Justin Robins

A passionate family

CHAPTER ONE

Laura Moore looked at her handsome husband's reflection in the mirror, her heart showing in her eyes. She adored Ray, for he had changed her whole world. She had never dared dream that she could be this happy in the dark days when she'd lost Billy, but today her happy world would be complete.

The dark-haired young wife lolled in her bath, her mind trying to absorb all the ecstasy she was feeling. She looked at the rippling muscles of her husband's arms and back as he stood in his shorts, shaving.

"Ray, do you think… Billy will forgive me?" she said, faint apprehension marring her pretty face.

Ray put his razor away and doused his face with water. He grabbed a towel and wiped his face, then splashed on some after-shave lotion before answering.

He turned his eyes downward, feasting them on the milk-white naked body of his wife in the bath. Glowing with love and pride, he looked at her soft swelling breasts, her flat, maidenly stomach, and the dark wet vee of her pubic hair where it made a shadow under the water. He knew he had been lucky to have finally convinced Laura that she should marry him. She'd had it so hard, struggling to make a living for herself and her daughter Lisa. It had been doubly heartbreaking for her, he knew, to have gone all those years without her son. But that would all change today.

He finally answered her question.

"Don't be silly, honey… of course he'll forgive you. You did the best you could, and the Baylors were wonderful foster parents. Besides, give him a day with you and he'll love you with all his heart. I do, you know… how could your own son fail to?"

"Imagine, thirteen years…" Laura said dreamily. "Thirteen long years to make up for…"

Her thoughts drifted back to that night in San Francisco when she had returned from the doctor's office. It was raining, she remembered, and cold, and she was about to have her baby. The baby was already almost a week overdue, according to her doctor's calculations. She remembered opening the door of the flat and hearing Lisa, only a year old, crying plaintively.

"Oh, God," she had cried out, "Bill… did you give Lisa her bottle?" She ran into the small bedroom and to the crib where her infant daughter lay crying. She saw the note pinned to the crib, and her heart almost stopped.