Father Mine by J. R. Ward Page A

roughly, thinking for some reason about the number of nights his wife ate alone. “So please go home and celebrate.”
    â€œI will, Doctor. Merci mille fois. ” Marcia bowed and went over to the receiving desk—which was really nothing more than an antique table with a phone hidden in the side drawer and a laptop you accessed by flipping open a mahogany panel. “I shall just sign out of the system and wait to welcome your patient.”
    â€œHave a great night.”
    As T.W. turned away and left her to her glow, he took his ruined hand back out of his pocket. He always hid it from her, part of the leftover from having been a teenager with the damn thing. It was so ridiculous. He was happily married and not even attracted to Marcia, so it shouldn’t have mattered at all. Scars, though, left wounds on the inside of you, and as with skin that didn’t heal right, you still felt the rough spots from time to time.
    The three lasers in the clinic’s facility were used to treat spider veins in legs, port-wine-stain birthmarks, and red dermal imperfections, as well as provide resurfacing treatments for the face, and the removal of the guiding tattoo marks of cancer patients who’d received radiation.
    B. Nalla might need any one of those things done—but if he were a betting man, he would go with cosmetic resurfacing. Just seemed to fit . . . after hours, in the downstairs clinic, with a mysterious name. No doubt another one of the very wealthy, with a paralytic need for confidentiality.
    Still, you had to respect your cash cows.
    Going into the second laser suite, which he preferred for no good reason, he took a seat behind the mahogany desk and logged on to the computer, reviewing the patients who were coming in the morning and then focusing on the dermatology fellows’ reports he’d brought with him.
    As the minutes ticked by, he started to get annoyed at these rich people and their demands and their self-important view of their place in the world. Sure . . . some of them were fine, and all of them helped support his efforts, but man, sometimes he wanted to choke the entitlement right out of them—
    A six-foot-tall woman appeared in the doorway of the exam room, and he froze solid. What she was wearing was simple, just a crisp white button-down shirt tucked into a pair of ultraslim blue jeans, but she had Christian Louboutin’s red-soled stillies on her feet and Prada hanging off her shoulder.
    She was exactly his kind of private clientele, and not just because she was wearing about three grand’s worth of accessories. She was . . . indescribably beautiful, with deep brown hair and sapphire eyes and a face that was the sort of thing other women asked to be surgically altered to resemble.
    T.W. slowly stood up, shoving his left hand deep into his pocket. “Belinda? Belinda Nalda?”
    Unlike a lot of women of her class, which was clearly stratospheric, she didn’t waltz in like she owned the place. She took just one step past the doorway.
    â€œActually, it’s Bella.” Her voice made his eyes want to roll back into his head. Deep, husky . . . but kind.
    â€œI, ah . . .” T.W. cleared his throat. “I’m Dr. Franklin.”
    He extended his good hand and she took it. As they shook he knew he was staring, and not in a professional way, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d seen a lot of beautiful women in his day, but nothing like her. It was almost as if she were from another planet.
    â€œPlease . . . please come and have a seat.” He indicated the silk-covered club chair next to the desk. “We’ll get your history and—”
    â€œI’m not the one being treated. My hell —husband is.” She took a deep breath and looked over her shoulder. “Darling?”
    T.W. scrambled back and hit the wall so hard the framed watercolor next to him bounced. His first thought as he looked at what walked in was