No Regrets. JoAnn Ross

      She smiled at that. A soft sad smile that tore at something elemental inside Reece. “You are so incredible. I’ve never known anyone with such patience.”

      For some reason, her words rankled. “Dammit, Lena, don’t make me into any kind of saint. Because I’m not. I’m just a man. Who loves you with a depth I never would have imagined possible. I’ve tried to come up with a word for how I feel. Obsession comes close. But it’s still not enough.”

      She felt the traitorous tears overbrimming her eyes. “I’m never going to make it through this if you keep making me cry.”

      Reece managed, just barely, to remain where he was, watching with admiration as she drew in a deep, calming breath. She’d changed since Molly’s attack, the emotionally frail young bride he’d married had begun to show signs of becoming an independent woman.

      Lena turned her gaze away from him and looked back out the window at the lights of the city below them. “I can’t remember a time when my parents weren’t fighting.” Her voice was soft, little more than a whisper, but Reece had no difficulty hearing it in the hushed room. “About everything. And anything. My father was a big man. With a big hairy belly that always stuck out from beneath his sweat-stained undershirt. And big hands that loved to hit little girls. But of course, I was very little, so perhaps he wasn’t so big at all. Perhaps he just seemed that way....

      “Did I ever tell you I had a kitten?”

      “No,” Reece said carefully, feeling like he’d just entered one of those dark carnival fun houses that weren’t really any fun at all but filled with monsters who’d gleefully leap out and scare the piss out of little kids.

      “Her name was Miss Puss in Boots.” She turned toward him, her eyes as flat as her voice. “Because she had white paws. Like little boots. I found her in the alley and brought her home. Molly helped me hide her in our bedroom closet and every night I’d let her out of her box and she’d sneak beneath the blanket and curl up next to me and purr. I used to listen to that sound, like a small warm little engine, and it helped me block out the sound of the fighting.”

      She fell silent. Reece waited.

      “One night he came in to drag us out of bed for some perceived misbehavior. I can’t remember what, and it probably wasn’t anything at all. Drinking always made him paranoid and he’d imagine all sorts of things we might have done. Or even thought.

      “Anyway, he found Miss Puss. He pulled her out of the bed, and Molly tried to stop him. He knocked her away and she hit her head on the corner of the metal bed frame. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget that sound.

      “She still has the scar on her temple. It’s faint, but if you know it’s there, you can see it. There was so much blood, I thought she was going to die. But of course she didn’t....

      “Then he strangled Miss Puss with his big hairy hands. And threatened to do the same to us if we ever brought another animal into his house.”

      As an ER doctor, Reece thought he’d seen all the evils humans could do to one another. But never had such horror hit so close to home.

      “My God, Lena—”

      “No.” She held up a hand. “Please, just let me get this all out. Because it’s taken me years to get up the nerve to say it out loud, and if I stop, I may never be able to do it again.”

      Reece tamped down his building fury and nodded.

      “I think he raped our mother that night. I didn’t understand the sounds coming through the wall from their bedroom at the time. But now I believe that’s what happened. Then he left the house to go out drinking.

      “Molly and I tried to see if Mama was all right—we could hear her crying—but she wouldn’t open her bedroom door. She told us to go to bed and everything would be all right in the morning.... She always said that. But of course it never was.”

      Lena shook her head and dragged her hand through her hair. In the moonlight streaming in through the window, the diamonds in her wedding band glistened like ice.

      “Molly put a Band-Aid on her head to stop the bleeding, which it really didn’t do, but it finally slowed down. At least it wasn’t streaming down her face anymore.

      “Once Mama seemed to be all right, Molly wrapped Miss Puss in a clean nightgown. Then, when we knew he wasn’t coming back that night, when it was safe, she got a flashlight and we went out in the backyard and Molly dug a hole and we buried Miss Puss.

      “Our house was by Dodger Stadium and Molly had just finished saying a prayer, when the game ended and suddenly the sky lit up with the most wonderful fireworks.”

      She closed her eyes. “I can still see them today. They were so beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. And Molly told me they were in celebration of Miss Puss’s arrival in heaven, where all the angels would love her and she’d have all the cream and kibble she’d ever want.”

      Reece had always known what a special person Molly was, but for the first time he was getting a sense of the burden she’d had put on her young shoulders, and he finally began to understand her seemingly limitless capacity for caring.

      As if in a trance, Lena continued to relate the story of the lives and times of Lena and Molly McBride. Reece had been sickened by the saga of Miss Puss, but he was horrified by his wife’s tale of the murder/suicide of her parents.

      When she was finally finished, when she’d unburdened her heart and her soul, including the self-

      destructive sexual behavior that may have left her unable to have children, she turned to him, her eyes wide and dark in her too-pale face.

      “So now you know the truth. And I’ll understand if you decide you can’t love me any longer.”

      A complicated rage burned through Reece. He wanted to beat her dead father to a pulp for having inflicted such terrible pain on his family. His feelings for Lena’s mother wavered somewhere between fury and pity.

      But since there was nothing he could do to correct past sins, at this moment Reece’s overriding urge was to shake his wife. To shout at her. To ask her what the hell kind of man she thought he was that he could ever hold her responsible for any of those horrors she’d described. But understanding that his anger was directed toward the injustice of what had been done to her, he managed, just barely, to hold his tongue.

      “I told you—” He had to force the words past the massive lump of anguished fury that had taken up residence in his throat. “I love you, Lena.” Needing to touch her, to hold her, he crossed the room and drew her into his arms. “More than life itself.”

      “But…”

      “Shh.” He pressed a finger against her trembling lips. She was like a block of ice in his arms. “You’ve had your say. Now it’s my turn, okay?”

      She nodded, her shimmering wet eyes on his.

      “If I could go back in time and erase all those things that happened, I would. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way, so I can’t change the past. But the one thing I can do is to vow to spend the rest of my life helping you to feel happy. And safe.”

      Relief flooded through Lena, like a cool crystal river.

      “You’ve already done that,” she said on a deep, shuddering breath. “I realize I don’t say it enough, but I’ve been happier since meeting you than I ever thought possible. And I’ve never felt so safe.” Wrapping her arms around his waist, Lena hung on for dear life.

      Reece kissed her then. A deep, heartfelt kiss filled with love and promise. And then he carried her into the bedroom, where he made love to her with a tenderness that made her cry all over again.

      But this time, Lena’s tears were not born of sorrow, but joy.

      Chapter Seven

      “You’re