JoAnn Ross - No Regrets

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Tragedy tore them apart. Now tragedy will bring the sisters together again, offering them the chance to find happiness in sorrow…if they choose.

As children, Molly, Lena and Tessa McBride witnessed their parents’ murder-suicide. That life-changing moment shaped their future in unimaginable ways, but was unable to destroy the ties between them.

Molly chose a life of helping others through her work as a nun. But her determination to do good cannot prevent darkness from touching her life…or make her forget the man she secretly loves: her sister’s husband.

Lena longs for intimacy, but fears again losing someone she loves—until she meets Dr. Reece Longworth. His belief in her makes her willing to try to open her heart again. But by the time she learns to love him, will it be too late?

Adopted as a baby, Tessa McBride remembers little of her sisters, but feels the effects of their parents’ deaths as keenly. She seeks fame, but finds herself caught by a man whose promise of love comes with terrible consequences.

Praise for No Regrets by

“Ross’s insight into both romantic attraction and family dynamics is striking.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A steamy, fast-paced read.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A moving story with marvelous characters that should not be missed.”

—RT Book Reviews, 4 1/2 stars

“JoAnn Ross is more than just one of the superstars. She has moved to the elite of the elite.”

—Harriet Klausner

“No Regrets had a profound impact on me…a keeper, in the finest sense of the word.”

—Linda Mowery, The Romance Reader, 5 Hearts

No Regrets

JoAnn Ross

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To Jay. Now more than ever.

Dear Reader,

Many of my stories are born from my own life experience. No Regrets, first published in 1997, is one of those. While I was growing up, the nuns continually assured me that I had a vocation. Although I personally dreamed of becoming a writer, having watched A Nun’s Story too many times to count, I also found it hard to turn my back on a supposed vocation. After much soul searching, instead of becoming a bride of Christ, I chose to marry the man I’m still, after many decades, madly in love with.

Another No Regrets story line borrowed from true life is that my birth father—oops—failed to tell his family about my existence, which makes me, like Grace, a “secret baby.”

Ask writers which of their stories or characters they like best, and you’ll usually be told that books are like children and it’s impossible to choose a favorite. Which is mostly true. But I will admit that of all the characters I’ve lived with over the years, Sister Molly is one I continue to think about often, with warm affection.

I hope you enjoy following her journey to a well-deserved happy ending.

JoAnn

Contents

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Part Two

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Part Three

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Epilogue

Prologue

1972

It was Christmas in Los Angeles. Although the temperature was in the mid-eighties the residents of the City of Angels were determined to rev up that old holiday spirit.

The venerable Queen Mary was decked out in its winter wonderland finery, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was playing to standing-room-only crowds at the Hollywood Bowl, and at the Shrine Auditorium the Nutcracker ballet continued to entrance.

Richard Burton was narrating A Child’s Christmas in Wales at the Shubert Theatre, the Mickey Mouse Very Merry Christmas Parade had returned to Disneyland’s Main Street, and even the hookers strolling Hollywood Boulevard had gotten into the act, dressing for the season in skimpy red-and-white outfits.

But inside a small pink stucco house, located in the shadow of Dodger Stadium, the mood was anything but festive.

* * *

“Molly,” Lena McBride whispered desperately, “I’m going to pee in my pants.”

Ten-year-old Molly McBride drew her sister a little tighter against her. “No, you’re not, Lena,” she whispered back without taking her eyes from their daddy. “You can hold on.”

“No, I can’t. Please, Molly,” she hissed, as she recrossed her legs and pressed her small hand between them. “You have to do something.”

It was a common refrain, one Molly had grown up hearing. Although there was only two years’ difference between them, sometimes she felt more like Lena’s mother than her sister.

“Would you two brats shut the fuck up?” Rory McBride roared, aiming his gun away from his wife and at Molly and Lena.

Amazingly, his shout failed to wake three-year-old Tessa, who continued to sleep on the rug in the center of the room. Her baby sister had been cranky that morning with a cold. Afraid at what might happen if Tessa woke and began fussing, Molly was relieved that the cough medicine seemed to have knocked her out.

“How’s a man supposed to think around here with you brats babbling all the time?”

Having learned to keep quiet when her parents were drinking, which her daddy had been doing until he’d run out of liquor around sundown, Molly didn’t point out that it was the first thing either one of them had said since this all started six hours earlier. When her mama had come home from her afternoon shift at Denny’s smelling—as Rory had put it—of sex and sin, instead of cigarette smoke and fried eggs.

“Lena needs to go to the bathroom,” she announced.

“She’ll have to hold it, because she’s not goin’ anywhere.”

Molly lifted her chin and met his bleary, red-rimmed eyes with a level look of her own. “She needs to go to the bathroom.” Her voice was quiet. But insistent.

He drew in a long drag on a cigarette—his last—exhaled the smoke through his nose like a fire-breathing dragon and glared at her through the blue cloud. “You always have been a real mouthy little bitch, Molly McBride.” He shook his head with mock regret. “I think it’s high time your daddy shut you up.”

He pointed the revolver straight at her, winked and pulled the trigger.

* * *

A phalanx of police cars was parked out in front of the house. Klieg lights lit up the area, making it as bright as day. Behind the police barricade, despite the fact that it was nearly midnight on Christmas Eve, spectators stood in groups, talking about the action as if they were watching a taping of “The Rookies” while video crews from every television station in the city were jockeying over the best vantage positions.

“What we’ve got inside that house is potential multiple homicides,” Lieutenant Alex Kovaleski reminded his men. “The guy’s been threatening to kill himself and his wife and daughters for hours.” As chief negotiator of the Los Angeles police hostage team, it was Alex’s responsibility to see that didn’t happen.

“Why don’t we just rush the house?” a young, impatient rookie asked.

“This isn’t some Hollywood movie. We do that and there’ll be lots of gunfire that’ll look real dandy on the nightly news, but we could end up taking three little girls out of there in body bags.”