Wild Honey

Cover Page

Excerpt

About The Author

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

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Copyright

Lovely though Randi was, the child claimed Travis’s attention

Matt’s small body already held evidence of the long-boned height that was as much a McLean trait as the square jaw and blond curls. His legs pumped furiously as he went after the beach ball

His son. Oh, yeah, most definitely his son. Travis was overcome by an emotion so new he wasn’t sure what it was, except that his heart seemed to somersault. Without thinking, he caught the ball. He found himself looking into a small upturned face.

“Sorry, mister,” said the boy. “My name’s Matt. Wanna play catch with my mom ‘n me?” he asked hopefully.

Travis stared into the eager face of his son, swallowed past the lump in his throat and remembered feeling the way Matt looked right now….

Dad, would you play a game of catch with me?

Sorry, Travis, but I’m late for a meeting at the hospital

“Sure thing, Matt,” he said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in New Jersey, author Veronica Sattler has had several career interests, ranging from teaching to selling antiques to her ultimate passion, writing. She was inspired by historical writer Kathleen Woodiwiss, and went on to win several awards in the historical genre. Wild Honey is her second contemporary novel.

Veronica, who also enjoys gourmet cooking and American folk art, currently resides in rural Pennsylvania with her daughter, Alyssa, and an Irish wolfhound named Brendan.

Wild Honey

Veronica Sattler

To Peg and Bill Kreitler with love.

CHAPTER ONE

DEAR GOD, it can’t be! Please, oh, please, it can’t be him! Randi Terhune mouthed the silent plea, her bloodless lips moving almost imperceptibly.

She stared at the big handsome man being transferred from a stretcher to an emergency-room gurney. It was him, she realized as she fought to steady her trembling hands. There couldn’t be two such perfect male specimens walking the earth, unless they were twins, and Travis McLean’s information profile had revealed no such thing. Dear Lord, what am I going to do?

Dimly she was aware he was the patient they’d just rerouted from Bethesda Naval Hospital. Brought in by special helicopter, he’d been flown here to Johns Hopkins when fog prevented landing at the original destination.

At the forefront of her mind, however, other things about him loomed much larger. Like the fact that he was the father of her child. A child he knew nothing about. Had never seen.

A child whose mother was still a virgin.

Randi managed to pull herself together enough to issue an order to one of her staff to assist in the admittance procedure. She was buying herself some time, but that was all. As head ER nurse, she’d be the one expected to deal with this VIP patient. The call from Bethesda had been very specific about the man’s importance, although they hadn’t given any details.

Glancing at the memo she pulled from her clipboard, Randi frowned. He’d be a doctor, of course. He’d been a fourth-year medical student back then, so he had to be a full-fledged physician by now. But why would the brass at Bethesda be ordering the red-carpet treatment for a doctor—a doctor with a gunshot wound?

Hope flared as she redirected her gaze to the tall blond man now stretched out on the gurney. Maybe there were two of them! There were such things as doubles, she’d heard. The Germans even had a word for it—Doppelgänger, if she recalled her high-school German correctly.

Carefully, trying to appear casual amid the usual emergency-room chaos, she made her way toward the nurse she’d directed to admit the man on the gurney. She saw John Ames, the second-year resident in surgery on duty tonight, and managed a smile as he approached the gurney from the opposite side.

At least, she hoped what she did passed for a smile. Inwardly she was quaking like a leaf in a storm.

Randi held her breath and prayed as she stole a glance over her assistant’s shoulder. At the form on the clipboard that gave the patient’s full name.

And felt her heart sink as she read, “Travis Paxton McLean.”

“E-excuse me, Pierson,” she stammered when her assistant, a big capable black woman, glanced up at her and then offered her the clipboard. “I…there’s something I forgot to take care of in my office. Continue until I get back, please. I’ll…I’ll only be a minute.”

How she managed to get to her tiny office at the far end of the corridor, Randi never knew. But somehow, agonizing minutes later, she was shutting the door behind her. She leaned back against it in the unlit room, her heart slamming against her ribs.

She hadn’t really expected to learn he was someone else of course. No, reading his name had only compounded the feeling that the floor had just opened under her. The feeling she got when she’d risked a glance at the man’s eyes: the exact same eyes as her son’s.

Images swirled as the past came up to confront her—the tastefully decorated waiting room of the doctor’s office outside Cambridge, the look that might have hinted at embarrassment on the handsome face, the lazy Southern draw! as he asked for an application, and finally the sharp crystalline blue of those eyes.

Matt’s eyes.

Matt. Seizing on the image of her son, Randi fought for control; she sucked in a deep calming breath, then another. Matt, she repeated silently. Matt had been worth it!

Miranda Terhune was thirty-two years old; because of a rapid shift in personnel that had left several unexpected vacancies, and because of her own professional skill and competence, she’d been promoted to her present position at Johns Hopkins Medical Center in a little more than two years.

But it wasn’t the scene of her current job she was remembering now. It was the place where she’d worked five years before. A fertility clinic near Cambridge.

She’d gotten the job because of Connie, her old college roommate. She, Randi, had been working at the time at a hospital in Washington, D.C., and not really enjoying it. But it hadn’t been just the work; she’d felt a vague dissatisfaction, an odd restlessness, though she’d been unable to put her finger on the source of these feelings.

Now, with the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight, she knew why she’d felt that way. She’d always thrown herself into her work, but as time wore on, it hadn’t been enough. Perhaps earlier than most women who chose career over marriage and family, she’d felt her biological clock ticking. Reminding her that her prime child-bearing years were passing. That one day she could wake up and find it was too late.

Of course, she hadn’t had an inkling she might be yearning for a child when Connie had called, asking if she’d like to fill in for her at the clinic while she was on maternity leave. Yet she might have picked up a clue from something Connie had said.

“Never thought I’d be one to opt for the Pablum and Pampers scene, but you know, Randi, there’s something about being in a place like this day after day, seeing all these women with big bellies—and grins on their faces, instead of the urgent hungry looks they came in with. Maybe it’s catching, y’know?”

Yes, the clue had been there, all right. Because when Connie had said that, Randi had said yes.

But the yearning had been strong and recognizable after only a few months of working in Dr. Philip Burgess’s clinic. Randi wanted a child, hungered for one. The trouble was, she was unmarried and determined to remain so.

Because Randi Terhune was afraid of men.

Leaning against her office door now, she felt herself shudder with the silent admission. It was the first time she’d admitted it, to herself or anyone else. She suspected Jill knew, though. Jill and Dr. Carol Martin.

Fighting a wave of nausea, she tried to block the images, but they came at her with the ruthlessness of longsuppressed demons. Demons straight out of hell.

He was stalking her. She knew it as well as she knew her own name. Or that she was twelve years old. Or that her mother had been dead more than six months now, and all she had left was Jill.

But Jill couldn’t help her, couldn’t protect her. Her sister was only fourteen, and she hadn’t been able to protect herself! He’d come to Jill’s bedroom at night, when he’d thought both girls were asleep. But Randi hadn’t been asleep. She’d gotten up to get a drink of water from the bathroom and glanced into her sister’s room. The door was open and the hall light spilled in. And she’d seen.

Just as she’d seen him stalking Jill for days. Touching her back and shoulders and arms with lingering hands, brushing against her small breasts in passing. Watching her with eyes that burned as they fastened on those breasts, and on Jill’s bottom when she bent over, or her bare legs when she wore shorts.

Soon he’d begun stalking Randi, too. Waiting until he thought the time was right to come into her room and make her whimper, just as Jill had whimpered, to push her down on the bed and—

“Oh, God!”

The sound of her cry startled her in the still, dark room. She became aware that tears were streaming down her face.

Impatiently she swiped at them with her fingers. She’d thought all that was behind her. Jill had put it behind her, hadn’t she? And Randi’d had just as many hours of counseling as her sister. Jill was happily engaged to marry David in the fall, and Dr. Martin was so certain of Jill’s recovery she’d delightedly consented to be a bridesmaid.

But the doctor isn’t so certain of your recovery, is she? an inner voice taunted.

Carol Martin was the psychiatric counselor they’d both seen following their stepfather’s death in a car crash. The car crash that had mercifully ended his months-long sexual abuse of Jill Terhune and prevented him from ever actually laying hands on Randi.

Yet Randi had been the one with the nightmares after they’d gone to live with Aunt Tess. The nightmares that had awakened Jill, if not the kindly old woman who was their dead mother’s maiden aunt. And so Randi had finally been forced to tell Jill that she knew.

The two of them had always been close, but that night, as they’d wept together, an even closer bond had been forged. A bond that gave them the courage to approach the guidance counselor at school. The woman had broken the news to their elderly guardian, and it was then they’d begun the sessions with Carol Martin.

Sessions that had healed the actual victim of the abuse, but not her younger sister? In the silence of the darkened office now, Randi wanted to deny it, but how could she with the man whose sperm she’d stolen lying on a gurney a room away? Stolen, because she’d longed desperately for a child, but was terrified to conceive in the normal way.

Still, old habits die hard, and so Randi did find herself denying it as she switched on the light and reached for a tissue from the box on her desk. Nonsense, she thought as she blotted her face and checked it in the small mirror from her purse. You aren’t afraid of men. You just aren’t one of those women who feels she needs a man to make her life complete.

Feeling more resolute with this assessment, she switched’ off the light and, straightening her shoulders, headed back to the ER. She scrubbed her hands carefully and nodded to her assistant. Martha Pierson was still beside the gurney across the room, and Randi signaled she’d be right there. But as she approached the figure now sitting up on the gurney, her resolution took a nose dive.

Matt will look like that in thirty years, she found herself thinking as she took in Travis McLean’s chiseled features. She’d already noticed several women in the room staring at him with unconcealed admiration, and she didn’t have to guess why. She’d looked at him the same way five years ago; he was too beautiful to believe.

Pierson handed her a tray of sterilized instruments. Randi paused, feeling the inner tension mount as she stole glances at Travis McLean’s profile while Dr. Ames examined his shoulder. So much like Matt…

Her own hair was a fine and silky honey blond. McLean’s was sun-streaked with flaxen. And coarser, thick and springy, with a lot more curl. Like Matt’s. The lean planes beneath the prominent cheekbones weren’t evident in her son’s young face yet, but she suspected they’d appear with time. Just as Matt’s perfect little nose would lengthen, grow into the narrow, straight proportions of his father’s. And Matt already had ample evidence of the square jaw she saw on McLean. She found herself wondering if it denoted the same stubbornness that—Don’t think about it! Don’t think about things you’ll never be able to compare because—

The tray of instruments she was holding crashed to the floor.

“Good grief, Terhune, what’s wrong with you? I’ve never seen you this way!” The resident’s uncharacteristic sharpness told her plenty about how distraught she must appear. She’d better get ahold of herself.

“I…I’m sorry, Doctor. Just having a…a bad night, I guess.”

Her face flaming, Randi bent to retrieve the instruments, even though it meant she’d have to scrub again. She needed to get away from those crystalline blue eyes that seemed to look right through her. What if he remembered her? What if…

But, no, he had no way of knowing what she’d done. She’d destroyed all records of his donation after she’d inseminated herself. And she’d told no one but Jill and, reluctantly, Carol Martin. Jill and Carol, both sworn to keep her confidence.

She’d been certain she’d never again lay eyes on the perfect specimen of American manhood she’d selected for his health, intelligence, family background and physical assets to be the father of her child. So certain…

She straightened and handed the tray to an orderly. Taking great pains to avoid the sight of McLean’s tanned and muscled bare chest, she asked Pierson to cover for her again, murmured an excuse to Ames and went to scrub.

Making her way across the busy room, she tried to regain a sense of normalcy by taking in the scene. It was chaotic, but familiar.

On her far right a uniformed police officer waited, no expression on his face, to give her other assistant, Nurse Ryan, details about the young punk he’d just brought in; the teenager was comitose from a suspected drug overdose.

Just to her left, an anxious young couple hovered, the woman clutching the man’s hand as they watched an intern stitch up a nasty cut on their little girl’s leg. The child was trying hard not to cry, but the words, “Mommy…Daddy,” kept erupting through her stilted sobs.

Would she ever be able to watch so bravely if it were Matt lying there on the table? And no husband to share the agony, to support you, as this woman has? her inner voice taunted.

Where on earth had that come from? She’d never questioned her single parenthood before. Besides, she wasn’t alone. She had Jill, didn’t she?

Jill—who was getting married in a few months.

Suddenly Randi began to feel as if she’d never again be certain of anything in her life.

CHAPTER TWO

TRAVIS MCLEAN hated hospitals. Emergency rooms in particular. That he sat in one at the moment was not improving his disposition one iota.

Dammit, he’d told Cord he didn’t need this! A local ambulance, maybe the attentions of some small-town country doctor near the scene, and he’d have been fine. But would that SOB listen? Hell, no!

But then, Jason Cord never listened much to anyone these days. Something was eating at that guy, and Travis suspected if Cord didn’t unload it mighty soon, there’d be hell to pay.

As for Rafe O’Hara, his other so-called buddy of long standing, yeah, okay, maybe O’Hara had owed him one. And he doubted Rafe could have said anything that would have changed Cord’s mind, anyhow.

But, Lord, did he hate hospitals!

Scowling at the tired-looking overworked resident who probed the wound in his shoulder, Travis wanted to bolt and run. The shoulder hurt like a sonofabitch, but physical pain was not the reason. No, nothing that simple. Besides, he was more than acquainted with pain. Hell, any five-year CIA veteran was likely to be, and he’d had a four-year hitch in the navy before that. A hitch that had seen action. He’d been shot during that action, and compared to what he’d endured then, this was nothing. A run-of-the-mill flesh wound. He’d live.

But what wasn’t so simple was another kind of pain the ER, for some reason, brought to mind The pain of remembering. And something that felt suspiciously like guilt….

Travis, I simply do not understand you! The tear-filled voice of his mother floated back to him on the currents of memory, aided perhaps by the shot of Demerol they’d given him. To take a lifetime of plannin’ and just throw it away. It doesn’t make any sense!

But whose plan are we talkin’ about, Mother? His own voice echoed through the corridors of five long years, angry, strident. Y’all were so certain I’d become a doctor—a heart surgeon, to be specific. Just like my father. And my grandfather, of course. But did anyone ever ask me? Did anyone, just once, ask if that was what I wanted?

But four years at Harvard Medical School, Travis! Four years of straight A’s! Why do all that if you didn’t want it? His poor mother, sounding so bewildered, helpless, and so very sad. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He loved her, respected her. But his father, ah, now there—

“Nurse, give me a hand here please.” The voice of the young resident cut across his thoughts. Then a loud crash had Travis glancing at the floor beneath his gurney; a tray of surgical instruments lay scattered there.

“Good grief, Terhune, what’s wrong with you? I’ve never seen you this way!” The resident, whose name tag said Dr. Ames, looked more puzzled than angry.

“I…I’m sorry, Doctor. Just having a…a bad night, I guess.”

Travis’s eyes traveled upward from the tray on the floor. When they came to rest on the flushed face of the woman who’d stammered the apology, he sucked in his breath.

“Sorry,” Ames said to him. “I know it’s painful, but I’m suturing now. It shouldn’t take much longer.”

Pain, hell! Pain had nothing to do with it. But Nurse Terhune’s gorgeous self sure did! What a stunner! Honey blond hair, whiskey-colored eyes and a figure that…

Travis cleared his throat and quickly looked away as Nurse Terhune’s shapely bottom presented itself when she bent to retrieve the instruments. He was actually getting aroused! Like some horny adolescent, for Pete’s sake!

He couldn’t resist slanting another glance at the beautiful blonde as she handed the tray to an orderly and asked another nurse to stand in for her while she went to scrub. He took in the long leggy figure striding away from him, and his lips formed a silent whistle.

Ames grinned at him, finally aware of what was going on with his patient. “Some piece, huh?”

“Dynamite.” Travis’s soft drawl was slightly husky, his eyes lazily assessing as they followed the retreating figure.

“Yeah, but don’t get your hopes up, buddy.” Ames gestured in Nurse Terhune’s direction. “That little number comes in at about forty below.”

“You’re kiddin’.”

The resident shrugged. “All I can say is, a lot of us have tried, and no one’s gotten to first base. Of course, our little ice queen may have a ‘significant other’ tucked away somewhere, but nobody’s been able to—Uh-oh…”

Travis winced as Ames returned his attention to the wound a bit too energetically; Nurse Terhune was headed back in their direction.

“Lord, Lord, what a shame,” Travis murmured softly as his eyes approved of what they saw. Dynamite, coming and going.

Ames caught this and barely stifled a grin as he told Nurse Terhune to proceed with dressing the wound.

But Travis frowned. Something had begun to niggle at the back of his mind. Through half-shuttered eyes he traced the features of Nurse Terhune’s heart-shaped face as she bent over his shoulder. There was a hazy momentary image of a similar face, but younger maybe…and then it was gone. Damned Demerol!

“Ouch!” Travis glared at the woman who’d been the object of his most recent—and scandalous—thoughts.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!”

Her embarrassed apology had Travis swallowing the blistering setdown he’d been about to deliver. But she sure had been clumsy in bandaging his shoulder. A glance at her badge had already told him she was the ER’s head nurse. Why, he asked himself, was she acting as nervous as a newly capped rookie? And damned if that wasn’t a blush under that porcelain skin.

A slow, lazy grin stole across his face as he watched her from beneath half-closed lids. She caught his casual scrutiny, and the blush deepened.

Lord, he did love a blusher! You hardly ever saw one these days. Fact was, he couldn’t recall the last time he had. Unless it had been Sarah, and kid sisters didn’t count.

The grin faltered as he recalled how long ago that would have been. He hadn’t seen Sarah in five years, hadn’t seen any of his family. His sister was in her second year of premed at Georgetown now. Hardly a kid anymore.

Maybe he should go there and try to see her. Would she even let him? Would she dare it? Maybe. She’d always been pretty gutsy.

Suddenly the monstrous inadequacy of relying solely on his sources at the Agency to keep informed about his own sister had him wanting to pound something with his fist. His fingers clenched and he ground his teeth.

“If…if the pain’s real bad, I think I could get you something more for it.”

The softly murmured offer of Nurse M. Terhune pulled him back to the moment. She’d stammered a bit; still jittery, then. Yet somehow, maybe because of its softness, he’d found her voice soothing. His grin reemerged.

“What’s the M stand for, Nurse M. Terhune?”

“Hold still, please.” Suddenly all thumbs, Randi tried to sound professional and concentrate on the bandaging.