Daniel's Desire - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,40

didn’t fall apart, and she didn’t blame any of them for the way they felt about her.”

“And your father?”

“He was conveniently absent. If I didn’t know better, I’d have to wonder if he hadn’t had some instinct that they were coming. He’s the one who’s kept Mom silent all this time. I think she wants to get everything out in the open, but every time she dares to suggest it, he freaks. I know in my heart that everything that happened was his doing. Of course, she shares some of the responsibility because she went along with it, but he made the decision back then. I’d stake my life on that.”

“If you’re right, that means it’s going to be that much harder for him to face his sons,” Molly said. “It must have eaten away at both of them all these years. I’m amazed they stayed together.”

Daniel regarded her with surprise. “They love each other,” he said simply. “It’s the one thing I’ve never questioned about my parents.”

“But even the strongest love can be destroyed by something like this. It happens all the time after a child’s death or some other tragedy,” she said. Then she added, “Our love certainly wasn’t strong enough to withstand what happened, and I would have sworn we were invincible.”

Daniel flinched. “You can’t compare the two situations.”

“You turned your back on our child,” she said. “How is that different?”

He was silent for so long she thought he might not answer, but then she realized he was genuinely thinking it over before responding.

“I did, but you have to understand that the baby wasn’t real to me yet,” he said eventually. “You’d known for, what, a day, maybe a little longer, when you told me. You’d probably suspected you were pregnant before that. You’d had time to accept the idea. I was caught completely off guard.”

“Would your reaction have been one bit different if you’d had time to think about it?” she asked, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

He kept his gaze steady. “I’d like to think so,” he told her quietly.

“Easy to say now,” she scoffed.

“No, it’s not,” he said. “Because it makes it so much worse that I put you through so much pain unnecessarily. If only I’d been a better man, if only I hadn’t been the son of people who’d walked out on their own children, if only I’d been able to envision a little girl who looked like you, or a little boy playing ball like Patrick and me, maybe I would have done things differently that night and we’d have a family now.” His gaze captured hers, held it. “Do you think it’s been easy for me to live with knowing that I cost us that chance? Do you think it’s easy admitting it to you now?”

Molly heard real pain in his voice, but she couldn’t allow herself to feel any sympathy at all. It was one thing to kiss Daniel and let the old passions stir once again. It was quite another to forget the past and give him the chance to hurt her again.

“Molly?” he pressed. “Say something. Anything.”

She looked into his eyes, saw the regret, but shook her head, anyway. “What’s left to say?”

He opened his mouth and she could almost hear the unspoken words that were on the tip of his tongue.

“Don’t say it,” she pleaded. “Don’t say you still love me.”

For a moment she was afraid he might argue, might say it anyway, but he didn’t. He merely nodded, a sad half smile coming and going.

“Not saying the words doesn’t change anything,” he told her.

Maybe not, but at least she could cling to the illusion that there was nothing between them now except anger. She needed to hold on to that anger with everything in her, because if she didn’t, her heart would surely break. And that sizzling kiss they’d shared would take on a meaning she could not, under any circumstances, allow it to assume.

Chapter Nine

Two shocks in one day were almost more than Daniel, with his rigid code of self-discipline and planning, could cope with. The out-of-the-blue appearance of his brothers barely held a candle, though, to the stunning impact of kissing Molly.

All these years he’d thought she hated him for abandoning her when she needed him. Now he had to wonder if there wasn’t at least the possibility of forgiveness. That kiss hadn’t been about hatred. It had been a devastating reminder of the passion that they had once shared.