Orchids & Hurricane Kisses

by Stacy Eaton

  “No, we don’t, I’m sorry,” I told her.

  Then Roan jumped in. “But we can try to find him. I found out that Finley was adopted, but the records never said anything about siblings. Finley didn’t even know that she was adopted, her parents never told her. Now that we know that you guys had a brother, and we know his name, we can search for him.”

  Amy swiped at the tears dripping from her chin. “You’d do that for me?”

  He squeezed her hand. “Of course, we were already going to start researching Finley’s adoption to find out more, now we have even more of a reason.”

  I looked at my brother. “Do you think he might have a key, too?”

  Roan shook his head and took the key back from Amy. “I don’t know.” He studied it for a moment. “Maybe he does, but I don’t think so.”

  “But why would Amy and Finley have keys, and not Jenson?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t have a blanket.”

  “No,” Amy shook her head, “he had a stuffed bear. He didn’t want a blanket. The day we left my grandma’s home, he had a bear with him.”

  “Well, maybe if we can locate him, he will still have that bear and that bear might be able to tell us what the keys are to.”

  “Do you really think he will have a stuffed bear from when he was a child?”

  I grinned. “You still have your blanket, Finley had hers, so maybe he will still have the bear.”

  “Speaking of Finley,” Rye said, grinning widely, “I should probably make a phone call.”

  “Are you going to tell her about me? Maybe she won’t want to know that she has a sister.”

  Roan squatted in front of Amy and took her hands. “Your sister is going to be so excited to know that you exist. She thought that she was alone in the world.”

  Amy began to cry again, and I pulled her to my side as she said, “Too much, everything happening today has been too much. Cammie getting a heart, your showing up here with your brother, and finding out that not only do you know my sister, but that she’s in love with your brother. Oh, my god, Rye, it’s just too much.”

  I kissed her forehead. “Relax, Amy, you can handle this, and you’re not alone to do it anymore. You have us all to help. You have family to help.”

  “Family—” she said softly and lifted her glistening, green eyes to me. “For so long it’s just been Cammie and me, and Joanne. I don’t know where I’d be without Joanne.”

  Amy turned and looked at her friend, and then the two of them were hugging, and I leaned back in my seat to watch them as they talked quietly.

  A few minutes later, Roan joined us again, and Amy looked at him nervously.

  “Well, Finley is on her way.”

  “What?” Amy jerked upright. “She’s coming here? Why?”

  “Because she wants to see her sister, and she wants to be here for her niece when she gets out of surgery.”

  “But that’s a long drive, or is she flying?”

  “She’s going to drive down with my son, Wade. The two of them can take turns driving. They should be here by ten or so.”

  “Cammie should be out of surgery by then.” Amy glanced at the clock and wrung her hands. “How long has she been in surgery?” she asked.

  Roan pointed to something behind her. “They started her surgery about twenty-three minutes ago.” We all looked at the big computer screen that showed the status of patients in the ORs. The screen showed if patients were in pre-op, surgery, or recovery, and the time at which they had entered each.

  “Twenty-three minutes? That’s all?” She looked at the clock. “But she’s been down there for over an hour.”

  “Relax, Amy, they had to get her prepped and probably wait for the donor heart to arrive.”

  Amy’s eyes dropped to the floor, and she shook her head sadly. “I can’t believe you know the child who is the donor.”

  “It’s a little bittersweet,” I told her.

  She took my hand and squeezed. “Yes, it is.”

  For a few minutes, she asked questions about the accident and the family. I promised her that if Maggie wanted to meet her, I would introduce them when the time was right.

  Roan ran out a couple of hours later and picked up food for all of us, but Amy only picked at her burger and fries. Her gaze flicked to the computer screen on the wall every few minutes, and as the seconds ticked into minutes, and the minutes spun into hours, she became tenser and more withdrawn.

  It was seven thirty-six when Amy burst from her seat. “Oh, my god. They just moved her to recovery.”

  Cammie’s name was now in the purple column, and Amy’s body shook as I stood and wrapped my arms around her to hug her. “You’ll get to see her soon.”

  We were just about to sit down again when the doctor joined us. “Amy,” he nodded to me as I put my arm around her shoulders and drew her close.

  “How is she?”

  The doctor glanced at our little group, and Amy said impatiently, “They are family. You can talk in front of them.”

  He let loose a smile. “She’s doing great. The heart was in excellent condition, and we had no major complications during the surgery.”

  “So she’s going to live? She’s going to be okay?”

  “As long as she takes her anti-rejection medications, I don’t see any reason for her not to be okay.”

  With those words, Amy turned to me and buried her face into my chest as the sobs took over.

  Chapter 22

  Amy

  I was in a daze when the nurse finally came to bring me back to recovery. I’d been staring at the wall and thinking about everything that Cammie and I had gone through over the last few years. If she didn’t reject this heart, her life could be normal in a year or two. She could go to school like regular kids, even play sports. We could go on vacation and do more than just lie around and relax. Maybe I could find a way to take her back to that island with me. Cammie would love the orchids and other lilies that seemed to flower constantly there. She’d always had a thing for flowers.

  The nurse told me what to expect on our way to recovery, and I was prepared to see her. This wasn’t her first heart surgery, but hopefully it would be her last. The moment my eyes fell on her, I noticed that her color looked better than it had in months. The circles under her eyes were lighter, and I knew that in time they would vanish altogether. She was groggy and out of it, but she half-smiled when she saw me, and for once, I let her see the tears run unchecked down my cheeks.

  “I have a new heart,” she whispered.

  “You have a new heart,” I replied gently.

  “I can feel it beating. It feels good.”

  She took hold of my hand and laid it gently over her bandage. I closed my eyes and let the sturdy thumping travel up my arm and into my own chest. “It does feel good, baby.”

  Cammie nodded and then began to drift back to sleep as a nurse injected something into her IV. Dr. August found me a little while later and said that they were going to keep her mostly sedated for the next twelve hours to help with the early healing and to keep her from straining too much. He suggested that once we got her up to her room, I should head home and get some rest because she would be out for the rest of the night.

  As soon as I knew she was comfortable in her room, I left her blanket and dolphin beside her, kissed her brow, and whispered a good night. She hadn’t stirred since the recovery room, and the nurse reminded me that she wouldn’t until the next day. She was still in Pediatric ICU, so she had a nurse watching her every second, and an aide would sit beside the bed just in case she woke up. I had no reason to stay.

  In the waiting room, Rye was yawning as he stared, blurry-eyed, at his computer, but he looked up immediately as if I’d spoken and not just stepped into the room.

  “How is she?”

  “She’s fantastic, and she let me feel her heart beating. She already looks stronger.”

  Joanne approached me. “Is she resting?”

  “Yeah, they wan
t to keep her heavily sedated overnight, so she rests and doesn’t move around too much. They told me to go home.”

  “That’s a good idea.” Joanne hugged me as Rye slipped his computer back into his laptop bag.

  I glanced around the waiting room. “Where is Roan?”

  Rye grinned. “He went to get something.”

  I was too tired to ask more. Hopefully, as soon as he got back, he would take me home. “Um, I guess you guys are staying here? I’m not sure where, my condo is pretty small.”

  “We are staying, but don’t worry about us. We booked a room down the street at the Princess.”

  “Oh.” I’m not sure why it bothered me that he had booked a room at a hotel, but it did.

  Rye came to my side as Joanne went to gather her things. He spoke softly as he gazed down at me, “Unless you’d rather I stay with you.”

  I wanted him with me forever, but could I say that? Not tonight, but I would soon. “I don’t think I’d be very good company tonight. I’m exhausted.”

  As if on cue, he began to yawn again. “I know what you mean. I haven’t had more than a few hours of sleep since I woke up on the island and found you gone.” He put his hands on my hips and centered us. “You are going to have to explain to me what happened, but not tonight. What if I come back to your place, and I just hold you while we sleep?”

  How could I resist that? “I like that idea.”

  A noise behind us caught my attention, and I turned to see Roan standing in the doorway, a younger version of him to his side, and a woman with dark-brown hair and bright-green eyes on his other side. My heart thudded hard in my chest as the two of us stared at one another. Every cell in my body immediately recognized her and shouted: Sister!

  “Finley,” her name slipped off my lips and then my feet were moving, and she took a few steps toward me. I didn’t know this grown woman, but at one time, she had been my baby sister. I had held her when she had cried, and I had fed her bottles, changed her diapers, and then she’d been stripped from my arms, taken in by a family I didn’t know. Now it was thirty years later, and it felt like it had only been a day since I’d last seen her. I threw my arms around her, and for the hundredth time today, I cried.

  She clung to me as hard as I did to her, and when we finally stepped back, we stared at one another. “We both have our mother’s eyes,” I said.

  Finley gulped for air. “You remember her?”

  “Yes, I do, barely, but she had beautiful, green eyes.”

  “And Roan said we had a brother?”

  “Yeah, Jenson, but I don’t know where he went. I was adopted before he was.”

  “Amy, this is my son, Wade. Wade, this is Amy Clandestino.”

  I shook his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Wade, and actually, I’m in the process of changing back to Amy Black.”

  “What was our last name before we were adopted?”

  “Montenegro,” I told her.

  Roan startled. “But that’s what you went by when we modeled together.”

  “Yes, my adoptive parents knew that I wanted to use that as a stage name, so they allowed me to change it when I was eighteen. I also thought it might make it easier for my siblings to find me if they were looking.”

  “But I thought you didn’t like it. You used to complain about being Ameleena Montenegro and said one day you’d change it to Amy Black.”

  “I used Amy Black as my pen name at work because I was trying to separate my modeling career from my writing career. Then I married Andre, and I used Amy Clandestino, but since we got divorced, I went back to Amy Black. It was just easier.”

  Finley laughed, “You’ve had too many names.”

  Rye came around my side and kissed Finley on the cheek before giving Wade a hug. “Glad you guys made it. Why don’t we take this get-to-know-you chat up over breakfast tomorrow? Amy is exhausted after her day, and I know you guys are tired, too.”

  Finley turned and took hold of her hand. “How is Cammie?”

  “She is resting, but her surgery went very well.”

  “I’m so glad. How scary for you. I can’t imagine what you have gone through.”

  In the end, we all walked down to the parking lot after I introduced my sister—Holy cow! I’d found my sister—and Roan’s son to Joanne. Wade tossed Rye a set of keys after Roan suggested we take Finley’s car back to my house, and he would take Wade and Finley to the hotel. We all agreed to meet the next morning, and after another round of emotional hugs, Rye settled me into the passenger seat of my sister’s car—my sister’s car!

  “I can’t believe that my daughter has a new heart, and I got you and my sister all in one day.”

  Rye caressed the side of my face. “It’s a lot, I know.”

  “Am I dreaming? Am I going to wake up and find myself back in that bungalow on the beach with you?”

  He chuckled. “No, you’re not dreaming, but I think we both need to get some sleep.”

  We drove back to my place in relative silence and easily found a parking space since it wasn’t tourist season. I was dragging as I took the two flights of stairs up to my condo. Rye’s hand was on my back, but I knew he was as exhausted as I was. I didn’t even have the energy to worry about what he would think of my place.

  “This is it. It’s not much, but it’s home,” I said as I stuck the key in the lock.

  He followed me in and set his small bag down on the vinyl tile of the entryway, his weary gaze flowing from one side of the condo to the other in a quick sweep. “It’s a nice place.”

  “It’s small,” I said as I dropped my keys and bag on the counter of the kitchen. “Cammie and I don’t need much.”

  “Small is much easier sometimes.”

  I threw him a smile as I kicked off my shoes. “Yeah, it is.” As I turned to face him, I suddenly had butterflies in my stomach. Rye was in my house, and this morning I thought I would never see him again.

  The two of us stared at one another, ten feet between us, and he slowly began to approach. “You look exhausted. Why don’t you take a hot bath or shower and then climb in bed?”

  “I want to ask you to join me, but neither is big enough,” I giggled slightly.

  He reached me and slid a hand along the side of my face. “Tonight is about sleep. We are going to have years of making love.”

  “Years?” I asked wistfully.

  “Yes, years,” he kissed me gently, “but we’ll talk about that later. Right now, we both need sleep.”

  I laced my fingers with his and led him back to the bedroom. “I think I might just take that shower.” I paused at the threshold. “You know I’ve never had a man in this bedroom.”

  He gave me a crooked smile. “I’m happy to be the first.”

  “Did you want to take a shower?”

  “Yeah, but I can take one after you’re done.”

  I told him to make himself comfortable and gathered my stuff for the bathroom. As I stood under the shower, I smiled. My daughter had a new heart, and in a way, I did, too. I had Rye, and he was my heart, my everything. It amazed me that I could feel so much for him, but I did. By the time I got out of the shower, I was ready to slip into bed and make love to him. Yes, I was exhausted, but I also wanted to be with him again.

  I towel-dried my hair and brushed my teeth. When I entered the bedroom, I found Rye lying on the bed, fully dressed except for his shoes, and sound asleep. My heart sighed happily as I stared at the handsome man in my bed. I guessed sleep was all I was going to get tonight. I retrieved a blanket from the hall closet and covered him gently before turning the light off and slipping into bed beside him.

  I wanted to cuddle with him, but I also didn’t want to disturb him, so instead of curling myself around him, I placed my hand on his chest and let the rhythmic beating of his heart lull me into sleep as I remembered the sturdy pumping of my daughter’s new heart under my hand.

  Chapter 23

  Rye

  I wanted to rest my eyes for a moment, bu
t the minute I lay on Amy’s bed, I felt myself slipping, and no matter how much I tried to hold on, I couldn’t avoid the darkness that beckoned.

  I woke with a start a few hours later. The room was dark, and for a second, I wondered if the day had been a dream, but it was then that I felt a hand on my chest and reached for it. I glanced to the side and saw Amy’s face in the ambient light of her alarm clock. She was beautiful, so elegant in her sleep, and as I studied her, I saw more of Finley in her than I’d originally noticed. How had I not recognized that their eyes were exactly the same shape and color or that their hair was the same deep shade of brown?

  I slipped out from under the blanket she had put on me and wandered out to the bathroom where I removed all my clothes except my boxer briefs and then tiptoed back to the bedroom. I shimmied under the covers, and Amy stirred, murmuring my name. The sexy sound of it coming from her sleeping form hit all the right buttons.

  I reached for her under the sheets, and her body automatically shifted toward mine. She slid her foot up my leg and then hooked it over my thigh, bringing our bodies into close contact. I kissed her forehead as she nuzzled my chest. A moment later, she lifted her face to me, her eyes open. “Make love to me, Rye.”

  We kissed, and I rolled her to her back and covered her with my body. We made love slowly, tenderly, and then she curled against my side, and we both drifted back to sleep.

  I woke up to a text message notification on my phone and blinked away the haze of sleep. Amy was still curled against my side, her arm thrown over my stomach as if she were holding me down. I reached for the nightstand and collected my phone.

  You guys up yet? my brother asked.

  No, your message woke us up. Give me a little while to get some coffee and I’ll get back to you.

  A moment later he replied with a simple, K, and I set my phone back on the bedside table and turned to find Amy staring at me.

  “Well, good morning, beautiful.”

  “You’re really here.”