Perfectly Matched (13 page)

The spot where his biological mother was buried.

I debated whether to come. After all, if this was the place he came to be alone, my intrusion might not be welcome.

Then again, it was about time that Sean Donahue learned that he didn’t have to shoulder his troubles alone—and that I wasn’t going anywhere.

A raindrop plopped onto my head as sunbeams lit the path. Another dropped, and another.

A sun shower.

One of my favorite things.

I opened the umbrella and stood still, listening to the rain splat against the polyester covering. I breathed deep, loving the smell of the droplets hitting the hot pavement. I drew in another deep breath as I rounded a bend and saw Sean up ahead, sitting on a bench. Thoreau was curled up alongside him, sound asleep.

Sean hadn’t noticed me yet, and I took a second to watch him. The way he had his arms folded across his chest, his hands clenched as if ready to throw a punch at any moment. The way his legs jutted onto the path. The sharp angle of his jaw. The curve of his cheek. The waviness in his hair. The way he didn’t even seem to notice the rain. The way his gaze was fixated on a tombstone across the path.

The way sadness emanated from him, making my knees weak, my heart ache.

His head turned, and his gaze met mine.

Just like that, my foot didn’t hurt. I wasn’t worried about the arsonist, or Ebbie, or anything.

My sole focus was him.

And at that moment, I was his.

My pulse thrummed in time with the falling raindrops as I walked slowly toward him, and his expression darkened when he noticed my limp. Thoreau suddenly woke from his nap as if sensing a change in the air. His head coming up and he glanced at Sean, then at me. In a flash, he hopped down from the bench and raced to me, as fast as his legs could carry him.

I bent down to scoop him up and allowed him to slather my chin in doggy kisses. His short fur was damp, and I wrinkled my nose at the sour smell.

When I reached the bench, I sat down next to Sean, my side pressing against his. I held my umbrella over both our heads, and Thoreau busily sniffed my tote bag.

“What happened to your foot, Ms. Valentine?” he asked quietly.

“A skateboard incident,” I said, looking into his troubled eyes.

He shook his head. “Why do I feel there’s more to that story?”

“Because there is.” I smiled and reached out to wipe a rain drop from his cheek. “Have you been here all day?”

“Most of it.”

I glanced across the path, at the simple tombstone facing us.

Holly Cavanagh.

Cavanagh. I committed the name to memory. After all, it had once been Sean’s name, too, before the Donahues adopted him.

“Did Sam tell you I was here?” he asked.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“He shouldn’t have.”

“You’re right about that.
You
should have told me.”

Rain drops dripped off the umbrella and splattered onto our legs. Thoreau curled up in my lap.

“I,” he began, then stopped. He picked up my left hand, and turned it palm up. Little zaps of electricity shot down my fingers and up my arm as he trailed his fingertips over my skin.

This is what happened between us—this electricity. If I pressed his palm against mine, I would have a vision. I recalled the first one I’d ever had, where I’d seen us in bed together.

“What’s with the smile?” he asked, as he traced the valleys between my fingers.

“I was just remembering the first vision I ever had of us. In bed.”

He traced the lines of my palms. My blood raced. “I remember, too.”

He didn’t
see
the visions I did, but he
felt
the same sparks, the same emotion.

That vision had been one of my misleading ones—we’d been in bed only to fool Dovie, but the thought of him bare-chested atop of me still made my internal temperature skyrocket.

I nudged him with my shoulder. “You should have told me where you were, Mr. Donahue. I was worried.”

“I know.”

His palm hovered over mine, and I tried to ignore the arcs of electricity flowing between our hands. “Then why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know that.”

I took a breath, folded my hand closed and pulled it away. He wasn’t going to distract me. I motioned to the tombstone. “Your mom?”

Slowly, he drew his hand back, too. His jaw clenched, and he nodded.

“She was young when she died,” I prompted.

I felt his whole body tense next to me, and knew without a doubt how hard it was for him to talk about this. But it was time.

“Thirty-two.”

Only two years older than he was now.

I did the mental math. He was ten when he was orphaned. “How did she die?”

I could hear his jaw working side to side, could feel his discomfort. “She had a heart attack while driving.”

Rain splashed against the umbrella, my legs, my feet. I pulled Thoreau a little closer to me. “Heart attack?”

“That’s what I was told.”

“But not what you believe.”

He shrugged. “My condition is genetic.”

“Did she know she had a heart problem?” Sean hadn’t known about his until
he’d
almost died.

“I don’t know.”

He sat stock-still, and tension emanated from him in waves. I pressed on. We had to get through this. “What was she like?”

“Lucy.”

Thoreau glanced up at Sean’s sharp tone. I pet his head, soothing him, and met Sean’s gaze straight on. “Sean.”

We stared at each other for a bit, neither blinking, neither giving in. Finally, I repeated, “What was she like?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Was she blond-haired? Dark? A redhead? Did she have gray eyes like you? Was she sweet? Tough as nails? Or crazy like my mom?”

“
A b
lond
e
, but not naturally. I remember the smell when she used to use those at-home kits.”

“Horrible smell,” I agreed. “Especially back in those days. Once, Marisol and I tried to dye Em’s red hair black. It was her Goth phase, before there was such a thing as Goth. It took five hundred dollars and a hair stylist six hours to fix the damage.”

His lip twitched. “Em did not have a Goth phase.”

“I have pictures.”

“I want to see them.”

“We’ll make a whole night of it. Popcorn and everything.”

He leaned forward and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. Fingers fumbled as he dug through slots to find what he was looking for. Finally, he tugged out a worn photo and handed it to me.

Tears sprang as I looked at the image of a beautiful young woman holding a dark-haired toddler. They both had gray eyes. “You look a lot like her.”

He nodded.

I studied her features, and noted the wave in her hair, the long nose, the high cheekbones. She didn’t have the superhero jaw—that must have come from his father, but the rest...he was a spitting image.

“That picture is the only thing I have left of her,” he said.

“How is that possible?” I asked. It didn’t seem right. What happened to all their family history?

“It was all lost between my moves in the foster system. A piece here, a piece there. One of my foster mothers thought I obsessed too much on my past and threw a lot of my things in the trash. That was the first time I ran away. I was eleven.”

I handed the photo back to him. “How many times did you run away?”

He shrugged. “Too many to count. I met Sam when I was thirteen, and we lived on the streets together until one night when we were squatting in a vacant building and lit a fire to keep warm... The place went up in an instant. We tried frantically to put out the fire, but couldn’t. Next thing we knew, the roof was caving in. We couldn’t breathe. And then a pair of strong hands reached out and saved us.”

“Daniel?”

Moisture shimmered in his eyes. “Daniel. I don’t know how he managed it, but he talked his way around the social workers and brought us home.”

“And kept you.”

“We were lucky,” he said softly. He glanced at me then, his eyes full of pain. “I can’t lose Sam, too, Lucy.”

Ah, the heart of the matter.

“You won’t,” I said.

“Why is someone doing this?” he asked, anguished.

“I don’t know, but we’ll find out.” I cupped his chin. “We will find out.”

He nodded and rested his forehead on mine. “I’m sorry I worried you.”

“No more disappearing acts, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Promise.”

I felt his smile down to my soul. “I promise,” he said.

“Cross your heart.”

“Now you’re pushing it.”

I laughed and he kissed me. Heat spiraled through me, settling low in my stomach.

When we finally broke apart, he said, “Let’s go. I’ll make you dinner at my place and you can tell me all about this skateboarding incident of yours.”

I was about to explain to him the problem with his suggestion—that he didn’t have an apartment of his own any more—when my cell phone rang.

I glanced at the readout.
Preston
.

I wasn’t going to answer until Sean pointed out that she wouldn’t let me be until I did. Annie Hendrix had nothing on
Preston
when it came to persistence.

I was more than a little shocked when a man’s voice came over the line. “Lucy?” he said.

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Paul. Paul McDermott.”

Cranky Dr. Paul. Great. “Why are you using
Preston
’s phone?”

“She asked me to call you.”

“Why?”

He sighed. “It’s best if you just come down here.”

“Where?”

“The emergency room. There’s been...an incident.”

Chapter Thirteen

The hospital was located in
Quincy
, just south of the city. I found a parking spot in the visitor garage, and Sean pulled his car in to a spot nearby.

At first when Dr. Paul said
Preston
had been involved with an “incident,” my imagination had run wild with theories ranging from her breaking a patient out of the psych ward to her raiding the pharmacy. One never knew when
Preston
was involved.

But then he’d knocked the wind straight out of me by saying that
Preston
had collapsed and was currently in the ER having testing done.

My heart hammered as I threw the car into park and leapt out of my seat. Only when my foot hit the cement floor did I remember that I’d hurt it. My leg nearly buckled with the pain.

I swore a blue streak under my breath, inhaled deeply, and stumbled toward Sean’s Mustang. The oppressive heat settled over me like a wet blanket. The rain showers only increased the humidity in the air and hadn’t knocked down the temperature at all.

Sean cursed when he saw me limping so badly. “You’ll get that looked at while we’re here.”

It hadn’t been a suggestion. I brushed him off. “Em will look at it later.”

“Only if she’s
here
looking at it.”

I narrowed my eyes on him.

He tipped his head, his eyes daring me to argue.

It was hard to squabble when pain was shooting up my leg. “Then you’d better give her a call.”

He was nice enough not to gloat as he reached into the car and scooped out Thoreau. How we were going to sneak the dog into the hospital, I had no idea, but there was no way we were leaving him out here. Even with the windows down in the car, the temperatures would be unbearable within minutes.

“I called Andrew on the way over,” Sean said. “He’s coming by to pick up the company car and take Thoreau.”

“Take him where?” I asked, trying to ignore the pain in my foot.

However, it wouldn’t be ignored. In fact, it was screaming like a barely-dressed groupie at a rock concert.

Sean reached out and wrapped his arm around my waist. “Put your arm around my shoulder.”

“Bossy.” I barely managed to smile.

He kissed my temple. “Watch it, or I’ll let you go.”

“You’d never,” I countered.

Emotion clouded his eyes. “Not willingly, Lucy Valentine. Not willingly.”

“Good to know,” I said softly.

Warm lips pressed against my temple. “Andrew is taking Thoreau to Dovie’s.”

Dovie’s halfway house for the wayward.

Between Ebbie and Thoreau, she could open some sort of shelter. And although she loved animals, she was going to spin her good deeds into asking favors from us. Undoubtedly, she was going to ask, yet again, that I procreate. Immediately. She was relentless in her quest for a great-grandchild.

Sean and I made our way into the emergency room, and surprisingly no one blinked twice at my gimpiness or at the dog. The waiting area was crowded, nearly every seat taken. Young, old, wealthy, homeless. The emergency room was a great society equalizer.

Sean propped me against a wall, handed off Thoreau to me, and strolled up to a registration desk to a stoic-looking older woman.

Her take-no-prisoners look melted away the more Sean spoke to her. He wasn’t beyond using his charm to get what he wanted, and before I knew it he was leading me into a maze of trauma rooms.

“You have a way with older women,” I said, hobbling along. This wasn’t the first time he’d had a no-nonsense matronly type eating out of the palm of his hand. The last one was a librarian who hadn’t wanted to give
me
the time of day.

“You have your gifts, I have mine.”

“It’s the dimples,” I said. “Irresistible.”

He smiled, and the dimple in his right cheek popped. “You think so?”

“Put that thing away before the women in the geriatric ward swarm and carry you off.”

Laughing, he led me down another hallway, and I was amazed at how relaxed he appeared to be.

Sean hated hospitals with a burning passion. He’d spent so much time in one after his heart surgery that even the smell of rubbing alcohol sometimes brought out anxiety.

We dodged a man being wheeled toward the elevator, and I threw a glance at Sean. I knew well that appearances could be deceiving. Especially where Sean was concerned. He used to be able to hide his emotions from me easily. Not anymore. I now could see through all his shields, and it had nothing to do with being psychic and everything to do with being in love with him.

“Thanks for coming here with me,” I said.

“How could I not? It’s
Preston
,” he said simply.

Preston
.

At some point over the last few months she went from being a thorn in my side to holding a piece of my heart. I wasn’t altogether sure how it had happened, especially since she was a pain in the ass, but there was just something so...lovable about her.

And apparently Sean thought so, too.

I loved him even more because of it.

“There,” Sean said, motioning with his jaw since his arms were full of hobbling woman and happy dog.

Dr. Paul stood outside a room reading a chart. He glanced up and his forehead wrinkled as he took in the sight of us.

His gaze dropped back to the chart. “I need a vacation,” he said, shaking his head.

“
Preston
has that effect on people,” I joked.

He didn’t even crack a smile. “She’s in there. Talk to her, will you?”

“About?” Sean asked.

Dr. Paul stared at Thoreau, opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. Finally, he said, “She’s refusing treatment. Won’t even let a nurse put an IV in her arm.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Not sure.” He wiped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “One minute she’s interviewing one of my patients, the next she’s on the floor. Scared the hell out of the patient.”

“But not you?” I asked.

“People fall at my feet all the time,” he said, straight-faced.

I stared at him.

He cracked a smile. “I’m joking.”

“Ah,” I said.

Dr. Paul frowned. “Anyway, talk to her. People don’t usually collapse for no reason.”

He had a point.

“What’s with your foot?” he asked, bending down for a closer look.

“My shoe went one way, my foot another.”

Dr. Paul stood up and said, “The shoe won.”

Sean gave me a confused look. “I thought it was a skateboarding incident?”

“I was chasing the skateboarder,” I explained.

“I need more details, Lucy,” Sean said.

I thought about my missing wallet, and how Graham had seen my license with a bullseye on it. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t keep information like that from Sean. If our roles were reversed I would want to know. However, now wasn’t the time or place to talk about it. “I’ll tell you later.”

Dr. Paul glanced at me, at Sean, at Thoreau, muttered, “Vacation,” and turned to walk away. His lab coat flapped as he turned a corner and disappeared.

Sean said, “Personable fellow.”

I smiled. “Tell me about it.”

I tapped on the closed door.

“Go away!”
Preston
shouted.

Talk about personable. “I think that means we can go in,” I said.

Sean agreed. I turned the handle and pushed the door open.
Preston
sat, fully dressed, on top of the bed, her arms crossed, her eyes blazing. Her gaze widened as we came in.

“Thank God you’re here. Now I can go.” She hopped off the bed.