No Regrets (17 page)

“Perfect. I love the new shade,” Molly said reassuringly.

“You look just like Jackie O,” Lena seconded.

Theo leaned closer to the glass. “I think my nose is shiny.”

“Your nose is perfect.” As they heard the harpist downstairs begin to play, Molly put her hands on Theo's lace-clad shoulders and turned her toward the bedroom door. “You don't want to keep your groom waiting.”

The wedding was being held in the Longworths' gar
den. From the upstairs window, the women could see Alex, standing beside Dan—who he'd asked to be his best man—beneath the rose-covered arbor. A green-and-white striped tent had been erected beside the pool for the reception; a buffet fit for royalty had been set up on the damask-draped tables, and silver urns held nuggets of sparkling ice and dark green bottles of champagne.

“No.” Theo squared her shoulders and reminded herself that not many women were fortunate enough to be so loved. “We've both waited too long as it is.” She scooped up her bouquet, a tasteful arrangement of white orchids. “Let's get this show on the road.”

 

“So,” Joe Salvatore asked Molly two weeks later as they were preparing to leave the hospital, “how was the wedding of the year?”

“Absolutely perfect. The bride was beautiful and the groom was a wreck.” Molly grinned as she thought back on the obvious nervousness of the man who'd risked his life so many times during his years on the L.A. police force.

“Sounds like the situation was normal. Although in my family, Uncle Thomas always gets drunk, tries to give the bridesmaids hickeys and grabs the microphone sometime during the evening to sing ‘Volaré.' I don't suppose anything like that happened?”

“Everyone was a model of decorum.”

“The average Californian is obviously too laid-back to have any flair for the dramatic. I suppose you brought pictures?”

“Tons.” She pulled the snapshots out of her purse and
handed them over. He flipped through the stack, making appropriate comments, pausing when he got to the one of Alex awaiting the arrival of his bride.

“Looks as if he's getting along pretty well with those artificial legs.” Molly had told him the story of Alex's accident, and what he'd endured on the way to recovery.

“He plays in a police veteran's basketball league,” she informed him. “And not one of those wheelchair leagues for disabled cops.”

“That's terrific.” He nodded his medical approval and moved on to the next photograph, which happened to be of Grace, standing in the garden, holding her flower-girl basket of snowy rose petals. “Jeez, that's a gorgeous child!”

“She is, isn't she?”

Molly experienced that same unbidden surge of maternal pride she'd felt when she'd first seen her daughter—Lena's daughter—in a powder pink lace dress that was a perfect foil for her gleaming jet hair. As she'd done all the other times, she'd firmly tamped it down. Still, as hard as she tried, she knew she'd never forget the musical sound of Grace's childish laughter as Reece scooped her up into his arms after the wedding and began dancing across the wooden platform that had been laid beneath the tent.

“She's definitely going to break a lot of hearts.” He turned to a family photo of Grace, Lena, Reece and Molly. “Although they're both good-looking, she doesn't seem to resemble either of her parents,” he murmured.

“Not all children do,” Molly said quickly. A bit too quickly, she realized, when he looked up at her, a tinge of curiosity in his expression.

“Now that you mention it, my brother, Dominic, takes after my mother, my sister, Ann, resembles my dad, but except for the same coloring, I don't look like anyone else in the family.” He studied the photo again. “Actually, you know who she looks like?”

Molly's blood went cold. Although no one had said anything, she'd been aware that several of the wedding guests—and everyone in the family—had noticed the remarkable resemblance. “Who?” she asked in a voice that was not as strong as she would have liked.

“The kid's a dead ringer for you.”

Molly turned to gaze out the window, pretending a sudden interest in the towering red-rock formation in the distance. “Do you really think so?”

“Don't you? She's got the same wavy black hair, the same blue eyes, the same stubborn chin. And her nose tilts to the left, exactly like yours.”

“My nose isn't crooked,” she argued in an attempt to change the subject.

“Of course it is.” He took her hand and led her over to the mirror above the white pedestal sink in the doctors' lounge. “See?” He ran a finger down the slope of her nose. “Right here, it takes just the slightest turn.”

“It does not.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you're real cute when you get your back up, Sister Molly?”

“And to think I was about to offer to cook you dinner.”

“Really? Honest-to-God food that doesn't come in a cardboard box and has to be nuked in a microwave?”

“Actually, now that you bring it up, I
was
planning to reheat it in the microwave. I made too much lasagna last night and will never be able to eat it all by myself.”

“Brains, beauty, and the woman can cook.” He sighed, and stretched, working out the kinks earned from a long day treating everything from cold sores to arthritis to a broken elbow, to an emergency C-section. “I think I'm in love.”

Accustomed to his teasing attitude, which reminded her of Reece, Molly didn't take him seriously. “You probably say that to all the nurse practitioners you work with.”

“Nah. Just the drop-dead gorgeous ones.”

Something flickered in the depths of his dark brown eyes. Some unnamed emotion that came and went so quickly, if Molly hadn't met his gaze at that precise moment, she might have missed it. Something that seemed strangely close to a masculine appreciation that had nothing to do with her medical skills.

Deciding that notion was ridiculously fanciful, she put the idea away. “Such a tongue you have on you, Dr. Salvatore. Are you certain you're Italian, and not Irish? I have the feeling you must have kissed the Blarney stone.”

“Perhaps in some other life,” he agreed, his mood lightening to match hers as they left the hospital and crossed the parking lot to the motor home that had served as her home for nearly four years. Since so much of the space had been converted to a portable clinic, her living quarters were little more than a kitchen, a propane stove, a table, two wooden chairs and a narrow bed. Although it wasn't spacious, compared to some cloistered nun's cells Molly had heard the older nuns describe, it was downright homey.

But it wasn't home. Not really. A home was what
Reece, Lena and Grace shared. And now Theo and Alex. And even as she tried to remind herself that God had never promised that the road she'd chosen would be free of bumps, Molly could no longer ignore the haunting thoughts of what might have been. And the even more tempting thoughts about what, if she were brave enough, could still be.

A silence settled over them as she took the lasagna from the refrigerator and put it into the microwave. While the dinner warmed, Joe opened the bottle of wine he'd retrieved from a hiding place in the doctors' lounge.

“This is damn near close to perfection,” he said with a warm, satisfied smile. He was a remarkably good-looking man, making Molly wonder, not for the first time, how he'd managed to get all the way through medical school, an internship and a residency without some woman staking her claim on him.

Telling herself that Joe Salvatore's love life was absolutely none of her business, she began buttering some French bread to serve with the lasagna.

“Would you like a glass of wine?”

Molly paused. Although she'd drunk a bit of illegal beer during her rebellious teenage years and wine on special occasions, like the champagne at Alex and Theo's wedding, she'd always worried that her father's tragic tendency for alcoholism might run in her veins.

“Would you feel safer if I promise not to get you drunk and have my way with you?”

His teasing tone made Molly realize he'd misunderstood her ambivalence and concern. “Just a bit,” she said. “I'm really not much of a drinker.”

“Just a bit.” True to his word, he poured a scant few inches of the ruby red burgundy into her glass.

After complimenting her on the lasagna, assuring her it was every bit as delicious as his grandmother used to make, Joe didn't say another word. Sitting across the narrow table from him, Molly realized he was deep in thought and decided he was undoubtedly running through today's C-section in his head. During her tenure at Mercy Sam, she'd seen Reece sitting silently reviewing a patient's treatment countless times.

A comfortable silence settled over them as they finished the simple meal. Molly cleared the table, then settled back, not complaining when he topped off her wine.

“You are, you know,” Joe said suddenly, his words shattering the stillness inside the van.

“Am what?”

“Drop-dead gorgeous.” He leaned toward her, his forearms on the table between them. “I love what you've done to your hair.”

She tensed slightly as he reached out and ran his palm down the rippling waves that had suddenly appeared when she'd had her straight, nearly waist-length hair cut to a more stylish shoulder length for the wedding.

“Joe—”

“It looks like obsidian, all black and shiny,” he said, ignoring her murmured warning. “But it feels like silk. And your eyes. Lord, if you only knew how many nights I've lain awake thinking about your eyes.”

“I don't think—”

“That's right.” His hand curved around her jaw, his long fingers holding her face to his. “Don't think. Not until I've had my say. Please?”

There was something remarkably close to torment in his expression. Something that rendered Molly temporarily mute. She could only nod, slowly, in response.

“They're such a clear pale hue, almost like Irish crystal at the center, but they get darker and darker with each ring outward, from the blue of the Celtic sea to a dark, moonless midnight sky at the outer rims. A man could drown in those incredible, magical eyes, Molly McBride. And welcome the experience with open arms.”

Never had any man ever spoken to her this way. Sensual intent swirled in his own dark eyes, which had deepened to a jet nearly as dark as his hair.

“And, of course, we've already discussed your endearingly crooked nose. Which brings me to your mouth. And your lovely, luscious lips.”

His gaze had settled on her mouth, which suddenly went as dry as the red desert dust. Molly knew she should tell him to stop. Knew she must remind him that he must not talk this way. But she could not make the words that were swirling around and around in her head come out of the mouth that seemed to enthrall him so.

Before she could utter a single word, he was on his feet. His chair teetered, then clattered to the floor but went ignored. And then he was pulling her out of her own chair and his arms were around her and his fingers were tangled in her hair and his firm hard masculine mouth was pressing hard against hers with a passion she'd never, ever experienced.

W
hen Joe's tongue slipped wickedly past the barrier of her lips and teeth, in some far distant corner of her whirling mind, Molly vaguely remembered having been taught that French kissing was a mortal sin. But how, she wondered as his tongue swept the moist dark interior of her mouth, could anything so thrillingly perfect be wrong?

“Do you have any idea how long I've waited to taste you?” he rasped. As his lips plucked at hers, those same deft fingers that had cut a woman open to deliver a baby, then sewed her back up again, began to unbutton Molly's blouse. When she didn't—couldn't—respond, he answered his own question. “Forever.”

Considering the passion underlying his kiss, his touch was remarkably gentle. But when she felt his hands on her breasts, a vision flashed through Molly's mind, an image of a man kneeling over her in the alley.

“No!” She cried out, pushing against his chest.

Joe's response was instantaneous. He released her and backed away, his hands in the air. “Christ, Molly, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that…well, actually, to tell the truth, I did. I've been wanting to kiss you, to touch you, to love you, for months. But I certainly never intended to frighten you. Or hurt you in any way.”

Terror that she thought she'd put behind her, disoriented Molly. She sank down onto the bed and stared up at him, trying to understand where she was. And more importantly, with whom. Frightening images continued to flash before her open eyes like strobe lights.

Finally, the handsome face, stark with guilt and concern gradually settled into focus.

“Joe?”

“I'm so sorry,” he repeated as he sat down beside her. His clever fingers fumbled as he began rebuttoning her blouse.

“It wasn't you.” Reality sank in, swiftly replaced by embarrassment. “I thought I'd put it behind me. But when you touched me, it all came flooding back.”

As her complexion colored, his paled. “Are you saying—”

“I was raped and brutally beaten.”

His curse was ripe, vicious and directed inward. “I guess I really screwed things up, didn't I?”

“It wasn't your fault.”

“Wasn't it?” Molly had never seen him look so bleak. “If I hadn't talked you into drinking that wine, if I hadn't taken advantage of your innocence—”

“You didn't take advantage of me, Joe.” It was a difficult admission, but Molly knew this was a case when
honesty was more important than her own shame. “Oh, I wasn't expecting you to kiss me. But I could have asked you to stop. And you would have.” Of that she had not a single doubt.

“I would have,” he agreed huskily. He sat there, looking down at her for what seemed like forever. “I'm sorry I was the cause of painful memories, but I'm not going to apologize for wanting to make love to you.”

“I suppose it's not that surprising,” she admitted reluctantly. In a way, it was almost a relief, after years of locking her emotions tightly away, to realize she could feel something as powerful as the edgy desire created by Joe's kiss. “After all, we shared a tremendously intimate experience together, today, Joe. We brought a new life into the world. Factor in the alcohol, and it was probably inevitable that we'd feel a bond—”

“I've delivered other babies, Molly. I've worked for thirty-six hours straight with nurses before. And never once have I wanted to drag any of them off to the nearest bed.”

Molly couldn't help smiling at that. “Not ever?”

Joe smiled a bit sheepishly. “Well, perhaps there were a couple occasions…. But, dammit, what I felt a few minutes ago, what I've been feeling for months, is different. It's not just sex. I love you, Molly McBride,” he finished up on a burst of heartfelt passion.

Molly stared up at him. “You can't.”

“Why not? You're an incredibly lovable person. Even discounting your beauty, you're warmhearted, you have the most generous nature of any woman I've ever met, you're loyal, hardworking…”

Humor rose to soothe her tangled nerves. “Now you make me sound like a German shepherd police dog.”

“I was just about to mention your sense of humor.” He grinned down at her and combed his fingers through her tousled dark hair. “I really am head over heels in love with you, Molly. And nothing you can say is going to change that.”

Perhaps not. But she had to try. “I'm a nun.”

“You're a woman first,” he said, unknowingly repeating what she'd told Reece four years ago when he'd resisted the possibility of her pregnancy. “And I love you. I want to marry you, Molly. And have children with you.”

His words moved her in ways too complex to unravel while she was so physically tired and emotionally unsettled. They also forced her to wonder if, perhaps, some deep-seated, hidden feelings for Joe were part of the reason she'd decided to ask to be released from her vows.

“That's the most wonderful compliment anyone's ever given me, Joe. And I'll treasure it forever.”

“That sounds suspiciously like a rejection.”

“I'm afraid it is.”

He gave her a long regretful look. “You realize that you're not just rejecting me. But you're cheating yourself, as well.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're too passionate a woman to devote your life to some lonely, cold, celibate existence,” he argued. “Whether you want to admit it or not, your uninhibited response to me proved that. And don't forget, I've watched you with the kids that come into the clinic.
You're a natural-born mother, Molly. You deserve children of your own.”

Once again, he'd hit too close to home. When Molly flinched at that statement, his eyes widened.

“My God.” He stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. “Grace doesn't look like her parents because she's not their child…. She's yours, isn't she?”

Molly closed her eyes briefly, which was all the answer he needed. “She's Lena's.”

“Perhaps legally. But she'll always be the child of your heart.” He shook his head and trailed the back of his hand down the side of her face. “Poor, poor Molly,” he murmured. “Don't you realize how difficult it's going to be? Going through life, watching some other woman play mother to your daughter?”

“Lena's not just some other woman. She's my sister.”

“That's got to make it even harder.” He shook his head. “I realize you've already made your decision, and changing your mind and claiming Grace now would destroy too many lives. But there's still a chance for you to have a family, Molly. You could have more children. With me.”

“It wouldn't work, Joe. I like you. And respect you. And I do love you. But not in the way a woman should love a husband.” Even as she said the words, Molly realized, with some relief, that they were true.

“Besides,” she said, belatedly recalling the true reason she couldn't accept his out-of-the-blue proposal, “it's a moot point. Because I'm a nun.” She felt a prick of guilt using her vocation for an excuse at a time when her religious status could be about to change, but this
wasn't the time for a lengthy discussion regarding her future plans.

“You've said that before. And believe me, sweetheart, having a second cousin who left the convent and eventually ended up an assistant D.A. in Queens, I happen to know that it doesn't have to be a permanent condition.

“However,” he said, when he realized she was about to argue, “you're right about it having been a long day. And since you have to leave at first light for your meeting with Sister Benvenuto tomorrow in Flagstaff, I should be going. But I know damn well that I'm going to dream of you. Just as you'll dream of me.”

He gave her another quick kiss, just a peck on the lips that created a brief flare of heat. “We'll talk about this when you get back.”

With those words ringing in her ears, he was gone.

Molly flopped back onto the mattress and covered her eyes with her forearm. She knew she should be down on her knees, begging God's forgiveness for her sinful behavior, but her mind kept rerunning her undeniably passionate response to his forbidden kisses.

She remembered, just before she'd had that flashback, how warm his hands had felt on her breasts. But strangely, his intimate touch hadn't made them tingle the way they had when she'd arrived at LAX for the wedding and Reece had hugged her, pressing her against his hard chest.

“No.” She shook her head, refusing to think about her mutinous body's unbidden response. She had no business feeling desire for anyone, least of all her very own brother-in-law.

Molly's mind, seemingly determined to plague her, turned next to Grace who, although she struggled against it, she adored in a way that only a mother could love a child. Each time she visited Los Angeles, hearing her daughter calling Lena
Mommy
hurt. But even though such occasions were painful she could no more stay away than she could turn back time to the day she'd made the decision to give her child to her sister.

She'd made her choice, Molly reminded herself firmly. The only choice she could have made. The best choice for everyone concerned, especially Grace, who may have been conceived in violence, but had been born in love.

That settled once more in her mind, Molly forced herself to stay awake long enough for the obligatory prayers of repentance. Then, finally, she allowed sleep to claim her.

And when she did, indeed, dream the sensual dreams Joe had predicted, the face of the man making such slow, exquisite love to her was not that of Dr. Joseph Salvatore, but Reece Longworth.

 

Molly grew increasingly uncomfortable as she met with her superior, who was visiting a group of Sisters of Mercy in Flagstaff. The painting on the wall behind the desk where Sister Benvenuto sat was a romanticized print of the adoration of the savior by the shepherds, with a host of gilt-winged angels hovering overhead. Although the pink seventeenth-century-style dress did not at all resemble anything Mary might have worn, Molly had no trouble recognizing the expression of unconditional maternal love on the Madonna's face.
She wondered if that was how she looked at her daughter, reluctantly decided it probably was, and understood all too well why Reece seemed worried and Lena uncomfortable and nervous whenever she visited Los Angeles.

The elderly nun had been silent for a very long time. She was looking out the window at the small garden, seemingly deep in contemplation. Molly suspected that her request was more disappointing to her superior than surprising.

When she turned back to Molly, her expression was grave, her eyes shadowed with regret. “I cannot let you do this, Margaret.”

It was the first time in years Molly could remember the nun using her full name. “No disrespect intended, Sister, but it's not really your decision to make.”

“I realize that. Yet I have an obligation to protect you from making a mistake, and I would not be living up to my duty if I allowed you to leave the order without trying to change your mind.”

“But I've been questioning my vocation for a very long time,” Molly argued.

“We all question.” A trace of irritation sharpened Sister Benvenuto's tone. “Teresa of Avalon wrote of her battles with herself. And you can't have forgotten Christ's agony in the garden of Gethsemane, when he kept asking his Father to take the cup away.”

“Of course not, but—”

“But Mark tells us in his gospel that Jesus finally accepted his fate. ‘Let it be as you would have it, not as I.' This is a powerful lesson for us all.”

“It's not a lesson I can personally live up to,” Molly
said quietly. “Although I love the order, and everyone in it, my heart needs more.”

“You must pray—”

“I do!” Molly leapt to her feet, hectic spots of color marring her cheeks. “But prayers don't change the way I feel, deep inside. They don't take away my need for a child.”

“You have many children,” the nun pointed out. “I've had reports about how good you are with the reservation children, how much they love and look up to you.”

“I love them, too. But at the end of the day they go home to their families. I want my own child, Sister.”

“That's distressingly self-indulgent, Molly,” the nun chided gently.

Her legs were trembling; Molly sat back down. “I realize that. But it's how I feel.”

“Trying to reclaim your child would cause terrible heartbreak.”

“I wasn't talking about taking Grace away from Lena and Reece!” Molly was shocked that after all these years the nun would think her capable of such a thing. “No, Grace is Lena's daughter. Not mine. But that doesn't mean I can't have another child. After all, I'm young and healthy, and—”

“And have you, perhaps, found a man to father this child you seem to need so badly?”

“No.” Memories of the wicked, sensual dream starring her brother-in-law flickered in her mind, and she recalled with vivid detail the power of Joe's kiss. “But, I have to admit, that there have been times lately, when I've found myself tempted to break my vow of celibacy.”

“Again, that's not surprising,” the nun stated briskly.
“As you said, you're young and healthy and perhaps we made a mistake allowing you to stay out there alone on the reservation, so far from the companionship of other members of the order. If you were to return to Los Angeles—”

“I don't think that's such a good idea,” Molly said quickly.

“You took a vow of obedience.”

“That becomes a moot point if I leave the order.”

The nun sighed. “And now we're back to that?”

“Yes.” Molly forced herself to meet the look of disapproval head-on. “I've tried my best to overcome my doubts for years. But it's not going to happen.”

“God works in His own time,” Sister Benvenuto advised sagely. “And His time is often not our time.” Her smile—the first she'd managed since Molly had arrived for her meeting—did not touch her eyes. “Why don't we attempt a compromise?”