No Regrets

by JoAnn Ross

  “Why?”

  “Because it’ll turn me on.”

  “I thought I turned you on.”

  “You do.” His fingers trailed down her face, then curled around the base of her throat where her pulse had begun to hammer. “But a little variety is always nice.”

  “I don’t understand.” But she did. Too well.

  His fingers tightened, ever so slightly. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “No,” she lied.

  The pressure on her skin increased. “You should be, you know.” He kept his tone conversational even as his vaguely threatening demeanor made Tessa wonder why she’d ever believed Miles to be the more dangerous of the twins.

  “I think I am,” she admitted on a whisper.

  “Afraid of what I’ll do to you?”

  Tessa nodded, knots of fear, and, dammit, need, tangling in her stomach.

  After putting the beer bottle down on the table, he tangled his hand in her hair and pulled her head back, forcing her to look up into his eyes. “Say it.”

  “I’m afraid of what you’ll do to me.”

  “Afraid you’ll like it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Believe me, baby, you will.” He leaned forward, close enough for her to feel the heat emanating from his body. “Tell me everything the guy did to you.” Although his voice was rough and raw, it possessed the confident tone of a man assured of getting his own way. “And I’ll do exactly the same thing.” The hand circling her throat moved down to cup her breast. “And then you can make a real comparison.”

  Tessa felt guilty about her impetuous night of passion with the Malibu car dealer. Now she felt embarrassed, as well. But his touch was beginning to make her head spin and she felt inexorably drawn into the sexual fantasy.

  “First he made me strip for him. Then, when I was naked, he had me kneel down on all fours in the middle of the bed.”

  “That’s a start.” He backed away. “Do it for me, Tessa. Just like you did for him.”

  “I’d been drinking,” she demurred.

  Somehow, last night, drifting on a soft haze of alcohol, submitting to the sensual demands of a total stranger hadn’t seemed so wrong. Now, in Jason’s kitchen, with the buttery yellow morning light of a spring day streaming through the window, his suggestion seemed vulgar and offensive.

  As if deciding to change tactics, he softened his stance. And his voice. “I can open some champagne,” he suggested helpfully. “And get you another pill. Just to take the edge off.”

  Tessa knew instinctively that to say no to Jason would be to lose him. And she wasn’t prepared to do that. Not when there were so many gorgeous, willing substitutes waiting in the wings. “Maybe a mimosa.”

  His smile, as he heard the capitulation in her tone, reminded her of the gold stars the nuns used to put on her spelling papers. “And a pill.”

  The last of her resistance ebbed. Tessa knew she was lost. She had to do whatever Jason wanted. Everything he wanted. Because she had no choice. “Perhaps, just a half.”

  In the end, she ended up drinking nearly half the bottle of champagne. And taking at least two of the pills.

  When she woke up hours later, Jason had gone back on duty, leaving a hastily scrawled note on the pillow assuring her that it was the hottest, best sex he’d ever had.

  A maniac was banging away with a sledgehammer behind her eyes and although Tessa had no memory of what they’d done, the bruises he’d left on her body told their own story.

  The pains came shortly after midnight. Lying in bed, her hands splayed across the hard expanse of her swollen abdomen, Molly assured herself that she was experiencing false labor.

  Beneath her fingers, her muscles tightened. The hardening began above her pubis, spread toward her groin, and encompassed her entire uterus, then softened like the ebbing of the tide. Indeed, the feeling reminded Molly of the ocean waves she could hear outside the bedroom window of the cliffside home—gathering, breaking, subsiding.

  By the time a soft, silvery pink predawn glow had settled over the room, Molly knew these were not false contractions. The baby she’d carried all these months was about to be born.

  She waited for the wave—stronger than any so far—to crest, then pushed herself into a sitting position and picked up the telephone beside the bed.

  Five minutes later, she was tapping on Reece and Lena’s bedroom door. Seconds later it opened.

  Although she’d certainly seen Reece wearing less out by the pool and on the beach, there was something uncomfortably intimate about viewing him standing in the open door to his bedroom, clad in a pair of royal blue silk boxer shorts. She dragged her gaze from his tanned chest to a point just beyond his left shoulder.

  “I hate to bother you, but I think I’d better get to the hospital.”

  “How close together are the contractions?”

  “About ten minutes apart.”

  “Ten minutes?” His voice held a very undoctorlike panic. “How long have you been in labor?”

  “Since about midnight.”

  “Midnight? And you waited until now to let me know?”

  “There wasn’t any point in waking you up earlier.” She decided, since he wasn’t technically her physician, not to add that her water had just broken.

  Lena was now out of bed, as well, looking beautifully ethereal with her sleep-tousled auburn hair floating around her shoulders. She was wearing an exquisite, lace-trimmed white cotton gown that made Molly feel vaguely like a pregnant street urchin in the oversize Kermit the Frog nightshirt Yolanda had given her as a gag gift.

  “Oh, Molly!” She reached out and took both her older sister’s hands in hers. “How wonderful.” Her smile belonged on one of the angels that had been painted on the ceiling above the altar at the Good Shepherd Home. “It’ll only take me a couple minutes to get into some clothes. Meanwhile, you should probably put on a robe. No point in getting dressed, since they’ll undoubtedly make you put on one of those ugly old hospital gowns as soon as we arrive.” She turned to Reece. “You’d better call Dr. Carstairs.”

  Amusement at his wife’s take-charge attitude seemed to make Reece relax. He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ve already called Dr. Carstairs,” Molly revealed. “She said she’ll meet us at the hospital.”

  “Well, then.” Even though her expression stayed calm, anticipation and excitement were more than a little evident in Lena’s tone. “What are we waiting for?”

  After they’d arrived at the hospital and Molly had been checked into a labor room, Lena, who’d been her coach during her birthing classes, remained by the bedside, holding her hand, reminding her to relax, massaging her back and stomach, timing her contractions, wiping her forehead with cool cloths and providing the same constant moral support and encouragement she had during the long months of Molly’s pregnancy.

  To the amusement of both of them, Reece proved to be a basket case. By the time Molly had reached transition, her obstetrician, Dr. Carstairs, fed up with his continually second-guessing her treatment, sent Reece downstairs to the cafeteria for coffee.

  “I liked it a lot better when prospective fathers were kept outside,” she muttered. “Where they could pace, smoke and worry to their heart’s content without getting in the way.”

  Molly managed to laugh even through a contraction so hard and lasting so long, it literally took her breath away. The pain increased, sucking red tides that seemed endless.

  When the doctor finally declared her eight centimeters dilated and gave her a paracervical injection, Molly could have wept with relief. She was moved to the delivery room, lifted onto the table, her legs put in stirrups and draped.

  Through the exhaustion clouding her mind, Molly vaguely heard the doctor telling her to push.

  “Okay, the baby’s crowned. The hard part’s over now, so you can lie back for a minute, Molly,” Janet Carstairs said. “You’re doing great.”

  “Better than great.” Lena smiled a bright, watery sm
ile of encouragement as she pushed the damp, stringy hair off Molly’s forehead. “You’re spectacular, Molly. Just like I knew you’d be.”

  Molly, who was panting, huffing and puffing like a blowfish, couldn’t answer.

  And then she was pushing again and heard the doctor say, “Just one more now, Molly.” A moment later, Molly felt something wet and slippery slide effortlessly from her body.

  “You’ve got yourself a little girl,” Dr. Carstairs announced.

  “A beautiful little girl,” Lena echoed.

  “Do you want to hold her?” the doctor, who knew all about the adoption arrangement, asked Molly.

  While she hesitated, the baby began to cry. At first the sound was faint and ragged and stuttering. But as it grew stronger, Molly felt something unbidden stir in her heart. The pull was deep and private, as old as the earth and every bit as strong.

  “Molly?” Lena was smiling down at her. Happy tears were streaming down her cheeks. “Whatever you want, honey. You did all the work, it’s your call.”

  The crying had escalated to a scream. “Perhaps if she could just nurse, for a minute or two, it might comfort her,” Molly said finally.

  Reece, who’d missed out on the actual delivery, arrived just in time to see the still-wet infant placed on Molly’s stomach, where it instinctively nuzzled its head against her breast, rooting for her nipple. With each tug of the tiny rosebud mouth, as the baby suckled the clear fluid from her breast, Molly felt a corresponding pull deep in her uterus.

  Mine. The reckless thought reverberated dangerously in her head. My daughter. My heart.

  “Isn’t she beautiful, darling?” Lena asked Reece as they stood beside the bed, hand in hand, watching the baby nurse.

  “Gorgeous,” Reece murmured, running his finger down the satin cheek. “She’s got hair.”

  “Of course she does,” Molly countered on a voice choked with unshed tears. She ran her own fingers over the wet black strands. “You didn’t think I’d give birth to a bald baby?”

  “It’ll fall out,” the nurse advised. “It usually does.”

  “Is that true?” Lena asked.

  “Sometimes.” Even as he answered his wife, Reece was looking down at Molly. “You did good, kid.” Although he was smiling, she could see the questions in his eyes. Questions she didn’t dare answer. Not even to herself.

  “I did, didn’t I?” Molly murmured with maternal pride as she gazed down in wonder at this child she’d carried beneath her heart for so many months.

  Although she suspected every mother was prejudiced, she knew this was truly the most beautiful baby she’d ever seen. And, like so many other new mothers, she couldn’t resist counting fingers and toes. She was also vastly relieved that her final AIDS test had come up negative, meaning she couldn’t have passed the fatal disease on to her child.

  Later, as she’d watched her blue-eyed, black-haired daughter—now cleaned up and dressed—placed into Lena’s arms, Molly suffered a jolt of loss so wrenching, she almost cried out. As she watched the blissful new parents ooh and aah over their darling daughter, her heart lay stonelike in her chest.

  “Have you decided on a name?” the attending nurse asked.

  Lena was smiling down at her daughter as if the entire world had just been handed to her on a silver platter. “Grace,” she said as she lifted her gaze to Molly. “Grace Margaret Longworth.”

  Molly was moved by her sister using her name as the baby’s middle name. As for Grace, she realized that Lena had chosen well. This innocent infant, the result of a heinous crime, was, indeed a very special gift from God.

  Thy will be done, Molly prayed mentally. And struggled not to weep.

  Six weeks later, Molly was back in Sister Benvenuto’s office, waiting to hear her superior’s response to her written, formal request for a transfer.

  “I think you’ve made a wise decision,” the nun said. “It’s not surprising you’d continue to have strong emotional ties to the child. As it is, it can’t be easy, living in the same house with your sister and brother-in-law and daughter.”

  “Grace isn’t my daughter,” Molly corrected softly. “She’s my niece.”

  “Or soon will be, legally,” the older nun agreed. “But matters of the law are often at odds with matters of the heart.”

  “That’s true.” Molly was twisting a tissue into little pieces. Although she’d blamed her recent depression on a case of postpartum blues, she feared the reason for her melancholy went far deeper.

  “The assignment you’ve requested is not an easy one,” Sister Benvenuto told Molly, a fact she already knew. “Are you certain you’re up to the work?”

  “Dr. Carstairs says that I’m physically fit.”

  “And emotionally?”

  Molly met the nun’s questioning gaze with an unflinching one of her own. “I will be. As soon as I can get away from here.”

  Away from her daughter. The words were not spoken, but both women heard them over the roar of the cars on the nearby freeway. Sister Benvenuto played with her pen for a time and continued to study Molly intently. “I’ve never believed that running away from a problem is the answer.”

  “I’m not running away,” Molly said, not quite truthfully. “I prefer to think of it as running to something. And you’ve often stated that our missions on the Native American reservations are in dire need of nurses.”

  “True. As is Mercy Samaritan.”

  Molly couldn’t argue with that.

  “I assume you’ve prayed about this matter,” the elder nun said after another long pause.

  “Of course.” Constantly. “And I know this is the right answer.”

  “Well, then.” Sister Benvenuto nodded. Then signed the papers in front of her. “Who am I to question God’s plan?”

  Having expected resistance from her sister, Molly was surprised when Lena instantly accepted the idea.

  “We’re going to miss you,” she said, giving Molly a hug. “But I understand that there are others in the world who need you even more than we do.” They both looked up instinctively toward the door as they heard Grace suddenly begin to cry in the nursery. The nursery Lena had decorated for a princess. “Fortunately, Arizona and New Mexico aren’t that far away.”

  The baby’s cries increased. “Not far at all,” Molly agreed. It was a cry of hunger. Over the past weeks she’d learned to distinguish them.

  “You’ll be able to come home often,” Lena said, obviously distracted.

  “Yes.” Molly was no less distracted.

  Even with baby Grace’s wails now reaching earsplitting decibel level, both sisters studiously pretended to ignore them. “But you will stay for the baptism?” Lena asked.

  “Absolutely,” Molly said.

  “Good.” Lena nodded. That settled, she left the room.

  As she remained behind, listening to her daughter’s plaintive cries dwindle away, Molly realized why her plan had met with no resistance from her sister.

  It was obvious that Grace could only have one mother.

  Just as it was obvious that Lena was that mother.

  Once again, Molly assured herself that her decision was for the best. For everyone. So why did she want to cry?

  Hormones, she told herself as she stubbornly blinked away the threatening tears. That’s all it was. That’s all she would allow it to be.

  One week after her decision to leave Los Angeles, seven weeks after her daughter’s birth, Molly was alone with Reece in the vestibule of our Lady of Perpetual Help Church.

  “Are you certain you want to go through with this?” Reece asked gently.

  “Of course.” Molly flashed him a bright, feigned smile. “I’m thrilled that Lena asked me to be Grace’s godmother.”

  “I tried to talk her out of it, but—”

  “Why?”

  “Because it puts you in an uncomfortable position.”

  Molly heard the question in his tone and chose to ignore it. “Grace is Lena’s daughter,” she sai
d firmly, wondering who she was trying to convince, Reece, or herself. “And yours.”

  “Still, there’s time to change your mind. I know Theo would love to fill in….”

  “Theo’s a fallen-away Southern Baptist,” Molly reminded him. “And, although the Catholic Church has embraced the ecumenical movement since Vatican II, I doubt they’re ready for Baptist godmothers.”

  He sighed. “You’re right, of course. It’s just that….” He shook his head, jammed his hands deep in his pockets and looked away. “After you made your announcement to go and work with the Indians—”

  “Native Americans.”

  “Whatever.” He turned back to her. “When I first heard about your decision, I realized that Lena and I had been so wrapped up in our own happiness, we hadn’t really given enough thought to the one individual who made it all possible.”

  “You’ve been wonderful to me. You’ve given me a place to stay, Lena bought me more maternity clothes than any self-respecting nun who’s taken a vow of poverty should possess, you paid for the best obstetrician in town. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  “All those things are peripheral. I was talking about our insensitivity to your feelings.”

  It was Molly’s turn to look away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t you?” he challenged quietly.

  There were three people Molly had never been able to lie to: Alex, Sister Benvenuto and Reece. However, unable to be perfectly open with him—since he was an integral part of her problem—she opted to hedge.

  “It’s a difficult situation for all of us.”

  “I warned you that it could be.”

  “Yes.” She took a deep breath. “So, once again you were right. But I’ve given this a great deal of thought, Reece. And I’ve prayed over it. And everything will be fine. Once I’ve removed myself from the scene.”

  “And your daughter?”

  “Your daughter.”

  They exchanged a long look. “Yes,” he said finally. Shoulders slumped, he did not exactly look like a happy father about to witness the baptism of his child. “We’d better go. Before they come looking for us.”