Judith Bowen - The Doctor's Daughter

“I want to thank you, Lucas, for all the help you’ve been to me and my son.” “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.” Letter to Reader 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 Title Page The Doctor’s Daughter Judith Bowen www.millsandboon.co.uk Dedication To my good friend, Kathy Garner 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.