The Doctor's Secret Child

by Catherine Spencer

  “Stop talking to me as if I’ve had a lobotomy,” she snapped.

  “So you did hear me, the first time around?”

  “I heard you say you’d have had to give up your work at the clinic if you’d stayed with Summer, because marrying a society princess exacts a price. What I hear you saying now is that with me for a wife, you’re marrying down, so staying at the clinic’s no longer a problem.”

  She’d tested his patience too far. His eyes turned flinty, his expression cold as stone. “Your incessant whining’s growing tiresome, Molly. Do yourself and everyone around you a favor and dump the excess baggage you’ve been carting around for the last twenty years or more. And while you’re at it, drop the attitude, as well. It’s old, it’s tired, and it’s toxic.”

  “Move to Seattle.”

  “No. My work here is important to me.”

  “And mine isn’t, to me?”

  “I’m not qualified to make that judgment. I don’t know what your work involves.”

  “But you feel qualified to judge me! You’ve determined I can’t do a good enough job bringing up my daughter by myself, even though you seem quite delighted with the results I’ve achieved so far. You’ve decided to do me the enormous favor of marrying me. But you don’t have the first idea of what I’m all about. What’s more, you really don’t give a damn. All you care about is coming across as the big hero charging to the rescue of the fallen woman and her bastard child.”

  He straightened his shoulders. Inhaled so deeply his aristocratic nostrils flared. “The child I will protect with every means at my disposal, including flattening the next person who calls her a bastard. I’ll see to it that she grows up secure in her father’s love and wants for nothing. But tell me why I should bother with a woman who so thoroughly enjoys denigrating herself that she won’t even consider the benefits of marrying her child’s father. What the devil can I bring to her life that would make up for her having to abandon her role of woman wronged?”

  “Certainly not a marriage doomed to fail before it begins,” she spat, pride refusing to let her admit there was more than a grain of truth in his assessment.

  “You’re right.” With bone-deep weariness, he reached for the jacket he’d slung over the back of a chair and shoved his arms into the sleeves. “It could have worked, but only if we were both willing to try. And you, clearly, are not.”

  He was halfway to the front door, ready to walk out of her life a second time, before she found the courage to follow him and utter the one word she’d been afraid to mention before. “What would be the point, when we don’t love each other?”

  “I’m past the age where I think love is a cure-all for everything, Molly,” he said, pausing with one hand on the door knob. “If it were, I’d be out of work. But other things can cement a relationship between an adult man and woman.”

  “Like what? Rolling around in bed in a cheap motel room?”

  “No,” he said. “Like working together for the betterment of someone else. Like learning to respect and value one another for something other than sex.”

  She turned her face aside, not wanting him to see how devastated she was by his words. Were the two of them so out of sync that he didn’t realize all he had to say was that he wanted her—her!—and she’d fall into his arms without a moment’s hesitation? Had the fire and passion which had seared her soul the other night, and branded his name forever on her heart, been something only she had known?

  “If that were all it takes, then you’re right. We might have stood a chance,” she said stonily. “But you don’t respect me, and that’s the whole problem.”

  “I respect you enough to offer you marriage.”

  “No. You’re prepared to do the right thing, and that’s not quite the same.”

  “Perhaps. But I’m burning a lot of bridges in the process, and that ought to count for something. I’ve ended my engagement. When the time’s right, I plan to tell my parents about Ariel because I refuse to keep her hidden like some dirty little secret. And I’m prepared to stand in front of a minister or a marriage commissioner with you, and to hell with what anyone has to say about it.”

  “And you’d like to do it very soon, right?”

  “The sooner, the better. Tomorrow, if it can be arranged.”

  “I thought as much.” Misery gaining the upper hand, she started to cry because although he was saying all the right things, he was doing so for all the wrong reasons. “Once I’m your wife, no one will dare say a word about your choice, because the Cordells are above reproach of any kind. But you’re so hidebound by public opinion you’d never dare flout convention and be seen in public with me without a wedding ring on my finger to give me respectability.”

  “You think you know me so well?” he said grimly, unmoved by her tears. “Fine, let’s make a deal. I’ll take you out on Saturday night, and you’ll wear something eye-catching, to make sure we don’t go unnoticed. If, when the evening’s over, you still think I’m just ‘doing the right thing,’ I’ll back off. On everything. Including letting Ariel know I’m her father.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then we’ll renegotiate. In good faith this time.”

  She smeared her fingers over her face and dug in her pocket for a tissue to wipe her nose. “Is that a promise I can count on?”

  “You have my word on it.”

  She was crazy to believe him. Crazier still to let her heart leap with hope. But she did both anyway, standing where he left her at the front door for long minutes after he drove away, and dreaming impossible dreams based on improbable what-if’s.

  What if she could make him fall in love with her? What if they got married and she made him so happy that he wanted to have another baby with her? What if she left Elaine to manage the Seattle shop and opened another in Harmony Cove? Flaunted her success, so that people could see she hadn’t married him for his money? Proved herself to be better than they all expected?

  And what if he takes you to some hole-in-the-wall dive on Saturday, where the lights are so dim that he could be treating the bearded lady from the circus to dinner, and no one would know the difference? her bruised ego inquired. Get a grip on reality, girl!

  When he phoned to tell her he’d pick her up at eight, she said she’d meet him in the lobby of the Inn. And he knew why. She didn’t want him around Ariel, trying to weasel his way into the kid’s affections. So he made an end run by showing up a good twenty minutes early and bribing his way past the front desk, armed with flowers for Hilda and a couple of books for his daughter.

  He’d have liked his first gift to her to be something more memorable; something she’d have for the rest of her life, like a gold bracelet, or a locket. But he knew he had to tread carefully. She was ten, not two, and smart as a whip. When she learned he was her father, she’d have questions. He couldn’t afford to give the impression he was trying to bribe her to accept him.

  “I didn’t know Mommy was going out with you!” she said, her face lighting up when she opened the door and found him standing in the hallway outside the suite. “She just said she had to go to an important meeting.”

  His heart ached at the sight of her, all long, skinny legs, flying braids, and big shining eyes. He wished he could swing her around and make her squeal by blowing kisses against her neck before she grew too old for that kind of father-daughter thing. “She does,” he said. “A very important meeting with me.”

  “Well, she’s not ready yet. She bought a new dress and thought it was a bit too low in front, so she’s sewing it up. But Grandma’s in the sitting room, if you want to come in.”

  “I’d like that. It’ll give us a chance to visit.”

  He was parked in the wing chair opposite Hilda’s, listening to Ariel read to him from one of her new books, when Molly finally appeared. “How did you get in here?” she demanded, stopping dead at the sight of him.

  “The usual way. Through the door,” he said, aiming for a little levity, which was n
o mean feat, given that he just about choked at the sight of her.

  He’d always found her lovely, but tonight he saw that she’d learned to enhance her natural beauty by perfecting the art of elegance to go with it. She wore black, from the narrow dress which draped in folds of shimmery chiffon from shoulder to midcalf, to her sheer silk stockings and heeled pumps. Her hair was longer these days, curving almost to her jaw, so he couldn’t tell if she was wearing earrings. Her only jewelry appeared to be a plain silver band at her wrist and a diamanté buckle cinching the dress just below her breasts.

  No one seeing her for the first time would have guessed she’d grown up on Wharf Street, or tried to earn a little extra cash by taking a summer job slinging hamburgers at The Ivy Tree. The woman confronting him with such suspicion now was top-drawer all the way.

  “I did not expect to find you making yourself at home in here,” she said.

  “He wanted to give me my present,” Ariel explained, dancing over to show her. “Look, Mommy, this one’s a book about a girl with the same name as mine, and this one’s got puzzles and stuff in it.”

  “And he brought me flowers,” Hilda chimed in.

  Molly’s glance slid past the books, and the bowl of tulips on the coffee table, and came to rest witheringly on him. “So I see. Well, if you’re quite finished distributing largesse, Doctor Cordell, shall we go?”

  She dropped a kiss on her mother’s head, and bent to wrap Ariel in a hug, then stalked to the door, rejecting with an abrupt tilt of her shoulder his attempt to help her put on her coat.

  “Just what the devil do you think you’re up to?” she snapped, the minute they were out of earshot.

  “Taking you out for a night on the town, my lovely,” he said. “Just as we planned.”

  “Don’t play Mr. Innocent with me, Dan Cordell! We arranged to meet in the lobby, and you know it.”

  “I happened to be early and didn’t see the harm in coming to the suite.”

  “And I suppose you just happened to come bearing gifts for my daughter and mother, as well!”

  “No,” he said candidly, steering her outside to his car. “That part was planned. And before you get your knickers in a knot, let me point out that I gave Ariel a couple of books, not a copy of her birth certificate with my name written in the space where her father’s name should be. And why you’d begrudge your mother a simple flower arrangement when it’s likely the first she’s ever received anything with a florist’s bow attached, is beyond me.”

  She was caught between wind and water on that one. All set to fire back a reply calculated to put him in his place once and for all, she compressed her lips and made do with a toss of her head which sent her hair fluttering around her face like glossy bird’s wings.

  Taking advantage of the cease-fire, he put the car in gear and drove away from the Inn. Soon, they’d cleared the town limits and were speeding north along a road cut through a sprawling birch forest.

  Finally, her voice rife with another load of suspicion, she said, “Where are you taking me?”

  “To Le Caveau, of course. If a guy wants to be seen, where else does he take his beautiful date on a Saturday night?”

  He’d caught her by surprise again, except that this time her mouth fell open instead of snapping closed. Le Caveau was not just any run-of-the-mill restaurant, and she knew it.

  Situated on the banks of a slow-flowing river some twenty-five miles outside Harmony Cove, and built along the lines of a French château, with thick plaster walls, vaulted ceilings and planked oak floors, it was famous both for its fine wine cellar and outstanding menu.

  He was pretty sure it was Molly’s first visit, but if she was overwhelmed by the massive grandeur of the place, she didn’t let it show. When they arrived, she swayed ahead of him into the dining room as though to the manner born, inclined her head graciously as the maître d’hôtel showed them to a table on the edge of the dance floor, and looked around with utter composure while Dan examined the wine list.

  “Champagne all right with you, Molly?”

  “Lovely, thank you,” she said, permitting herself a small, self-possessed smile.

  “Any particular label you prefer?”

  “I’m rather fond of Bollinger.”

  “Vieilles Vignes ’92?”

  He was testing her, certain she’d pulled the name out of a hat without knowing the first thing about it, but she floored him by coming right back with, “No need to go overboard, Dan. A ’92 Grande Année will do just as well.”

  That pretty much set the tone for the entire meal. She didn’t need the waiter to translate the all-French menu. She knew exactly what Fondue de Chicons à la Bière was all about, which was more than he did, and tackled the quail and truffles following it with seasoned nonchalance.

  Covertly he studied her as the meal progressed, mesmerized by her grace. Wanting to touch her, to kiss her. But there was more to her than innate sex appeal. You don’t have the first idea of what I’m all about, she’d said, and she was right.

  “Tell me about your business,” he said, when the polite small talk leading nowhere finally withered and died.

  “I own a shop which sells quilted things—bedcovers, baby supplies, decorative items, that sort of thing.”

  “And you’re successful?”

  “I am now,” she said. “But it was hard to get started. I worked out of my apartment to begin with.”

  “Why quilts?”

  “Because it was the only thing I knew how to do which would let me stay at home with my baby.” She looked at him across the table, her big, wide eyes reflecting the candle flame in the middle of their table. “I had no other skills. I never finished high school. But I learned to quilt at my mother’s knee. Every woman on Wharf Street could turn her hand to it. It was how they passed the long winter evenings. As things turned out, it stood me in very good stead.”

  “It’s a shame about high school, though. As I recall, you hoped to go to university.”

  “Being a single mother with limited resources tends to put an end to those kinds of plans.”

  “If I’d known, Molly, I could have helped.”

  “I didn’t want you to know,” she said. “In fact, I made sure you wouldn’t by moving to the other end of the country where, by a stroke of luck, I found a guardian angel.”

  “The guy you married, you mean?”

  “I never married, Dan,” she scoffed, “and you know it. That was just a story my mother dreamed up in case anyone from Harmony Cove found out I’d had a baby.”

  “So who was this guardian angel?”

  “The head of personnel at the department store where I applied for work when I first got to Seattle.”

  “A man?” He had no business being jealous, but it was eating holes in his gut, worse than acid indigestion. He could see it all: beautiful young girl, pregnant and alone in the big city; suave, smarmy employer pretending to be her friend and crawling all over her the first chance he got.

  “No. His mother.”

  “Oh.” The heartburn subsided briefly, only to flare up more potent than ever as another snippet of information nagged at his memory. “But he’s the one who was there for you when Ariel was born?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was he in love with you?”

  “He loved me. There’s a difference.”

  “Did he want to marry you?”

  “No. He was gay.”

  “Was?”

  “He died nearly two years ago.”

  “From AIDS?”

  “Yes.” She leaned toward him, her eyes flashing fire. “And I don’t want to hear a word from you about Ariel growing up around ‘someone like that,’ or any of the other rubbish you heterosexual studs obsess about. Rob was the dearest, the kindest man I’ve ever known, and I adored him. And so did Ariel. And if you ever try to tarnish her memories of him, I’ll make sure you never see or speak to her again!”

  Totally stunned by her outburst, he stared at her. “Fo
r crying out loud, Molly, who’s being insulting now? I’m a doctor. I’ve treated patients with AIDS. I’ve seen first-hand what a wicked disease it is, and if you think I’d wish it on anyone because his sexual orientation isn’t the same as mine, you don’t begin to know the kind of man I am. Nobody deserves the devastation or heartbreak AIDS metes out.”

  “Well, not everyone agrees with you.”

  “I know,” he said, aiming to lighten the atmosphere. “That’s why I’m here with you tonight, remember? To prove it doesn’t matter what other people think. And I’m sorry I never got to meet your Rob. I owe him a lot for being there when I should have been and wasn’t. How’s his mother coping?”

  “Better.” Her voice softened, and the sweet, fond smile curving her luscious mouth made him wonder how he’d ever found the will to send her away all those years before. “She keeps busy, and that helps. She manages the shop for me and looks after the books, and is always there if I need a sitter for Ariel, though I try not to call on her too often ever since a new man came into her life.”

  “She’s not married?”

  “Divorced. Her ex couldn’t deal with a gay son. But I wouldn’t be surprised if she decides to give marriage another try. Hugh’s a wonderful man and they have a lot in common. His son died of AIDS, too.”

  Her compassion moved him deeply. She might be all sass and defiance on the outside, but underneath she was a fine, intelligent woman who deserved a better fate than the one handed out to her, and he was a moron not to have recognized it sooner. “Do you know how to tango?” he asked, apropos of nothing but the compelling urge to touch her.

  “Of course,” she said, looking at him as if she thought he’d benefit from a brain transplant. “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “I don’t. Will you teach me?”

  “That’s not a tango they’re playing, it’s rock ’n’ roll.”

  “I know,” he said, laughing. “Wanna boogie?”

  She lowered her lashes, then lifted them again with slow deliberation. “You’re asking me to dance?”