“Sure thing.” The voice belonging to the face hidden behind the flowers dropped from near falsetto to baritone. “Then after that, you and I are going to sit down and have a little talk.”
It was the second time that night that a man had wanted to engage her in conversation against her wishes. The pity of it was, this time it wasn’t Alec Livingston who’d disguised his voice to con his way inside the suite, and they weren’t Alec Livingston’s shifty little prune-pit eyes regarding her unsympathetically as she realized how easily she’d been duped into opening her door.
They were Dan’s, and the uncompromising light in their clear blue depths left her quivering with agitation.
“Shouldn’t you be somewhere else?” she said, with as much poise as she could muster, given that he was stalking her across the foyer with the unwinking concentration of a starving cat pursuing a mouse. “Such as dancing attendance on that rather pretty woman sitting next to you at dinner and whom I assume is your fiancée, given the size of the diamond she was wearing and the fact that she couldn’t keep her hands off you?”
“I made my excuses,” he said, his gaze never wavering. “She understood.”
“Did she really? Would she also understand if she knew you’d abandoned her to force your way in here and spend time with a woman you used to sleep with?”
“I didn’t force my way in. You opened the door of your own free will and invited me in.”
“You deceived me.”
“The way you’re trying to deceive me, Molly?”
A more loaded question was hard to imagine. Though it probably wasn’t medically feasible, she felt as lightheaded as if all the blood in her body rushed to her feet. Her heart pumped frantically, trying to restore order out of internal mayhem. Her palms grew clammy with sweat. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. “Tried to deceive you how?”
“By lying to me about Ariel.”
“Lying?” she repeated, desperately playing for time. Above all else, the tiny voice of self-preservation cautioned, do not let him trick you into making rash disclosures! Swallowing, she wet her lips with the tip of her tongue and said hoarsely, “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
He had her backed into the corner by then, and loomed over her with one arm braced against the wall, barring any attempt she might make at escape. “Then let me spell it straight out for you, Molly,” he said. “I have reason to believe I’m that child’s father.”
Terrified, she stared at him, willing herself to wake up and find this was all a bad dream, that he hadn’t confronted her with the one truth she was most anxious to hide.
On the TV, the organ music rose to a crescendo. A thin scream echoed. Thunder crashed.
“Well,” Dan asked implacably. “Am I right?”
“No!” Mutinously she glared at him, clinging to the one thing keeping her afloat: he could suspect all he liked, but he knew nothing for sure. “Whatever made you think she is?”
“You did. With every word and gesture. You never used to be afraid of me, Molly. Why are you now, when I’ve done everything in my power to set your mother back on the road to recovery? What is it about me that makes you want to take Ariel and run as far and as fast as you can, just to keep me away from her?”
“You’ve had too much to drink! You’re imagining things.”
Grasping her arm, he pressed his fingertips firmly against her inner wrist. “I’m not imagining the way your pulse is racing out of control, or the sweat beading your upper lip, or the outright terror glazing your eyes. I know a panic attack when I see one.”
“I’m not interested in playing doctor with you, Dan. I outgrew that when I was seventeen.”
He let go of her and laughed softly. “Come on, Molly, ’fess up! Or would you prefer I get a court-ordered DNA test to prove Ariel’s mine?”
“Don’t you dare! I will not have my child dragged through the courts to satisfy some harebrained notion that you’ve concocted for God only knows what reason!”
“Very noble of you, I’m sure. Pity you’re not as high-minded when it comes to depriving her of knowing her father.”
“She doesn’t need a father!”
“Oh really? Has she ever said that? Or are you just imposing your views on her because of the screwed-up relationship you had with your own father?”
Beleaguered on every front, she cried, “Why are you doing this? Isn’t it enough that you’ve always got everything else you ever wanted, without having to have my child, as well? If being a father’s that important to you, go back to your fiancée and make your own babies, and leave mine alone!”
“Oh, Molly!” With a tenderness which undid her more thoroughly than if he’d continued to hound her, he pulled her into his arms and stroked his hand soothingly up the length of her spine. “I didn’t come here to frighten you, my lovely, and I’m not trying to coerce you. I just want the truth.”
My lovely, he said, and it destroyed her.
He used to call her that when she lay naked beneath him on a deserted stretch of beach, or in a field, with only the moon to watch what they were doing. Drowsy with passion, his eyes would roam over her. And then his hands, and then his mouth, until she was quivering all over, beside herself and begging for him to come into her.
It wasn’t fair that with two words called up from a past she longed to forget, he could undo her again so completely!
“Well, you are coercing me!” she wept, her defiant bravado dissolving into tears of pure frustration. “And what I don’t understand is, why? Why do you even care about the truth after all these years?”
“Because it’s never too late to fix past mistakes,” he said quietly. “And because it matters. She matters. If I’d known at the time that you were pregnant, I’d have taken care of both of you then.”
“We don’t need you to take care of us, not then and not now. We manage very well by ourselves. I’m a good mother, a good provider.”
“And I’m her father.” He nudged under her chin with his knuckles, forcing her to meet his gaze. “Aren’t I, Molly?”
This was how it must feel to be lost in a maze: to run frantically in one direction after another, seeking a way out, and instead keep coming up against a solid brick wall.
Suddenly defeated, she wilted against him and closed her eyes. “Please understand, I can’t do this anymore tonight,” she said, barely recognizing that pale, uncertain voice as her own. “Please…please go away!”
“Okay,” he said, releasing her. “I’ll go.”
“You will?” For a second, perhaps two, a wave of delirious relief swept over her. She’d outmaneuvered him. She’d won!
“For now,” he said. “But I’ll be back.”
“Why? What’s the point?” She was pleading, unraveling before his eyes all over again, and damning herself in the process.
“Why do you think, Molly?” he said grimly. “To get to the truth. So I’ll see you tomorrow and—”
“I’m busy tomorrow.”
“So am I. We’ll make it the evening, after I’m done at the clinic.”
“I have plans for the evening.”
“You’re a rotten liar, my lovely, but just in case you are telling the truth, unmake those plans. I’ll pick you up at six. And if you’re not here, I’ll wait until you get back—all night, if I have to. I’m sure you don’t want that, because who knows what I might say to Ariel or your mother, in your absence?”
“That’s blackmail,” she quavered.
He considered for a moment, then shrugged. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“So?”
“So I’ll see you tomorrow at six. Don’t keep me waiting.” He dropped a kiss on her cheek, strolled unhurriedly to the door and let himself out of the suite.
To avoid any sort of confrontation in front of Ariel or her mother, Molly was waiting at the main entrance to the Inn when he drove up the next night, and hopped into his car before he had time to get out and hold open her door.
H
e took her to a small town about forty miles down the coast, to an out-of-the-way restaurant perched on sturdy wooden piles over the water. “We’re less likely to be disturbed here,” he said, pulling into the graveled parking area.
The clear weather had held, leaving the sky a mass of stars reflected like polka dots on the quiet surface of the bay. Farther out, fishing boats rocked gently at anchor. Candleglow glimmered behind the square-paned windows of the low shingled building. The scent of wood smoke undercut the sharp, salty air.
If she and Dan had been out on a real date rather than what promised to be an examination of discovery, she’d have found the rustic setting charming and romantic. As it was, she said, “Less likely to be seen by anyone who matters is what you really mean.”
He pressed his lips together and flung her a sideways glance. “Let’s try to keep it civilized, okay? If I didn’t want to be seen with you, I wouldn’t risk bringing you here. It’s a popular place with a lot of people from Harmony Cove who want a change of scene.”
No one would have thought so, judging from the few patrons inside. “It’s usually quiet on Mondays,” their server told them, showing them to a table at the back, overlooking the water. “Do you care to begin with a cocktail before dinner?”
“No,” Dan said, before Molly could open her mouth. “Just wine with the meal. We’ll have a salad, the lobster thermidor, and a bottle of Louis Latour Chardonnay.”
He’d barely finished ordering before a busboy plunked a loaf of oven-fresh bread and a dish of butter curls on the table. Seconds later the server was back, bottle of wine and ice bucket at the ready. Fuming, Molly waited until the ritual of tasting and pouring was over and the man had disappeared to take care of their dinner order, then leaned forward across the table.
“I’d have liked a cocktail,” she informed Dan, less because she cared one way or another than because she resented his high-handed attitude. “And furthermore, I can speak for myself, so save your leave-everything-tome-little-woman act for the future Mrs. Cordell. She might appreciate it. I don’t.”
“Too bad,” he said, helping himself to a chunk of bread. “I’m not having you wind up hammered until we’ve sorted things out. If you’re still of the same mind after we’ve come to some sort of acceptable arrangement, you can order whatever you want and get falling-down drunk for all I care.”
“I’m talking about a glass of sherry, not tippling myself into oblivion! In any case, who appointed you my watch-dog? I’ve managed to live a clean and decent life this far, and it’ll take a lot more than anything you can throw at me to change that. And what do you mean by ‘acceptable arrangement’? My present arrangement is more than satisfactory, thank you very much!”
Idly he swirled the wine in his glass and took a sip. “Not too many years ago,” he said, his tone deceptively casual, “proving paternity was something of a hit-and-miss affair. Although it was possible to determine conclusively that a man was not the father of a child, the reverse did not apply. The closest lab tests came was to indicate the possibility that he could be the father—along with any number of other men who happened to have the same blood type.”
“And I should care because?”
He lifted his head and fixed her in a gaze which was anything but casual. “All that changed with DNA testing, Molly. Now, we don’t even need a blood sample. A sliver of fingernail will do, or a minute flake of skin. Or a hair. Any one of these is enough to pinpoint without question the identity of, say, a murderer, a body decayed beyond recognition…or the man who fathered a child.”
With shocking clarity, a picture formed in Molly’s mind, of last night, and Dan playing with Ariel’s braids. Of him lifting a stray hair from her clothing—innocently, she was sure, but it served to impress on her how simple it would be for him to collect evidence, should she force his hand.
He was watching her closely, dissecting her expression. Noticing the flush warming her face, the stifled gasp she couldn’t quite suppress. “Shall I go on, Molly,” he asked evenly, “or are you ready to stop yanking my chain and be straight with me?”
She stared at her hands, clenched to white-knuckle tension in her lap. How to answer? What to say? There was nothing; no way out—and he knew it.
Quietly he said, “I’m not going to take her away from you, Molly, it that’s what’s eating at you. That’s not what this is all about.”
“Then what is it about?”
“Our dealing with the fact that we share a child. Don’t ask me not to care.”
“Care if you must!” she whispered past the lump in her throat. “Care enough to let us alone! And if you won’t do that, think of how it’s going to affect your life once word gets out. That woman you’re engaged to—”
“Summer,” he said. “Her name’s Summer.”
“All right, Summer. She seems like a nice person, a kind, sensitive person. What’s it going to do to her if you insist on broadcasting that you’re Ariel’s father? Or are you planning to keep it a secret and be one of those anonymous benefactors who set up trust funds for other people’s children for no apparent reason?”
“If that was all I wanted, I wouldn’t be here trying to chisel the truth out of you. I wouldn’t need to risk being seen having dinner with a beautiful woman and giving rise to gossip neither of us wants or needs. I could, as you rightly suggest, simply set up an account and make discreet deposits from time to time without anyone being the wiser.”
“Then what are you proposing?”
“Damned if I’ve got the answer to that, yet,” he said, as the server returned with their salads. “Begin by telling Summer, I suppose. She has a right to know.”
“And if she ends the engagement because of it?”
“I expect she will.”
“You don’t sound exactly broken-up by the prospect.”
“Summer is a product of her upbringing, and the only child of ultraconservative parents. I’m not fool enough to think this is something she’ll easily take in stride. Marrying a man with an illegitimate daughter waiting in the wings is too far beyond the socially acceptable boundaries that make up her life for her to accept it with equanimity.”
“Even if that child lives at the other end of the country and isn’t really a factor in your life?”
She was grasping at straws, and he knew it. Pushing aside his salad bowl, he subjected her to another disturbingly direct gaze. “I do not plan to be an absentee parent, if that’s what you’re hoping, Molly.”
“Are you saying you’re prepared to move to Seattle?”
“No. I’m hoping you’ll decide to stay, if not in Harmony Cove, then in some other town close by.”
“Rearrange my life to suits yours, you mean?” She didn’t bother to mask her scorn. “And to think I was half-convinced you’d changed! But you haven’t, at all. You’re as self-involved now as you were the last time I got myself mixed up with you.”
“I intend to get to know my daughter, and I intend for her not only to get to know me, but also to understand that I’m not just a family friend stepping in as a surrogate parent, I’m the real thing.”
Churning with anger fortified by a healthy dose of fear, Molly flung down her napkin and shoved her chair away from the table. “Not that I expect for a minute that you give a damn, but I don’t intend to sit here meekly while you spell out your demands without any regard for what I want.”
“Running out on me isn’t going to change anything, Molly,” he said calmly.
“It worked pretty well for you when you decided you’d had enough of me, eleven years ago!”
“You were only seventeen, for Pete’s sake! I had no choice.”
“You have the audacity to tell me you were trying to spare my feelings?” She laughed bitterly. “Is that what you were doing when you had sex with me, as well? How noble of you!”
To her surprise, she’d found a crack in his impressive facade of respectability. “Don’t call it that,” he muttered, averting his eyes.
“Why not, Doctor? It’s a perfectly acceptable description. Or would you prefer something more clinically correct, such as copulate?”
“Stop it! You know damn well there was more to it than that. There was…”
“Yes? Come on, Dan! You’re the man with an answer for everything, so don’t let me down now. I’m waiting with bated breath to hear how you’re going to rationalize this one!”
“Sit down and stop making a spectacle of yourself,” he ordered, his blue eyes shooting sparks.
The new and improved Molly Paget would never have created a scene in the first place. But he’d revived too many old feelings of inferiority; of being dismissed because neither her feelings nor her opinions had any worth.
“How’s this for spectacle?” she hissed, seizing his wineglass and upending it on the sizzling plate of lobster thermidor the waiter had just set before him. Then, for good measure—and in the interests of not letting it go to waste, since she certainly wasn’t going to drink it—she threw her own wine on top. Most of it, she noticed with grim satisfaction, splashed all over Dan’s impeccably correct silk tie.
Beyond caring that she’d put on a floor show which would keep the whole place entertained for the rest of the night, she then swept up her purse and coat, and stormed out.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE got as far as the parking lot before he recovered his wits enough to throw a fistful of bills on the table, mutter an apology to the waiter, and give chase.
Closing in on her, he snagged her by the collar of her coat and swung her around to face him just as she reached his car. “You’re insane, you know that, don’t you?” he panted.
“Don’t you manhandle me,” she shot back, lashing out at him like some wild gypsy, with her gold hoop earrings swinging furiously below her night-black hair.
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