Forbidden Love Read online

  Frank confirmed that news. He was a bit groggy from the anesthesia, but he’d already started to make jokes, trying to calm me down.

  It was immediately clear that Frank thought we’d been the victims of a random robbery; he was elated that we’d survived. I wrestled with my conscience, wanting to postpone the truth at least until morning. In the end, though, I decided I couldn’t bear this agony alone any longer.

  I told Frank everything. I emphasized over and over how I’d never meant for anything like this to happen, and that I loved him and no one else.

  He was silent until I’d finished. Then he said, “Mariska, we’ve both been through a lot tonight. I don’t want to say anything while my mind is clouded. Can we talk tomorrow?”

  My part was done, and I felt a relief so great that I practically collapsed with fatigue. The nurse who came in to check Frank’s vital signs noticed my condition, and she insisted that I go home.

  Frank was right when he said we’d been through a lot that night, but it wasn’t over. A police lieutenant called early the next morning and insisted that I come down to the station.

  “Do I have to?” I asked. “I want to see my husband—”

  “There’s something you need to see,” he told me. “I think you’ll be happier when that’s done.”

  I went down to the station—and reeled in shock when Lieutenant Adamo explained what he wanted to show me.

  It was a videotape, of my night with Jared Beacon.

  “He—he taped it?” The words came out in a hoarse whisper. I felt weak with shock, positively sick with shame.

  “Mrs. Connor, please trust me—I wouldn’t ask you to look at something like this without a reason. And you don’t have to view it, if you feel that you can’t. But the fact is, nothing happened that night. This tape is absolute proof. Jared gave you too much sedative, and you passed out. The tape runs six hours, right up to the time when you awoke vomiting the following morning. You slept like a baby the whole night through, in spite of his efforts to wake you.”

  My tortured mind registered one word. “Sedative?” I asked.

  Lieutenant Adamo nodded. “He gives it to all his victims. The man has a library full of these tapes, and most of the women were not as lucky as you were. Jared Beacon’s a rapist, but not the usual kind. He insists on his victims ‘cooperating,’ and he achieves that by drugging them.”

  “Nothing happened?”

  “I give you my word. You’re welcome to view the entire tape if you like. You can watch yourself sleep while Beacon paces the floor and waits, occasionally shaking you good and hard, or slapping your cheeks.”

  My relief was almost overpowering. I viewed the tape then, and except for the part where Jared undressed me and put me into a nightgown, there was little to cause real horror. In fact, Jared’s efforts to wake me would’ve been almost comical, had he not caused me so much pain and misery.

  I felt almost giddy with relief as I drove back to the hospital.

  “Frank,” I began, as soon as I walked into his room.

  “No,” he said. “Let me talk first.”

  “But—”

  Frank reached out and put a hand over my lips. “This is as much my fault as yours,” he began. “I wish it hadn’t happened, but we’ll get past it, honey. We’ll recover—”

  “Frank, it didn’t happen,” I said, ready to shake him if he wouldn’t let me finish. “Frank, he’s a rapist. He drugged me, but it didn’t work. Nothing happened. It’s all on tape. The police say you can watch the whole thing if you want to.”

  Frank looked confused. I couldn’t blame him.

  “I don’t get to forgive you?” he asked at last.

  I went into this arms then, careful not to touch the bandage on his shoulder.

  “Yes,” I said, “you do. Forgive me for being impatient, Frank, and for letting another man get close enough to put me into that position. But I’m not an adulteress. Before I passed out, I fought him off. It’s all on the videotape.”

  Frank had to stay one more night, and then I took him home. Our lives together truly did start that day. Frank forgave me; I hadn’t thought it was possible to love him more, but I do.

  Lieutenant Adamo eventually turned over the videotape, and I insisted that Frank watch it, in case he ever had any doubts. After that, we burned it in a little private ceremony in our backyard.

  It turned out that Jared had a long record of assault, but he hadn’t shown up on the police computer because he’d changed his name. Due to Mr. Steadman’s support, he wasn’t even fingerprinted that day down at the station.

  Thankfully, though, Jared didn’t get off easily this time. For one thing, the shooting added substantially to his offense. Records showed that he’d purchased the gun when I returned home that night, which explained why he hadn’t been waiting for me when I arrived. As it stands, judges seem to be taking less lenient attitudes toward repeat offenders, and Jared got twenty years. They tell us he will have to serve at least seven of them.

  Mr. Steadman apologized to me personally, and asked me to stay on at the company. But Frank and I want to try an old-fashioned lifestyle for a change, so I left to keep house and plan our family. Mr. Steadman tells me that I will always have a job with him, should I ever decide to return to the workforce.

  That won’t be for a few years, though. The only work I do these days is to travel around our state, speaking to various groups about the passage of an anti-stalking law.

  Frank and I moved out of the apartment, into a home we bought in the suburbs. Our first child is due in three months, and we plan to have at least one more.

  At long last, I’m living out my dreams. THE END

  I MARRIED MY SPERM DONOR DAD

  My mom and I were very close, despite the vast number of years between our ages. She’d waited a long time to have me because her career as a pediatrician had been very important to her. In fact, when she finally realized her biological clock was ticking at warp speed and she still hadn’t found Mr. Right, she conceived me without the luxury of marrying my father.

  I never knew who my father was. Every time I asked Mom, she’d just shrug and shake her head. She said it didn’t matter because he’d never be a part of my life.

  Naturally, I assumed he was someone she’d had an affair with. She didn’t confirm or deny it, so there was no reason to believe otherwise.

  Mom was wonderful to me. Although she had a very demanding career, she made sure all my needs were met. I never doubted her love for me, either. We had many wonderful times together, something a lot of my friends couldn’t say.

  I went through high school studying hard, with the goal of following in my mom’s footsteps when I was finished. My aptitude for the sciences was extremely high, and Mom told me I should use this in making a career decision. So I decided early on that I wanted to be a pediatrician. She told me I could join her practice and we’d be the best children’s doctors in town. I had no doubt she was right.

  I made it through college with flying colors and then I attended the same medical school as Mom. My grades remained so high, I managed to get scholarships for the majority of my tuition. Mom supplemented the rest. I didn’t have to work, which made it much easier for me than some of the students who had to take out loans and take on part-time jobs to finance their education.

  After all my classes were completed, I did my residency at the local hospital in the emergency room. This was where I met Dave, an emergency room doctor and the head of the department.

  This man was incredible. He was quite a bit older than I was, but he acted like most men my age. He’d been married and had one child, according to the gossip mill. But his wife had decided she didn’t like being married to an emergency room physician because of the demanding hours and being on call twenty-four hours a day.

  What I liked about him was his high energy and enthusiasm for his work. He believed nothing was out of the realm of possibility, even when people came in with limbs practically severed or hearts that had stopped long enough to declare them dead. We worked on people until there was absolutely no hope for recovery.

  Dave also had the philosophy that once we did everything we possibly could to take care of our patients, if they died or didn’t get better, then it wasn’t meant to be. “Once you’ve done all that’s humanly possible,” he told me, “it’s in God’s hands. Sometimes they’re better off not recovering.”

  At times, that attitude was hard to take. But when I saw him in action, I knew that if a miracle could be worked, Dave would be the one to do it. He took full responsibility for his department, too.

  I’ll never forget when we had a brand new nurse on our team. She’d started crying over having lost a patient several minutes earlier. I was sad, too, but we’d done everything in our power to save the woman, who’d suffered head trauma in a car crash. This nurse was walking around in a blue funk, and she couldn’t seem to stop the tears.

  Finally, I pulled her over to the side and told her that she did a wonderful job trying to save the woman, but that there were times you had to let go. She told me she couldn’t. Then I reminded her of all the lives she’d saved and that we couldn’t play God when the end was inevitable. The nurse offered a shaky smile, then thanked me.

  After she walked away, I thought about the words I’d said. I was amazed when I realized I sounded just like Dave. I’d taken on his philosophy and made it my own.

  With a grin, I went to the cafeteria for my coffee break. One of the doctors from the next shift had taken over when the emergency room slowed down. I was exhausted from a very busy morning.

  I spotted Dave sitting over in the corner of the cafeteria all by himself. This was unusual. Dave is one of those people who almost always has a crowd sitting around him.
He’s a positive person, and he always has wonderful stories to tell, drawing people to him like a magnet.

  “Hi, Claudia,” he said as he motioned to the chair next to him. “Have a seat.”

  I sat down and fixed my coffee. Neither of us said anything at first, but it was a comfortable silence. Dave and I had known each other professionally for several months, so we were pretty much at ease with each other.

  Finally, he started nodding his head and smiling at me. “What?” I said.

  He chuckled. “I heard what you told the nurse. That was very nice of you, letting her know how much we appreciate what she’s doing.”

  “You would have done the same thing,” I told him. “We have a tendency to expect way too much of ourselves. I tend to agree with your philosophy on medical care.”

  Our eyes met. “Good,” he said. “That ‘philosophy’, as you call it, has kept me going for many years. I love what I do. It’s great to save lives, but I also know I’m not a super-hero.”

  Actually, Dave was a super-hero in my book, but I didn’t say that to his face. I just smiled back at him.

  A warmth came over me as he and I made small talk. We had so much in common, and I was completely myself with him. Over the next several months we had coffee together almost every day we were both on duty during the same shift.

  One day, after I’d had a particularly rough shift, Dave sought me out at the nurse’s station.

  “I have two tickets to a new show that’s playing at the Community Theater this weekend. Would you like to join me?”

  I swallowed hard. Was Dave asking me out on a date? Because I’d been so busy with medical school, I hadn’t gone out with men much.

  Slowly, I nodded. “Yes, I’d like that.”

  “Good. I’ll pick you up at seven. After the show we can go someplace nice for dinner.”

  After he walked away, I felt like I was on Cloud Nine. For the first time in my life, I had a crush on a man. Mom had always told me it would take a very special kind of guy to get my attention and hold it for any amount of time. I knew now that I’d found that guy.

  Dave was quite a bit older than me, but he certainly didn’t look it. He had golden brown hair that he kept short. His eyes were sort of a greenish golden. He was slightly under six feet tall, which seemed perfect next to my five-foot-six height. I looked up to him, but he didn’t seem like a giant, which I liked.

  His easy laughter was infectious. Everyone smiled within seconds of being around him. He loved people, and they loved him back. Kids were drawn to him like little magnets.

  One afternoon, after he’d stitched up a little boy’s chin, I watched as Dave magically pulled a toy Matchbox car from his pocket. He held it out and asked if the boy had lost it. The boy said he hadn’t, so the doctor told him to take it home and make sure he didn’t lose it. The child left with a smile on his face, in spite of the pain he must have felt from a really nasty fall.

  The boy’s mother obviously adored Dave, who seemed oblivious to his own charm. She stuttered and stammered all over the place as she backed out of his office.

  The nurses in the emergency room all placed bets as to when Dave would ever meet a woman who could have the same effect on him that he had on nearly every person he made contact with. I laughed about this. He was the kind of man who would never get caught unless he wanted to.

  Well, Friday night finally rolled around. We’d both been working the late shift the evening before, so we were getting ready to go home when the sun came up.

  “See you at seven?” he said as he backed toward the door.

  “Sure. Do you know where I live?”

  He winked, sending shivers up my arm. “Of course I do, Claudia. I’ve had your phone number and address for months.”

  I didn’t think anyone had heard us until I turned around after he’d gone. The eyes of the nurse standing behind me were open so wide, I thought they might fall out of her head.

  “This is so cool, Dr. Sims.” A slow grin spread across her face.

  “What’s so cool?”

  “You and Dr. Wichert are going out.”

  “Oh, that.” I tried to act nonchalant. “We’re just going to a play. He got two tickets and didn’t want to waste them, so I agreed to go.”

  “Uh huh.”

  I knew that news of my date with Dave would be all over the hospital by the time I came in to work my next shift. But that was okay. I really liked Dave. I just hoped he wouldn’t be too upset over it.

  And he wasn’t. In fact, when he picked me up for our date, he told me he’d heard everyone was speculating on our relationship. I pulled back and looked at him very carefully.

  “Are you okay with that?”

  He belted out a hearty laugh. “I’m fine with it, Claudia. If you promise you won’t tell anyone, I’m terribly flattered that anyone would think you’d be interested in an old man like me.”

  Before I could think, I said, “Oh, but you’re not an old man.”

  Dave smiled and reached for my hand. “I’m almost old enough to be your father.”

  My feelings said otherwise. Dave was warm, sensitive, and caring, not to mention the hottest-looking guy I’d ever seen. The fact that we were both interested in almost the exact same things didn’t hurt a bit.

  We laughed our heads off during the play, which was a romantic comedy. Then we went to a nice little Italian restaurant in the heart of town for a late dinner. Over a bottle of Chianti, we talked and discovered that we loved all the same foods, music, sports, and almost everything else you can possibly imagine.

  I’m not saying it was love at first sight because I’d known Dave for quite a while. But on our first date, I had the feeling he just might be “the one” for me.

  It was awful that the night ever had to end, but it did. We had to be at work the next night.

  “Get some rest, Claudia, honey.” Dave reached out and gently touched the tip of my nose.

  I started to nod, then he leaned over and kissed me. It started out being a gentle lip-to-lip touch, but then we sort of melted into each other’s arms.

  Being a doctor, I never thought I’d be able to feel such a physical attraction to another human being. I’d seen every part of a person exposed, and I couldn’t imagine the thrill of feeling a man’s touch. This was a whole new experience for me.

  Finally, he pulled away and told me he looked forward to seeing me again. I laughed.

  “You’ll see me in just a few hours.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it. I want to be with you, just the two of us, alone, so we can talk and really get to know each other even better.”

  He wanted the exact same thing I wanted. I smiled back at him, not saying a word, and when he got to his car, I turned and went inside. I was in love.

  Somehow my body quit buzzing long enough for me to go to sleep. I dreamed of Dave and me holding onto each other. It was as though there was no one else in the world but us. I loved being with him more than anything else in the world.

  When it was time to go to work, I wondered how we’d act around each other. I’d never been involved with someone I worked with. Actually, I’d never been involved with anyone before. I’d have to let him take the lead.

  The first thing Dave did when I arrived at the hospital was lean over and kiss me on the cheek. “Ready to go to work?” he whispered, ignoring all the gawking nurses and hospital staff.

  I nodded and grinned as I turned toward the nurses’ station where I needed to look over the charts. Everyone watched me, but I forced myself to maintain my cool. It was hard because I wanted to jump up, run, and kick up my heels to let everyone know I was in love.

  We had two serious car crashes come in during the first few hours. Then we took a break together, letting the other two doctors take over. They knew where we’d be if they needed us.

  Over coffee, Dave started telling me about an idea he had for our next date. The feeling was exhilarating, knowing he’d taken for granted that we’d be going out again. I loved the thought of being part of a couple, as long as he was the other part.

  The last half of our shift was pretty quiet. We had a woman in who thought she was having a heart attack, then some man came in because he thought he’d taken the wrong medication. He said he’d tried to take his medicine without getting his reading glasses. His wife was frantic with worry. Fortunately, all he’d taken was a laxative, and Dave told him he’d better get home before it started working.