by JoAnn Ross
He was waiting at the arrival gate when her flight landed. Molly felt the familiar warmth of genuine friendship and wished it could be something deeper. Falling in love with Joe Salvatore would be so uncomplicated. She almost envied the woman who would be granted that pleasure.
His arms, as they wrapped around her, were strong and sure and comforting. But despite her unbidden response to that illicit kiss they’d shared, his embrace did not touch a single sensual chord inside her.
He took hold of her shoulders and put her a little away from him in order to look down into her face. “So. You’ve done it. You’ve left the order.”
“Does it show?”
She was only joking, but to her surprise, he seemed to be considering that. After another longer, more probing look, he nodded his dark head. “I think it does. There’s a spark of freedom in your eyes that wasn’t there before. You have the look, Molly, me love,” he said on an awful brogue that made her laugh, “of a woman who’s looking life full in the face.”
“And discovering that it’s a little frightening,” she admitted with a light, musical laugh that drew the appreciative attention of a male passenger checking in at the counter.
Joe laughed, as well, then hugged her again. “You’ll do fine. Better than fine. You’re going to soar, sweetheart. I only wish I was going to be around to watch.”
“Joe—”
“Later.” He took her carry-on bag from her hand. “I’ve booked you into the hotel. We’ll have dinner and you can fill me in on the latest chapter in the saga of Molly McBride.”
The hotel was situated in a stand of Ponderosa pine forest on the outskirts of town at the foot of the San Francisco mountains. Although the setting was wonderfully serene and scenic, Molly’s nerves were tied up in knots.
“Was it difficult?” he asked, studying her over the rim of the champagne flute. Although she was nervous about drinking wine with this man again after what had happened the last time, she couldn’t refuse his insistence on toasting what he kept calling her freedom.
“Not as difficult as I thought it would be,” she admitted. “I’ve spent so many years agonizing over the validity of my vocation, when I finally decided to leave, it seemed absolutely, positively right.”
“Funny how things work out, isn’t it?” he mused. “If the good Dr. Longworth hadn’t gone into a tailspin after his wife’s death, forcing you to return and take care of your daughter, you might have continued vacillating about your true feelings for years.”
There was something in his tone. A tinge of acid sarcasm that reminded her uncomfortably of the day Reece had accused her of having an affair with Joe.
“Of course I care about Grace’s well-being. But I also understand she’s Reece’s daughter,” Molly insisted quietly.
“So you’re never going to tell her the truth?”
“No. Of course not. Lena was her mother in every way that counted. And I’d never—ever—want any child to bear the burden of knowing she was the product of a brutal act like rape.”
“Good point.” He refilled his glass for the second time. When he went to pour more of the sparkling gold wine into Molly’s glass, she covered it with her palm.
As he drank the wine, Joe looked out the tall windows at the darkening forest beyond. Dusk was settling over the mountains, casting everything in an ethereal, silvery pale light. Molly drew in a quick breath as she watched a herd of deer approach the man-made pond behind the hotel. Their ears were up like radar detectors, every lithe muscle in the slender brown bodies tensed, prepared to run from potential danger. As the silence between Molly and Joe lingered, stretching her already-taut nerves to near the breaking point, Molly decided she knew exactly how those skittish deer felt.
“You love him, don’t you?” Joe’s deep voice shattered the oppressive silence.
She knew better than to ask who he was talking about. “Of course I do. Reece was my best friend even before he and Lena met. I valued his friendship then, and I still do. Especially after all he’s done for me. And Lena. And, especially Grace.”
“It’s more than that. You love him more than a former nun loves a mere friend. Or her brother-in-law. Or even the adoptive father of her child.”
“That’s not true.”
“Of course it is.” His dark eyes held both regret and pity. “You may not realize it yet, Molly. But you will.”
Much, much later, after they’d said their goodbyes and promised to keep in touch—something they both knew would probably not happen, given the impossibility of their relationship—Molly lay alone in the too-wide hotel bed, listening to the wail of a freight train echoing in the midnight hour. Even that lonely whistle couldn’t drown out Joe’s ominous prediction that continued to toll deep in her fretful mind.
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-Two
1994
“You aren’t going to wear that, are you?”
Reece turned to look at his six-year-old daughter, who was sitting cross-legged on his bed, her frown registering her disapproval at the shirt he’d selected.
“I’d better,” he said, buttoning the black pleated-front shirt, “if I know what’s good for me.”
“Because Meredith bought it for you.” A deeper scowl suggested Grace disapproved of his choice in women even more than she did his shirt.
“When someone goes to the trouble of shopping for you, the least you can do is show appreciation for the gift,” he said mildly. “The same way you wore that sweater with the purple dinosaur on the front that Uncle Alex bought you last Christmas.”
Grace’s sigh sounded far older than her years. “I didn’t want to tell him that I was too old for Barney.”
“Exactly. The same way I didn’t want to tell Meredith that our taste in clothing differs.” Which would be putting it mildly, Reece thought. He felt like some sort of rap music star in the black, collarless tuxedo shirt.
“I suppose she thinks it makes you look like a Hollywood stud,” Grace decided.
A stud? “Where did you hear that expression?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged and traced the outline of the dark brown diamonds on the black bedspread. “I guess I just heard it somewhere.”
“Obviously not on Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers.”
“Oh, Dad.” Curls bounced as his frighteningly precocious daughter shook her head. “You’re as bad as Uncle Alex. I haven’t watched them for years.”
As he suddenly wondered what his daughter was watching these days, Reece made a note to look into kidproofing his cable channels.
There were days, and this was one of them, that Reece still couldn’t believe how his life had changed in the past three years. Although he still missed Lena, he found himself talking out loud to her less and less. And despite Molly’s coaxing, he hadn’t returned to medicine. But thanks to Theo, he had a new career.
At first he’d been furious when he’d discovered that his aunt had taken all those short stories he’d written, depicting the various ways he could kill the man who’d destroyed his life, to the producer of her soap opera who’d been in the market for a prime-time program to pitch to the networks.
Before Reece knew what was happening, he’d been offered an obscene amount of money for the short dramas that had been therapy for his pain. And if that wasn’t weird enough, he was offered a job as head writer for the producer’s new pet project, an anthology series reminiscent of the old Twilight Zone.
“It’s in the genes,” Theo had proudly crowed at the time. “It only stands to reason that a nephew of mine would be one helluva talented writer.”
Eighteen months after the series had debuted, Reece still didn’t consider himself “one helluva writer.”
Apparently his peers did, however, since he’d been nominated for an Emmy for the episode in which a vengeful doctor killed the carjacker who’d murdered his wife. When the thug showed up in the ER suffering a bullet wound in the chest, the lidocaine cream the doctor rubbed into the man’s chest c
aused a fatal heart attack.
“I wish I could go with you tonight,” Grace coaxed.
“It’s a school night.”
“Lots of kids get to stay up late on school nights,” she complained.
“Not my kid.”
Her frustrated sigh ruffled her jet bangs. “If you win, you’re not going to tell me to go to bed on national television, like Johnny Newman’s mom and dad did last year, are you?”
“I’ll try to refrain from behaving like a parent.” He passed up the silver and turquoise studs, opting for plain black ones instead. There was a limit to what he was willing to do to keep Meredith Rivers happy. “Am I allowed to thank you for all the help you’ve given to my career?”
“Like staying out of your way when you’re writing?”
He laughed. “Exactly. It’s true, you know.” His expression sobered, his gaze softened. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you these past years, kiddo.”
“I don’t know what you would have done without me, either.” In contrast to his sudden seriousness, Grace’s grin was quick, quirky and all too familiar. Molly must have looked like this at six, Reece mused. On those rare occasions she might have had something to smile about. Before her brutal father turned a little girl’s already-rocky world upside down.
“I wish Aunt Molly was able to sit with me,” Grace said.
“I do, too. But she had to work.”
“No, she didn’t.”
He stopped in the act of putting on his dress shoes. “She told me she was working the night shift.”
Understandably unwilling to return to Mercy Samaritan after her sister’s death in the hospital, she’d taken a position as head of trauma nursing at Cedars-Sinai.
“I heard her tell Aunt Theo that she had a date. With some doctor she used to work with in Arizona. Dr. Sal something.”
“Salvatore?” Reece frowned, remembering the BIA doctor who’d shown up uninvited at the house after Lena’s accident. The one who’d obviously been in love with Molly. He hadn’t liked the guy then. And he doubted he’d feel any different today.
“That’s his name.” Grace nodded. “Joe Salvatore.”
“You must have misunderstood her.”
“No, I didn’t. They’re going out to dinner, then he’s taking her flying.”
“Flying?”
“In a plane. Dr. Salvatore has his own plane. He flew it all the way here from Arizona. Isn’t that neat?”
It wasn’t exactly on a par with piloting the space shuttle to Mars, Reece thought. “Sounds pretty neat to me,” he said instead.
Although he’d been disappointed to learn that Molly wouldn’t be watching the awards tonight with Theo, Alex and Grace, he’d realized she couldn’t take a night off to watch television. To discover she was going out on a damn date with some slick Italian doctor from her past irked. Whatever happened to loyalty?
“It’s funny thinking of Aunt Molly going out with boyfriends,” Grace said.
“She’s allowed.” When his tone sounded a bit too harsh, Reece softened it. “After all, she’s not a nun anymore.”
“I know. But I wish she’d marry you, instead.”
“What?”
“If you and Aunt Molly got married, she could live here with us. And she wouldn’t be going flying with Dr. Salvatore. And you wouldn’t have to wear Meredith’s ugly black shirt.”
There was, Reece allowed, some sort of skewed logic in that statement. “Your aunt Molly and I are just friends.”
“She loves you.”
“Where did you hear that?”
This was definitely turning out to be a night of revelations. At least, Reece thought, this conversation was succeeding in getting rid of the giant condors that had been flapping their wings inside his gut whenever he thought about the anxiety-filled evening ahead.
He didn’t care if he won an Emmy. It was an honor just to be nominated. He’d been telling himself—and everyone else who’d brought up the subject—that for weeks. Reece wondered when he’d become such a damn liar.
“Aunt Molly tells me all the time that she loves you. And me, too.”
Reece relaxed. “She meant she loves us because we’re her family. Like she loves Uncle Alex and Aunt Theo and Dan.”
Grace appeared to consider that. “I still think it would be neat if you got married,” she said stubbornly. Another Molly trait, Reece thought.
“Well, don’t hold your breath waiting for me to walk down the aisle, punkin.” He ruffled the glossy curls that surrounded his daughter’s head like an ebony halo. “Because I’ve already been married.”
“Eddie Bank’s father has been married five times,” she informed him. “And he’s engaged again. To that new lifeguard on Baywatch.”
Reece refrained from saying that in his opinion it was high time the forty-five-year-old director grew up and quit marrying women young enough to be his daughter.
“Well, Eddie’s father and I obviously have different ideas about marriage.”
Grace folded her arms across a scarlet T-shirt emblazoned with whales. After a school outing to San Diego’s Sea World, she’d turned into a committed environmentalist. “I don’t know which is worse,” she muttered. “Having five stepmothers like Eddie. Or no mom at all.”
“You do have it rough,” he commiserated. “I’d better call Theo and tell her to stop and pick up some cake and ice cream on the way to the house.”
“For your celebration party?”
“No. For your pity party.”
His chiding words had the desired effect. Grace giggled in good-natured surrender, and as he lifted her off the bed and into his arms for a hug, Reece thought for the umpteenth time, that his beautiful, intensely inquisitive and frustratingly stubborn daughter was, without a single doubt, the light of his life.
A shining light he’d almost extinguished with his selfish behavior after Lena’s death, when he’d left Grace to emotionally fend for herself. Hardly a day went by that Reece didn’t thank God, or the Fates, for Molly’s interference.
She’d slipped into their lives as easily as if she’d always been there, being protective of Grace without being smothering, and tender in a maternal way that didn’t intrude on his own right of parenthood. She radiated wholeness and an uncomplicated, all-embracing, warmhearted love.
She also spoke of her sister often, always with warmth and affection, and encouraged Grace to recall all those joyful times of shared pleasure that so easily get forgotten as children grow into adulthood.
When she’d first returned from Arizona, she’d had all the family members gather up things of Lena’s that had held special significance for them. Theo had brought the matron of honor bouquet Lena had carried at her wedding, Alex had contributed a plaster handprint she’d made for him for Father’s Day when she’d been in the fourth grade. Dan had surprised everyone by unearthing a letter she’d written from a camp the parish had sent foster children to, begging him to break her out before she perished from the inedible food.
Reece had contributed their wedding album and a snapshot of their honeymoon, while Molly had opted for the college diploma her sister had worked so hard to earn. The eyes of all the adults gathered in the room had grown moist when Grace handed over the tattered teddy bear clad in the frilly pink net tutu her mother had sewn for her beloved stuffed animal.
“Okay,” Molly had explained when the family had gathered together. “Here’s the deal. Everyone’s encouraged to look through these things as often as you want. The only rule is that we all have to be together whenever the memory box is opened.”
Which was exactly what they’d done. In the beginning it was mostly Alex and Theo who had called the family together, in an attempt to encourage Grace to do likewise. Which, eventually, she began to do. Often. Molly had called her own counsels, and finally, one rainy Sunday afternoon, Reece had admitted his need to look through the album.
For a long time the box had stayed on a counter in the kitchen, close at h
and. Then, as time went on, it was moved into the library. Finally, the last time Reece had seen it, it had been in the attic. And Grace seemed to have come to grips with her loss. As had he.
“What do I need an Emmy for?” Reece asked now as he twirled Grace around in much the same way he’d done when she was a toddler. Although she always complained she was too grown-up for such behavior, he noticed her giggles increased when he remembered to take the time to do it. “When I have you?”
“You can’t put me on the mantel,” she pointed out pragmatically. “I’m too big.”
“True.” And growing bigger by the day. Reece wondered, as he so often did, whether Lena was able to watch their daughter’s seemingly quicksilver metamorphosis into a young lady.
If you are watching, he thought, I hope you think I’m doing an okay job with our little girl.
It wasn’t easy raising a daughter without a mother, even with Molly’s assistance. But Reece had no intention of ever marrying again. Losing someone you loved was just too painful. It was much, much easier—especially in this town with his newly acquired fame—to play the field.
He heard the door open and Theo call out their names. After having to defend his shirt yet again, Reece was finally on his way.
“Don’t forget,” Grace called after him, “don’t say anything about my bedtime when you win your Emmy.”
“My lips are sealed,” he promised back over his shoulder.
As he walked out to his car, parked in the driveway, Reece looked up into the clear blue sky that would undoubtedly be filled with stars in a few hours.
He thought of Molly flying through the dark of night with that undoubtedly oversexed BIA doctor. It caused something that felt ridiculously like jealousy to stir inside him.
“This is the biggest night of my life,” he muttered as he twisted the key in the ignition of the new Jaguar he’d bought with the bonus the Emmy nomination had earned him. The engine sprang to life, humming impatiently. “The least she could do would be to stay home and offer me a little moral support.”
