about a hundred years behind the outside world. I was forty-three when I had you, and women of my generation didn’t walk out on their husbands, it’s as simple as that. And he wasn’t always bad. When we were first married, he was a lovely man. But the accident changed him. Losing his leg cost him his livelihood, child. He’d always been big and strong. Able to do anything. But a cripple’s no use on a fishing boat when the weather’s stirring up a storm, and it killed something in him to know he wasn’t the leader of the fleet anymore.”
“Having only one leg didn’t hamper him too much when he was chasing me down the street in a blind rage.”
“Because you reminded him too much of how he used to be—healthy and strong and independent. He was eaten up with anger, Molly, and it made him do and say wicked things at times.”
“At times? There was hardly a day went by that he didn’t make me miserable! If I was wild, he did his part in driving me to it.”
Her mother had sighed and squeezed her hand again. “Don’t let yourself fall into that trap,” she said sagely. “He passed on his looks to you, and you’re beautiful for it, but don’t take on his bitterness and make it your own. It’ll sour the rest of your life, if you do, and come to infect that sweet granddaughter of mine, as well.”
Molly had had all night to mull over her mother’s words and much though it galled her to admit it, they made a certain sort of sense. Coming back to Harmony Cove had made her realize the extent to which John Paget still warped her thinking from beyond the grave. But only because she allowed him to. Although breaking the habit wouldn’t be easy, it was the only way she’d ever free herself from his painful influence.
The clinic’s outer door flew open and Dan strode in, bringing a cold, fresh whiff of snow and frigid sea air with him. “Hi, Molly,” he said, breezing past and stopping at the receptionist’s desk to pick up his messages. “Have a seat in my office and I’ll be with you in a sec.”
But it was closer to ten minutes before he followed. “Cripes,” he said, flinging himself into the beaten-up old chair behind the equally battered desk, “what a morning!”
“Actually, it’s now the afternoon,” Molly said, glancing pointedly at the clock on the wall. “And my appointment was for eleven-thirty.”
“Sorry about that,” he said, sounding anything but.
“You could have fooled me!”
He fixed her in the sort of semi-stern, semi-cajoling gaze which no doubt left most of his patients, especially the women, slobbering with delight and falling all over themselves to do his bidding. The way the laugh lines deepened at the corners of his eyes and his lashes drooped over those brilliant blue irises struck Molly as nothing less than ludicrous. Did he think he was auditioning for leading man in a soap opera or something?
“Babies don’t always show up when they’re supposed to, Molly, you should know that,” he said. “Or was your daughter the rare exception and born exactly on schedule?”
When Ariel was born wasn’t something she was willing to discuss with him but it was clear from the way he continued to regard her that he expected a reply. There was a layer of hidden steel under all that warm, fuzzy charm. “Not quite,” she said.
“There you are, then!” He flashed one of his thousand megawatt grins and slapped the flat of his hand against the even flatter planes of his stomach. “Are you hungry?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said, are you—?”
“I heard what you said. I’m just not sure I understand the reason you said it, Doctor.”
He rolled his eyes, another in his repertoire of disarming mannerisms. “Will you for Pete’s sake give over with the ‘Doctor’ business and stop acting as if you just swallowed a lemon? I’m offering to buy you lunch, not cut out your heart.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him he’d done the latter eleven years before without benefit of medical expertise, but his ego was inflated enough. “Thank you, but no. Ariel’s sitting with my mother and I don’t want to leave her alone any longer than I have to.”
“You can spare another half hour,” he said. “It’s going to take that long to sort out what we’re going to do about your mom anyway, and I’m talking about a quick sandwich somewhere, not a seven-course dinner at Le Caveau.”
As if a man of his fine lineage would ever take a woman from Wharf Street to Le Caveau! The most exclusive restaurant for miles around didn’t even hire people from there, let alone welcome them as guests.
He scooped the phone across the desk toward her. “If you’re worried about Ariel and Hilda, give Alice Livingston a call and ask her to keep an eye on them. She stops in every day around this time anyway with a bowl of soup or something for your mom.”
“I’d rather have my teeth pulled!”
He treated her to another grin. “Don’t tell me you’ve already locked horns with her, as well!”
“We’ve yet to come face-to-face since I got back, but it’s a foregone conclusion that when we do, it won’t be a happy reunion. And she won’t be dropping off soup or anything else, come to that. I left Ariel with strict instructions not to open the door to anyone.”
“So she and Hilda are waiting for you to go home and make lunch?”
He’d handed her the perfect opening to decline his invitation, but what was the point of lying when this meeting had to take place sooner, rather than later? “No. I left sandwiches and milk in case I was delayed getting back. Ariel will make sure neither she nor my mother starves.”
“Isn’t that child a bit young to left with so much responsibility?”
“She’s ten—”
“Ten?” He raised his eyebrows questioningly. “That must mean she—”
“T…ten times more capable than girls nearly twice her age.” Shaking inside, Molly tacked on the qualifier, aghast at how close she’d come to endangering the one secret she was most committed to protect. Oh, the pitfalls of deceit! “And I always keep my cell phone turned on when I’m not home, so she knows she can get in touch any time.”
“You make it sound as if you leave her alone often.”
“No, I don’t! Not that it’s any of your business, but if she needs to call me from school or a friend’s house or something, and I happen to be out…” She trailed into silence, aware that she sounded far too defensive for a woman supposedly confident of her parenting skills.
As if he’d noticed the same thing, he regarded her thoughtfully a moment and she tensed, waiting for another probing observation. But in the end, he merely rose out of the chair and said, “In that case, there’s no reason at all we can’t have lunch while we talk about your mom’s case, is there?”
There’s every reason in the world! she thought. Time spent with you is like walking a tightrope and knowing there’s no safety net waiting to catch me if I trip and fall!
And trip she surely would, unless she wrestled her runaway emotions under control. But he seemed determined to thwart her at every turn.
