The Doctor's Daughter

“I want to thank you, Lucas, for all the help you’ve been to me and my son.” Letter to Reader Title Page Dedication CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY Copyright

“I want to thank you, Lucas, for all the help you’ve been to me and my son.”

Virginia’s voice was low and urgent. “It was a huge thing for me to come back to Glory. I only hope I’ve made the right decision.”

“Hey, Virginia.” Lucas held her gaze and felt something start to hum and burn inside his chest. She had this effect on him; she’d always had this effect on him.

“You’ve been terrific. And...and I really appreciate it. Especially since things aren’t always the way I’d like them to be with Mother and Father.”

Lucas had noticed that she always referred to her parents rather formally It seemed odd, since everyone in town knew how much Doc and Doris Lake had doted on their only daughter.

Lucas wanted to reach out and touch her. Suddenly he did. He leaned forward and placed both his hands on her shoulders. “Listen, Virginia, I’m happy to be a good friend to you. But that’s not all I want to be. When we’re at work, I’m a hundred percent professional. But when we’re not...I intend to court you. Seriously.”

There was a moment of strained silence. Then “S-seriously?” Her voice was faint.

“Damn seriously.”

“Oh, Lucas...then kiss me. Please.”

Dear Reader,

There’s a wrong side to every town.

Sometimes it’s the east end, if the prevailing wind is from the west. Sometimes it’s across the tracks, where the cinders and smoke once flew and the freight whistles meant sleepless nights for the nearby residents. Sometimes it’s on the far bank of the river or creek, with a graveled path leading toward it, away from the brighter lights.

Rarely it was a hilltop. Generally that’s where “Society” lived, with a good view of those less fortunate folk below.

Lucas Yellowfly is poor, half-Native American and from the wrong side of town. But he’s got big plans for himself.

Maverick daughter of the local surgeon, Virginia Lake is definitely from the right side of town. But she returns in disgrace, a young son in tow and no husband in sight.

Now, twelve years after they both left Glory, they’ve got a second chance. This time, will love prevail, no matter what the neighbors think?

I hope you enjoy Lucas and Virginia’s story. How could two wrongs come out so right?

Sincerely,

Judith Bowen

P.S. I’d love to hear from you! Write to me at P.O. Box 2333, Point Roberts, WA 98281-2333

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my good friend, Kathy Garner

CHAPTER ONE

IT NEVER CEASED to amaze Lucas Yellowfly how, in this life, you couldn’t discount coincidence. Sure, good luck was good management, but sometimes you had to wonder.

Look at today’s mail, for instance. How likely was it he’d get an invitation to a baby christening, a letter from his sister, who never wrote when there was a phone in town, and a job application from a woman he’d once loved? Twelve long years since he’d seen her. No woman had ever measured up quite that way since.

Pete Horsfall, his law partner, mostly retired but still in the office a day or two a week, had tossed the application on Lucas’s desk after lunch. Lucas had just picked up his personal mail at home and read the invitation to the christening of Joe and Honor Gallant’s baby boy. His sister’s letter he’d tucked in his pocket unopened after examining the postmark. Somewhere on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. He wanted to think about it on his short walk back to the office.

So Theresa had ended up on the coast again. With her daughter, presumably. Lucas’s sister had had her share of problems. He was always ready to help her, no questions asked, especially since Tammy’s birth eight years ago. He just wanted a few minutes to think about what Theresa might be up to this time before he opened the envelope and found out.

And then, as soon as he sat down at his desk, there was that application for the legal assistant’s position from Virginia Lake staring him in the face, on top of the handful of six or seven applications Horsfall had already opened and read. Lucas wondered if Virginia was on his partner’s short list. If she wasn’t, he pondered briefly how he’d get around the old man and get her hired.

Because that was what he intended. He didn’t care what her qualifications were. He’d train her himself if he had to—he wanted to see Virginia again. He wanted her back in Glory.

When had he seen her last?

Graduation night. Her graduation. He’d come back to Glory with one thing on his mind—to show the town that had never had time for the Indian kid from the south side of the tracks just how wrong they were. He’d had a freshly inked bachelor of arts degree in one pocket and a letter accepting him to one of the country’s top law schools in the other. He’d planned to ask the doctor’s daughter to the dance—the one girl in town who’d been considered completely beyond his reach. All she could do was turn him down, right?

But she hadn’t turned him down. She’d said yes, and Lucas wasn’t sure his life had ever been the same again.

He’d had his eye on her all through high school, although she was several years behind him. She’d been wild. Crazy and wild, and it seemed there wasn’t anything she and that boyfriend of hers, Johnny Gagnon, wouldn’t get up to. She was the bane of Doc Lake’s life. His only daughter. His and that stiff society dame. As if there was any society in the town of Glory!

But Doris Lake did her best to pretend there was. Only, it was extremely difficult with a flame-haired daredevil of a daughter who drag-raced her daddy’s Oldsmobile on the abandoned airfield five miles out of town and thumbed her nose at every convention in the book.

Maybe that was why she’d accepted his invitation to the senior prom. Because he was hands-off. A half-breed. A no-good with a drunk for a father and a brittle, worried, worn-out mother who somehow kept the family together by cleaning houses in the fancy district up on Buffalo Hill. Doc Lake’s wasn’t one of them. Lucas didn’t think he could have borne the shame at eighteen, no matter how proud he was of his mother now, at thirty-five. The old man was dead finally, of a rotten liver and a broken heart, a salmon-eating Fraser River Sto:lo dead in prairie Blackfoot country, home of the buffalo-eaters. And a few years ago, Lucas had bought his mother a retirement apartment in south Calgary, which she shared with her older and only surviving sister. Family was a part of his life Lucas rarely talked about. The truth was, nobody asked.

Or maybe Virginia Lake had accepted his invitation becaue her boyfriedn was in jail.

Johnny Gagnon had a string of petty charges against him by the time he quit school at sixteen. Joyriding, public mischief, shoplifting. He had a laughing, darkly handsome face and a devil-may-care attitude to match Virginia’s. Even when he went to work as a grease monkey for the local mechanic, Walter Friesen, he hung around the high school, revving up his old Thunderbird in the parking lot, waiting for Virginia to finish class. When Virginia was out of town, Lucas would see him driving up and down Main Street with any number of other female companions. Or steaming up the car windows with some girl at the Starlight Drive-in.

The day of Virginia’s graduation, Johnny was in jail for grand larceny. Car theft. He wasn’t a young offender anymore and the Glory Plain Dealer didn’t call it joyriding in their “This Week in Court” column. He got six months, was out in three, but by then Lucas had taken his girl to the senior prom and earned Gagnon’s enduring enmity.

Not that Lucas Yellowfly gave a damn. Where was Johnny Gagnon now? Ha. Lucas hadn’t thought of him in years. Probably in a maximum-security pen somewhere. Dorchester or Kingston. Well out of society’s hair, anyway, he presumed. Lucas had grown up and dedicated his life to the law. He’d put the violence of his own youth behind him. The bar fights, the rodeo brawls, the lies dreamed up to protect his no-good father and tired mother from the town’s scorn—all of it behind him. He believed in the law now. In the power of justice.

And his profession had been very, very good to him. He had an excellent income, a knockout wardrobe, savings in the bank, a stockbroker on retainer, holidays in the south every January, a BMW—he’d achieved all the trappings of success. And, best of all, he’d come back to Glory to do it. He’d shoved his success in the town’s face and they’d had to take it. Now he could accompany any single woman in Glory to any dinner party, anytime. He was in demand. Fathers brightened when they saw him arrive with their daughter on his arm. Where were the scowls of the old days?

Lucas enjoyed every minute of it. Revenge, they said, was sweet. Indeed, it was.

He frowned slightly as he examined the facts on Virginia’s resumé. Thirty, diploma in office management and legal research, past experience... He ran his eye quickly down the list and frowned again. It seemed she’d had an awful lot of short-term jobs in a lot of different towns. He glanced at her cover letter.

Then his eye stopped. His heart stopped. She had a child. A boy, five years old.

Lucas pushed back his chair and put his feet up on the desk, hands behind his head. He stared out the window.

Single. With a child. Coming back to Glory. What had happened in Virginia Lake’s life?

Lucas told himself he’d do everything right. He’d let Pete handle it; otherwise, she might remember that prom date and the night they’d spent together and maybe change her mind. When he saw her, in person, it would be different. There’d be no embarrassment on either side. She’d know he cared. The way he always had. She’d know he’d never do anything to hurt her. She’d know she’d come to the right place. If he could help her, he would.

Yes, he’d let Pete take care of things. Lucas couldn’t afford to blow it. He’d been waiting for Virginia for a very long time.

CHAPTER TWO

Six years earlier

VIRGINIA PAUSED at the spring-loaded door to the Bragg Creek Grocery with an odd feeling that something was wrong.

What could be wrong?

It was a glorious morning, the trees were in full leaf and the wild roses were in bud. She’d just heard good news about a summer job at the Banff Springs Hotel and now she had a place to live, too, at the Prescotts’ summer cabin just down the road. She didn’t have to go home to Glory, didn’t have to deal with her parents, after all. She could take care of herself.

Virginia frowned. Maybe the feeling had something to do with the shiny late-model Jeep that stood outside the store with its engine running. In winter, yes, people sometimes left their cars and pickups running, but on a beautiful May morning? She pushed open the door and stepped into the gloom of the old store.

“Well, well.”

“Johnny!”

“Will you lookee who’s here?”

Virginia was tongue-tied. She hadn’t seen Johnny Gagnon since the summer her father had packed her off to Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, four thousand miles away.

“Haven’t seen you in a while, babe. Man, what a sight for sore eyes!”

She’d have recognized him anywhere. Handsome as ever, maybe even more so now that he was a man, fully grown. He wore a mustache, which suited him, and his hair was fashionably long. His teeth flashed white in his swarthy face when he grinned at her, and, as always, she found it hard not to grin back.

Johnny Bandito.

But what was he doing here?

Then she noticed his right hand stuffed awkwardly in his jacket pocket and, slung over his shoulder, a stained and worn canvas cash bag that was stenciled faintly with “Bragg Creek Grocery.” He was sweating profusely and his dark eyes were all over her and all over the store at the same time. Where was Mr. Gibbon? Where were the other customers? The old guys who gathered every morning in the country store to shoot the breeze with the proprietor?

Virginia heard a muffled thump from behind the high wooden counter. That was when she noticed the wall phone was off the hook and the connection had been ripped out.

Her eyes shot to Johnny’s. “What are you doing here?”

“C’mon, babe,” he shot back, winking at her. “Lighten up, eh? Just a little grubstake, that’s all.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket, leaving a bulky-looking object behind. A gun. He had a gun in his pocket.

He grabbed her arm. “Come with me, sweetheart. I could use a good-looking hostage.” He grinned again, but this time Virginia felt no inclination to smile back. Her insides were frozen. He was robbing this store. She’d walked into the middle of a robbery.

“Where’s Mr. Gibbon?” she demanded, wrenching her arm away from the man who’d been her first lover and, once, her closest friend.

“Aw, he’s fine. Tied him up with a little of his own stock. Panty hose.” Johnny nodded in the direction of the counter. “Little trick I learned in the pen. You know I’d never hurt anybody, Ginny,” he said irritably.

Virginia stepped closer, trying to peer behind the counter. “My God!” She turned to rush to the aid of the three people on the floor-one of whom was Mr. Gibbon—gagged and bound together by the feet. But Johnny grabbed her arm again.

This time it hurt. This time she knew he meant it. He was going to take her with him, just as he’d said.

“Look, they’re fine. I tied ‘em up so I could put a few miles between me and this dump before they called the cops. And I ripped out the wires just to give ’em a little more challenge, eh?” He winked at her, then reached out and scooped up half-a-dozen beef jerky and pepperoni packages from the display on the counter. “Come on, Ginny. Let’s get out of here.”

He stuffed the jerky and pepperoni in the cash bag and gripped her arm. Virginia cursed herself for not doing something when he’d let her go. Why hadn’t she run out of there screaming? She ought to be able to raise the alarm herself even now—run, get help at the nearest occupied cabin. Where was that at this time of year? Not many Calgary people spent more than weekends at their Bragg Creek cabins this early in the season.

It was too late. He had her arm in a viselike grip and he wasn’t letting go. Maybe she should play along. Maybe she could talk him out of this, talk him into giving himself up. Convince him that this kind of stupid crime was no way to have a life.

Johnny doused the lights with his free hand, twisted the doorknob lock and flipped the plastic sign hanging on the window beside the door to Closed. The lock wasn’t secure, but it would halt most people, though they might wonder why Mr. Gibbon hadn’t opened up yet.

Then, holding her tightly, he turned and yelled back into the silent store, “Remember, old man. I got a gun and a hostage—just stay where you are and don’t do nothin’ and nobody’ll get hurt!”

He slammed the door shut, then frog-marched her to the driver’s side of the running Jeep. “Get in, Ginny, and don’t try nothin’ funny. We got a lot of catching up to do.”

Virginia clambered across the driver’s bucket seat and the gearshift into the passenger seat. By the time she was reaching for her seat belt—a matter of habit—Johnny had thrown the Jeep into gear and popped the clutch. He left the small parking lot in a spray of gravel and grinned at her as she jammed her seat belt lever home. “Just like the old days, eh? You and me? Bonnie and Clyde—”

“This is nuts, Johnny. You’ll never get away with this.”

His eyes narrowed. “Who says, babe?”

“Me. You can’t do this.” She made a wild gesture at him, at the vehicle, at the blur of trees lining the roadside. “Whose Jeep is this, anyway?”

“Friend of a friend, you might say. Just borrowed it.” He winked at her again. She noticed then that there was no key in the ignition. He’d hot-wired it. That was why he’d left it running.

Johnny tossed her the cash bag with one hand as he pulled out to pass a gleaming stainless-steel dairy tanker. “Dig in there and throw me a chunk of that pepperoni, will you?”

Obediently Virginia rummaged in the bag. There wasn’t much cash. Probably just Mr. Gibbon’s float for the day. Or maybe his receipts over the weekend. She was disgusted. Imagine robbing a store for a couple hundred bucks or less. Then she caught herself—stealing was stealing, no matter what the amount. She’d just finished her second year of law school and she knew where this kind of thing led.

She’d have had more respect for her former lover if he’d planned and carried out something big. This nickel-and-dime stuff, this hot-wiring and stealing cars—all it did was add up to a ruined life and a string of jail terms. Not that robbing a bank and going to jail for twenty years in a federal penitentiary wouldn’t ruin a person’s life. But at least it took some brains. She tossed Johnny a bag of pepperoni strips, which he caught with his free hand.

“Thanks, babe. So—” he tore the bag open with his teeth “—what’ve you been up to since the last time I saw you? Four, five years ago now?”

“More than that.” She paused. She didn’t feel like filling Johnny in on her life over the past six years. This was no social picnic or school reunion. She was in the middle of a crime that was still taking place. He had called her his hostage. Armed robbery. She hadn’t guessed wrong; he’d told Mr. Gibbon and the others that he had a gun. Car theft. Now kidnapping. Did he mean it? Or was he going to drop her off somewhere, maybe in the next town or on one of these back roads, and ask her not to go to the police?

She wasn’t sure where they were headed, except that they were traveling west. The Rockies loomed, snowcapped and gleaming in the sunshine, in the near distance. Bragg Creek was in the wooded foothills twenty miles west of Calgary. To the southeast was the Stoney Reserve and, south of that, ranch country. Longview, Priddis, Black Diamond, Turner Valley, Millarville, Glory. If they stopped in one of those towns, she could jump out. Then what? She supposed she’d have to turn Johnny in and even testify against him when the time came. She didn’t want to be involved. She wished she hadn’t decided to walk to the store for a cellophane-wrapped Danish for breakfast this morning. She wished she’d settled for the dry cereal her first check of the Prescotts’ cupboards had yielded.

What luck. And Mr. Gibbon’s stock of bakery goods would likely have been a week old, anyway.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked finally.

Johnny swallowed the mouthful of pepperoni he’d been chewing and turned to her. “Place I know. Nice little cabin up here off the Powderface Trail. Give us a chance to visit. Nobody to disturb us, if you know what I mean.” He laughed and bit off another chunk of the pepperoni.

Virginia relaxed slightly. He couldn’t intend her any harm if he’d told her where they were going. He must plan to let her go soon, maybe after this “visit.” Oddly, even with the gun she knew he had, she wasn’t particularly worried. She wished he’d just let her go now. She had nothing to talk about with him. They had nothing in common anymore, probably hadn’t since high school. She’d gone to her prom with that half-Indian guy she’d always secretly admired, Lucas Yellowfly. Johnny had been in jail. It had been the last in a string of disappointments with Johnny Gagnon, and in a way she was relieved when her father, furious that she’d dated Yellowfly, had packed her up and sent her to university in New Brunswick.

She’d stayed with her aunt Sadie and attended Mount Allison for four years, long enough to get her bachelor of arts, and then she’d applied for law school in Edmonton and Calgary. Edmonton had accepted her. She’d wanted to come back to Alberta. Maybe not to Glory with her parents, but she’d missed the mountains and the wide-open spaces. She’d missed home.

But she hadn’t missed Johnny Gagnon, although she hadn’t forgotten him, either. You never forgot the first man you’d been with. You never forgot someone who’d been a good friend, someone who’d grown up with you and who’d once shared all the secrets of your teenage heart.

“What’ve you been doing, Johnny?” she ventured. Might as well play the game. For now, at least.

“You mean besides robbing dumpy little highway grocery stores?” He grinned at her and ripped open a bag of peanuts that had been lying on the dash. “Oh, this and that.” He stuffed a few peanuts in his mouth. “Got married.”

“Really!” Virginia was genuinely pleased. “Anybody I know?”

“Nope. Babe from Clearwater. In B.C. On the Yellowhead.” Johnny frowned, chewed a mouthful of peanuts and swallowed again. “Hey—you hungry?” He offered her the open bag. She shook her head.

“So, got any kids?”

“Nah. Marriage went belly-up a few years back. She couldn’t handle the life-style, know what I mean?”

That didn’t surprise her. What woman could?

“Worked a few jobs here and there, tried to stay straight. Sawmills, oil rigs, drove truck for a while. Harper’s Transport out of Olds.” He glanced at her. “Nothing that amounted to much. Spent a little time in the clink—I already mentioned that, huh?” Virginia had the distinct impression he’d spent more than a little time in jail, and maybe that had been the part of the life-style his wife couldn’t handle. “What about you?”

“Oh, this and that. I was down East for a few years. I’m going to law school up in Edmonton now, second year—”

“No kidding! So you can put guys like me behind bars, eh?”

“I guess so.” She smiled. It was hard to stay mad at Johnny. She remembered that about him. He could always make her laugh, even during the worst times. Firmly she reminded herself that this was different. This was serious. Mr. Gibbon had no doubt freed himself and called the Mounties. Any minute now they’d hear a police siren and they’d be pulled over and Johnny’d be arrested and that would be the end of it.

Suddenly Johnny slowed the Jeep and they lurched off the road, which had been gravel for the past several miles, onto a rutted lane that wasn’t much more than a grassy track. The vehicle heaved and bounced, engine growling.

Virginia held tight to the armrest. She didn’t like this. She didn’t like it one bit. At least the road they’d been on was public; there’d been a chance of flagging down another car, if she’d had the opportunity. But what could she do out here in some shack in the bush? Somehow, though, she didn’t think Johnny was a walker. Too lazy. The cabin he’d mentioned couldn’t be too far and she figured it had to be on some sort of road.

She was wrong.

They came to a stop in the middle of a clearing with a faint turnaround. There were tiny spring flowers and grasses growing in the tracks, indicating it hadn’t been used for a while.

“What are we stopping for?” she asked, on the off chance this wasn’t what she thought it was—their destination.

“We’re here, babe. This is old-fashioned cabin country. You take the cash bag and I’ll grab that duffel in the back. I’m banking on my buddy keeping the joint stocked. Otherwise it’s pepperoni and peanuts or, if the lady prefers, peanuts and pepperoni.” He laughed, as though it was a tremendous joke.