No Regrets (35 page)

“What the hell is Mathison up to now?” Reece asked, fearing for the worst.

“I don't know.” From what he knew of his former
partner, Dan didn't believe he'd let his hostages go without a fight.

“Is Molly holding a gun?” Reece asked in disbelief.

Dan zeroed in on the pistol she was holding between visibly shaking hands. Several possible scenarios flashed through his mind, none of them pretty.

“Aw, shit…Molly,” he called out, “put the gun down, honey. Everything's going to be all right.”

“Of course it is,” Tessa yelled back. “Because my big sister knocked the son of a bitch out.”

“Only after Tessa jumped on his back,” Molly tacked on.

Dan and Reece exchanged a brief, disbelieving look, then as Molly bent down and carefully placed the pistol on the lawn, they took off running toward the house. Behind them, the commander instructed the SWAT team to continue to hold fire.

“She decked him with a vase,” Tessa crowed, her face flushed and wet with tears. “And a frying pan.”

“I couldn't have done it if Tessa hadn't attacked him first,” Molly said. Her blue eyes were bright with moisture and, Reece considered, instinctively thinking like a doctor, some hysteria.

“We make a helluva team, sis,” Tessa said.

Molly's answering grin could have lit up Los Angeles for a month of smoggy Sundays. “Yes. We do.”

After a very groggy Jason Mathison had been handcuffed and put in the back of a patrol car, Molly and Reece stood in the middle of her lawn in each other's arms.

“Do you have any idea how frantic I was?” he murmured against the top of her head. “Thinking I might lose you?”

“Yes. Because I was worried about the same thing. That you'd lose me.”

He pulled his head back and smiled down into her face. Her lovely, lovely face. “I'll admit it sounds irrational, but when I began to realize how much you meant to me, I was afraid that if I allowed myself to care for you too much, fate would make something horrible happen to you. Like my parents' plane crash. And Lena's dying.”

“I know you felt that way, but—”

“But it didn't make any difference,” he interrupted, needing to get the long overdue declaration said. “Because even after I refused to admit how I felt, I still ended up almost losing you.” He took a deep breath. “I love you, Molly McBride.”

She linked her fingers around his neck. “I know.”

Of course she did, Reece thought. Molly had always known everything about him. It was one of the reasons she frustrated him so often. It was also one of the many reasons he'd fallen head over heels in love with her.

“Are you going to marry me?”

Feminine instincts she'd once told Tessa she didn't possess told Molly this was no time to be coy.

“You bet I am.” Dual feelings of relief and happiness flowed through her like a golden sunlit stream, washing away her earlier fear. Molly laughed as she went up on her toes and pressed her lips against his.

Tessa watched her sister kissing the man she so obviously loved and felt a tinge of envy. But mostly she felt pleasure at the idea of Reece and Molly beginning a new life together.

Speaking of new lives…

“About that Twelve Step lecture,” she said, looking up at Dan.

He folded his arms and lifted a chestnut brow. “What about it?”

“How about you give it to me while you drive me back to Phoenix House?”

A ghost of a smile twitched at the corner of those gorgeous male lips Tessa vowed to someday taste again. When they were both ready.

“Lady, you've got yourself a deal.” He took her hand and tucked it through his arm. “Let's go.”

December 24, 1996

I
t was Christmas in Los Angeles. The season of joy. As she returned home from the chapel with her husband and daughter, Molly couldn't remember ever being happier.

“I've got to call Mary Beth,” Grace announced the moment they entered the house that smelled of pine and balsam.

“It's late,” Molly said. “And it
is
Christmas Eve. I'm not certain Mary Beth's parents will be wild about—”

“Puleeze, Mom,” she wheedled prettily. “I promised to tell her all about the wedding.”

Molly knew better than to ask if such news couldn't wait until morning. The wedding was all the girls had been talking about for weeks. “Try to keep it short.”

“I will, promise!” She gave Molly a hug, then dashed up the stairs.

“That's a relief,” Reece said as he threw himself down on the living room couch.

Molly was smiling as she turned toward her husband. She knew it was silly of her, but having Grace call her Mom never failed to warm her heart. As for Reece… Nearly eighteen months ago, she'd stood in this very room in front of friends and family and promised to love and cherish this man. No promise had ever come easier.

“What's a relief?”

She sat down beside him, snuggling into his embrace as he put his arm around her shoulder. In the corner, the fairy lights adorning the towering twelve-foot fir tree sparkled like stars in a midnight sky.

It had taken an entire weekend for the three of them to put up the tree, another weekend to bake the gingerbread shapes hanging side by side with the hand-blown crystal ornaments she and Reece had brought back from their honeymoon in Ireland, but Molly decided the effort had definitely been worth it.

“I'm relieved that it was an eight-year-old running up those stairs. And not the almost grown-up stranger who came down them a few hours ago.”

Molly knew all too well what he meant. When she'd first viewed their daughter, dressed in the wine red bridesmaid dress and wearing a slender string of pearls, she'd caught a disconcerting glimpse of the woman Grace would too soon become.

“Children grow up faster these days.”

“Try telling me something I don't know.” Reece
sighed as he thought of all the teenage mothers he and Molly were forced to deal with on a daily basis. Babies having babies, forgoing prenatal care, showing up in Mercy Sam's emergency room—where they'd both returned to work—when it came time to deliver. “I don't suppose you'd agree to locking her in a closet until she's thirty.”

Molly laughed. “She's a good kid. She'll be all right.”

Reece was more pragmatic. “And if she isn't?”

Molly refused to think unpleasant thoughts tonight. Watching Tessa and Dan exchange vows had wiped away the lingering sense of pain she'd always experienced on this day. Although her sister had never said anything, Molly suspected she'd chosen Christmas Eve specifically for that reason, and she loved her all the more for such sensitivity.

Thinking of how Tessa had turned her life around—getting off drugs, winning the role as the vixen on Theo's soap opera, signing that new contract for a made-for-television-movie, even making time to volunteer in a battered women's shelter—made Molly believe anything was possible.

She patted Reece's cheek with wifely reassurance. “Then we'll deal with it.”

He laughed and shrugged off the momentary parental fear. “Just what I should have expected Molly Sunshine to say.” He kissed her, a deep, slow kiss that she knew would always possess the power to curl her toes.

“Did I happen to mention that you were the most beautiful woman at that chapel today?” he asked when the blissful kiss finally ended.

“The bride is always the most beautiful woman at her wedding,” Molly corrected breathlessly as his lips continued to pluck at hers. It was ten o'clock and she'd been fantasizing about tonight for hours. Molly hoped Grace did, indeed, manage to keep her conversation with her best friend short.

“Tessa was lovely. But you, my love—” he kissed his way down her throat “—were stunning. I swear, the way you were glowing, you could have been the bride.”

She'd been planning to tell him later. After they'd made love. She'd wanted to save her news for a Christmas present. But now, since he'd brought it up…

“Actually,” she said, with far more aplomb than she was feeling, “if I was glowing, there's a very good reason.”

Reece drew back and looked down into her face. He could see tiny Christmas trees reflected in her eyes, but realized that the lights shining in those blue depths were from something else altogether.

“Are you saying…?”

Molly gently framed his face with her hands. “This time next year, Santa will have to add another Longworth child to his list.”

Her warm, serene, satisfied smile reminded Reece of every painting of every Madonna he'd ever seen. He felt a surge of wonder. He'd been so grateful for Molly and Grace that he'd never dared consider asking for more.

He pulled her into his arms again, holding her tight. “I do love you, Molly McBride Longworth.”

As joy sang its sweet song in her veins like a chorus of silver bells, Molly laughed and lifted her face for her husband's kiss. “I know.”