No Regrets
Although she knew Sister Benvenuto would probably have her down on her knees saying an Act of Contrition and countless rosaries for such heresy, Molly decided she’d be willing to pray to God, all the saints, Mohammed, Buddha, the Dalai Lama, even some ancient druidic pagan oak tree if only she could dodge this deadly bullet.
“If I get AIDS, I’ll just die,” she muttered, more to herself than to Yolanda.
She and her longtime friend exchanged a gloomy look. Then burst into laughter.
* * *
“She’s going to be all right,” Reece assured Lena once again as they drove home from the hospital together. Although he never would have wished such horror on Molly, he couldn’t deny being grateful for the change seeing her sister victimized seemed to have made on his wife these past days.
“I know.” She put her hand on his leg. “Thanks to you. If you hadn’t done all that you did…”
Her voice drifted off and she stared out at the brilliant lights of the city as they drove up the curving road to their Pacific Palisades home. The house, situated on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway and the ocean beyond, was more expensive than a resident could afford, but Reece was independently wealthy. He’d inherited a generous trust from his parents, who’d died in a plane crash when he was a boy.
He slanted her a sideways glance. “How are you with all this?”
“Strangely, although I was panic-stricken when you first called, I’m doing pretty well.” Lena shook her head. “All my life, even when we were separated, I knew that Molly would be there for me if I ever needed her.”
“In a heartbeat,” he agreed.
“I think, although she meant well, her protective behavior kept me from growing up.”
Since there was no way he was going to get trapped into agreeing that the woman he adored was immature, Reece didn’t say anything.
“Then, of course, I married you, who took over where Molly left off.”
He laid a hand over hers. “I think it’s only natural for a man to want to protect his wife.”
“I suppose.”
Lena thought back to the tarot card reading. Amazingly, the destiny foretold that night seemed to be coming true. Out of apparent evil, she remembered the young woman saying sagely, much good can come.
“What happened to Molly made me realize I can’t always count on other people taking care of me. It’s time I learned to stand on my own two feet.”
Something inside Reece went still. And cold. “Are you saying you want a divorce?”
“A divorce?” Shocked, she looked over at him. “Of course not.” Turning her hand, she linked their fingers together. “You’re the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me, Reece. I just think it might be a nice change if you were to discover that you were married to a woman. And not a girl.”
Reece thought about that and decided she was right. As much as he adored his bride, there were times when he found being the sole focus of her life—along with her desperate desire for a child—more than a little wearying.
“You certainly don’t have to change on my account. I love you just the way you are.”
“I know. And I thank God for that every day. And I’m not changing for you. I’m doing it for me.” Lena smiled, pleased with the plan she’d come up with while drinking far too many cups of that toxic waste the hospital cafeteria tried to pass off as coffee. “Although I think you’ll find some side benefits.”
There was something in her voice. Something lush and sensual, an impression that was heightened by the way she’d begun trailing her fingernail up his thigh.
“Why, Mrs. Longworth,” he murmured, “are you trying to seduce me?”
She laughed at that. A silky, womanly laugh designed to get beneath a man’s skin. “I am going to seduce you, Dr. Longworth.” Her fingers trailed higher. “And you’re going to love it.”
The sound of his zipper lowering was the sexiest thing Reece had ever heard. Or felt. When she freed his erection from his jeans, blood rushed from his head straight into his groin.
“Jesus, Lena.” The words clogged in his throat, his breath was trapped in his lungs. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to make me run off the road.”
“Don’t worry, darling.” She bent her head and pressed her lips against the tip of his penis. “I promise to be very, very careful.”
Her breath was like the Santa Ana winds that blew in from the desert, fanning flames he’d banked for too long. From the first night of their honeymoon, wanting to prove himself different from all the users she’d gotten involved with before him, Reece had gone out of his way to treat his bride with consideration and respect. Their lovemaking, while enjoyable, had remained restrained.
After she’d become obsessed with having a child, the only times they made love were on those days when she was most likely to conceive. And although he adored her to pieces, lately he’d begun to feel more like a stud bull than a husband.
“Lord, Lena,” he groaned as she took him fully into her ripe wet mouth. “You’re going to get us both killed.... Let me…” He managed, just barely, to turn into the half-moon driveway and cut the engine.
On the verge of exploding, Reece grabbed hold of a fistful of thick silky hair and yanked her head up.
“Let’s go in the house.” His voice was harsh and guttural. “I want to take my time. And do this right.”
The silvery moonlight streaming through the windshield illuminated her face, letting him see the sexual fever burning in Lena’s eyes.
“You can take all the time you want.” She unfastened her seat belt and straddled him. “Later.”
“What the hell did you do with your panties?” he gasped as she teased the tip of his throbbing cock with hot female flesh.
“I tucked them away in my purse before we left the hospital.” She put her hands on his shoulders, her mouth on his.
That she’d planned this seduction made it even more exciting. Reece’s fingers delved beneath her sweater, digging deeply into the bare skin of her waist as he forced her down on him at the same time he slammed up to meet her.
Their teeth clashed as their mouths ate into one another’s, their tongues tangled. The ride was hard and fast, their slick damp bodies slapping against each other in a ruthless need for release. When she cried out his name, then shuddered violently, Reece gave in to his own white-hot, explosive climax.
He stayed deep inside her as they enjoyed the aftermath of passion. “I can feel you,” he murmured against her throat as the rhythmic tightening of her inner muscles continued to caress him like silken gloves.
“Mmm.” She tilted her head and outlined his mouth with the tip of her tongue. “I can feel you, too. And you feel so good inside me, I don’t think I’ll ever move.”
“We’d get arrested for indecent exposure.”
“I’m willing to risk it if you are. Besides, we have friends on the police force who’ll vouch for us.”
Reece felt his body beginning to warm again, but became aware of the chill of the December night. “I want you again.” Shoving her sweater up, he took her breast in his mouth, suckling deeply in a way that made her body involuntarily clutch at his. “But this time I want to do it with all our clothes off. Inside, where no one can hear you scream.”
As she felt him growing hard again inside her, Lena shivered with anticipation. And just a touch of erotic fear. “Are you really going to make me scream?”
He bit her nipple, not harshly, but with a dark sensual intent that caused excitement to curl in her belly. “You bet.” His tongue soothed the tingling flesh. “And you’re going to love it.”
Reece proved to be a man of his word. He did wonderful, wicked things to her. And then, when she was positive there couldn’t be more, he’d proven her wrong.
But this time it was different, Lena mused as she lay wrapped in her husband’s arms, luxuriating in the feel of him still buried deep inside her. Because for the first time since they’d been married, she’d given him more than her body. She’d given him her heart.
And that, she thought with a soft smile as she drifted off on gentle wavelets of sleep, made all the difference.
Chapter Five
Molly had always suspected she wouldn’t make a very good patient; she was too restless to lie in bed all day. Daytime television was a revelation, filled with programs about women who loved men who murdered, mothers who slept with their daughter’s boyfriends, husbands who got their wives’ best friends pregnant. Since her work had given her an up-close and personal look at society’s ills, none of the subjects shocked her. What was surprising was that viewers would be interested in watching all these depressingly dysfunctional relationships.
She tried to read, but every time an ambulance cut its siren outside the ER doors, or a code came over the loudspeakers, she wanted to jump up and return to the battle. If her days were boring, her nights were anything but. Her sleep was interrupted at regular intervals by horrifying nightmares in which she was forced to suffer the rape, which she now remembered, over and over again.
From her talks with the psych resident, Alan Bernstein, Molly understood the night terrors were her subconscious mind’s way of struggling to deal with the trauma she’d suffered. She also became convinced that as soon as she was allowed to return to the routine of normal daily life, the nightmares would stop.
Yolanda remained sympathetic, but refused to do anything to help Molly escape what she’d come to view as her imprisonment.
“Reece says if you’re a good girl he may sign you out tomorrow.”
“I’ve already been here five days.”
“So, you’ll be here six.”
Molly muttered something that while not exactly a curse, wasn’t exactly nunlike, either. “At least tell me what’s happening down in The Pit. I never thought I’d miss that place, but I do.”
“Taking religious vows doesn’t prevent you from becoming hooked on the adrenaline rush, just like the rest of us.”
Molly couldn’t argue with that. She’d be the first to admit that the impatient streak that had once resulted in her being disciplined as a child with depressing regularity, now made her a natural ER nurse.
“Oh, there is some news,” Yolanda said. “About Benny.”
Molly’s own petty frustration was instantly forgotten. Benny Johnson was a five-year-old boy who’d suffered more than any child should have to. He’d been born a crack baby on Molly’s first day in the ER. His near-fatal withdrawal had been excruciatingly painful, making more than one battle-hardened ER nurse cry.
Social Services had taken Benny from his mother. Unfortunately, they’d turned him over to his grandmother, who was no model of maternal expertise, either. By the time he was six months old, Benny had suffered a broken arm and possible head injuries from being shaken.
He’d been put in a crisis nursery, only to be released to his mother again when she was released from a drug-abuse treatment program. Two days later, Benny was back with mysterious burns.
The cycle had continued for five years. And each time Benny showed up in The Pit for treatment after another one of his accidents, Molly was more tempted just to take the poor little boy and run away.
“What now?”
“He came in this morning all bruised, with cracked ribs. The court’s toughened up. He’s going to be released for adoption over his mother’s consent.”
That should have been good news, but unfortunately, Molly knew better.
“Older children are difficult to place,” she murmured. She also recalled, with vivid clarity, that long ago day when she’d eavesdropped on a conversation between the Mother Superior who ran the orphanage and prospective parents.
The well-dressed couple who thought Lena “sweet” and were prepared to overlook the fact that Molly could be “a bit of a handful,” had been reluctant to adopt the sisters because of their background.
“How can anyone know about genetics, really?” the man had asked. “What if one of the girls harbors some impulse that might cause her to violently explode with rage? As her father did?”
“That’s highly unlikely,” the nun had assured him.
“Unlikely perhaps. But you can’t guarantee it’s not a possibility.”
“There are no guarantees in life, Mr. Howard,” the nun had tried again. “Even if the Lord were to bless you with your own children—”
“That’s just it. They’d be our own. And believe me, Sister, there are no murderous alcoholics in either my wife’s or my family. No.” Molly, who was standing with her ear against the door, had heard a deep sigh. “I’m afraid it’s just not worth the risk.”
Over the years the faces in that office had changed. But the argument had remained the same. Molly and Lena McBride were damaged goods.
“Benny has a lot of strikes working against him when it comes to adoption,” Molly murmured, thinking back on those lonely, frustrating days when she and Lena had been forced to watch other children leave the orphanage with their new families.
“That’s sure true. But you know Dr. Moore?”
“In pediatrics?”
“That’s him. He and his wife have been trying to have kids for ages with no luck. I overheard him talking to the social worker about getting the paperwork started.”
“Oh, that is good news.” Sometimes God did answer prayers. “Is Benny still downstairs?”
Yolanda’s sharp look revealed that she knew Molly all too well. “Yes, but you’re not—”
“I promise not to do any work. I just want to keep a little boy company for a while.”
“Reece will kill me.”
“Reece is too much of a sweetheart to kill anyone. Especially these days.”
“You noticed that the doc’s been floating up somewhere on cloud nine, too?”
Molly returned Yolanda’s grin with one of her own. “You’d have to be blind not to notice.”
“He’s got the look of a man who’s getting laid regular. And your sister’s looking like a kitten who discovered a saucer of cream. I swear, if I hadn’t sworn off marriage after my third divorce, I’d almost be willing to give it a try again.”
Molly laughed. She didn’t know what had happened between Lena and Reece. But whatever it was, she was definitely more than a little relieved at the change.
“If you could just get me some scrubs,” Molly coaxed, returning to their previous subject.
Yolanda folded her arms across her ample breasts. “If you tell anyone where you got them…”
“I won’t say a word. Cross my heart.”
Muttering to herself, Yolanda left the room, but returned a few minutes later with a pair of green surgical scrubs. “I didn’t see a thing,” she said. Then left again.
Molly found Benny in one of the waiting rooms, seated at a small table. Someone had given him a box of crayons and a coloring book, but he hadn’t touched them, and sat staring out into space. Molly didn’t want to know what the child was seeing. What he’d already seen. She also hoped that Dr. Moore and his wife had an immense store of patience.
“Hi, Benny,” she said cheerily.
He looked up, his expression flat until he saw her bruises. “Somebody hit you, too, Sister?”
“I’m afraid so, Benny.”
He thought about that for a minute. “People aren’t supposed to hit nuns.”
“People aren’t supposed to hit children, either. But sometimes people do.”
“Yeah.” He looked down at the backs of his small hands, which had circular scars that could only have been made from cigarette burns.
“Have you had lunch yet?”
“Yeah. One of the nurses brought me a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich from the cafeteria. And some chocolate milk.”
“That was nice.”
“I like chocolate milk.” Despite his words, his eyes had gone flat again.
“How about popcorn?”
He shrugged. “It’s okay, I guess. I only ever had it once. When the lady at one of the places I was staying took a bunch of us to see An American Tail.”
“That was a cool movie.”
Another shrug.
“I was sitting upstairs feeling a little sorry for myself when I decided popcorn might cheer me up.” Molly decided a white lie in this case was definitely one of the more venial sins she’d committed. “But I hate snacking alone and can’t eat the entire bag anyway. So, I was kind of hoping you’d help me out.”
She watched the flicker of interest in the depths of his dark eyes.
“I guess that’d be okay. Since I have to hang around here, anyway, until the social worker shows up.”
“Thanks, Benny. I really appreciate your helping me out.”
She took him into the nurses’ lounge, retrieved a bag of popcorn from her secret hiding place and put it in the microwave.
Five minutes later, they were working their way through the plump white kernels.
“I heard the nurses talking,” Benny volunteered. “One of them said that Dr. Moore wants to be my dad.”
“How do you feel about that?” Molly asked, popping the top on a soft drink can and handing it to him.
“I guess that’d be okay. I never had a dad.”
“I lost mine when I was little, too,” Molly volunteered.
He gave her a long look, but didn’t ask any questions. Molly knew all too well how children from violent homes learned the importance of keeping secrets.
“Johnny Brown has a dad. He hits him. A lot.”
“Dr. Moore would never hit you, Benny.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I know so.”
He fell silent, mulling that over.
“I guess it’d be okay, then.”
“I think it would be even better than okay,” Molly agreed mildly.
That little worrisome matter settled, neither Molly nor Benny said anything else. There was no need to. For both of them, the quiet companionship was enough.
* * *
Molly was packing away the last of her toiletries. She was finally being allowed to return home to her own apartment. At least that’s where she had thought she’d be going. Until Lena had shown up, determined that she come and stay with her.
“You and Reece have been acting like you’re newlyweds. The last thing you need is me hanging around your house.” Molly returned to the adjoining bathroom for the shampoo. “What if you want to make love hanging from the dining room chandelier while I’m in the room eating my microwave dinner?”
“Molly!” Lena appeared shocked that her sister would even think of such a thing. “You’re a nun!” Then color flooded into her cheeks as she thought of the fantasy game she and Reece had played last night. The one where he’d been a ruthless Norman plundering the Saxon countryside. And dear Lord, how wonderfully he’d plundered!
“All this is beside the point,” she insisted, shaking off the sensual memory. “Because we’re not going to be alone anyway.” Her shoulders slumped beneath her pale blue angora sweater. “Reece’s aunt called last night. She’s arriving in town this evening.”
“Theo’s coming here?” Molly had met Theodora Longworth at Reece and Lena’s wedding. A successful writer, she was a bold, larger-than-life character who could have stepped from one of the pages of her romance novels.
“She’s gotten an offer to be head writer for some soap opera,” Lena said glumly.
“Wouldn’t that mean she’d have to settle down?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. I do know that if the woman is going to be living under my roof, I need someone in my corner.”
“Why? She seemed genuinely fond of you at the wedding.”
“She’s filthy rich, Molly.”
“So’s Reece. And that’s never seemed to bother you.”
“Because he’s never acted rich. Theo is just so…” Lena’s voice trailed off.
“Like Rosalind Russell’s portrayal of Auntie Mame?”
“With a lot of Bette Midler thrown in.” Lena sighed. “I’ll really feel better if you’re staying at the house, too. Heaven knows we’ve plenty of room.” Rooms she’d planned to fill with children.
Molly suspected that the invitation was more than a little due to Reece and Lena’s concern about her returning home alone to her apartment, which was in a neighborhood not much better than the area surrounding the hospital. However, whether or not they’d done it intentionally, they’d managed to come up with a situation she couldn’t refuse.
“Just for the next week or so,” Molly insisted. “But as soon as I come back to work, I’m returning to my own place.”
“Oh, thank you!” Lena rushed forward to hug Molly, remembering the cracked ribs just in time. “I promise, Molly, I’ll make this up to you.”
“There’s certainly nothing to make up to me. Lounging around your house is not exactly on par with doing missionary work in Zaire.”
“Wait until you spend a few days with Theo.” Lena’s expression of impending doom echoed her glum tone. “I hate this time of year, anyway.” She sighed and began picking at her fingernail polish. “Do you ever think about that night?”
“Of course.” Molly knew Lena was not referring to the recent Christmas attack, but the earlier one.
“I used to think about it all the time. It’s gotten better, but it never goes away. Like a scab I can’t resist picking.”
“May’s almost as bad,” Molly murmured.
“When you walk in the drugstore to buy some aspirin or tampons and get attacked by all those aisles of flowery Mother’s Day cards,” Lena agreed. “I didn’t think it bothered you. That once you became a nun—”
“God automatically took away the pain on my Profession Day?”
“Something like that.”
It was Molly’s turn to sigh. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.”
“I guess not.” Lena walked over to the window and stared down at the parking lot, but Molly suspected it was not the cars she was seeing, but that long-ago scene that had been imprinted indelibly on both their minds. “Do you ever hear Mama’s voice?”
“No. I stopped being able to hear her about the third year after Daddy…after it happened.”
“I do.” Lena glanced back over her shoulder. “Every once in a while, I imagine I hear her singing. Remember how she used to love to sing?”
The memory was bittersweet. “Just like Patsy Cline.”
“Yeah. I remember her once telling me how tragic it was that Patsy had died so young in that plane crash. And then she died too young, as well....
“I think that’s why I turned wild for a while, until I met Reece,” Lena admitted. “Because I have this terrible fear I’m going to die young, too.” She dragged her hand through her thick auburn hair. “I look just like her, don’t I?”
Molly didn’t like where this conversation was going. “I suppose there’s some resemblance,” she hedged.
“I stole a picture the day the social worker took us away,” Lena revealed. “It was a snapshot of Mama in a bathing suit at the beach. I’ve kept it all these years. I look at that picture and it’s like looking in a mirror....
“Then I look in the mirror and it’s as if Mama’s ghost is looking back at me. As if she’s reminding me that I could die anytime, just like she did. Like Patsy did…
“Did you know that I’d planned my funeral when I was twelve?”
“You never said anything.”
“I wrote it all down. So you’d find it after I died. I still update it every year, but I’m always a little surprised when I don’t make all that many changes. I’ve planned your funeral, too. And Reece’s.”
“I didn’t know that, either.” Molly reminded herself that she’d only been a child herself, that she’d done the best she could for her sister under the circumstances. Nevertheless she felt a familiar stab of guilt that she hadn’t managed to provide Lena with the security she’d needed growing up.
“Of course you didn’t. Because I never told you. But it seems as if I’ve spent my entire life waiting to die. Waiting for people I love to die. Which was why I was so terrified of loving Reece.
“If he was ten minutes late coming home, I knew he’d had an accident on the freeway. If I called here and he didn’t answer his page, I was certain some crazed homicidal junkie had taken him hostage and was going to kill him. I was so fixated on all those morbid thoughts that I was too afraid to enjoy life.”
“And now?” Molly asked carefully.