He laughed at the hint of satisfaction in her voice. “Phenomenal.”
“Okay, don’t overdo it,” she said. “I can live with great. Now, let’s get to work.”
“In a sec. There’s one last thing I wanted to say.”
“Oh?”
“I’m glad you haven’t given up on me. It’s more than I deserve.”
She sighed. “There was never a question about that, Michael. I’m here for as long as you need me. There’s nothing you could do that would chase me away.”
The heartfelt commitment took him aback. Few people in his life had made that kind of commitment to him. His own parents certainly hadn’t. The Havilceks had, but because adoption had been out of the question, there had never been that final leap to becoming a real family that he believed he could count on forever. The reservation had been his alone. He’d been scared to allow himself to feel too much for the Havilceks.
Beyond that, though he and Bryan had been as close as brothers, or at least as close as he’d remembered brothers being, they hadn’t stayed in touch once he’d joined the navy.
Now here was a beautiful, compassionate, loving woman telling him she was in his life for as long as he needed her. An unfamiliar feeling filled his chest. He tried to pin a label on it, but couldn’t.
Only later that night, when he was all alone in his cold bed, his leg throbbing, did it dawn on him what that feeling had been: contentment. If he could feel such a thing at the worst time of his life, then he owed the woman responsible. He owed her more than respect and fair play. He owed her his heart, and it was past time he proved he was capable of giving it.
Chapter Eleven
When there was a knock on Michael’s door about six o’clock on Friday evening, he opened it, anticipating that he’d find Kelly on the other side. Instead, it was Sean, his usual jovial expression far more grim than Michael had ever seen it.
“Come on in. Is there a problem?” Michael asked his older brother.
“We need to talk,” Sean said, looking around the apartment with a cursory glance.
Since it was the first time Sean had been to visit since Michael had returned to Boston, Michael assumed it had to be important, especially when they were supposed to see each other at the pub in less than an hour.
“Okay,” Michael said cautiously, gesturing for him to come in. “I take it this is something we couldn’t get into later at Ryan’s Place.”
“Too many people around,” Sean said. “I figure you and I need to work this out and present a united front.”
Michael sighed. “Then it’s about the search for the rest of the family,” he guessed.
Sean nodded. “You know where I stand on that. Where do you stand?”
Despite the conversation he’d had with his mother, since then Michael had tried to avoid giving the matter any serious thought at all. He’d been secretly hoping that Ryan would simply take the matter out of their hands and do whatever it was he felt the need to do.
“Have a seat,” he said to Sean, just to buy himself some time to put his thoughts into words.
“I’ll stand.”
“And make me get a stiff neck trying to look you in the eye?” Michael inquired.
Sean immediately looked chagrined. “Sorry, man. I wasn’t thinking.” He sat down on the edge of the sofa. “Are you doing okay?”
Michael shrugged. “Kelly thinks I’m making progress.”
“Well, she’s the expert.”
He thought of the young girl he’d seen at the clinic the day before and how guilty he’d felt when he’d seen how hard she was struggling to overcome her injuries. “Kelly’s idea of progress and mine differ slightly, but that’s going to change,” he said with determination. He’d wallowed in self-pity and given lip service to his therapy long enough. Maybe he’d never be a SEAL again, but everyone had been right—there were plenty of things he could do. He just had to find the right one, something that challenged him mentally and physically. Captaining a charter boat might not be it, but there was something out there.
Sean regarded him with obvious discomfort. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around much to help out. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it’s just…”
Sean’s voice trailed off, and Michael knew that his assessment of his brother’s careful distance had been right on target. “It’s just that my situation made you uncomfortable,” he said. “I understand. I think when people like you and me, who work in a profession that requires top-notch fitness, run into a situation where someone’s physically impaired, we see ourselves. The guys on my SEAL team were the same way when I was in the hospital in San Diego. They came around because they felt duty-bound to come, but they couldn’t look me in the eye. It made all of us uncomfortable, me most of all.”
Relief spread across Sean’s face. “That’s it exactly. It’s sort of the there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I thing. I got trapped in a fire last year trying to get my partner out. It turned out okay, but I think that brush with a potential tragedy put the fear of God in me. And now that I have Deanna and Kevin to consider…” He shrugged. “Maybe it’s time to think about a new line of work.”
“Would you be happy doing anything else?” Michael asked.
“Nothing I can think of,” Sean admitted.
Michael sighed. “Same with me.” He felt as if he and his brother were sharing a rare moment of being totally in sync, the way brothers ought to be. It was a strange—and oddly comforting—sensation.
“It doesn’t do a damn bit of good to tell you it will all work out, does it?” Sean asked.
“Not much.”
With nothing left to be said, Michael pushed the topic out of his mind. It wasn’t a situation they could resolve today. Maybe they could figure out the pros and cons of this hunt for their parents and twin brothers, though.
“Sean, just how vehemently against this search are you?” he asked. “You’ve had longer to make peace with the idea than I have, yet you haven’t done it.”
“It’s a funny thing about that,” Sean said, looking pensive. “For years I waited for our folks to turn up to claim me. When I grew up and that hadn’t happened, I told myself it didn’t matter. In fact, I deliberately took pains to make it difficult for them to locate me—an unlisted phone number, no credit cards, the whole nine yards.” He gave Michael a rueful look. “Ryan found me anyway.”
“Which led you to believe that our parents never even tried,” Michael concluded. That’s the way he would have interpreted things, as well. And it would have hurt, if he’d allowed himself to dwell on it, just as it so clearly hurt his brother.
“They certainly didn’t look hard enough, anyway.” Sean’s eyes were filled with bitterness and belligerence as he met Michael’s gaze. “So, why should I care about finding them?”
“I can’t argue with that,” Michael said. “The way I see it, we don’t owe them a damned thing, but maybe finding them is like finding a missing piece of a puzzle. You don’t really care about it and it may not mean much in the grand scheme of things, but clicking that last piece into place can still complete things you’d never even realized you were wondering about. It can bring about a sense of closure where the past’s concerned.”
Sean sighed heavily, clearly unhappy with Michael’s assessment. “Then you’re saying we should go to meet this Patrick.”
Michael nodded slowly as he reached his own decision. “Yeah, I think I am. I thought I had a lot to lose by looking for the rest of the family. I thought it would hurt the people who’d given me a home and raised me as if I were one of their own kids. But my mom made me see that I can never lose them, not really. I can only gain some answers, maybe even get my old family back.”
“You sure you want them?” Sean asked wryly.
Michael grinned. “Hey, if it goes badly, you, Ryan and I still have each other, which is more than we had before Ryan started looking. And it could go well. If that happens, well, a man can never have too many decent brothers watching
his back, can he?” He regarded Sean intently. “But that’s the way I see it. It doesn’t mean you have to reach the same conclusion.”
“Yeah, right,” Sean said. “But if I don’t, the two of you will see me as holding out just out of pure stubbornness.”
“I won’t,” Michael reassured him. “It’s your call, Sean. Seems to me like this is one of those times when the majority shouldn’t necessarily rule. I don’t know how Ryan will feel, but I say we need a unanimous vote to move on.”
Sean didn’t look entirely convinced, but he finally sighed. “I’ll go along with it,” he said, not even trying to hide his reluctance. “I know Deanna thinks I should. And you and Ryan have given it a lot of thought. So what happens next?”
“If you’re absolutely sure, then we’ll tell Ryan tonight that the trip is on.”
“When do you want to go?”
Michael regarded his brother with an innocent expression. “Just as soon as I’m out of this chair and can go on my own two feet.”
Sean reacted with surprise. “After everything you just said, you want to wait?”
Michael chuckled. “I said I wanted answers. I didn’t say I was in a hurry to get them.”
Friday nights at Ryan’s Place had turned into a regular thing, not only for the Devaneys, the O’Briens and the Havilceks, but for Kelly, Bryan and Moira. It had been two weeks since Kelly and Michael had set up her brother with her best friend, and the two had been pretty much inseparable since that awkward beginning.
Kelly glanced toward the tiny dance floor where Moira was attempting to teach Bryan an Irish jig. It wasn’t going well. Kelly’s brother had two left feet, which he kept tripping over. Moira was trying to hide her laughter, even as she patiently demonstrated the steps yet again.
Watching them instilled a feeling of melancholy in Kelly. Bryan and Moira hardly knew each other, but you could tell just looking at them that there was something special happening. She thought of her own situation with Michael and wondered if they would ever share that kind of closeness. They were totally in sync in so many ways and the chemistry was certainly powerful, but when it came to the important stuff, they kept bumping into roadblocks.
Even as the thought began to nag at her, she realized how contradictory it was, given the steamy kisses they’d shared. Yet something was missing in their relationship, something she could no longer deny. Sizzling attraction wasn’t commitment, and that was what she wanted from Michael. She wanted forever, maybe not right now when he was still doing so much soul-searching about his own future, but at least the promise of forever once those questions were resolved.
“Hey, why the frown?” Michael asked, regarding her worriedly.
“Just thinking,” she said evasively. This wasn’t the time or the place to get into a discussion about their relationship. Maybe there was no appropriate time to get into it. Maybe she needed to accept that there would never be a relationship—at least not the kind she’d been hoping for—and move on with her life just the way she’d been encouraging Michael to do when it came to his career.
“It must be some pretty heavy thinking,” he said, tracing his finger lightly over the furrow in her brow. “Anything I can help with?”
“No. It’s under control.” She forced a smile. “You said earlier that Sean came by. How was that?”
“Pretty great, actually. We really connected.”
“I’m glad,” she said with total sincerity. “It’s wonderful that this whole reunion thing is working out so well for you.”
He frowned. “Okay, that’s it.”
“What?” she said, startled by his reaction.
“You’re suddenly being too blasted polite and—I don’t know—distant, I guess. What’s going on?”
“Nothing.”
His scowl deepened. “So much for honesty and trust.”
The jab hit home. Kelly sighed. “Okay, the truth is I was thinking about us, about how there really isn’t an us, might never be an us, and I was trying to decide what to do about that.”
“I see,” he said slowly.
Since he looked more troubled than angered, she decided to press on. She regarded him earnestly. “I love being here with you, with your family,” she told him honestly, “but it’s an unhealthy situation for me.”
He stared at her as if she’d suddenly started spouting Greek. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means that I’m starting to care too much, not just about you, but about all of this,” she said, gesturing around the table at the gathering of Devaneys, Havilceks and Maggie’s relatives. “Right now, I’m your therapist. That’s the only relationship that’s real between us, the only one you’re allowing to be real.”
Michael looked genuinely bewildered by her claim. “Those kisses felt damn real to me.”
She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the sensation of pure longing that suddenly swamped her. “I know,” she said softly. “But they’re not enough. Not anymore.”
“What are you saying?”
She drew in a deep breath and faced him evenly. “I’m going to start seeing other people, and I won’t be hanging out here anymore.”
His expression turned hard. “Your choice.”
A tide of hurt washed over her. If only he’d objected, fought even a little to change her mind, but he didn’t. And that said everything. It said that whatever they had, he didn’t think it was worth fighting for.
Kelly stood up, grabbed her coat and spun away from the table before anyone could see the tears that were starting to slide down her cheeks. As she raced for the door, she heard several people call her name, but she pretended she hadn’t. She needed to be alone, needed to tell herself—probably a million and one times before she believed it—that she had done the right thing.
She was also going to need every single second between now and tomorrow morning to brace herself for having to face Michael at the rehab clinic, because even though it would be the smart, safe thing to do, she had no intention of abandoning him in the middle of his therapy.
Michael still wasn’t entirely sure what the devil had happened the night before. One minute Kelly had been looking a little thoughtful, the next she’d been announcing that she was through with him. Maybe he was only a clueless male, but it didn’t make any sense. He honestly had no idea what had triggered her announcement or her abrupt departure, not even after every single person in all of the combined families had tried to pry it out of him.
That had irritated him most of all, that Kelly had walked out, and he’d been left to answer an endless barrage of questions about what he’d done to make her go. Clearly everyone assumed that she couldn’t possibly be the one at fault. He intended to have quite a lot to say about that when he saw her this morning at the clinic—if he saw her at the clinic.
He arrived with his heart admittedly in his throat as he scanned the mirrored therapy room for some sign of her. He spotted Jennifer, the teenaged patient who had inspired his own renewed dedication to his therapy, but she was working with someone else. His heart sank.
“Looking for Kelly?” Moira inquired, her tone every bit as cool as it had been the night before when she’d assumed that he had somehow driven Kelly from the pub.
He nodded.
“She’s in a meeting with Dr. Burroughs. She should be free soon.”
Michael couldn’t describe the feeling of relief that spread through him. “Thanks.” When Moira would have turned away, he caught her hand. “I didn’t do anything to upset her last night. I swear it.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. I’m as confused as you are.”
“If Bryan or I find out differently, there will be hell to pay,” she said fiercely. “You know that, don’t you?”
He had to admire that kind of loyalty, even if it did make him feel as if he’d been unwittingly targeted. “Everyone should have friends as protective as you are,” he said. “I’ll wait over there.”
He felt Moira’s gaze
on his back as he wheeled himself across the room. He turned his back to the mirrored wall. He hated those mirrors. When he looked into them, he couldn’t ignore his condition.
A few minutes later, he heard Kelly’s laughter before he actually saw her. She emerged from an office with a man dressed in carefully creased slacks, a designer dress shirt and a lab coat. He was the epitome of everything Michael wasn’t at the moment—suave, sure of himself and physically fit. Michael hated him on sight. Watching the way the man looked at Kelly set Michael’s teeth on edge. If he’d been in any shape to do it, Michael would have slugged the man on the spot just as a matter of principle.
Even as the desire to punch the guy’s lights out rocketed through him, he brought himself up short. He was jealous. He—a man who’d never had a jealous bone in his body—was feeling totally and thoroughly possessive about a woman he’d never even had a right to claim as his own. Well, hell. He was going to have to take a good long look at the reason for that, just not right now. Right now, he had to get across the room and protect his interests, even if he wasn’t entirely sure why it mattered so much.
Kelly noticed him before her companion did. She frowned when she realized that he was heading straight for her, even though she was in the midst of a private conversation.
“Bill, I’ve got a client scheduled, and he’s here now,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight at seven.”
The doctor glanced in Michael’s direction, gave him a distracted greeting, then turned his disgustingly toothy, white smile on Kelly. “I’ll look forward to it.”
“You didn’t waste much time, did you?” Michael said sourly when Kelly finally turned to him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Big date with the doc tonight, or did I misunderstand?”
“Whether I have a date with Dr. Burroughs tonight or not is none of your business,” she told him coldly. “Are you ready to get to work today?”
He scowled at the dismissal of his question, but decided not to make an issue of it right now. First things first. He needed to get back on his feet, so he could show the doctor a thing or two about which of them was the better man.
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