No Regrets (20 page)

“I'm sorry,” Reece said again. The words seemed so horribly inadequate.

“Like I said, it was five years ago. But I still can't bring myself to treat a bastard like that.”

When Reece didn't immediately respond, she took another deep breath. “I'm sorry, Doctor. I didn't mean to dump on you. My only excuse is that being a survivor
of a violent death is like a boil you think has healed, and suddenly, something triggers a reinfection and all that pus just pours out.”

Reece realized she was forecasting his life. Not just his future, but Grace's, as well. And even if Molly was able to pray up a miracle, it would be a very long time before Lena would be ready to return home and pick up her life as they all knew it. Their daughter would need him to be strong. How much help could he be in prison?

“There's no reason to apologize. Your daughter was a very fortunate girl to have you for a mother. And your husband was lucky, as well. Even if he didn't know it.”

She smiled at that, a quick pleased smile that banished the remnants of cold anger from her expression. “His loss,” she agreed as she left the room.

Reece stood beside the bed, staring down at the man for a long silent time. Then made his decision.

It was not easy, but he managed to rouse the sleeping drunk. “What d'ya want?” the man grumbled, his words slurred.

“I want you to wake up.”

“Go 'way, Doc.” He tried to roll over and found his movement stifled by the leg pulleys. “What the hell?”

“Look at me.” Reece shook him by the shoulder.

Bleary eyes stared up at him.

“See this needle?”

The man nodded. “Good. I could use a little shot of painkiller, Doc.”

“This isn't painkiller. Oh, I suppose in a way you could consider it that, since believe me, it'll stop your pain.” He proceeded, on a brisk, no-nonsense tone to describe exactly what would happen to the man before
death. “You're lucky I'm going to inject it,” he said. “Otherwise, even with all the booze in your system, it could take a lot longer to work. You'd suffer dizziness, cyanosis, tremors, convulsions, bronchial spasm.

“But in your case, the reaction will be immediate. As soon as I inject this procaine into your vein, you'll go into immediate cardiac arrest.

“Then, that's that.” He picked up the limp arm and touched the tip of the needle to the thin blue line at the inner bend of the elbow. “You're finished. Flatlined.”

“What the hell?” The man tried to jerk his arm away. “Who are you? What the hell do you think you're doing?”

Even without the icy rage flowing through his veins, Reece would have been stronger. His fingers tightened around the man's arm. He pricked the skin. Both men watched the faint red dot of blood rise beneath the shiny sharpened steel.

“You were driving drunk.” Reece's fingers were a tourniquet, causing blood to begin to trickle down the bare arm. “You crossed the center line and ran into my wife's minivan.”

He squeezed harder. The trickle became a flow. “Do you understand what I'm saying?”

The man's eyes were round with panic. “I don't unnerstand anything.”

The needle tip was sparkling with deadly sharpness. All it would take was a quick spearing flick for revenge to be delivered. But even as Reece imagined driving the needle deep into the vein, tearing away at flesh and muscle, breaking into the bone, he knew he couldn't do it.

For years he had fought the dark angel, Death. Ultimately, of course, Death won, but Reece had sworn a sacred oath to put off that victory for as long as possible. He could not join forces now.

He recapped the needle and returned the syringe to his pocket. “This is your lucky day,” he told the gray-faced man. “I'm going to let you live.”

Then he took out his billfold and retrieved a snapshot of Lena he'd taken during their Maui honeymoon. She was standing up to her knees in an unbelievably blue lagoon, her hair gleaming like copper in the bright Hawaiian sun. She was laughing, blissfully unaware that only a few years later her life would be cut tragically short by this drunken killer.

“This is my wife.” He placed the picture on the man's chest. “Her name is Lena.” He took another photo. This one depicted Grace at Disneyland, enthusiastically hugging Goofy. “This is our daughter, Grace. The little girl who's going to grow up without her mother.”

He placed this photo beside the first. “I hope you live a very long time, you worthless son of a bitch. And I hope, for every day of your miserable useless life, you're haunted by these faces.”

That said, he left the room. And the hospital.

 

Molly had never felt so helpless or so useless as she sat beside Lena, holding her hand. Dr. Parker had been kind, but brutal in his assessment. There was nothing medically that could be done. Which left Molly to pray for a miracle as the ventilator went rhythmically up and down, breathing for her sister who could no longer breathe for herself.

From time to time she couldn't resist pinching her sister's limp arm, which had been tanned to a golden California Girl hue when Molly had arrived for Alex and Theo's wedding, but now resembled porcelain. Had the wedding been only a couple of weeks ago? It seemed an eternity.

She tried talking to her sister and singing old familiar lullabies that dated back from their childhood days when a terrified Lena would crawl into Molly's bed, seeking shelter from their father's alcoholic rampages.

But there was no response. Lena's pupils remained dilated, her lungs lifting and falling in response to the respirator. The only interruption was when one of the ICU nurses would briefly disconnect Lena from the machine to suction clean the tubes. The squat, multidialed aluminum-and-plastic box was infinitely, obscenely patient.

Unfortunately, the harvest team was less so. Dr. Parker had contacted the transplant donor network as soon as brain death had been verified. When they entered the room to rate her body for the harvest of usable—healthy—parts, Molly was immensely grateful that Reece was not there to witness the necessary, but ghoulish procedure.

Which brought to mind another concern. Where was he? Yolanda had filled Molly in on the details, so far as anyone knew about the accident. Including the fact that the driver of the other car, suspected to have been drunk, had been taken to Cedars-Sinai. Surely, Molly tried to assure herself as the day dragged on and there was still no sign of Reece, he wouldn't try to take revenge into his own hands?

“If he's anywhere in the hospital, he isn't answering his pages,” Yolanda told Molly when she shared her fears. “But I think you're overreacting. He adores Lena, but there's no way he'd do anything that would cause Grace to lose her father as well as her mother.”

“It's not always possible to predict what people will do in times of stress,” Molly reminded her.

“True. But Reece doesn't have it in him to kill anyone. No matter how much such an act would be justified.” Yolanda shook her head as she looked down at the woman who, were it not for the machines and tubing, could have been merely sleeping.

“The word's gotten out. Security had to turn away some of those slimeball tabloid reporters. Turns out the guy driving the car was some hotshot legal eagle. Karin, at Admissions, said one of them told her he was the same guy who got that action hero hunk an acquittal in that drunk-driving manslaughter case a few years ago.”

Molly remembered the case. As well she should, since she was one of the medical team who'd tried to save the eleven-year-old Little League player who'd been dragged two hundred yards beneath the bumper of the actor's Mercedes convertible. She also recalled that Reece had been the doctor on duty when the fatally broken child had been brought into the ER.

“If Reece realizes that—”

“You don't have to worry,” a deep voice interrupted from the doorway. “I didn't do it.” Reece took the syringe from his pocket and held it out to Yolanda. “I think you'll find the med cabinet short one vial of procaine. I must have slipped it into my pocket earlier when I was treating that jogger with the blown knee, then forgot about it.”

Yolanda didn't so much as blink at the outrageous lie. “I'll see it's accounted for,” she replied smoothly.

“How is she?” Reece asked Molly when they were alone again.

At this moment, looking up at his haggard face, Molly didn't know who she felt sorrier for. At least, if James Parker could be believed, Lena was beyond pain.

“Nothing's changed.”

He didn't immediately respond. Instead, he opened a nearby cupboard and took out a blanket. “She gets cold feet,” he explained. “I always kid her—warm heart, cold feet.”

“I was worried about you,” Molly admitted quietly. “About what you might do.”

“I went over to Cedars to kill the bastard,” Reece said in a matter-of-fact tone that frightened her.

“But you couldn't do it.”

“No.” He dragged his hand down his face and sat down beside Lena on the other side of the bed. “But Lord, how I wanted to.”

“I can understand that.”

“Really?”

“She's my sister. I've loved her all of her life. How can you even ask that question?”

“Touché. So, even you can understand my motives, Saint Molly. But can God?”

“I have to believe that since He made us human in the first place, He understands our frailties.”

“Ah, now we're back to free will.”

Molly wasn't prepared to enter into a theological debate. She didn't have the strength. Not when her heart was aching for these two people she loved so very much.

“What about the other guy?” Reece pressed his case when she didn't respond. “Wasn't he demonstrating free will when he chose to get into that car and drive drunk? Or was it God's will that he ram that fucking one-hundred-thousand-dollar car into Lena's minivan, and in an act of pure selfish disregard for human life, turned a vibrant, laughing, loving wife and mother into a vegetable?”

“Reece.” She reached across the blanket and covered his fisted hand with hers. “This doesn't solve anything.”

“I should have killed him.” Reece had been second-guessing his behavior all the way back to the hospital.

“No.” Molly's voice was firm, revealing that on this, at least, she was on firm ground. “I can't claim to understand God's plan for any of us.” She thought about all the painful twists and turns in her own life. “But I do know we've moved beyond the Old Testament belief of an eye for an eye.”

“Perhaps that was a mistake.”

“Murdering the man who did this terrible thing probably would have made you feel better for a moment or two,” she allowed. “But think how you would have felt saying goodbye to Grace as they hauled you off to prison.”

“There isn't a jury in the state who'd convict me.”

“You can't be certain of that. And even if you were eventually acquitted, think what it would do to Grace.” Molly felt his fingers clenching and loosening beneath hers. “Lena knew what it was to grow up under a violent cloud. There's no way she'd want that for her daughter.”

Reece didn't immediately answer, but from the way
his harsh expression softened as he looked down into Lena's too-still face, Molly knew he was giving serious consideration to her words.

W
hile Reece and Molly maintained a silent vigil at Lena's bedside, Tessa was sunning herself beside Miles's sparkling blue pool.

“So,” he said, as he leaned back in the chaise, “Jason tells me he's asked you to help him out of this latest fix.”

“He had no right to tell you that.”

“We're brothers, sweetcakes. More than brothers, we're twins. We've always shared everything.”

His eyes were hidden behind the mirrored lens of his glasses, but Tessa could feel his gaze crawling over every tanned and oiled inch of her, and although the day was typically hot and sunny, her flesh turned ice-cold.

“Well, almost everything,” he tacked on.

His meaning was implicit. Tessa knew that Miles had wanted to make love to her—no, she corrected with brutal honesty—he'd wanted to
fuck
her since their first
meeting over four years ago. He'd made that more than clear.

But he'd also held off pressing her, which should have made her feel relieved, but didn't, because he reminded her of a patient spider sitting in the center of a glittering web, waiting for his hapless prey to stumble into the imprisoning silk.

“Sleeping with Jason's bookie to get him off the hook would have been prostitution. I may as well go to work for your mother.” Tessa had not been all that surprised to discover Jason's mother was the premier madam for the Hollywood elite.

They were a perfect team. Jason's job as a traffic cop working the Sunset beat and Miles's work as a photographer offered access to beautiful former beauty queen MAWs—model/actress/waitresses—new to town, all trying to break into show business. After realizing the odds stacked against them, a high percentage were eager to join Elaine's privileged stable of working girls.

“That's not such a bad idea.”

“Not on a bet.”

“You're overreacting again. You slept with that car dealer.”

Obviously, Jason did tell him everything, Tessa thought grimly. “Afterward.”

“Before, after, what's the difference?”

It was the same thing Jason had said. “I didn't come to Hollywood to become a whore,” Tessa repeated firmly. “I haven't worked hard at my craft to sink to selling my body.”

“What a lovely speech. It almost reminds me of a young Bergman playing St. Joan.” He lifted his frosty
mint-hued margarita to her in a mocking salute. “But the truth of the matter, Tessa, dear, is that you haven't been working all that much these days.”

“It's just a lull.”

One that had been going on for too long. The agent she'd hired after Terrance Quinn's death, the same one who'd lost her the job on the sitcom by advising her to hold out for double the weekly salary, which resulted in her being written out of the show, was having trouble even getting her commercials. He'd recently warned her that she was developing a reputation for being unreliable. Which, Tessa supposed with a sigh, was true.

If only she hadn't missed that audition last week. But Jason had had a party at the house and naturally, drugs had been readily available, along with constantly flowing liquor, and before she'd known it, it was the next afternoon and she'd completely forgotten all about her ten o'clock meeting with the casting director looking for a female costar for a new Western series.

“It was just as well,” Jason had reassured her during her crying jag. “It'd be a damn stupid move to cover that magnificent body in homespun.”

Having learned the hard way that Jason was not at his best after partying, and not wanting to trigger his hot quick temper, Tessa had refrained from mentioning that dressing up in a body-concealing prairie wardrobe certainly hadn't hurt Jane Seymour's career.

“Something will turn up,” she said now, wishing she believed that.

“It always does,” Miles agreed mildly. “In the meantime, why don't you be a good girl and help Jason out? You do owe the guy a lot, Tessa.”

That might have been true in the beginning. But the way Tessa figured it, she'd paid for everything Jason had done for her. In spades.

“If you're so worried about your brother, why don't you pay off his debts?”

“Because Benny doesn't want to sleep with me, darling,” Miles countered patiently. “It's you he wants. And he has a reputation for being generous to pretty girls. Play your cards right, and you might even cover the overdraft at the bank and keep your car from being re-possessed.”

Tessa was not an actress for nothing. She tossed her head and gave him a steady cool look that gave nothing away. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Of course you do. And perhaps, before you get up on your high horse, someone ought to remind you that writing bad checks is a felony.” The smile he flashed at her over the salted rim of the glass, held not an iota of warmth. “It would be a crying shame if Jason had to arrest you.”

“He wouldn't.”

The man she'd mistakenly thought she loved was many things. He was a thief, a liar; she had every suspicion he was a drug dealer, and if she gave in to the pressure he'd been putting on her lately, he'd also be a pimp. On top of all that, he was undoubtedly the most crooked cop on the L.A. police force. But to turn her in, he could end up implicating himself and she knew he'd never risk that.

“You're probably right,” Miles allowed. “However, did you ever think that if that bookie's thugs kill my brother, you might find yourself in the middle of a mur
der investigation?” He reached out and ran his hand down the red-gold slide of her hair. Against Jason's instructions, she'd begun growing it long again, and it now reached her shoulders.

“Which, considering your affection for illegal drugs, could well land you in prison.” His fingers traced a trail of ice along her bare collarbone. “Do you have any idea what a woman's prison is really like, Tessa?” Those treacherous fingers continued down to the crest of her breast. “You'd undoubtedly end up down on your knees in a broom closet, giving cunnilingus to some dyke guard.”

Her nipples were visible through the white bikini top. He pinched one, hard enough to cause her to draw in a sharp breath. “And I don't even want to get into what the other prisoners would do to you. But I have heard tales of young women being raped with everything, from pipes ripped from beneath sinks to butcher knives stolen from the prison cafeteria.”

His words, meant to frighten, did exactly that. Despite the warmth of the day, Tessa shivered. “I can't do what he wants.”

“Sure you can,” Miles said encouragingly. “I'll help you.”

“Ah.” Tessa might be unnerved, but she hadn't lost her wits. “This is where you offer to give me lessons.”

“Exactly.” This time his smile held more warmth. “You can't deny you've been wondering how we'd be together since that first night we met. Would fucking me be just like fucking Jason? Are twins alike in every way? Or do I know things my brother is too self-centered to ever dream of doing? He can make a woman
scream in pain. But have you ever been made love to for hours and hours until you were screaming in ecstasy, Tessa?”

She didn't answer. But she felt the red rise in her cheeks, like mercury in the glass tube of a thermometer.

Radiating a superbly masculine self-satisfaction, Miles put his empty glass down on the wrought-iron table beside the lounge, then stood up in a lithe, smooth movement that reminded her of a panther and held a hand down to her.

Although she'd never admit it, Miles was right about her having wondered how they'd be together. He'd always stirred something uncontrollably primal in her. Something dark and dangerous that caused a disturbing, discordant hum of anticipation in her veins.

“What about Jason?” Her hesitant tone revealed that she was on the verge of capitulation.

“Jason's otherwise occupied.” He tilted his dark head toward the Jacuzzi, where his brother seemed to be engaged in foreplay with a former
Playboy
centerfold who'd discarded the top to her bikini shortly after arriving at the party. “He won't notice.”

Worse yet, he wouldn't care. When hot adolescent jealousy flashed through her, Tessa stood up and put her hand in Miles's.

She expected him to say something smugly obscene. But instead, he surprised her by lifting her hand to his lips. Then he linked their fingers and together they walked into the house and down the hall to his bedroom.

Although she'd fought against it, Tessa had fantasized about this room more times than she cared to
count. She'd imagined it as a sybaritic pleasure palace, a place of leopard-skin bedspreads, mirrors on the ceiling and undoubtedly a large-screen television for viewing pornographic movies.

But Miles's bedroom was nothing like her fantasy. The moment she entered, she felt as if she'd walked through a shift in time and space and ended up in the Far East.

The floors were bleached hardwood that added a sense of space and light. Sheer white screens separated different areas of the huge room. An antique Chinese altar table stood at the far end of the room, topped with a small bronze Japanese bull and a trio of black vases, each holding a single white lily.

The one thing she had not guessed wrong about was that the bed, indeed, did dominate the room. But rather than the tacky round water bed she'd envisioned, the wide bed draped in white linen seemed to float on its black lacquer pedestal, its four posts looking like jet lacquer arrows reaching for the white arched cathedral ceiling. The view from the bed looked out on to a Japanese rock garden so perfect that the grains of sparkling gray sand appeared to have been put in place with a pair of tweezers.

As spartan and bare as it admittedly was, Tessa found it surprisingly sensual. “It's exquisite.” As the serenity of the room worked its magic on her nerve endings, Tessa began to relax.

“I'm glad you approve.” His eyes, usually so cool and mocking, seemed to observe her with warmth and gentle humor. “Would you care for a drink? I have some white wine on ice.”

She'd had two strawberry daiquiris out by the pool and a line of coke. Since her head was already spinning because of what she was about to do, Tessa decided against adding any more alcohol to an already-combustible situation.

“Thank you,” she said, as politely as a sorority girl attending a rush tea party. “But I believe I'd better not.”

“Fine.” His voice remained equally polite, but the dark, unblinking eyes looking into hers reminded Tessa of a predator all too certain of its prey. She tried telling herself that the sudden chill causing goose bumps to rise on her skin was merely due to the artificially cooled air blowing through the air-conditioner vents, but knew that was a lie.

She risked a cautious glance downward, to his groin, where his erection was pressing against the silky black material of his brief, European-style swim trunks in a blatantly erotic way he didn't attempt to conceal.

“See something you like?” he asked mildly.

Tessa didn't answer. But she couldn't take her eyes away as he hooked his long dark fingers into the low-slung waistband and lowered the trunks, freeing his penis that jutted out of the curly black hair.

He stood in front of her, boldly, proudly naked, studying her for a long silent time that made her more and more uncomfortable. Tessa wondered if he meant for her to take off her bikini, as well, and was strangely reluctant to dispense with what little protection it provided.

“You can still change your mind, Tessa.” His tone was mocking, his eyes cool and sardonic as he watched her for a reaction. “I'm not into raping women.” His smug smile suggested he didn't need to.

Tessa swallowed and resisted, just barely, licking her arid lips. “I'm not going anywhere.”

He nodded, satisfied. “Good girl.”

“If I was a good girl,” she shot back recklessly, “I wouldn't be here.”

His smile was a slash of white in his dark face. “Point taken.” He tilted his head and studied her for another of those seemingly endless times that made her flesh hot and cold all at the same time. “Are you afraid of me?”

“No.” It was not quite the truth.

“You should be. You're not a schoolgirl anymore, Tessa. You're playing with the grown-ups now. And sometimes a girl can get hurt.”

“You wouldn't hurt me.”

He laughed at that. A low, rich sound that slipped beneath her skin and into her blood and went coursing straight to the secret place that was growing increasingly wet and warm.

“Ah, but that's where you're wrong.” He wrapped his fingers around his rampant penis and held it toward her, like an offering. Or a weapon.

“I am going to hurt you. I'm going to take you hard and rough and you're going to love it. I'm going to teach you all the things men secretly want women to do to them. And then I'm going to do wicked things to you that you could have never imagined. Things that will shock you. And thrill you. And have you crying out for more.”

Heaven help her, the crotch of her bikini bottom was drenched with need. So much so, that when he told her to get down on her knees, she was powerless to resist.

“Crawl over here.”

Even the violence she'd come to accept as a prelude to lovemaking had never been so demeaning. Tessa realized that was because Jason's behavior was born of his flash-fire, wicked temper. While Miles's grew out of a calculating need to dominate.

“Now, Tessa.” His voice was soft, with a razor-sharp edge that excited even as it frightened.

The throbbing between her legs became almost painful as she obeyed him.

“I'm going to teach you how to suck a man. When you do it right, you'll be rewarded. When you do something wrong, you'll be punished. So you'll never make that mistake again.”

His hands tangled in her hair as he pulled her head back and forced himself between her lips. Deeper and deeper he pushed himself into her mouth, but every time she gagged, he yanked on her hair, hard enough to bring tears to her eyes.