Daniel's Desire

by Sherryl Woods

  “Try to change their minds,” she pleaded urgently. “It used to be they would listen to anything you said.”

  Ryan sighed. “That was a long time ago. For a lot of years, while we were apart, they blamed me for the separation almost as much as they blamed you and Dad.”

  She looked genuinely shocked by that. “How could they? You were a boy.”

  “It’s not a rational reaction,” Ryan said. “It’s the reaction of two scared little boys who were abandoned by their parents, then separated from their big brother. They were sure there had to be something I could have done to keep us together at least.”

  Daniel tried not to feel the anguish his brothers had felt all those years ago, but it ate at his gut. He’d seen it too often in other frightened children who were facing an uncertain future. He’d seen it in Kendra Morrow’s haunted eyes.

  His mother was right. He spent his life trying to find happy endings for kids like that. He wanted one now, even though it was years and years too late. He wanted it for his brothers, even for his parents. They needed this as much as Ryan, Sean, Michael and Patrick did. As much as he did. They all needed to find peace, so they could move on.

  “Ryan, they still look up to you. I saw it the first time we met on Patrick’s boat. You can get them back here again,” Daniel told him.

  Ryan looked from Daniel to his mother, then back again. “I’ll do the best I can,” he promised. “If I can convince them to stay over, I’ll call to set a time. If you don’t hear anything, it’s because they’re determined to go back to Boston.”

  “Thank you for being willing to try,” their mother said, her relief evident. “And, Ryan, I probably have no right to say this, and it might not even matter to you, but not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of all of you and prayed for you. You deserved better.”

  Ryan’s gaze never wavered. “Yes, we did.”

  And then he was gone, and Daniel was left to deal with his mother’s tears.

  Chapter Eight

  It was nearly midnight and the bar was empty as Molly wiped down the tables and put the chairs back into place, then gave the floor a more thorough scrubbing than usual. There was something comforting about the routine of it in the midst of the turmoil her life had become.

  Kendra had gone to bed two hours earlier, still disgruntled over their earlier argument. Despite Molly’s attempts to persuade the sulky adolescent, she’d continued to refuse to go out for pizza and had spent most of the evening in the kitchen with Retta, as uncommunicative with her as she had been with Molly.

  Usually by now Molly would have gone upstairs herself, but she was feeling restless. She couldn’t seem to stop wondering what had happened to Daniel. What sort of emergency had there been that had caused him to cancel an important first meeting with Kendra, especially with Joe’s deadline looming over them? And why hadn’t she at least heard from him by now? Surely the crisis couldn’t have lasted this long…unless someone was seriously ill.

  She made herself a glass of iced tea and sat at the bar, idly stirring in sugar, her thoughts a jumble. Maybe she should stop counting on Daniel to come up with a solution for Kendra and take matters into her own hands. There was still time before morning to bolt. They could be a few hours ahead of any search. Maybe that was all the edge they’d need.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  The sound of Daniel’s voice right behind her startled her so badly, she knocked her tea all over the just-mopped floor. She whirled around and scowled at him.

  “Look at what you made me do,” she snapped, going behind the bar to get a rag to mop up the mess and to put some distance between herself and Daniel.

  He gave her a knowing, unapologetic look. “I wouldn’t have startled you if you hadn’t been trying to formulate a sneaky plan to take Kendra and make a break for it.”

  “I was not,” she denied, though she could feel the heat of a blush climbing into her cheeks at the blatant lie.

  “Oh, please. I might have been teasing, but your guilty conscience was written all over your face the second you heard my voice,” Daniel said. “You’ve never been good at lying, Molly. Don’t start trying it now.”

  “You startled me,” she insisted, not giving up. “I thought I’d locked the door against unwelcome intruders.”

  Daniel grinned. “Well, you hadn’t, which meant you were still expecting me, whether you care to admit it or not.” His expression suddenly faltered. He looked bone-deep weary. “May I stay?”

  She regarded him with surprise. “You’re actually asking my permission?”

  He shrugged. “For a change. Consider it a peace offering.”

  She heard a rare note of uncertainty in his voice and saw the additional evidence of exhaustion and strain in his eyes. She put aside her damp cloth and gestured toward a stool. “Sit. What can I get you? You look as if you could use a drink.”

  “Decaf coffee if you have it.”

  Molly grinned at his idea of a pick-me-up. “It’ll just take a minute,” she said. “You’d probably sleep better if you had a beer.”

  He shook his head as he slid onto a stool at the bar. “I don’t drink, not when I’m feeling like this. I don’t want to risk it becoming a habit.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at him as she turned on the coffee maker and scooped in the decaf coffee grounds. “Is that it? Or are you really afraid of losing control, especially around me?”

  He frowned at her observation. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Because you’re the kind of guy who likes to weigh all the options, chart out a very precise course and then stick to it.” She patted his hand. “That’s okay. There are a lot of people like that in the world.”

  “But you’re not one of them,” he said.

  “Lord, I hope not. I like surprises.”

  His gaze caught hers, held. “Oh, really?” he said, his voice filled with a challenge.

  Before Molly realized his intention, he caught her chin in his hand, leaned across the bar and kissed her. It was a glancing kiss that barely touched her lips, but the shock of it sizzled straight through her. Memories tangled with the present, making her knees weak and her resistance weaker.

  “That kind of surprise?” he asked, his voice husky, the dare in it still there to taunt her.

  “For starters,” she said, reaching for him and settling her mouth on his again.

  She swept her tongue across the seam of his lips, heard the low moan deep in his throat, and then the kiss turned dark and dangerous and demanding. It was the kind of kiss she’d been craving since the moment they’d parted, all consuming and so hot it set her on fire. It had surprised her back then that Daniel Devaney could be the one to provide such a devastating kiss. Now it shocked her that he still could. She hadn’t wanted that. She hadn’t wanted the embers of her love for him to flare to life so readily.

  Or had she? Wasn’t this the anticipated ending of the dance they’d been doing for days now? Hadn’t she been testing him? Testing herself?

  Oh, what the hell, she thought. Enjoy the moment. She made herself stop thinking at all and gave herself completely to the wonder of having Daniel’s mouth on hers again, of having his breath mingling with hers. For this moment the kiss alone was enough, even without its promise of so much more. She didn’t have to have his hands roaming restlessly over her, didn’t need to feel the deliberate caresses that could send her rocketing into another dimension altogether. The kiss brought heat and passion and more memories than she could count.

  “Oh, my,” she whispered, when it finally ended.

  Daniel said nothing at all. He just sat there looking as if he’d been struck by a bolt of lightning. Molly grinned at him.

  “Knocked you speechless at long last, didn’t I?” she taunted happily, pouring his coffee and setting it in front of him as if nothing monumental had just occurred. “Told you, you had control issues.”

  He stared at her, his expression troubled. “Why did that happen?”

>   “Which part? Why did you kiss me? Or why did I kiss you back?”

  “Any of it. Molly, this complicates an already complicated situation.”

  “Tell me about it,” she agreed, though she was having a hard time mustering up the kind of regret he was obviously feeling.

  “It cannot happen again,” he said flatly.

  “Okay.”

  He frowned at that. “That’s all you’ve got to say? Just ‘Okay’?”

  She was beginning to lose patience with his attitude. “Did you want me to scream and holler and pout? It was a kiss, Daniel. I didn’t declare my undying love. Neither did you. I can live without another one. I’ve been doing just fine without any contact at all with you. If it weren’t for Kendra…” Her voice trailed off as she remembered the girl upstairs whose fate was in their hands. “Oh, my God, what about Kendra? Daniel, what are we going to do about her situation? That’s why you’re here. This other is just an untimely distraction.”

  He gave her a wry look. “I thought I was here about Kendra when I walked through the door. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe I could have settled the Kendra situation that very first night, if I’d been thinking straight. Instead, I let you play games for days, because it allowed me to keep coming back.”

  She scowled at the implication that he had unwittingly come for the kiss, that all of his visits had been about her. “Kendra is the only thing that matters. She has to be. Now, concentrate. Were you able to postpone Joe’s visit in the morning?”

  He shook his head. “He’ll be here at nine. He refuses to postpone it even an hour.”

  Molly felt panic clawing at her. “We have to do something. He can’t come in here and take her.”

  “He can,” Daniel said quietly. “And there won’t be a thing I can do to prevent it.”

  “But that’s wrong. She’s scared of going home. There’s a reason for it. Doesn’t that matter at all?”

  “It might, if I knew the reason,” he told her.

  Molly considered telling him as much as Kendra had told her, but she didn’t feel right betraying the girl’s confidence, even for the best reason in the world.

  “Let me go upstairs and wake her. Maybe she’ll tell you now,” she suggested.

  But even as she spoke, she heard a rustle on the stairs, then caught a quick movement out of the corner of her eye. The front door of Jess’s opened and slammed shut before she could even make sense of what she’d heard and seen.

  “Kendra,” she said, racing for the door, Daniel on her heels. “She must have heard us talking.”

  Outside, she saw no sign of the girl. Kendra had disappeared into the darkness of the waterfront. She was, no doubt, hiding in the shadows, remaining perfectly still until Molly and Daniel gave up.

  “Kendra!” Molly called out. “Come back, sweetie. Talk to us. It will be okay. I promise.”

  “Dammit,” Daniel muttered. “If we lose track of her now, who knows where she’ll wind up? Where would she go, Molly?”

  “To Retta’s, maybe. She’s been over there every day, helping Leslie Sue look after the kids she baby-sits.”

  “You call Retta. I’ll keep looking out here,” he said. “She’s quick as a cat, but she can’t have gotten far. She doesn’t know her way around the waterfront like I do.”

  “Be careful, Daniel. She’s already scared to death.”

  “Molly, I’m not an ogre,” he retorted impatiently. “I know how to deal with a frightened runaway.”

  “Whatever,” she said, going back inside to call Retta.

  Unfortunately, the cook hadn’t seen any sign of Kendra. It would only take a few minutes for Kendra to have reached her house, which meant she’d more than likely just run away again, panicked by what she’d heard Molly and Daniel discussing. The thought of her being out in the middle of the night, all alone, terrified Molly. Even in a town as safe as Widow’s Cove, bad things could happen to an innocent young girl at that hour.

  “Call me if she turns up,” Molly told Retta.

  “Of course I will, but that child won’t go anywhere. Something tells me she’s close by. She trusts you.”

  “She did until tonight,” Molly said. “I think she heard me and Daniel talking about Joe taking her back to her parents in the morning.”

  “Oh, dear. There’s no way around that?”

  “Not that we’ve found yet,” Molly admitted. “We were hoping she could give us one, but she obviously overheard just enough of what we were saying to panic.”

  “She’ll come back,” Retta said confidently.

  “I hope you’re right,” Molly said, not sharing Retta’s confidence.

  But when she’d hung up and turned around, there was Kendra in the doorway, Daniel right behind her. She ran to Molly and threw herself at her.

  “I didn’t know where to go,” she said, her voice catching on a sob. “It’s so dark out there. What’s wrong with this town? Why aren’t there more streetlights?”

  Molly hid a grin at the complaint. Leave it to Kendra to blame the lack of streetlights for her decision to come back to Jess’s. “You did the right thing by not running away again,” Molly said, holding her tightly.

  “But I heard what he said,” she said, scowling at Daniel. “I have to go home.”

  “Didn’t you also hear him say that he might be able to change that if you can give him a good reason?” She urged Kendra toward a booth. “Sit down. I’m making you some hot chocolate and I’m getting more coffee for Daniel and more tea for me. We’re going to talk this out.”

  “I’ll come into the kitchen with you,” Kendra said, staring at Daniel with evident distrust.

  “Okay, fine,” replied Molly, leading the way.

  As she prepared Kendra’s hot chocolate in the microwave and poured the other drinks, she regarded the girl warily. “Sweetie, you have to trust somebody.”

  “I do,” Kendra said. “I trust you. Not him.”

  “But he’s the one who can provide a way out for you. Open up to him, please. Tell him what’s been going on at home.”

  Kendra still didn’t look convinced, but she took the hot chocolate Molly offered and followed her back into the bar, her feet dragging. Daniel was waiting for them in one of the booths, his legs stretched out, signs of exhaustion still plain on his face. Even so, he straightened when he saw them and smiled at Kendra. Under other circumstances, that smile could win over the wariest person, but Kendra’s defenses were solidly in place. She stuck to Molly’s side.

  “Could you try not thinking of me as the bad guy?” he asked. “I want to help you.”

  “You want to send me home,” Kendra said flatly, not giving an inch.

  “That’s usually where a girl your age belongs,” he told her, “unless you can persuade me that there’s some reason why you shouldn’t be there. Can you?”

  Kendra looked at Molly, clearly waiting for her encouraging nod. When she had it, she said, “I just don’t see the point of going back there, when they’re only going to send me away.”

  Just as Molly had anticipated, there was an immediate flash of sympathy in Daniel’s eyes, a quick rise of temper. “Why do you think they’re going to send you away?”

  “Because they made all the plans,” she said defiantly. “It’s a done deal. I don’t have any say in it.” She glowered at him. “And I won’t go back there, no matter what you say or what that cop says.”

  She bolted out of the booth and ran, but at least this time she headed for the stairs and ran up to Molly’s apartment, not out into the streets.

  Daniel turned to Molly. “What do you know about this?”

  “Nothing more than what she just told you. I can’t figure out where they’d be sending her that could possibly be so much worse than being on her own in a strange place.”

  “Neither can I. And it doesn’t make a lick of sense. They didn’t say a word to Joe about sending her away, or he would have mentioned it.”

  He pulled out his cell phone and punched in a
number, clearly oblivious to the lateness of the hour. “Joe, it’s Daniel. What do you know about the Morrows’ plan to send Kendra away from home?”

  Molly couldn’t hear Joe’s response, but she gathered from Daniel’s frown that he wasn’t satisfied by what Joe was saying.

  “Ask them,” he said tightly. “Then get back to me. In the meantime, the girl’s not going anywhere. I’ll go into court first thing in the morning, if that’s what it takes to keep you from taking her. Or we can keep this unofficial till I hear from you. Your call.” He nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll wait to hear from you.”

  Molly felt her heart swell at the determination in his voice. When he’d hung up, she smiled at him. “I told her you’d never let her be sent away.”

  “Since you knew how that would get to me, why didn’t you tell me yourself? It could have saved us all a lot of time.”

  “I’d promised I wouldn’t betray her confidence,” Molly said. “She needed to believe she could trust me.”

  “Did you tell her why knowing that would make a difference to me?”

  “No. I just asked her to trust me, and you.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve got to tell you, none of this makes a damned bit of sense to me. The Morrows are good parents. Joe wouldn’t make a mistake about something like that.”

  She leveled a look into his eyes. “Wouldn’t you have said your parents were good people, too?”

  He paled at that. “Below the belt, Molly.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I was just trying to point out that even the best people aren’t without flaws. You can’t know what’s behind a seemingly incomprehensible decision until they give you all the facts.”

  He sighed then. “You certainly got that right.”

  She studied his troubled expression, then asked, “What was the emergency at home tonight?”

  “My brothers decided to pay a visit to my mother, en masse and unannounced.”

  “Oh, my. No wonder she was frantic,” she said, feeling a surprising sympathy for all of them. She’d always liked Daniel’s mother, had always felt at home in her kitchen and anticipated a time when they’d be sharing holidays and other family occasions. Even after she’d learned the truth about the past, she hadn’t been able to reconcile that callous act with the warm and gentle woman she knew or even with the far more blustery Connor Devaney. She would have said he was a good man, who loved nothing more than his family.