyone around here believe in waiting to be invited before they march into someone else’s house?”

“No need to,” Cadie informed her. “People around here got nothing to hide—as a rule, that is. ’Course, that could change, depending on who’s living in the house in question.”

Accurately sizing up the scene, Dan raised a placating hand. “Just thought I’d stop by to make sure you were handling things okay before I call it a day, Molly, that’s all. Is that one of your fabulous casseroles I can smell, Cadie?”

The drawstring around her mouth relaxed enough to allow a smirk of pleasure to slip through. “It is. And there’s plenty more at home, if you’ve got time to stop for a bite, Doctor.”

The smile he cast at the old biddy left Molly wondering how the icicles draped outside the window didn’t melt on the spot. “Thanks, but it’ll have to be some other time. I’ve got a dinner engagement tonight and I’m already running behind. Molly, can we speak privately a moment?”

“You listen to what the doctor tells you, girl,” Cadie warned, wrapping her shawl around her head and yanking open the back door to let in another Arctic blast. “He knows what he’s talking about and your ma’s lucky he was there to look after her when she needed the best. He’s a good man, is our Doctor Cordell.”

In the silence she left behind, Molly stared across the kitchen at Dan, an age-old bitterness souring her tongue. “Tell me something, Doctor. How come you’re everybody’s fair-haired darling despite your many past delinquencies, while I remain forever a pariah, no matter how much I might have reformed?”

“Maybe I work harder to change public opinion than you do, Molly,” he said, propping up the wall with his altogether too impressive shoulders. “Or maybe I don’t go quite as far out of my way to offend people. You’ve been home what…an hour? Two? And already you’re squaring off with your next door neighbor. If I hadn’t shown up when I did, you’d probably have wound up decking Cadie when you should be on your knees thanking her.”

It—he!—was the last straw! Cadie Boudelet was a tiresome, ignorant woman who seldom bothered to learn the facts before she arrived at a conclusion, which rendered her opinion of Molly, or anyone else for that matter, irrelevant. But that he should have the nerve to stand there mouthing holier-than-thou platitudes, as if the mere idea that Molly might not have achieved heights of perfection comparable to his caused him intolerable pain, just about made her throw up and she wasted no time telling him so.

“You make me sick to my stomach, Dan Cordell! If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s a man who pretends he’s above reproach to the one person in the world who knows differently. And if you think sticking ‘Doctor’ in front of your name entitles you to change history, you’re even more arrogant than you are insufferable!”

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU don’t think much of me, do you, Molly?” he said, glad she didn’t have a kitchen knife at hand or he’d probably have been wearing it between his ribs.

“I don’t think about you at all,” she informed him loftily, “except when you force yourself to my notice. Then I find you irritating beyond words. So say whatever it is you came to say, then please leave.”

He’d thought, when he heard she was coming back, that seeing her again wouldn’t much affect him. Thought that age would have mellowed the fiery rebel he’d known briefly more years ago than he cared to count. She’d be a little plumper around the edges, both emotionally and physically; a little complacent and a lot less arrestingly gorgeous. Less inclined to fly off the handle, too. After all, she’d risen well above her impoverished beginnings, according to her mother, and had surely outgrown all those old resentments.

He’d been wrong on every count. The girl she’d been paled beside the woman she’d become. Spitting fury at him from across that sorry little kitchen, dark hair tumbling around her face, dark eyes flashing, her burgundy red skirt flinging an echoing slash of color across her magnificent cheekbones, she might have stepped out of a Russian drama, or a gypsy saga.

No wonder Cadie Boudelet had been on the verge of a stroke! Molly Paget had bloomed into much too exotic a specimen for the staid population of Harmony Cove to take in stride, and lost none of her rebelliousness in the process.

“If I’m irritating and insufferable, you’re impossible,” he said, fully aware that in firing a counterattack he left himself wide open to another verbal onslaught, but too intrigued by the challenge to let the opportunity pass. “I’m sorry if my being a doctor leaves you nauseated but the fact is, I earned the right to the title, just as you earned the right to call yourself a mother. And I fail to see what history has to do with the way things stand today.”

“Not everyone’s memory is as hazy as yours,” she said, with a lot less passion than he’d expected. “Coming back here is like taking a one-way walk into the past. I’m hardly in the door before you’re all lining up to tell me not to bother unpacking my bags.”

“You storm back into town with both barrels blazing, ready to take on all comers, and wonder why no one’s rushing to put out the welcome mat? It’s not other people’s perception of you that’s the problem, Molly, it’s that permanent chip on your shoulder.”

“I’m not the one who put it there.”

All at once, she looked defenseless, leaving him to wonder if she was quite as hard-boiled as she liked to appear. Her mouth drooped and if it weren’t that she’d always known how to use those stunning eyes to good effect, he might have been fooled into thinking they held the faint sheen of tears.

As if anyone or anything could make Molly Paget cry!

Shoving aside the preposterous urge to take her in his arms, he shifted his weight so that both feet were planted firmly on the floor, and rammed his hands in his jacket pockets, out of temptation’s way. “You are the one who chooses to keep carrying it around, though. Take a little well-meant advice from an old friend, Molly: drop the attitude and learn to give a little, and I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts you won’t have to take nearly as much flak as you seem to expect.”

“And it was for this that you wanted to speak privately with me? To dish out—?”

“No. Consider it a bonus thrown in without charge. The reason I dropped by is that I just got word the public health nurse is held up at one of the outlying farms and probably won’t make it back in time to look in on your mother. Hilda needs two different medications before she goes to sleep. If you like, I can walk you through what they entail or, if you’re not comfortable with that, I’ll come back again last thing and administer them myself.”

Her face told him she didn’t much like either option. “It depends what you mean by medication. If it involves sticking needles in her—”

“It doesn’t,” he said, unable to curb a smile. “If it did, there’d be no question but that I’d be the one to do the sticking, if for no other reason than I remember you don’t cope well with needles.”

“You do?” Her mouth formed a perfect O of surprise, reminding him of a rosebud about to unfurl.

“Uh-huh.” He wrenched his gaze away, and stared at the calendar on the wall, which he found a whole lot less distracting than her face. “You cut yourself on a glass, your first day waitressing at The Ivy Tree. I drove you to my father’s office and when he told you you’d need stitches, you just about passed out.”

She turned her left hand palm up and stroked her right forefinger over the faded scar. Her clothes were expensive. Her gold hoop earrings and the bangle around her wrist held the subtle gleam of the real twenty-four carat stuff. Yet she wore no rings, he noticed. No diamond solitaire or wedding band to proclaim her marital status.

“I’m surprised you remember that,” she murmured.

So was he. He hadn’t thought of the incident in years, but having found a crack in his defenses, nostalgia streamed through him like warm honey. She’d been irresistible as sun-kissed peaches, the summer they’d met. Sweet, delectable, and ripe for the picking, even with blood dripping down her uniform, and he’d wasted no time volunteering to be her driver. “There are a lot of things I remember about that summer, Molly,” he said.

Her face grew shuttered. “There are a lot I’d prefer to forget. I was very young at the time.”

“Yes. A lot younger than you led me to believe.”

“And you,” she said, “were a great deal more callous than was necessary. Telling me you’d grown tired of me was enough to get yourself off the hook. There was no need to parade my replacement under my nose to prove the point. No need to humiliate me in front of the other waitresses by letting your new girlfriend order me around as if I were her personal servant.”

“Either memory serves me badly, or you’re confusing me with someone else. I recall no such thing.”

“Her name,” she said, spitting out the words as if they were bullets, “was Francine. And she wrapped her legs so far around your waist when she rode pillion on your motorcycle that she looked like a boa constrictor preparing to devour her next meal.”

How he didn’t choke on his laughter was a direct contradiction of everything he’d learned in medical school. He should have needed resuscitating! “You always had such a way with words, Molly. It’s nice to see you haven’t lost your touch.”

But she wasn’t amused. If anything, the way she skewered him in a glare left him suspecting she’d been hurt more by his rejection than she let on at the time.

What she couldn’t begin to guess was that he hadn’t exactly walked away heart-whole, either. But even he’d had to draw the line when he’d learned she was only seventeen and not the almost-twenty she’d claimed. He might not have amounted to much in those days, but nor had he been completely without conscience.

“I’m sorry if I was less than sensitive.”

“I’m not,” she said bluntly. “If anything, I’m grateful you showed yourself in your true colors. You gave me the incentive to make a fresh start somewhere else.”

“How so?”

She started to reply, then seemed to think better of it. The flush on her cheeks deepened and she turned to the stove, leaving him to stare at her back. “Never mind. Let’s just say I grew up in a hurry and realized I’d been miles out of my depth in thinking we could ever have lasted as a couple.”

“So you left town, met the man of your dreams, settled down and started a family.”

She tilted her shoulder in a small shrug. “I met the man of my dreams. Did you ever meet the woman of yours?”

“I’m not married yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Why not? Haven’t found anyone with good enough bloodlines to assume the role?”

“It so happens that I have,” he said, ignoring the taunt. “Which reminds me, I’m running late and keeping her waiting, as usual.” He tore a blank sheet from the prescription pad in his pocket and scribbled directions on it. “Here’s what your mother will need before you settle her for the night. The meds are on a tray, on the dresser in her room. If you run into any difficulties or have any concerns at all, call my service and they’ll page me. And don’t forget to make that appointment to see me tomorrow at the clinic.”

“If I have time.” She tossed the answer over her shoulder with calculated defiance.

“Make the time, Molly,” he warned her. “This isn’t a request, it’s an order, and if you care about your mother at all, you’ll follow it.”

He kept her cooling her heels over half an hour when she showed up as scheduled, at eleven-thirty the next morning. Though tempted to cancel the appointment with a curt “My time’s valuable, too!” when told he’d been called to the hospital, she thought better of it and took a seat in the waiting area.

Meeting him on neutral ground, especially one as sterile as the setting where he shared space with two other doctors, was infinitely preferable to having him drop by the house whenever the mood took him. The less personal their contact, and the less he saw of Ariel, the better.

The shock of meeting him again, of finding him in charge of her mother’s case, was still too new. Molly felt brittle as blown glass around him—completely at the mercy of emotions as untoward as they were unanticipated.

Such a state of fragility was dangerous. It left her susceptible to letting slip little details which could lead to his asking questions about Ariel’s father which she wasn’t prepared to answer. But avoiding him was impossible, so deal with him she must. Now that she’d had time to digest her mother’s situation, she had questions of her own—concerns which hadn’t immediately occurred to her when he’d made his house call yesterday, but which definitely needed to be addressed.

As well, there was the issue of the fantasy life her mother had dreamed up on her behalf and which Molly felt compelled to tone down with at least a smidgen of truth, for Ariel’s sake if no one else’s.

“Well, I had to tell people something!” Hilda had protested, when Molly had confronted her on the subject of the phantom rich husband waiting in the wings. “It was the only way to shut people up. Even though no one knew for sure the real reason you left town, it didn’t stop the gossip.”

“But, Mom, what if someone asks Ariel about her supposed daddy—why he didn’t come with us, or what sort of work he does or why her last name’s Paget and not Smith or Brown or Jones?”

“Why would anyone question a child her age about things like that?”

“Your nosy neighbors—the very first chance they get, and we both know it!” Molly had shaken her head in dismay. “If you felt you had to lie, couldn’t you just have kept it simple and said I’d taken a job somewhere else? Or better yet, let them have their say and ignore them?”

“No,” her mother had said, with more vigor than Molly would have believed possible two hours before. “Why, Alice Livingston heard you were in jail, if you can imagine! So I put a stop to things the only way I knew how and that was to spread news they didn’t want to hear. Once word got out you’d married a rich man, you became boring and people found something else to wag tongues over.”

“I’m surprised anyone believed you in the first place!”

Hilda’s face had broken into a smile, and she’d covered Molly’s hand with hers. “Child, even your father believed me, and I never said a word to make him think differently! I know you despise me for letting him treat you the way he did, so you might find this hard to understand, but it hurt me, Molly, to have to stand back and do nothing when he went after you. It hurt me as much as it hurt you. The only difference was, my bruises didn’t show.”

Exhausted from the long day’s travel, Ariel was already asleep in the little room down the hall. The house was peaceful, the curtains drawn against the bitter night, and nothing but the low drone of the furnace in the cellar to compete with the budding intimacy between the two women. As far as Molly could recall, it was the first time she and her mother had ever exchanged confidences so freely. It allowed her to ask a question she’d never dared voice before.

“Then why didn’t you leave him, Mom? Why didn’t you take me and just run away? How could you stay married to such a brute?”

Looking haggard suddenly, her mother had wilted against the pillows. “You said it yourself more than once, Molly. We live in a backwater here, about a hundred years behind the outside world. I was forty-three when I had you, and women of my generation didn’t walk out on their husbands, it’s as simple as that. And he wasn’t always bad. When we were first married, he was a lovely man. But the accident changed him. Losing his leg cost him his livelihood, child. He’d always been big and strong. Able to do anything. But a cripple’s no use on a fishing boat when the weather’s stirring up a storm, and it killed something in him to know he wasn’t the leader of the fleet anymore.”

“Having only one leg didn’t hamper him too much when he was chasing me down the street in a blind rage.”

“Because you reminded him too much of how he used to be—healthy and strong and independent. He was eaten up with anger, Molly, and it made him do and say wicked things at times.”

“At times? There was hardly a day went by that he didn’t make me miserable! If I was wild, he did his part in driving me to it.”

Her mother had sighed and squeezed her hand again. “Don’t let yourself fall into that trap,” she said sagely. “He passed on his looks to you, and you’re beautiful for it, but don’t take on his bitterness and make it your own. It’ll sour the rest of your life, if you do, and come to infect that sweet granddaughter of mine, as well.”

Molly had had all night to mull over her mother’s words and much though it galled her to admit it, they made a certain sort of sense. Coming back to Harmony Cove had made her realize the extent to which John Paget still warped her thinking from beyond the grave. But only because she allowed him to. Although breaking the habit wouldn’t be easy, it was the only way she’d ever free herself from his painful influence.

The clinic’s outer door flew open and Dan strode in, bringing a cold, fresh whiff of snow and frigid sea air with him. “Hi, Molly,” he said, breezing past and stopping at the receptionist’s desk to pick up his messages. “Have a seat in my office and I’ll be with you in a sec.”

But it was closer to ten minutes before he followed. “Cripes,” he said, flinging himself into the beaten-up old chair behind the equally battered desk, “what a morning!”

“Actually, it’s now the afternoon,” Molly said, glancing pointedly at the clock on the wall. “And my appointment was for eleven-thirty.”

“Sorry about that,” he said, sounding anything but.

“You could have fooled me!”

He fixed her in the sort of semi-stern, semi-cajoling gaze which no doubt left most of his patients, especially the women, slobbering with delight and falling all over themselves to do his bidding. The way the laugh lines deepened at the corners of his eyes and his lashes drooped over those brilliant blue irises struck Molly as nothing less than ludicrous. Did he think he was auditioning for leading man in a soap opera or something?

“Babies don’t always show up when they’re supposed to, Molly, you should know that,” he said. “Or was your daughter the rare exception and born exactly on schedule?”

When Ariel was born wasn’t something she was willing to discuss with him but it was clear from the way he continued to regard her that he expected a reply. There was a layer of hidden steel under all that warm, fuzzy charm. “Not quite,” she said.

“There you are, then!” He flashed one of his thousand megawatt grins and slapped the flat of his hand against the even flatter planes of his stomach. “Are you hungry?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said, are you—?”

“I heard what you said. I’m just not sure I understand the reason you said it, Doctor.”

He rolled his eyes, another in his repertoire of disarming mannerisms. “Will you for Pete’s sake give over with the ‘Doctor’ business and stop acting as if you just swallowed a lemon? I’m offering to buy you lunch, not cut out your heart.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him he’d done the latter eleven years before without benefit of medical expertise, but his ego was inflated enough. “Thank you, but no. Ariel’s sitting with my mother and I don’t want to leave her alone any longer than I have to.”

“You can spare another half hour,” he said. “It’s going to take that long to sort out what we’re going to do about your mom anyway, and I’m talking about a quick sandwich somewhere, not a seven-course dinner at Le Caveau.”

As if a man of his fine lineage would ever take a woman from Wharf Street to Le Caveau! The most exclusive restaurant for miles around didn’t even hire people from there, let alone welcome them as guests.

He scooped the phone across the desk toward her. “If you’re worried about Ariel and Hilda, give Alice Livingston a call and ask her to keep an eye on them. She stops in every day around this time anyway with a bowl of soup or something for your mom.”

“I’d rather have my teeth pulled!”

He treated her to another grin. “Don’t tell me you’ve already locked horns with her, as well!”

“We’ve yet to come face-to-face since I got back, but it’s a foregone conclusion that when we do, it won’t be a happy reunion. And she won’t be dropping off soup or anything else, come to that. I left Ariel with strict instructions not to open the door to anyone.”

“So she and Hilda are waiting for you to go home and make lunch?”

He’d handed her the perfect opening to decline his invitation, but what was the point of lying when this meeting had to take place sooner, rather than later? “No. I left sandwiches and milk in case I was delayed getting back. Ariel will make sure neither she nor my mother starves.”

“Isn’t that child a bit young to left with so much responsibility?”

“She’s ten—”

“Ten?” He raised his eyebrows questioningly. “That must mean she—”

“T…ten times more capable than girls nearly twice her age.” Shaking inside, Molly tacked on the qualifier, aghast at how close she’d come to endangering the one secret she was most committed to protect. Oh, the pitfalls of deceit! “And I always keep my cell phone turned on when I’m not home, so she knows she can get in touch any time.”

“You make it sound as if you leave her alone often.”

“No, I don’t! Not that it’s any of your business, but if she needs to call me from school or a friend’s house or something, and I happen to be out…” She trailed into silence, aware that she sounded far too defensive for a woman supposedly confident of her parenting skills.

As if he’d noticed the same thing, he regarded her thoughtfully a moment and she tensed, waiting for another probing observation. But in the end, he merely rose out of the chair and said, “In that case, there’s no reason at all we can’t have lunch while we talk about your mom’s case, is there?”

There’s every reason in the world! she thought. Time spent with you is like walking a tightrope and knowing there’s no safety net waiting to catch me if I trip and fall!

And trip she surely would, unless she wrestled her runaway emotions under control. But he seemed determined to thwart her at every turn. “Watch your step,” he ordered, taking her arm as they approached the intersection of Fundy Street, Harmony Cove’s main road. “It’s slippery underfoot and you won’t be much use to your mom if you slip and break an ankle.”

She wore enough clothes to keep out the cold but not, it seemed, enough to stop the warmth from his hand creeping through the layers of her sweater and coat. Or was it just proximity to the only man who’d ever touched her deepest passions that sent awareness flushing over her skin like the kiss of the summer sun?

“I’m quite capable of crossing the street unaided,” she said.

“Not in those boots you’re not,” he informed her cheerfully. “You need to get yourself something a bit more serviceable if you’re going to be here more than a day or two. How long are you planning to stick around, by the way?”

“As long as my mother needs me, of course.”

“That could mean indefinitely, Molly. Are you really prepared to make that kind of sacrifice?”

“Yes,” she said, too focused on the fact that he hadn’t let go of her arm, even though they were now safely across the road and walking on bare, dry pavement again, to notice the trap he’d set.

He noticed, though, and didn’t pass up the chance to shove her face-first into it. “But what about your husband, my dear? If you were my wife, I can’t say I’d be too thrilled at being left to fend for myself while you travel to the other end of the country to play nursemaid to the mother-in-law I’ve never met.”

“That’s one reason you’re not my husband,” she said, congratulating herself on having sidestepped his question rather neatly. “You didn’t measure up to my expectations.”

“And the other reason of course being that I didn’t volunteer for the job.” As if he hadn’t rattled her nerves to breaking point already, he added injury to insult by marching her down a side lane and strong-arming her through the door to the one place guaranteed to unravel her completely. “In you go, sweet thing. The waitresses aren’t as fetching as some I used to know, but The Ivy Tree still makes the best club sandwiches in town.”

It was like being thrust on stage to reprise a role she hadn’t played in years. Everything was familiar, except the script. Panic closing in on her thicker than an Atlantic fog in November, she swung around, bent only on escape, and came smack up against the unyielding wall of his chest with such force that she almost fell.

Clawing blindly at his jacket, she struggled to maintain her balance along with her composure. Would have given ten years off her life to toss out some flippant remark that might fool him into believing this particular café was no different from any other. And could manage nothing more than a breathless, “Oops! I caught my heel in the welcome mat.”

“I told you those boots were useless,” he said.

Not entirely! Aimed in a kick at the right place, they could do substantial damage to a man, and the smug grin which accompanied his latest remark left Dan Cordell in grave danger of discovering that fact for himself.

Unaware of how close he’d come to limiting his potential for producing future heirs, he caught the attention of the hostess and inveigled her into seating them at a fireside table ahead of two other couples who’d been eyeing it. Molly supposed she should be grateful he hadn’t wanted the booth by the window to which she’d been assigned when she worked there.

“Club sandwiches and coffee for two,” he told the middle-aged waitress who waddled over to take their order.

“Make mine a spinach salad,” Molly said, determined to assert her independence before her entire life spun so far beyond her control she’d never be able to rein it in again, “with tea.”

“Sugar and cream?” the waitress inquired, scribbling on her pad.

“Just lemon, please.”

“The works for me, Charlene,” Dan said. “I need all the sweetening I can get.”

Charlene, who had to be all of fifty if she was a day, giggled like a schoolgirl and slapped his arm playfully. “Oh, Doctor!”

“How do you do it?” Molly asked him, when they were alone again.

He glanced up from contemplating his short, immaculately clean nails. “Do what?” he said, all blue-eyed innocence.

Innocent as a wolf on the prowl!

“As if you don’t know,” she scoffed. “That woman’s well past the age where she’s taken in by a smooth-talker, but one look from you and she just about fell out of her uniform!”

“Did she?” he said, reaching across the table to toy briefly with her fingers. “I can’t say I noticed. I’m too caught up remembering how you looked wearing yours, way back when.”

“Slightly indecent, probably,” she said, snatching her hand away. “As I recall, the tunic skirt was very short.”

“I recall your long, gorgeous legs. And how you came close to smacking me in the mouth for commenting on them.”

She only remembered his mouth and how it had driven her wild when he’d made love to her. “Never mind all that,” she said, sounding as starched as the lace curtains hanging at the café windows. “We’re here to talk about my mother. Right now, she’s spending all day in bed because she can’t manage the stairs. If I were to eliminate that problem, what kind of options would she have for getting around?”

“When she’s ready for it, primarily by using a wheelchair. I’ve already mentioned the possibility, but there’s so little space to maneuver in her bedroom and, as you say, the stairs make it difficult for her to be brought down to the main floor, so there hasn’t been much point in pursuing the idea. Frankly she’d have been better off recuperating in a nursing home but she flat-out refused to entertain the idea.”

“If I were to make different living arrangements—something that would permit her more mobility—would she still require daily visits from the nurse?”

“No,” he said. “In fact, freeing her from that bed would do more to speed her progress than just about anything we can offer in the way of medical care. Of course, she’ll need ongoing drug therapy to combat her asthma and osteoporosis, and probably something for pain management for at least another few weeks, but it’s my guess her present living conditions are the main reason she’s making such a slow recovery. Shut-aways don’t have a whole lot to motivate them to get well, Molly.”

“Especially not when they’re abandoned by their only living relative, right?”

“It surely doesn’t help.” He shot her a level look across the table. “Sorry if that hurts, but it’s the truth.”

She sat back as their meal arrived, but as soon as they were alone again, said, “Not that I feel I owe you or anyone else an explanation, but if I’d heard about the accident when it happened, instead of over a month after the fact, I’d have been here a lot sooner.”

“Hilda wouldn’t hear of it.”

“I’m her next of kin. You had an obligation to let me know.”

“My first obligation was to my patient. As it is, I went against her wishes in allowing social services to contact you.” He fixed her in another glance. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad I did.”

Uncertain how to interpret his last remark, she poked at the limp spinach salad in front of her and wished she’d ordered the club sandwich instead. “Will she still need to see you?”

“Occasionally, once she’s past the present stage of recovery. But don’t try to initiate too many changes too soon. Let’s see how she does over the next while, first. If she makes significant progress, the visits can be cut to once a week, then less often as she continues to improve.”

“If I were to drive her there, could she come to the clinic, instead of you having to come to the house?”

“Sure, if you can manage to get her there in one piece.”

“I’m not planning to trundle her down the hill in a wheelchair and risk tipping her into the gutter, if that’s what you’re implying! I’ll trade in my rental car for a minivan. I’m no doctor, but getting her out of that house, even if it’s only to come for a checkup, has to be a benefit.”

“I agree. But give her a few more days in bed first.”

“I heard you the first time, Dan. And even if I hadn’t, I’m not so blind that I can’t see she’s got a long recovery ahead of her.”

He shrugged. “Fine. Any more questions?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Then perhaps you’ll answer a couple for me.”

“Of course.” She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and stared him squarely in the eye. “Fire away.”

“You haven’t said a word about your father. Why not?”

“Because I don’t care about him. I’d even go so far as to say I’m glad he’s dead. I’d have held my nose and attended his funeral if I’d known about it, but only because it would have made it easier for my mother to have me there.”

He blew out a breath. “You don’t believe in pulling your punches, do you?”

“I don’t believe in lying to save face.”

“In that case, you won’t mind telling me this: Why, if you’re married, do you still go by the name Paget, and why aren’t you wearing a wedding ring, Molly?”

CHAPTER THREE

“THAT’S two questions,” Molly said, amazed that she managed to sound perfectly sane when she was near to suffocating with panic. “Which one should I answer?”

“Both,” he said inexorably.

“It’s easier to get rid of a husband than it is to face the world without one,” had been her mother’s rationale the night before. “If people ask, you can always say he died or something. At least you won’t be condemned for being a widow.”

“In this town, I just might be!” Molly had said ruefully. “They’re likely to think I murdered him for his supposed fortune.”

“Well, if you’re going to have an imaginary husband, he might as well have money. Dream big, I always say. If folks are determined to gossip—and let’s face it, it’s what makes the world go round in these parts—give them something they can really sink their teeth into. And Molly Paget coming back to town respectable and rich is about as juicy a tidbit as they’ve chewed on in years.”

She’d laughed at that. They both had, the shared conspiracy forging another long overdue bonding between mother and daughter. But it didn’t seem so funny or clever now, with Dan scrutinizing her, feature by feature.

Mind racing, Molly tried to decide between presenting herself as a widow or a divorcée. Widowhood might promote a more sympathetic response, but it was also likely to invite further questions, especially from a doctor. Divorce, on the other hand, was common enough that it rarely aroused much interest.

She gave a tiny shrug, as much to disguise the fact that she was shaking like a leaf, as for theatrical effect, and settled for a lie of omission over outright deceit. “I’d have thought it was obvious. I don’t wear a ring and I go by my maiden name because marriage didn’t work out for me. I’ve been a single parent for years.”

“I see.”

She was afraid he did—far more than she ever intended he should. Subterfuge had never been her strong point and the flimsy evasions she’d handed out wouldn’t fool a half-wit, let alone a man of his intelligence.

“You have sole custody of your daughter, then?”

“Yes. Why do you sound so surprised?”

“Because it’s unusual in this day and age. Most courts award joint guardianship of minor children.”

“Only if it’s something both parents want.”

And you didn’t, Dan Cordell!

“Let’s face it, sweet Molly,” he’d said, that hot August evening he ended their affair by trying to make it sound like a mutual decision, “it’s as well we’re calling it quits now because we wouldn’t have lasted much longer anyway. Next month I’m off to Europe for a year, maybe two. Even if I weren’t, I’m not ready to settle down and you…” He’d sighed and tried to look properly pained, as though to say, This is hurting me more than it’s hurting you, which was a laugh and a half! “You’re only seventeen. Much too young to be thinking about anything long-term, especially with a guy who still hasn’t figured out what he wants to do with his life.”

The new and reformed Daniel Cordell, M.D., swung his head in bewilderment. “I don’t understand how any man could turn away from his child. I’ve probably delivered close to a hundred babies over the last few years, and each one’s as big a thrill as the first. I don’t mind telling you, being there to watch my firstborn come into the world is something I look forward to with the utmost pleasure.”

“You talk as if it’s a fait accompli that you’ll father a child.”

He laughed. “It’s not a done deal, if that’s what you mean. I’m conventional enough to believe marriage comes before children.”

These days, maybe! But where were your fine scruples when you seduced me and forgot to use a condom?

“Are you planning to get married soon?” It shouldn’t hurt so much to ask, but it did. Pain shot through her like a live wire, leaving her winded from the shock of it.

“We’re in no hurry. We’re both busy with our careers. It’ll happen when the time’s right. What about you? Ever think of remarrying?”

“No,” she said. “I’m too busy raising a daughter and running a business—and now, looking after my mother. I don’t need the complication of a husband.”

He dropped two lumps of sugar in his coffee, added a dollop of cream and stirred thoughtfully. “But you must have been glad of one when you were pregnant, and especially when you gave birth?”

Straightforward enough, at least on the surface, the question slipped between the cracks in her defenses, and laid open a wound too grievous to endure a second time.

In the blink of an eye, it all came back. The fear, even though there’d been three nurses and two doctors in attendance—kind, competent professionals every one. The pain which nothing could assuage. The terrible, aching loneliness, even though Rob had been there the whole time, cheering her on.

But Molly had wanted Dan. Wanted him to wipe the sweat from her forehead. Wanted his hand to clutch when the contractions grew too strong to bear, and his encouragement when exhaustion wore her down to tears. And most of all wanted him to hold her in his arms and kiss her and tell her she was brave and wonderful and that he loved her, when at last it was all over and Ariel lay, bathed and sweetly sleeping, in her bassinet.

“Why so downcast? Don’t tell me you went through that time alone, Molly!”

She blinked and wrenched herself back to the present, taking comfort in the tangible warmth of the log fire smoldering in the hearth, and the pots of silk ivy trailing from brass planters hanging on the wall. “No,” she said softly, the break in her voice caused by another, more recent sorrow. “Rob was by my side the entire time, and he was wonderful.”

“At least you have some good memories then.”

More than he could begin to know but almost certainly not the kind he imagined. She doubted Dan could appreciate or understand the relationship she’d shared with Rob. Most men wouldn’t.

“I really have to go,” she said, pushing away from the table not just because the afternoon was slipping away but because it was safer to put an end to a conversation which had trespassed into territory altogether too personal. “Ariel and my mother have been alone long enough.”

He was out of his chair in a flash and helping her with her coat despite her protests that she could manage on her own. She didn’t want the scent of his cologne drifting out to touch her, or his fingers brushing warmly over the nape of her neck, or his breath ruffling her hair. She wanted him at least six feet away, in a starched white medical jacket and smelling of antiseptic.

“I’ll walk you out,” he said.

“No need. I know the way.”

“I’m sure!” He pulled a credit card from an inside pocket and made for the cashier’s desk. “I’ll walk you out anyway, as soon as I’ve settled up what we owe.”

Not about to waste opportunity when it stared her in the face, she headed for the door and almost made it out of the square and onto the main street before he caught up with her. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re afraid to be seen with me, Molly,” he chided genially.

“I’d think you’d have better things to do than idle away the afternoon with someone who isn’t even a patient.”

If she hadn’t been so occupied trying to dislodge the hand he persisted in clamping around her elbow, she might have noticed sooner the woman headed toward them, and had the presence of mind to cross the road before the almighty Mrs. Daniel Cordell Senior descended like a crow about to feast on a hapless quarry.

Frozen-faced, she brought her glance to rest on Molly. “What a surprise, Daniel,” she remarked, her cultured tones ringing with disdain. “I expected you to be spending the afternoon gainfully employed in caring for the sick and down-at-heel.”

“Nice to run into you, too, Yvonne,” he said. “You remember Molly Paget, don’t you?”

“I don’t believe we’ve ever met, though the name’s vaguely familiar.” The hint of a frown ruffled the smooth perfection of her brow. “Wasn’t it a Paget who drove his car directly into the path of a train, thereby managing to kill himself and leave his widow crippled for life?”

“More or less,” Dan said with undisguised annoyance. “But leave it you to paraphrase the incident so succinctly. Pity your memory’s not quite as acute in this instance. You met Molly long before her parents suffered such a tragedy. Over ten years ago, in fact.”

“Did I? I can’t imagine how or why.”

“I brought her to the house for dinner once.”

“Ah yes, now that you mention it, I do seem to recall some such incident.” She might as well have said, Wasn’t she the girl who didn’t know the difference between a wineglass and a demitasse? Dear heaven, Daniel, have you lost your mind? “And you’re still friends?”

“Hardly!” Bristling, Molly at last succeeded in prying her elbow free. “Dr. Cordell was merely bringing me up to speed on my mother’s prognosis.”

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