Michael's Discovery

by Sherryl Woods

  “I don’t think the basketball would be a problem,” she said thoughtfully, then winced as his grin spread. “Sorry. You were teasing.”

  “Just a little,” he conceded.

  “Michael, I really am sorry. What I did was inappropriate and unprofessional, and I assure you that it won’t happen again. I hope you’ll give me another chance.” She drew in a deep breath, then dove into her planned speech. “In fact, I was thinking that we could move the sessions to the rehab center where I work part-time, if that would make you feel more comfortable. There would be other patients, other therapists around. We’d never be alone.” She’d figured that alone would sell him on the idea, but just in case it wasn’t enough, she added, “And there is equipment there that would be helpful.”

  His frown deepened as she spoke. “Forget the center. I don’t want to work with a lot of people staring at me. We can go on working right here.”

  “But the equipment there really would be helpful. At some point you’ll need to go there, anyway.”

  “When that time comes, we’ll discuss it,” he said flatly, clearly refusing to give the idea any more consideration. “Not until then. As for avoiding a repeat of what happened last night, I told you then that part of the blame is mine. I take full responsibility for my part in it, and you’ve apologized for yours. That’s sufficient. We’ll just forget about this and make sure it never happens again. There’s no point in denying that there’s some sort of attraction going on here, but we’re both adults. We can deal with it and keep ourselves from acting on it.” He met her gaze. “Deal?”

  “Deal,” she agreed eagerly, so overcome with relief that she wanted to hug him, but wisely managed to resist. Instead, she injected a brisk note in her voice and said, “Now, why don’t I make some coffee and we can get started?”

  “The coffee can wait,” Michael said. “We’ve already wasted too much of this session. I want you to give me a real workout today, and in case there’s any doubt in your mind, that is a challenge, and I expect you to take me up on it.”

  Kelly nodded. She didn’t even try to hide her relief that he was giving her a second chance. And if the only thing he wanted from her was a grueling schedule of therapy, she would bury the memory of just how good that kiss had been and accommodate him.

  At least for now.

  The increasingly demanding exercises were excruciatingly painful. Sweat was beading on Michael’s brow, but Kelly had asked for ten more repetitions and, by God, he was going to give her ten. A SEAL never quit. Sometimes, in the weeks and months following his injury, he’d had a hard time remembering that. For a few weeks in San Diego, the news had been relentlessly discouraging. Eventually he’d taken it to heart and resigned himself to his sedentary fate.

  But ever since the morning after that unforgettable kiss, Kelly had flatly refused to let him sink for one single second into a morass of self-pity. Whenever he muttered about all this effort being a waste of time, she sent him a chiding look and demanded even more from him. In the last couple of weeks, he’d learned to keep his mouth shut and do whatever she asked without protest.

  The two hours she spent with him three days a week flew by. And after she left, it took him hours to recover from pushing himself to the limit, but he would not allow himself to quit.

  She thought he was making excellent progress. He disagreed, but kept his opinion to himself. If he so much as hinted that he was discouraged, he was afraid that one of these days she would stop responding with extra work and simply walk out the door. If she did that, she would take his only hope with her.

  Besides, aside from the rigors of her therapy, he enjoyed spending time with her. He liked the way she got in his face, refusing to back down. He liked even more the faint feminine scent she wore. He was beginning to remember just how much he liked having a woman in his life. Not one special woman, just someone to flirt with, maybe dance with, make love to.

  He sighed, then realized that Kelly was staring at him with a puzzled expression.

  “Where did you go just then?” she asked. “You stopped right in the middle of the eighth leg lift.”

  “Sorry. I guess my mind wandered.”

  “Really?”

  “It happens,” he said gruffly.

  “Of course it does, but you’re usually so focused.”

  He reached for a towel and wiped his face. “Well, today I’m not. Sue me.”

  There was no mistaking the hurt in Kelly’s eyes. It wrenched Michael’s heart. He honestly couldn’t blame her for being on the brink of tears. His mind had wandered down a forbidden path and now he was unreasonably taking it out on her. Why was it that he could look into the eyes of soulless terrorists and remain completely unmoved, but one glance into Kelly’s soft gray eyes and he was lost?

  “Sorry,” he said, apologizing yet again for his thoughtless behavior.

  “Why don’t we quit for the day?” she suggested, her tone neutral. “You’ve been working too hard for the past couple of weeks. You could use a break.”

  Michael was smart enough to acknowledge that she was right. He had been overexerting himself and his muscles were complaining. The last thing he needed was a tear or some other injury that would put his rehabilitation on hold. Nor did he need to risk offending Kelly any more than he had already.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said, trying to make amends. “I need to go see someone today. If you have time to give me a lift over there, I’ll buy you lunch on the way.”

  Kelly seemed so taken aback by the suggestion, he couldn’t help chuckling. “I’m not scared to be alone in a car with you,” he teased. “Or in a restaurant. You’ve been on very good behavior lately. I think I can let down my guard for a couple of hours.”

  She gave him a rueful smile. “You have no idea how stressful it’s been,” she responded.

  Michael had the distinct impression that she wasn’t actually joking. He could understand exactly where she was coming from. Despite his overwhelming relief that they’d been adhering to the ground rules about no intimate contact, the strain of it was telling on him, too. Maybe that was one more reason why he’d suggested lunch. He figured they both deserved a reward for their incredible restraint.

  “Probably best not to go down that road,” he told her. “Not when we’ve been doing so well.”

  An expression of what might have been disappointment flashed in her eyes, but then she regained her composure.

  “So where are you going that you’re willing to risk spending time alone in a car with me? It must be important.”

  He nodded slowly. “It is. I’m going to stop by to see the Havilceks.”

  “Your family,” she said at once, her expression brightening. “I met your mother a few times when we were kids. I guess she was actually your foster mother, though, right?”

  He nodded. “I didn’t think of her that way, not for long, anyway. She wouldn’t allow it. She said that even if she couldn’t adopt me, she intended to be my mother. No boy could have had a better one.”

  “Then why have you waited so long to get in touch with her since you got back to Boston?” she asked. “I still don’t understand that.”

  “Self-protection,” he admitted candidly. “She’s the kind of woman who assesses a situation, then takes over. It doesn’t matter to her that I’ve been a grown man for a long time and that I’ve handled extraordinary responsibilities with the Navy, I’m still her baby.”

  “Hard to picture anyone thinking of you that way,” Kelly said, surveying him with blatant appreciation. “Then again, that’s exactly how my folks treat Bryan and me. It would probably help if Bryan and I moved into our own places, but it’s been so comfortable living at home, neither of us have bothered. Hovering and worrying is probably just a universal parental trait.”

  “That doesn’t make it any less annoying, especially in a situation like this,” Michael said.

  “No, it certainly doesn’t.” Kelly regarded him with undisguised curiosity. “Do you
remember your real…” She immediately stopped and corrected herself, “I mean, your biological mother at all?”

  Michael had thought about that very question a lot over the years, even more so since Ryan and Sean had found him in San Diego. They both had such vivid memories of their mother, but Michael’s were all hazy. When Mother’s Day rolled around, it was Doris Havilcek—with her sweet smile, graying hair, sharp intelligence and steely resolve—whose image filled his head. Kathleen Devaney was a name on his birth certificate, nothing more. She stirred no sentimental feelings in him at all.

  “Not really,” he told Kelly. “I don’t have the same kind of anger about her and my dad that Ryan and Sean feel, either. Maybe if I’d been a little older or if I’d wound up in a different situation the way they did, I’d hate them, too, but basically when it comes to my biological parents, I feel nothing at all.”

  Sorrow spread across Kelly’s expressive face. “Aren’t you even the least bit curious about them? I know I would be. I’d want to know what they’re like, why they did what they did, where they are now.”

  “Why bother?” he said cynically. “There are no good explanations for any of it. If it were up to me, Ryan would give up searching for them, but he’s determined to finish what he started. Sean has some reservations, but in general, I think he’s backing him up. I think one reason they’re so determined to find our parents is to find out what happened to the twins. For all we know, they were abandoned along the way, too, when it got to be too inconvenient to keep them around.”

  “Twins?” Kelly repeated incredulously. “There were more of you?”

  He nodded. “Twin brothers, Patrick and Daniel. They were only two when we were all split up. Ryan seems convinced our parents took them when they left.” He tried to dismiss the little twinge of dismay that stirred in him, but he wasn’t entirely successful. If it was true, it made the whole mess even more despicable.

  He met Kelly’s gaze. “If you ask me, Ryan’s going to be opening up a whole lot of emotional garbage by tracking them down. If they did have all those years with our parents, how the hell are they supposed to react when three older brothers come charging back into their lives? And I doubt if either Ryan or Sean can claim to be entirely indifferent to the fact that our parents chose to keep Patrick and Daniel while dumping the rest of us into foster care.”

  “But it could be wonderful to be reunited,” Kelly insisted.

  “Maybe in an ideal world,” Michael said. “But something tells me it’s not going to be a picture-perfect moment, not for anyone.”

  He shrugged off his dread of that day and forced a smile. “Have you actually agreed to my invitation yet?”

  She laughed. “Probably not, but if you think I’d miss the chance to see you reunited with your mom, you’re crazy. Of course I’ll take you, and lunch will be great.”

  “You won’t mind pushing me around in this chair?” he asked, even though the real question was how he was going to feel letting her do it. He had a hunch she’d be more comfortable in the situation than he was likely to be.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, confirming his guess. “But you might want to change first. Otherwise the restaurant’s likely to make us eat outside, even though the temperature’s in the teens today.”

  Michael glanced at his sweaty workout clothes and feigned indignation. “You think I need to improve on this?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said fervently. “Not that I haven’t always been rather fond of a truly male scent, but everyone’s not like me.”

  “Maybe you should come back in a half hour,” he suggested.

  She frowned at him. “Make it an hour. I could use a little sprucing up myself. Will that still give us enough time for lunch before you’re due at the Havilceks’?”

  “Sure,” he said, unwilling to admit that he hadn’t exactly warned them that he was coming by. He hadn’t wanted to give his mother time to work up a good head of steam about his failure to get in touch the second he hit town. He was hoping the surprise of finding him on her doorstep would take the edge off of her annoyance.

  Kelly grinned at him. “You haven’t told them you’re coming, have you?”

  “Nope,” he said unrepentantly.

  She laughed. “This is going to be fun. I’m not sure which I’m looking forward to more—the joyful reunion or listening to your mother deliver a blistering lecture about the way you’ve been hiding out in Boston the last few months.”

  Michael regarded her with chagrin. “Something tells me you’ll get a chance to evaluate both options and decide which has the most entertainment value. The only person I’ve ever met who’s tougher on me than you is my mother. None of my commanding officers in the navy even came close.”

  “Then I can definitely hardly wait to meet her,” Kelly said. “Maybe she’ll give me some tips on how to handle you.”

  He leveled a look straight into eyes suddenly churning with emotion. “Trust me, that is not a lesson you need to learn.”

  Kelly looked incredibly pleased by the backhanded compliment. “Even an expert can use an occasional pointer from someone with more experience.”

  Michael groaned. What had he been thinking? The prospect of having Kelly and his mother ganging up on him was almost more daunting than trying to get out of this damned wheelchair.

  Chapter Six

  Kelly deliberately chose the most wheelchair accessible restaurant she knew for their lunch. Though she wasn’t absolutely certain, she was fairly sure that this was the first time Michael had ventured out to eat anyplace other than his brother’s pub. She didn’t want the experience to be so stressful that he refused to try it again. He was a proud man and he was already chafing enough at letting her assist him with getting in and out of her car.

  “Is this okay?” she asked as she walked along beside him as he rolled himself toward the street-level entrance.

  “Looks fine,” he said, his expression grim as he contemplated the door. When Kelly started toward it, he grabbed her wrist. “I’ll get the damn door.”

  Arguing seemed pointless. She waited until he’d maneuvered himself around and could hold it while she stepped inside. Then he faced the dilemma of how to get in himself without having the door crash into him. His face was a study in concentration as he shouldered the door open, then eased his chair through the entry. She didn’t release her pent-up breath until he was safely inside the restaurant.

  There were more obstacles to come. The only vacant table in the busy restaurant was all the way across the room. When the room was empty, Kelly imagined the aisles were wide enough, but now with chairs jutting erratically out, they were all but impassable. Michael’s expression was filled with tension as he tried to make his way between tables without knocking into the backs of other customers, most of whom were completely oblivious to his difficulties. The hostess had long since placed their menus on the table and gone back to her post by the time Michael finally crossed the room.

  “You did great,” Kelly said, taking her seat.

  “I don’t need a pat on the head for getting across a damned restaurant,” he snapped.

  She bit back a sharp retort of her own and turned her attention to the menu. She was still fighting the sting of tears when she felt his hand cover hers.

  “Kelly?”

  “What?” she responded, still holding her menu up to mask the fact that she was about to cry over something so ridiculous, especially when she could totally understand his level of exasperation. For a man whose work had required a peak level of physical fitness and agility, to adjust to being anything less had to be difficult.

  “I seem to spend my life apologizing to you, but I am sorry. It’s just so damned frustrating to be tied to this chair,” Michael said, his tone full of contrition.

  She lifted her gaze then and met his. “It won’t be forever. And even if it were, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

  “It’s already the end of my world,” he said quietly. “No matter
what, I won’t be going back to work as a SEAL. For months, in the back of my mind, I was convinced I could if I just worked hard enough.” He sighed. “But for weeks now I’ve been struggling to face the fact that that’s not going to happen.”

  “I know I can’t begin to understand what it’s like to lose something that’s been so important to you, but you will find something else just as challenging,” she told him earnestly. “There are plenty of things a man with your intelligence can do. And a career’s not everything. You can marry, have a family. Your life isn’t over.”

  “The only one I ever wanted is over,” he said flatly.

  “If that’s going to be your attitude, then I feel sorry for you,” she told him, refusing to back down when a dull, red flush climbed into his cheeks. “There are plenty of people who will never walk again. You will get out of that wheelchair. So it’s taking a little longer than you’d like. And you won’t be able to do some of the rigorous things you once did, so what? You’re alive, dammit! Stop feeling so sorry for yourself and concentrate on what you still have, instead of what you’ve lost.”

  For what seemed like an eternity she wasn’t sure if he was going to explode with anger or simply turn around and wheel himself right back out of the restaurant. She was still wondering when their waiter appeared and, completely oblivious to the tension, announced that he was Henry and he’d be taking care of them today.

  “Just what I need,” Michael muttered. “Somebody else who thinks it’s his mission in life to take care of me.”

  Henry stared at him in confusion. “What? Did I say something wrong?”

  Michael’s smile wasn’t exactly wholehearted, but it was a smile. “No, I’m just having a bad day. How’s your day going, Henry?”

  Henry still looked uncertain, but he said gamely, “Fine, sir. Have you two decided on what you’d like to drink?”

  Michael glanced questioningly toward Kelly.