LITMIR.BIZ

      Contents

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE house looked smaller, poorer even, than she remembered, but the dark blue sedan parked on the snowplowed road in front was new and expensive. Still, never for a moment would Molly have expected it would belong to Dan Cordell. It was too conservative, too practical. Not his sort of accessory at all. He was the Harley kind—hell on two wheels and the devil be damned.

      The voice that greeted her as she swung open her mother’s front door, though, was exactly his: dark and smooth as black silk. “So you finally deigned to come back,” he said.

      Molly wondered if the shock she felt ravaged her face as mercilessly as it violated her body. “Of course I did,” she said, clutching the door knob desperately in the hope that its cheap metal digging coldly into her palm would distract her from the painful lurch of her heart. “My mother, I’m told, has been injured and needs someone to help her recuperate, so there was never any question but that I’d come back.”

      He shrugged, as though he didn’t believe her, and nodded at Ariel. “And she…?”

      Molly had known it was a question she’d have to answer, but not so soon and never to him. He must never guess. “Is my daughter.”

      “That much I already figured out.” Just a trace of the smile which, once, had lured her to forget every sense of decency her puritanical father had tried so hard to instill in her, touched his mouth. “What I was going to ask is, what’s her name?”

      “Ariel,” she said, drawing her beloved child closer, as if doing so would protect her from ever having to know the truth of who he really was.

      His gaze, as startlingly blue and direct as ever but softened now with a compassion it hadn’t possessed eleven years before, settled on Ariel. “It’s a very pretty name,” he allowed. “Just like its owner.”

      Though Ariel smiled with pure delight, fear pinched Molly’s heart. What if her own searching for a trace of those aristocratic Cordell genes hadn’t been as thorough or impartial as she liked to think, and he saw in the child a resemblance to himself which Molly had missed? What if some sort of preternatural flash of insight told him he’d just met his own flesh and blood?

      Before he could make the connection, she pushed Ariel toward the kitchen at the end of the narrow hall. “Go see what’s in the refrigerator, sweetheart. We might need to make a run to the corner store before we do anything else. Look for milk and bread and eggs and juice—you know, the kind of thing we always have on hand at home.”

      He watched Ariel’s long legs cover the distance and Molly braced herself, sure unkind destiny had finally caught up with her. But, “I didn’t know you’d be bringing your family with you, Molly,” was all he said, shrugging into the sheepskin-lined denim jacket he’d flung over the coat stand.

      “And I didn’t know you had a key to my mother’s house,” she replied sharply, the rush of adrenaline inspired by fear seeking escape in outrage. “Or did you break in?”

      As if her finding him there to begin with hadn’t been shock enough, he answered, “I’m your mother’s doctor, and old-fashioned enough to believe in making house calls.”

      Molly’s mouth fell open. Dan Cordell, whose chief pastime eleven years ago had been trolling for women and collecting more speeding tickets than any other well-to-do layabout in town, a doctor? Old-fashioned? “Of course you are!” she scoffed, taking in his blue jeans and off-white fisherman’s knit sweater. “And I’m Anna, former governess to the King of Siam’s many children.”

      “On the contrary, Molly. You’re the absentee daughter so ashamed of her parents that she chose to forget they existed once she hooked up with a rich husband, so let’s not try to confuse truth with fantasy.”

      He could dish out insults as easily as he’d once doled out charm. The chill of his disapproval cast an even longer shadow than that of his six-foot-three-inch frame backlit by the cold mid-March sun filtering weakly through the window behind him. But it lost something of its sting with his reference to her marital status.

      Caught between a burst of hysterical laughter and outright scorn, she almost squeaked, Rich husband? Who thought up that fairy tale? but brought herself under control enough to reply coolly, “Let’s not indeed! Assuming you’re telling the truth for once and really are her doctor, how do you rate my mother’s condition?”

      “Poorly enough that I don’t want her trying to move around without assistance. A fall out of bed or down those steep stairs could finish her off. Even before the accident, she was in bad shape.”

      “Bad shape how?”

      He subjected Molly to a brief, clinical inspection, sweeping his glance from her glove-soft leather boots to the cashmere sweater showing above the fur-trimmed collar of her coat. “I find it depressing that you even have to ask. If you—”

      “If I weren’t such a pitiful excuse for a daughter, I’d already know why,” she cut in. “Well, don’t let the clothes fool you, Doctor! Underneath, I’m still that shameless, unruly Paget girl whose parents deserved better than to be saddled with a child marked by the devil.”

      “Those are your words, Molly, not mine.”

      “They are the words which drove me out of town before I turned eighteen, and they were whispered loudly enough for everyone to hear. I imagine they’ll find new life now that I’ve returned.”

      “Is that why you stayed away all these years? Because

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