Michael's Discovery (9 page)

“Why would he say such a thing?” Michael prodded.

“Look, just forget about it,” she said. “It’s not important. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

“You mentioned it because even though I was joking, I apparently struck a nerve. Now, tell me,” he ordered, “what gave this jerk the idea that you weren’t much fun? Was there some specific incident, or was he just insulting you on general principle?”

Kelly had never examined that awful exchange from that exact perspective before. She considered Michael’s question thoughtfully. It hadn’t been an out-of-the-blue comment on her personality at all. Phil had made the accusation when she’d refused to join him at a nightclub for swinging singles, who enjoyed sharing their partners. She’d been stunned that he’d asked in the first place. He’d professed to be shocked by her refusal. Obviously they hadn’t known each other at all. For months afterward she’d struggled to figure out why he’d ever thought she would go along with such an idea. She’d refused every invitation, terrified that the man who asked had the same low impression of her morals that Phil had had.

Suddenly she felt Michael’s hand cover hers.

“Kelly, what happened?” he asked, regarding her with concern. “I really want to know.”

And oddly enough, she found that she wanted to tell him, but how to explain it so that she didn’t feel even dirtier than she had that night? “He made a rather insulting suggestion about how we could spend an evening and I turned him down,” she said finally, skirting the specifics.

“Some men don’t take rejection well,” he noted.

Her lips twitched slightly. If only it were that simple. “As I recall, not five minutes ago you made the same comment when I turned your invitation down.”

“Yes, but I was joking and you knew it.” He studied her intently. “You did know it, didn’t you?”

“Honestly, yes, but that didn’t stop me from having an instant of déjà vu.”

“I’m sorry. Not that I don’t think running away to the Caribbean with you to be an excellent idea, but I was only trying to buy myself some time.” He lifted his wrist, looked at his watch, and a triumphant grin spread across his face. “Which I have successfully done.”

Kelly glanced at the clock on the dashboard and realized it was indeed after six-thirty. All thoughts of the slimy Phil Cavanaugh fled. She scowled at Michael. “You rat!”

“At least acknowledge that I’m a clever rat,” he teased.

“Not a chance. I intend to tell everyone who’ll listen that we’re late because you’re not only sneaky, but you’re also a total chicken.”

He regarded her with mock ferocity. “You wouldn’t dare,” he said direly.

“Watch me.”

He didn’t say another word as she started the car and drove the short distance to Ryan’s Place, but as soon as she’d parked and come around the car to help him into his wheelchair, he snagged her hand and pulled her closer.

“I know one way to stop you,” he said, amusement threading through his voice.

“Oh? How?”

“Like this.” He gave a firm tug that had her tumbling into his lap. His mouth covered hers in a kiss that robbed her of breath and definitely cut off both thoughts and speech. Her pulse was scrambling by the time he released her.

She stood up shakily, cleared her throat and re
garded him through dazed eyes. “You won’t do that, though,” she said, her voice unsteady.

“I won’t?”

“No,” she said with confidence. “It would stir up too many questions.”

He laughed. “Do you honestly think I’m afraid of a few questions? Especially when the trade-off is a chance to kiss you thoroughly? Sweetheart, remember that I’ve been trained to withstand the worst kind of torture without breaking.”

Kelly didn’t like the gleam in his eye. She realized suddenly that he meant exactly what he was saying. He would kiss her into silence and enjoy every outrageous minute of it.

So would she, but that was another issue entirely, and she was not about to share that little tidbit of information with him.

For once, kissing Kelly had served a purpose other than completely and fruitlessly turning him on. He was feeling downright cheerful and relaxed when they finally went into his brother’s pub. Unfortunately, his sister-in-law was the first to spot them. Maggie was on the two of them like a hummingbird after nectar.

“My, my, my,” she said, subjecting both of them to a thorough survey. “Rosy cheeks, avoiding looking at each other. Hmm, what could it mean?”

“Nothing,” Kelly insisted, her cheeks burning an even deeper shade of pink.

Maggie’s gaze settled on Michael. “You going to lie to me, too?”

He grinned. “Not a chance. I know better.”

Maggie patted his back. “Good man,” she said approvingly. She winked at Kelly. “Fibbing is a waste
of time, anyway. I saw you two through the front window. It was quite a show, at least until that kiss pretty much fogged up the window. Then I had to rely on my imagination to guess what was going on.”

“Oh, God,” Kelly whispered, obviously embarrassed. “Did everyone see?”

Maggie wrapped a consoling arm around her shoulders. “Only me and Ryan,” she said, then added, “and the people at the table by the door.”

Kelly whirled in that direction, then groaned when she saw it was Michael’s folks. His mother seemed especially pleased by what she’d observed. His father was merely studying the two of them with a speculative look.

Maggie laughed. “Definitely a fascinated audience, am I right?”

Michael shook his head at Maggie’s obvious pleasure in their discomfort. Ryan definitely had his hands full with her. Michael couldn’t decide if he pitied him or envied him. Add in Caitlyn, and the balance definitely tilted toward envy.

“I gather you’ve met the Havilceks,” he said to Maggie.

“Yes,” she responded cheerfully. “Why don’t you two go on and join them? Ryan’s going to move some more tables together in a minute. Sean and Deanna will be here soon.”

“And your folks?” Michael asked.

“They decided to wait until another time. They didn’t want to intrude.”

“Which I shouldn’t be doing, either,” Kelly said, suddenly backing away as if she were about to make a break for the door. “Michael, I’m sure someone
here will give you a lift home. I’ll see you tomorrow for your therapy session.”

She moved quickly, but even confined to his damnable chair, Michael was faster. He blocked her way and waited until her nervous gaze finally met his.

“I thought we’d settled this earlier in the week,” he chided. “I want you here.”

“But what must they think of me?” she whispered. “Kissing you right out there in public. What was I thinking?”

“Frankly, I don’t think either one of us were doing much thinking,” he retorted. “And for the record, this time I kissed you, not the other way around.”

“In the grand scheme of things, I think that qualifies as a pretty puny technicality,” she retorted.

Suddenly his mother’s voice cut through their debate. “When are you two going to stop bickering and get over here?” she asked.

“My master calls,” Michael said. “Are you going to dare to defy her?”

For an instant, he thought Kelly might do just that, but then she sighed and visibly squared her shoulders. “Let’s go,” she said. “But just so you know, you are going to pay for this. I have an exercise that will bring you to your knees.”

Michael grinned at her. “An intriguing concept. I can hardly wait,” he said, his tone deliberately wicked.

He noticed Kelly was still sputtering in indignation as she swept past him and went to join his parents. All things considered, the evening was off to a much better start than he’d anticipated.

I
t took less than an hour for Kelly to forget about how thoroughly flustered she’d been by Michael’s kiss and Maggie’s teasing. The heat she’d expected to keep her cheeks a permanent shade of embarrassed pink finally cooled, and she began to relax. After all, this evening wasn’t really about her at all. It was about the Havilceks and the Devaneys getting to know each other.

Although Michael had clearly dreaded the entire occasion and she’d been expecting it to be awkward, they’d both evidently forgotten about the warmth exuded by his foster mother and his sister-in-law. Doris Havilcek and Maggie Devaney were like a couple of cruise ship social directors determined to see that everyone had a good time. Introductions were accompanied by anecdotes designed to provide insight and
provoke good-natured laughter. Kelly was in awe of them, and more than a little envious.

So, apparently, was Michael. She turned to find him watching his foster mother with a dazed expression. Leaning close, she noted, “She’s an amazing woman, isn’t she?”

“Even more so than I realized,” he admitted. “I thought she’d feel threatened by having my brothers suddenly thrust into the middle of our lives, but she’s not. She’s simply opening that generous heart of hers and adding them to her family as if they’d just been rediscovered after a long absence. And my dad and sisters are following her lead.”

“I’m glad for you,” Kelly told him sincerely. “It would have been hard if they hadn’t gotten along. I’m sure you would have felt torn.”

Before Michael could respond, Sean moved into the vacant seat on his other side. “You really lucked out in the foster family department,” Sean told him. “The Havilceks are terrific people.”

Michael nodded. “No question about it.”

“I’ve tried to get my last foster family in here to spend some time with Ryan and Maggie, but they’re not much interested. Deanna and I go by to see them once in a while, but I always have the feeling if we stopped going they’d hardly notice. They’re good people, but they’ve moved on. I always had the feeling that they knew there would always be another foster kid waiting just around the corner, so they tried not to get too attached to any of us.”

Sean shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him, but Kelly could see that it did. And it must be even harder on Ryan, who’d never stayed with the same foster family for more than a few months at a time. There
was no one from his past to whom he felt the slightest sentimental attachment.

“Well, it looks to me as if you can all count on being part of the Havilcek clan from now on,” Kelly told Sean. “Mrs. Havilcek will see to that.”

Sean grinned. “Fine by me. I’ve heard about her apple pie.”

Ryan joined them. “Did I hear somebody mention apple pie? Who’s baking?”

Michael shook his head and regarded his big brother with amusement. “You’d think that a man who owns his own pub wouldn’t have any trouble getting all the food he wants.”

“Rory is a genius when it comes to cooking up an Irish stew or anything else he learned in Dublin, but he’s yet to master an American apple pie,” Ryan said with apparent regret. “Maggie’s offered to teach him, but he’s vowed to leave the day she starts trying to take over his kitchen the way she’s taken over the rest of this place. Now, when my Caitlyn gets a little older, it’ll be another story. That daughter of mine has our Rory wound around her little finger. She could sit in the kitchen all day long, banging on his favorite pots and pans with a spoon, and he’d never complain about the noise or the scratches.”

“Speaking of Caitlyn, where is my niece tonight?” Michael asked.

“Upstairs with the baby-sitter and, with any luck, sound asleep,” Ryan said.

“As is my son,” Sean said. “Though I imagine he’s playing video games rather than sleeping. He told us he wasn’t a baby like Caitlyn, so Deanna bribed him to stay out of our hair for a few hours. I think Kevin’s destined for a top-level management career
in business. He’s already a tough negotiator. Deanna and I come out on the losing end more than I’d like to admit.”

Kelly listened with fascination as the talk centering on the kids went on for several minutes. Apparently both Ryan and Sean had been able to put their own bad experiences with abandonment behind them and had taken to parenting like the proverbial ducks to water. She wondered if Michael would eventually do the same. Because he’d been younger and because he’d landed with the Havilceks right at the beginning, he seemed to have fewer issues than his older brothers had had growing up.

And yet, she sensed that Michael still had moments when he felt like an outsider. His failure to call the Havilceks the minute he returned to Boston was evidence of it. Though he’d made perfectly rational excuses for that, Kelly wondered if he hadn’t been just a little bit afraid of how they would perceive him now that he was no longer going to be a strong, able-bodied hero. He should have known better, but there had to be lingering insecurities from being abandoned by his own parents. How could there not be?

She snapped back to the present when she heard Ryan mention the search for the rest of the Devaneys.

“The investigator says he has a lead. It’s not a sure thing, but he’s found a Patrick Devaney up in Maine,” Ryan told them. “He thinks it could be one of the twins. The age is about right. They’d be nearly twenty-six by now.”

Sean’s expression darkened. “Is he going up there to check it out?”

“Actually, I thought maybe we should be the ones to go,” Ryan said slowly.

“Forget it!” Sean said with surprising heat. “Finding the two of you has been great, but I’ve been giving it a lot of thought. I think that’s going to be it for me.”

Ryan turned to Michael, who looked as if he might object, as well. “Do you feel the same way?” Ryan asked him.

Kelly wasn’t sure what she expected Michael to say or even what was right. This was an incredibly delicate situation, and clearly each of the brothers was coming at it from an entirely different perspective. And the twins might very well bring about a reunion between the three brothers and their biological parents.

“I need to think about it,” Michael said, his earlier good mood suddenly vanishing. He glanced worriedly toward the Havilceks, as if he feared they might overhear the conversation. When he turned back to Ryan, he said, “This is a big step. We’re getting closer to our parents. This guy’s not going anywhere, right?”

“It doesn’t sound like it,” Ryan said.

“Then let me and Sean give it some more thought and we’ll talk later, okay?”

“Sure. No problem,” Ryan said. “Trust me, I’ve got mixed feelings about this myself. Not so much about finding Patrick and Daniel. I think that would be great. But like you said, if they’re going to lead us to our folks, I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“I know exactly how I feel,” Sean said bitterly. “If they haven’t bothered to look for us in all these years, it’s their loss.”

“We don’t know they haven’t looked,” Michael suggested quietly.

Sean scowled at him. “Of course we do. If they
had, they would have found us. It didn’t take Ryan all that long to track me down, and the two of us were able to find you. It’s not as if any of us had changed our names and moved to the far ends of the earth.”

“Sean, believe me, you’re not saying anything I haven’t thought myself,” Ryan responded. “But maybe none of us will really be at peace with the past until we know the truth about what happened. Maggie’s forced me to see that.” He patted Sean on the back. “But it’s up to you. You two get back to me once you’ve thought it over. I’d better get back to the bar for a bit.”

Ryan started away, then turned back to Michael. “By the way,” he began casually, “there’s a guy who comes in here once in a while who runs a fleet of charter boats. I’d like you to meet him sometime.”

Kelly watched Michael’s already stormy expression turn even darker.

“Oh? What does that have to do with me?” Michael asked.

“A guy with your background has to have an interest in boats, right? You must have been trained on every kind imaginable,” Ryan responded. “I just thought you’d have a lot in common. And he’s told me he has a hard time finding captains who know the equipment.”

“The day won’t come when I’ll steer a bunch of damned tourists around Boston Harbor,” Michael said heatedly.

Ryan shrugged as if his response were of no consequence. “It was just an idea. What would it hurt to talk to him? Add that to your list of things to think about, okay?”

He walked away without waiting for Michael’s response.

Sean gave Michael a searching look, then sighed. “I think I’ll go upstairs and check on the kids,” he said.

After his brothers had gone, Michael faced Kelly with a troubled expression. “So, what do you think about this search of Ryan’s?”

She noticed he didn’t mention the job prospect Ryan had dangled in front of him. Apparently he really had dismissed it out of hand.

“It’s really none of my business,” she said finally.

“And that’s stopped you from forming an opinion?” Michael asked skeptically.

“Hardly,” she admitted with a rueful grin.

“Tell me.”

“I understand why all of you would hesitate, but I think Maggie’s right. I’m sure every one of you has wondered all these years why your parents disappeared and left you behind. I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of impact that’s had on your lives.” She searched his face, trying to gauge how he was responding, but his expression was neutral. “Come on, Michael, isn’t it better to find out the truth and put it behind you, once and for all?”

“Then the answer’s pretty much black-and-white to you,” he concluded. “You think we should go and see if this Patrick is one of the twins?”

“Yes, I do.”

Michael’s expression turned thoughtful. “Think about this, though. He was barely two when everything happened. He might not even remember that he had brothers. He and Daniel and our parents might have had this tight-knit, perfectly happy family all
these years. How’s he going to feel if three of us show up out of the blue and announce it was all a fraud?”

“It wasn’t a fraud,” Kelly replied. “It was simply
his
experience as a Devaney versus the ones each of you had.”

“But it could forever alter his trust in our parents. Do we have the right to do that?” He seemed genuinely tormented by the question.

“You know what I think? I think it’s amazing that you’re thinking of his feelings at all. That’s something a big brother would do. How can he not want to know that he has three older brothers who care deeply about him despite years and years of separation?”

Michael shook his head. “I think you’re being overly optimistic. I think he’s going to resent the hell out of us for coming in and destroying his world.”

“Then you’ll apologize and let him go on just as he has been.”

“You’re being naive, Kelly,” Michael accused her. “It doesn’t work that way. The damage will have been done.”

Kelly could see his point, but that was only one scenario. She pointed out another. “What if all these years, he has remembered having older brothers?” she asked. “What if he’s always felt as if a part of his life was missing? Are you ready to deny him the answers he needs to feel complete?”

Michael frowned at her questions. “If only we could predict which way it was going to go,” he said plaintively.

She put her hand over his and squeezed. “We can’t. We can only calculate the risks and make the best choice possible. No one should understand that better
than you do. You’ve made a career out of taking calculated risks.”

“Yeah, but those are the kind of risks I understand,” he said.

“They’re life-and-death risks,” she countered.

“And this isn’t?” he asked wryly.

“Certainly not in the same way,” she insisted.

“Remind me to have this conversation with you again when your entire world’s been turned upside down,” he said.

Little did he know that it already had been…on the day he’d come back into her life.

Despite Kelly’s opinion that things would turn out all right, Michael was still feeling uneasy about this search for the rest of his biological family. On the one hand, it had turned out okay when Ryan and Sean had found him, but on the other, he sensed it was going to be very different with the twins.

As for finding his parents, he wasn’t even ready to go there yet. He was not as bitter toward them as Ryan and Sean obviously were. He simply didn’t care much one way or the other. That was a hornet’s nest he didn’t particularly want to disturb, but more and more it was growing inevitable that he would have to unless they called a halt to the search now. Whatever they did, they needed to be united, because all their lives were going to be affected. He honestly didn’t know which decision was the right one.

There was one person, though, whose opinion he trusted more than anyone else’s when it came to matters of family—his foster mother. Impulsively, the minute his therapy session ended and Kelly had gone, he called a cab and went over to the Havilceks. The
fact that his mother would be in the midst of her Saturday baking wasn’t entirely coincidental.

It grated on him that he had to ask the cab driver to go up to the house and let his mother know to let him in through the garage, but the beaming smile on her face negated that momentary humiliation. She shivered as she waited for him just inside the garage.

“Come on in here, Michael,” she said briskly. “It’s freezing out there this morning. What brings you by? It’s too early for the pies to be out of the oven, you know.”

He regarded her slyly. “But not the cinnamon rolls, I’ll bet.”

She grinned. “With milk or coffee?”

“Milk, of course.”

She waited until he was settled at the kitchen table before sitting opposite him, her expression suddenly serious. “What’s on your mind, Michael? Did you and Kelly have a fight last night?”

Startled by the question, Michael paused with a forkful of gooey cinnamon roll halfway to his mouth. “No. Why would you think that?”

“Something changed during the evening. You were so clearly happy when you came in, but when you left, you both looked…” She hesitated, then said, “Serious, I guess. I thought something might have happened.”