No Regrets

by JoAnn Ross

  “You’d have a better chance at bringing Elvis back from the dead than getting me to ever treat another patient. I’m not a doctor, dammit.”

  “I told you over two years ago, you’ll always be a doctor. Besides, you’ve renewed your license.” When he gave her a surprised look, she shrugged. “I checked. I wanted to make certain the option to do something useful with your life would still be open when you got tired of life in the fast lane with all your twenty-two-year-old playmates.”

  That said, she retrieved her medical bag from the back seat, got out of the car and headed for the house.

  He should just stay here, Reece thought, enjoying the icy fury running through his veins. Who the hell did she think she was, talking to him that way? Didn’t she realize that in his world—a lofty world far more influential than the one he’d left behind in the ER—he was an important man? Nobody, not even the president of the network, would dare talk to Reece Longworth with the disregard she’d just shown him!

  What he ought to do, Reece considered blackly, was to just stay the hell in the car. What was she going to do? Send Dan out with his gun and handcuffs to drag him into that house?

  Remembering the determination on Molly’s face, and knowing her as well as he did, Reece reluctantly decided she might, when pushed, do exactly that.

  Cursing viciously, he climbed out of the car and slammed the door behind him. As he marched up the flagstone sidewalk, Reece vowed that as soon as this so-called emergency was over, he and Molly were going to have a very long, no-holds-barred talk.

  Molly thought it looked as though an earthquake had hit in the middle of the living room. Furniture was overturned, glass shards from a shattered gilt-frame mirror glittered like diamonds all over the mahogany floor, a fist-size hole had been punched into the ivory silk wallpaper.

  In the middle of the destruction, Dan sat on a white linen sofa. Next to him was a woman dressed in an emerald green satin robe. Her face was horribly battered and she was holding a washcloth filled with ice against her forehead.

  “Christ,” Reece, who’d entered the house after Molly, muttered as he surveyed the scene.

  “Hi, Molly, Reece.” Dan stood up. “Thanks for coming.”

  Reece nodded. The fact that Dan didn’t show an iota of surprise at seeing him made him angrier than he’d been when he’d learned of Molly’s subterfuge. Despite the fact that some perverse impulse had made him renew his license to practice medicine, he hadn’t thought of himself as a physician for more than two years. He’d earned the right not to care. So, why couldn’t people just leave him alone to live his life as he wanted?

  But, no. Those two do-gooders, Dan Kovaleski and Molly McBride, had to drag him back into the fray.

  He shook his head with frustration. “What happened?”

  “The lady agreed to help me with an investigation.” Reece easily recognized the self-recrimination in Dan’s voice, having lived with it himself these past years. “Obviously, I miscalculated the risk.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she murmured, her words barely understandable due to her swollen jaw. “If I’d been more honest with you up-front—”

  “Why don’t you two discuss this later?” Reece suggested. “I’m Reece Longworth.” He introduced himself to the battered young woman. “Looks as if I’m going to be your doctor tonight.”

  Tessa’s good eye narrowed as she looked up at him. “Do I know you?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “You look familiar.” She chewed on a peach-lacquered fingernail, then shrugged. “Then again, I’ve never been very good at remembering faces.”

  “In a lot of ways, L.A.’s a small town,” he said. “It’s possible our paths have crossed, but I’m sure I’d remember you.” His smile managed to somehow reveal masculine admiration without appearing unprofessionally seductive. “Let’s see what we’ve got here….”

  His touch, while gentle, made her flinch as he ran his fingers over the swollen flesh that was rapidly turning a vivid purple and blue. As she heard the familiar caring tone, Molly felt a rush of hope.

  He looked at the cut the woman had been holding the ice bag against. “You’ve got a pretty good gash.” The bleeding above her right eye had almost stopped, but the swelling was so intense, her eye was almost closed. “I could try a butterfly bandage, but I think you’d be better off with stitches.”

  “Won’t stitches scar?”

  “Not that badly.” He smiled, the slow, reassuring smile that had once calmed countless patients. The smile Molly hadn’t seen for too long. “It’ll be faint enough for makeup to cover. And without makeup, if it shows at all, you’ll just look a little dashing.” He pressed his fingers against the swollen flesh. “Like a lady pirate.”

  She managed a weak smile at that, flinching as it pulled her split lip.

  Since the ice had slowed the bleeding, Reece decided to take the time to do a thorough exam. “Why don’t we go in the bedroom?” he suggested. “Where we can have more privacy?”

  Instead of being relieved by that suggestion, her eyes widened in apparent panic and she looked over at Dan.

  “It’s okay,” he assured her. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Molly heard the uncharacteristic gentleness in his voice, then watched the relief and trust flood into the woman’s good eye and realized that whatever was happening here was more than just a typical cop/informant relationship.

  Reece turned to Molly. “I could use some help.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” Her tone was professionally deferential, but she knew that Reece wouldn’t have been able to miss the satisfaction underlying the words. “Give Elvis my regards,” she murmured as she followed him into the bedroom.

  The examination revealed a great deal of bruising, but the patient didn’t seem to have suffered any internal damage. She was also fortunate that no bones had been broken, although Reece did locate two ribs he suspected could be cracked.

  “We’ll want an X ray,” he said.

  “No.” Tessa shook her head. “I can’t go near a hospital. He told me if I talked to anyone about this, he’d kill me.”

  “No one’s going to kill you,” Molly said soothingly, stroking the blood-matted hair back from the woman’s forehead. Without the ice pack, the wound had begun bleeding again. “Dan will see to that.”

  “Yeah, he’s been a real big help so far.”

  Molly felt her temper rise, but managed not to point out that if the woman had been living a blameless life, she wouldn’t be in whatever mess she appeared to be in in the first place.

  “Here.” She picked up the woman’s limp hand and pressed it against the washcloth. “Make yourself useful and hold this in place.”

  Reece shot Molly a quick, warning look, but didn’t reprimand her for her sharp tone. He frowned when he viewed the marks on the woman’s stomach, then stopped when he got to her thighs. Along with the vermilion impression of ten fingers, there were crescent-shaped marks that could only have come from a man’s teeth. The same marks marred the smooth flesh around her navel.

  “Did he rape you?”

  Tessa didn’t answer. But the way she shuddered and closed her eyes when he touched the marks with a tender fingertip, told them everything. “Let me go get some disinfectant to clean those wounds,” he said. Since Molly had brought her bag into the room with her, she realized he wanted an excuse to talk to Dan.

  He left the bedroom and went back to where Dan was pacing the floor. “She needs to go to the hospital.”

  “She insists she won’t go. Says he’ll find out about it and kill her.”

  “Do you think that’s possible?”

  Dan’s look became hard. “Unfortunately, since I know the guy—I used to work with him, believe it or not—I do. But I’m not going to let it happen, so we’ll have to come up with some other plan.”

  “You could always just take her into custody.”

  “I already have. Then I convinced her to help me try to solve a murder ti
ed to the prostitution ring she’s working for. That’s what got her into this in the first place.” He shook his head. “No, she’s right. We’ve got to be more careful.”

  “I think I’ve got an idea,” Reece said. “But meanwhile, there’s something else. She was raped.”

  “Shit.” Dan dragged his hand through his hair. “I figured as much. But she assured me he hadn’t touched her that way.”

  “People find it harder to lie to doctors than cops. Do you want me to collect evidence?”

  Dan glanced over at the bedroom door, as if imagining how difficult this would be for her. “Yeah. I want to nail the bastard for everything he’s done. Since I’d lose my shield if I did what I’d like to do and simply kill the son of a bitch, at least I want to make certain he’s put away for a very long time.” Reece couldn’t remember ever seeing Dan more coldly furious. Although he felt no sympathy for any man who could hurt a woman so badly, he worried the cop might decide to take things into his own hands.

  “You’re not going to do anything foolish, are you?”

  Dan looked at him with surprise. “Of course not. I’m a cop. I’m just going to do my job.”

  “Sounds like more than that.”

  “Well, it isn’t.”

  Reece shrugged, knowing a lie when he heard it. “Whatever you say.”

  While Reece and Dan were planning what to do with Tessa, Molly found herself growing more and more uncomfortable with the thick silence that had settled over the gloomy bedroom. As soon as Reece had left the room, the woman seemed to shrink back into some private, secret place inside her. There was a weariness about her that went far beyond the physical.

  Molly felt she should at least try to offer some reassurance that the shame she was feeling would eventually pass.

  “I know it’s hard.” The mattress sighed as she sat down on the edge of the bed. She began stroking the woman’s tangled, bright hair. “And it’s going to get even harder. But you will get over this.”

  Tessa hated the pity in the woman’s tone. She hated the entire fucking situation. She should have known better than to let that handsome vice cop talk her into cooperating in his stupid investigation. She should have known better than to get herself mixed up with Elaine’s sex-for-hire business in the first place. She should have run like the devil was after her when Jason had offered her that first pill.

  Hell, she thought miserably, she never should have come to this goddamn town in the first place. She should have done what the general wanted and married Tom, had a bunch of little fighter pilots and been satisfied with volunteering to act in amateur musicals put on by the community theater.

  “You don’t know anything,” she snapped. If she’d ever seen a woman less likely to understand anything about the life she’d been living, it was this one. Although she appeared to be around thirty, there was an aura of innocence about her that Tessa hadn’t felt herself since she’d let Lanny Osborne feel her up after the high school Freshman Fling.

  Molly thought it said something about the woman’s spirit that she could manage to look defiant with her face so bruised and swollen. “I know about being raped.”

  The one good eye widened in surprise. “By someone you thought you loved?”

  “No.” Molly’s heart went out her. “Mine was a stranger. Yours was obviously much, much worse.” She couldn’t imagine how it would feel being so horribly betrayed by someone you loved and trusted.

  Tessa turned her head toward the wall, unable to bear the compassion in this woman’s gaze. “I just want to die.”

  “No.” Molly took hold of the bruised jaw and turned the battered face back toward her. “You do not want to die. As bad as all this is, it’s better than the alternative. If you don’t care about yourself, think about all those people who love you. Who’d miss you.”

  “I don’t have anyone who cares.”

  That wasn’t quite true. She knew that were she to return home, her father would take her in. She’d have to listen to one helluva lecture about him having been right all along, and about having known what was good for her, but the general wouldn’t turn her away. The problem was, she was too ashamed.

  “Of course you do. You have Dan—”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. He’s just wild about me. That’s why he busted me in the first place.”

  Molly was a bit surprised at that, but decided this was no time for questions. “I’ve known Dan Kovaleski all my life—”

  “Have you screwed him?”

  “What?”

  “I asked, since you seem to know the guy so well, if you’ve gone to bed with him. Done the dark deed. Fucked.”

  “He’s always been like a brother—”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. Didn’t anyone tell you? In some circles, incest is a national sport.”

  “We obviously run in different circles,” Molly snapped, her pique steamrolling over her pity.

  “Obviously.”

  The sarcasm scored a hit, just as the woman had intended. Molly took a deep breath and reminded herself that although she might not be a nun anymore, that didn’t get her off the hook when it came to Christ’s message of charity.

  “Look,” she said, trying again. “I’m on your side. Whatever it is. So, let’s not waste time and energy you don’t have fighting about things that don’t make any immediate difference to your situation….

  “I’d suggest we start over.” She held out her hand. “Hi. My name is Molly. And yours is…?”

  Her face ached, her chest hurt when she breathed deeply, and that battered place between her legs felt as if it were on fire. Tessa didn’t have the strength to keep up the tough act.

  “Tessa,” she muttered. “Tessa Starr.” No. Tessa Starr was the girl who thought she could become a hotshot movie actress. Tessa Starr was the whore who’d gotten her into this murderously dangerous mess in the first place. “I mean, Tessa Davis.”

  “Tessa?” The name was not all that unusual, Molly reminded herself. But still… She leaned closer, looking for clues on that poor injured face and found none. “You wouldn’t happen to be Catholic?”

  “I grew up Catholic. But obviously I haven’t been to church in a long time.”

  Molly’s heart was hammering a wild tattoo in her heart. “Were you, by any chance, adopted?”

  “When I was three. My parents were killed. My adoptive parents told me that they’d died in a car accident, but I overheard them talking one time about a murder…” Her voice drifted off as she looked at Molly with surprise. “How did you know?”

  “Oh, my God!”

  Tessa was uncomfortable with the way the woman named Molly was suddenly staring at her. “What?”

  There was no response. Tessa watched, stunned, as tears started pouring from Molly’s eyes.

  “Reece,” she called out, “you’ll never believe what’s happened!”

  Both men were at the door in a flash.

  “I’ve found Tessa,” Molly said, beaming through her tears. She pulled Tessa to her and held her tight, as she might Grace. “I’ve found my sister!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Tessa was examined at a little-known barrio clinic in East Los Angeles operated by the Sisters of Mercy, stitched up and three hours later was ensconced in Molly’s condominium where Dan had determined she’d be safe since there was no way anyone could ever connect the two women.

  “I still can’t believe this!” She was sitting up in Molly’s bed, drinking a cup of herbal tea her older sister had made to help her sleep.

  “It’s a miracle,” Molly decided. She also decided that both of them were due a miracle after all they’d been through.

  “Do you know, I vaguely remember you and Lena. But whenever I’d talk about having sisters, my father would insist I’d imagined you both.”

  “What about your mother?” Molly asked, immensely curious about the home her sister had grown up in.

  Tessa shrugged. “She left the day I started school. I went off in the mor
ning with my new book bag and when I came home that afternoon, she was gone. The general—that’s my dad—said she just couldn’t hack it.”

  A frown moved across her battered face like a storm cloud as she thought back on that day. “Later, I decided what she couldn’t hack was living under the general’s thumb. I was the only kid I knew—and I grew up on military bases—who had to undergo weekly room inspection.”

  “Is that why you ran away to Hollywood?” Molly could understand rebellion.

  “Nah.” Tessa was not about to blame anyone else for her own mistakes. “I always wanted to be an actress. And, despite what I ended up doing, I’m really good, which makes sense because I had to pretend to be something I wasn’t every time I landed in a new town.”

  “That must have made it difficult to figure out who you really were.”

  “You got that right.” Tessa sighed, wondering if there even was a real Tessa Davis somewhere deep down inside her.

  “I guess, since your life was already so unstable, the reason your father didn’t want you to remember Lena and me was because he wanted the two of you to be like a real family,” Molly suggested, thinking of all the years such subterfuge had cost them. If only they’d been allowed to keep in touch, how different all their lives might have turned out!

  “That’s a nice thought. But personally, I think it was just one more thing he wanted to control.”

  Never one to dwell on the past, Molly smiled and said, “Well, at least we’re together now.”

  “Yes.” Tessa ran her broken fingernail around the rim of the teacup. “I’m so sorry about Lena. She sounds like a wonderful person.”

  “She was.” Molly could finally smile when she thought of her sister. “She helped me through a terrible time. I’ll always be grateful.”

  “And she and Reece had a little girl?”

  “Yes.” Molly decided there had been enough revelations for one day. She’d fill her sister in on that all-important detail later. “Her name is Grace. She’s six, beautiful, sweet and as smart as a whip.”

  Tessa smiled for the first time since Molly had met her hours earlier. “Not that you’re prejudiced, or anything.”