The Doctor's Secret Child

by Catherine Spencer

  Finally Yvonne broke the painful silence. “May I come in?” she inquired, the eloquence in her raised eyebrows a trenchant comment on Molly’s lack of manners.

  “Of course.” Belatedly Molly stepped back and did her best to resurrect the smile which had slipped into obscurity at the sight of her visitor. “But if you’re looking for Dan, he’s not here.”

  Yvonne swept through the hall and into the kitchen as if she owned the place, slapped her purse down on the breakfast bar and prepared to do battle. “I know. Which is why I am.”

  “May I offer you coffee?”

  “No, dear. I’m not here to exchange recipes.”

  “I see.”

  “I doubt it, so let me blunt.”

  “Please do,” Molly said, the lump of foreboding in her throat swelling to epic proportions.

  Yvonne Cordell opened her purse and took out a checkbook. “How much will it take to persuade you to terminate this farce you’ve entered into with my son?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  STUPEFIED, Molly stared at her. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  “I want you to go away, darling.”

  “Go away where?”

  “Any place you like.” Yvonne shrugged her elegant shoulders and took out a silver-capped pen. “The farther removed from this town, the better.”

  “You’re actually asking me to end my engagement?”

  “Precisely. And I’m willing to pay handsomely for your cooperation.”

  Struggling to absorb the shock, Molly sank onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar before her legs gave out from under her. “You’re trying to buy me off?”

  “Since we’re speaking frankly, yes.”

  “Perhaps you’ve forgotten, Mrs. Cordell, that I have a daughter.”

  “I’ll take that into account.”

  “She’s Dan’s daughter, too. Your grandchild.”

  “So you say. But that sort of claim is, I believe, one of the oldest tricks in the book when a woman of limited means sets out to attach herself to wealth.” Pen poised, she arched her brows again. “Which is why I’m prepared to offer you generous compensation to remove yourself and your daughter from this town and leave my son to get on with the life he had mapped out for himself before you turned it upside-down.”

  “Does Dan know you’re here?”

  “Don’t be absurd, Ms. Paget! He would be furious if he knew about our little arrangement.”

  “He might also be very hurt to learn that people he believed he could trust would betray him like this.”

  Yvonne Cordell scribbled in her checkbook, tore off the page and laid it face-up on the counter so that Molly could read the amount written there. “Count the zeroes. I think you’ll find there are enough to buy your silence.”

  “My silence will cost you nothing because I wouldn’t dream of telling Dan about this meeting. And not all the money in the world would induce me to stoop to the kind of abominable behavior you’re suggesting. I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time, Mrs. Cordell. I am not for sale, and neither is my daughter.”

  “Of course you are, darling. Everyone is, if the price is right.”

  “In your circle of friends, perhaps, but not in mine,” Molly snapped, anger foaming within her.

  Dan’s mother smiled. “From everything I hear, you have no friends, at least not here.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” Molly said. “I doubt I’ll have much trouble forming a circle of acquaintances at least as well connected as yours. I thought people treated me very warmly last night.”

  “Naturally. Because you were with Daniel. He, you see, belongs. You, on the other hand, are a misfit. Just because no one was so crass as to let you see what a fool you made of yourself, with your flashy dress and patently obvious attempts to appear at ease, doesn’t mean they weren’t laughing at you behind their hands. They were simply too well-bred to be obvious about it, that’s all, besides which they’d never want to humiliate Daniel.”

  Molly was crumbling inside, shattered beyond repair by the woman’s chiseling erosion of her self-confidence. Laboring to remain calm, she said, “If that’s true, I think they might also be well-bred enough to overlook my shortcomings and recognize something you seem determined to overlook, which is that I happen to love your son very much.”

  “Ah, but does he love you, Ms. Paget?”

  The bottom fell out of Molly’s world at that. Numb with pain, she groped for an answer which would at least win her the battle, if not the war, and found none. “I know he loves his daughter,” she cried, “and she loves him. What kind of monster are you that you’d set out to destroy a little girl’s future by depriving her of a father? Leave us alone, for pity’s sake!”

  At the outburst, a wrinkle of distaste crossed Yvonne Cordell’s aristocratic features. “If you weren’t so caught up in your own melodrama, you’d realize you’re out of your depth. I play to win, Ms. Paget—always. So do yourself a favor and take the offer I’m laying on the table. Cut your losses and run. Buy yourself a nice house—on the West Coast. A nice car—on the West Coast. In other words, darling, face the facts. You don’t belong here. You never did. They don’t even want you in that dreary dockside area you call home. So do everyone a favor and take yourself and your benighted child out of our lives, because I promise you, if you persist in trying to hang on to my son, I’ll make your tenure here a living hell.”

  She swept the checkbook and pen inside her purse, snapped the bag closed and adjusted the angle of her hat. “Oh, yes, and one more thing: the owners of this house and I are old friends. A phone call from me is all it will take for the rental agreement you’ve signed to be rescinded. When it comes to who wields the most power, money and connections always win out.”

  He knew something was wrong, the minute he stepped out of his car. For a start, the front door stood ajar and she was nowhere to be found, although her van was in the garage.

  Not a man normally given to grisly imaginings, he couldn’t repress the prickle of apprehension skittering up his spine at the unearthly silence emanating from the house. The dead silence.

  Had she fallen from a stepladder and hurt herself? Broken her back or her neck? Had some unsuspected pervert infiltrated the community and finding her there alone, given in to uncontrollable urges? A rapist, a serial killer?

  Possibilities so outlandish he couldn’t believe he entertained them, spun in lurid Technicolor through his mind and left a film of cold fear on his skin. He raced up the steps and into the front hall, his yell splintering the indifferent silence of the afternoon. “Molly!”

  It seemed he waited an eternity for a reply; an eternity comprised of a millisecond fraught with unbearable suspense. Shocked by the hammering insistence of his sixth sense which told him something had gone dreadfully awry, he charged through the house, beginning with the bedrooms, and then through the reception rooms and the library, dreading what he might discover.

  Finding them undisturbed, he made his way through the butler’s pantry and came at last to the kitchen. At first glance, everything seemed to be in order there as well, except for her unwashed coffee mug.

  Then he saw her ring, and next to it the check, the obscene sum for which it was made out, and the signature. And his indeterminate apprehension crystallized into knowledge.

  “Have you lost your mind?” his mother had practically shrieked, arriving on his doorstep that morning before he was properly awake. “Ending your engagement to Summer is one thing, but to leap into another with that woman…and to spring her without warning on your father and me last night, in front of all our friends!”

  “That woman happens to be the mother of my child, Yvonne,” he’d reminded her coldly.

  “If you’re so sure of that, why are you keeping it such a deep, dark secret?”

  “Because Molly doesn’t want the news made public just yet.”

  “Until she finds herself safely married to you, you mean! Good lord, Daniel, come to y
our senses before you find yourself saddled with another man’s child and a woman who’s using you to elevate herself to a position in society she could never achieve on her own merit!”

  He’d had his share of run-ins with his mother over the years, some more acrimonious than others, but it had been some time since they’d squared off with so much vehemence.

  “Butt out, Yvonne!” he’d warned her. “And while you’re at it, button your lip around your friends because I won’t tolerate a smear campaign against Molly or our daughter.”

  “And if I refuse, what then, Daniel?”

  “Remember the last time you tried to bend me to your will, Mother? Let’s see, how long was it that you neither knew where I was or even if I was? Two years? Three? Would you like me to show you again how effectively I can cut you out of my life?”

  He’d seen the color wash out of her face and thought he’d driven home his point firmly enough for the matter to be closed. He should have known better. When it came to preserving what she perceived to be her elevated position in society, his mother’s warped judgment ruled the day and, sadly, she possessed the tenacity of a pit bull in defending it.

  Pocketing the ring, he went out to the back porch and scanned the expanse of lawn sloping down to the water. The rush of relief when he spotted Molly at the far end of the boat dock had him vaulting over the railing and striding down the path to where she sat facing the lake, with her bare feet dangling just above the water.

  “Hey,” he said, dropping down beside her and bouncing the ring on the palm of his hand. “What’s this all about?”

  She didn’t answer. And when he looked at her, he knew why. He’d seen grief before, more often than he cared to count, but he’d never thought to see it etched so savagely on her face. Never thought to see her looking so pale and stripped of emotion that she might as well have been dead. And never for a moment expected to see her so devastated that the tears simply flowed down her cheeks in a silent, unending stream as if someone had turned on a faucet and forgotten to turn it off again.

  This was not the Molly he knew, the one whose fire had stirred him to realize that, in order to find meaning in his life, he needed something more than the easy, undemanding pattern which had evolved with Summer.

  The light had gone out, leaving behind a waif so lacking in substance that he wanted to shake her until the color surged back to her cheeks, and she raged at him for the injury he’d let happen to her.

  At a loss to define the knot of emotion lodged in his gut, he put his arms around her and pulled her tight against him. He might just as well have tried to contain water in his bare hands. She slipped out of his hold and shuffled to the far end of the ramp, as if she thought he might contaminate her.

  “Don’t push me away, Molly,” he said hoarsely. “Tell me what happened and let me fix it.”

  Her chest heaved in a massive sigh. “You can’t fix it,” she said dully, “because you can’t change the truth.”

  “Whose truth are we talking about, angel?” he asked, a terrible aching filling his heart. “Yours, or my mother’s?”

  “Both,” she said. “I thought I’d outgrown my past, risen above it. Fooled myself for years into believing it. Eventually, though, destiny catches up with a person. Mine caught up with me today.”

  “Stop it!” he raged, anger coursing through him bitter as acid. “Do not succumb to the poisonous influence of a control freak like my mother, please!”

  “It’s not just your mother. Everybody’s been trying to tell me the same thing, one way or another, from the minute I set foot in town again—Cadie Boudelet, Alec Livingston. And you. Oh, you’ve been kind and decent and offered to make an honest woman out of me,” she said, “but even you can’t bring yourself to love me. How many times do I have to keep banging my head against the wall before I learn it’s not going to change anything and the only person I’m hurting is myself?”

  “Since when do you have to turn to someone else for validation, Molly, when you can look into your own heart and know that you’re not to blame for other people’s mean-spirited censure? Take pride in what you’ve accomplished. And recognize you’ve passed too far beyond the limitations of Harmony Cove for anyone to appreciate the strides you’ve made.”

  “Including you, Dan?”

  “Oh, I’m beginning to get a glimmer of understanding,” he said ruefully. “But for a supposedly intelligent man, I’ve taken a hell of a long time to see what’s been under my nose for weeks. Give me your hand, Molly, and let me put this ring back where it belongs.”

  “I can’t,” she said, her voice breaking. “I can’t marry you. I won’t have Ariel subjected to the scorn and insult I had to put up with when I was her age. I’m taking her back to Seattle where she’ll be safe. You can visit her whenever you want. You’ll always be welcome in our home. But please don’t ask me to stay here, because I can’t.”

  He saw the set of her mouth, the determined angle of her chin. Even through the tears and despair, the strength which had elevated her so far above her disastrous childhood shone through, and he knew that, for now at least, he was wasting words trying to convince her to change her mind.

  “Then do this for me instead,” he begged. “Come back to the house. Take a bath, wash away those tears, and put on something from that closet you’ve already filled with clothes. By the time you’re done, you’ll be feeling much better and I’ll have brought you proof that you’re wrong to give up on us without a fight.”

  She did as he asked because she was too empty to care one way or another, and too tired to resist. As if she were very old and frail, he lifted her to her feet and shepherded her carefully up the path and through the house to the master bathroom.

  While the tub filled, he stripped off her clothes with a tenderness and care exceeding anything he’d demonstrated before, then disappeared downstairs, returning a short time later with a glass of wine which he set on a stool within easy reach of where she lay up to her neck in scented bubbles.

  “Relax and try to enjoy,” he said, dropping a kiss on her head. “I’ll be back very soon.”

  In fact, he was gone over an hour. Expecting he intended dragging his witchy mother back to the house to force an apology out of her, Molly used the time to shampoo her hair and loofah her body to satin smoothness. Not that it would change anything, but he was right on one score, she admitted grudgingly, slipping on a silk caftan. A hot bath had made her feel better, although not to the point that she was willing to forgive the insults she’d suffered earlier.

  Wineglass in hand, she drifted through the upstairs rooms, saying her good byes and wishing things could have turned out differently. She loved everything about the house, from its gracious proportions and sunny exposure, to the grand old maples and slender birches screening it from the property next door. But she’d been foolish to think it was meant for her. What use had she for so many bedrooms, or a nursery?

  Such a place was meant to be filled with the sound of children’s laughter, not the lonely footsteps of one little girl ostracized by her classmates because her mother wasn’t “their kind of people.”

  It was almost dark when Dan’s car turned in the driveway, followed almost immediately by another. By the time she reached the downstairs hall, he was in the front door and she saw with horror that he had Ariel by the hand and that his parents were close behind.

  “What have you done?” she whispered, drawing Ariel away from him and into the protective curve of her body.

  “I thought you’d like to see our daughter, my love,” he said calmly.

  “And her?” She jerked her head to where Yvonne Cordell stood proud and unrepentant next to her husband who had the grace to look woefully ill-at-ease. “Did you think I’d like to see her again, too? Isn’t once enough for one day, Dan?”

  “Don’t upset yourself, angel,” he said, the glance he spared the older woman so cold that even Molly shivered. “My mother isn’t staying. She merely came to collect something she
left behind this morning. And to explain to Ariel why she left it here in the first place.”

  For once, Yvonne Cordell seemed at a loss. Paralyzed, almost.

  “Go ahead, Yvonne,” her husband said grimly. “Explain why you tried to bribe our son’s fiancée into taking our granddaughter and leaving town.”

  “I…made a mistake,” she said.

  “But if you’re my grandma, why did you do it?” Ariel asked, gazing at her out of eyes so wide with puzzled innocence that Molly’s heart shifted in her breast. “Don’t you like me?”

  Yvonne Cordell tried to meet her gaze, and couldn’t. “Of course I do, dear.”

  “Try to sound as if you mean it,” Dan advised her tersely.

  Defeated, she lifted her head and stared at him. “You’ve made your point,” she said, her voice cracking. “I was wrong. I’m sorry. I had no idea that…you and Ms. Paget…Molly…cared for one another so much.”

  “You don’t know the half of it, Mother,” he said. “I doubt you ever will. But if you’re at all interested in knowing your granddaughter and any brothers or sisters she might one day have, I suggest you make a concerted effort to overcome your prejudice. Otherwise you will never see my family or me again.”

  “You don’t need to hammer the point home, Daniel. I’m aware I’ve handled things badly.”

  “That’s something, Yvonne,” her husband said, “but it’s not quite enough, is it?”

  But Molly had been on the receiving end of humiliation too many times herself to enjoy watching someone else squirm. “Yes, it is,” she said, pity overcoming her resentment after all. “Thank you, Mrs. Cordell. I know this isn’t easy for you.”

  At first, Yvonne said nothing. She swung her gaze to the floor, raised it to the ceiling, and appeared to wage a fierce inner battle with herself. Then, clearly shaken, she stepped forward.

  “No,” she said. “It isn’t easy because we come from different worlds. But I was wrong to suggest mine is better than yours. None of us has control over the circumstances into which we are born. It’s how we choose to deal with those circumstances which divides or unites us.” She stretched out her hand and rested it briefly on Ariel’s head. “Sometimes it takes a child’s clear thinking to point the way to finding that unity. But these are only words, Molly, and words are never enough. I hope you’ll allow me the opportunity to back them up with action.”