Growing and Kissing (42 page)

While we waited, I checked my email and started going through the information Stephanie had sent me. Since Dr. Huxler had last heard about the clinic and its $500,000 treatment, the exchange rate had plummeted. 500,000 Swiss Francs wasn’t half a million, anymore: we’d saved almost fifty thousand dollars. Plus we’d sold the weed for $100,000 more than I’d originally intended. We had about $150,000 left in the account.

Stephanie wanted to check us into the same super-luxury hotel all of their visitors used, but this time I managed to reign her in. “We have very simple tastes,” I told her. She rattled away at her keyboard for a few seconds and checked us into a modest but comfortable place instead, frowning in confusion as she did it.

By the time they said we could see Kayley, she was sleeping. I sat down by her bedside, reached out, and touched her cheek. It was the first time I’d been able to stop and think for days and it all hit me at once: this was it, everything we’d been building towards. Either this would work, or….

Sean sat down beside me, wrapped his arms around my waist, and lifted me onto his knee, the warmth of his chest pressed against my back. We didn’t speak. We just sat there in the dimly-lit room, watching Kayley sleep, and hoped.

Louise

Her eyes. That’s where I saw it first. On the eighth day of treatment, the gleam came back to them, the one that had disappeared even before I’d taken her for those fateful first tests. It was like she was becoming
her
again.

She was still pitifully weak, of course. She’d have to regain all the weight she’d lost in the last few months and her body would take a long time to get back to full strength. But that gleam in her eyes was the tipping point. I told Sean and he pulled me close, wrapping me up in his arms.

On the tenth day, the doctors started to agree. The test results were good enough to be cautiously optimistic, they said. What reassured me wasn’t the numbers but the sight of her chowing down on a breakfast of croissants and hot chocolate.

On the twelfth day, she started to quiz Sean on his history, his tattoos, and his intentions. Sean flushed and looked at me, lost for words. That’s when I knew she was back.

On the fourteenth day, the doctors said the words we’d been waiting to hear:
reversal of disease
and remission. I pulled Kayley into an enormous hug and, for once, she let me hang onto her good and long. But then she pushed me gently back.

“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

Then I saw she was waving Sean forward. He glanced at me to check whether it was okay, and I nodded. Then all three of us were hugging, that huge strong body of his like a warm rock face that both of us could hang from.

One Month Later

Sean

“O’Harra!
Irish!”

I’d been so focused on knocking down the wall, that I hadn’t heard my boss’s call. “Hmm?”

“End of the day. Get out of here.”

Already?
I looked around. Yep, the construction site was clearing out and the boss and I were the last ones there. I got like that, sometimes, when I was wrapped up in my work. Nothing else existed. Now, though, I was starting to become aware of the pleasant ache in my shoulders from swinging the hammer.

Maybe Louise could rub oil into them, tonight. She was really good at that. And then afterwards, while we had the oil handy….

“What are you grinning at?” muttered my boss. “Go on, go home already!” But he was smiling. I’d survived my first week and people seemed happy with me—every site needed a big guy who could haul stuff around or move a heavy beam into place. But what I was really good at was smashing stuff. They just had to point me at a wall and, a few minutes later: no more wall.

There were plenty of people on the site to learn from, too, and I was learning as fast as I could. A little roofing here, a bit of plumbing there. It would take years to get good, but I was enjoying it.

I rode the metro home. Working a regular job was taking some getting used to. Getting up every morning, commuting.... Even seeing numbers on a payslip instead of cash pressed into my hand was weird.

But the upside was huge.

As I walked up the hill towards the mansion, I could see bright, warm light shining out from every window. The cardboard was gone, now, replaced by glass, and the holes in the roof were fixed. The tree was still there, though cut down to size a little. Louise wouldn’t hear of moving it, so we had the only house in the world with a tree growing through it.

Yeah, we bought the mansion. Mrs. Baker didn’t want much for it, we had cash in the bank and living there—even with only half the rooms habitable—made more sense than paying two sets of rent. I was using what I learned on the construction site to do it up. It might take a year or more but, when I’d finished, we’d have a place we could sell for much more than we paid for it. Or maybe we’d just carry on living there. That sounded pretty good, too.

Moving in with Louise and Kayley had been another huge life change. But when Louise and I were lying there at night in the four poster bed, the moonlight making her copper hair gleam on the pillow, and Kayley was asleep in the next room, it felt like...home. The sort of home I hadn’t known in a very long time. And that was worth changing for.

Louise

I’d gone back to college to complete my final year. I even managed to score a job with the campus groundsman, helping him look after the gardens. Between that and Sean’s construction job, we were doing okay.

I’d already taken two trips to Mexico, touring farms and explaining my system with the help of diagrams, charts and a very patient interpreter. It seemed to be working: I’d seen Isabella on one occasion and she’d seemed happy (or as happy as that coolly unreadable face ever got). She’d even mentioned something about a permanent job...but I’d told her no. Doing what I’d done to save Kayley...I could live with that. Doing it for profit would be different. I was going to get my degree and then go back to my original plan of getting a job with a research company. I was back to being the good girl.

That didn’t mean I hadn’t changed, though. You can’t go through something like that and not be changed a little. I still waited at red lights, but now I only apologized when something was actually my fault. I waited patiently in line, but I’d tell you where to get off if you tried to cut in front of me. I had
attitude,
now. Just a little bit.

Living in the mansion was crazy, ridiculous, and idyllic. One of those decisions I’d have been far too sensible to make on my own, but could stretch to with Sean by my side. The best part was the garden, something we’d barely explored while we’d been growing there. There was enough space to grow anything I wanted, and I’d already started with some fruit trees and flowers. We’d even paid a visit to the old grow house, in the dead of night, dug up the rose Sean had planted and moved it here. Like its owner, it seemed to be settling in fine. And Kayley
loved
the mansion, especially her huge bedroom...although she now wanted a four poster bed of her own. Sean had promised to make her one.

I heard the door bang downstairs as Sean arrived home and ran down the stairs two at a time to meet him. I launched myself into the air when I was still four steps from the bottom, hurling myself into his arms and trusting him to catch me. Which he did—magnificently. I wound my arms and legs around him as he tilted my head back and kissed me, deep and sensual and unhurried at first...then with slowly gathering pace. I ground my groin a little harder against his abs. He could never control himself, once we started kissing, and neither could I.

I didn’t want to break the kiss but I had a surprise planned. Coming up for air, I panted, “Can you go back out again? Just quickly? We need milk.” The refrigerator was actually full, but I needed the excuse.

He gave just a hint of a tired sigh, but then his expression softened. “Kiss me again,” he ordered, “and then I will.” I gladly complied, running my hands up and down his back and then over his ass for good measure.

When he eventually put me down, he asked, “Can I take your car?”

“Sure,” I told him, trying not to grin. “It’s in the garage.”

He strolled outside to get it and I followed behind him, wanting to see but trying not to look suspicious. I managed to contain myself until he hauled open the garage door.

Inside, parked in front of my car, was his Mustang.

“Took a while to track it down,” I said, slipping my arm around his waist. “It had been bought and sold a few times since Murray had it. But I got there in the end. We had
just
enough money.”

Sean ran his hand over the gleaming paintwork. “Thank you,” he said at last. His voice sounded just a little bit choked up.

“Want to take me for a drive?” I asked.

We climbed in and I passed him the key. He started up the engine and gave a little satisfied sigh as it roared into life. Then he put his hand on the gearstick and, just like that first time he’d taken me out in it, his palm was suddenly very close to my knee. He glanced up and we locked eyes.

“Let’s drive somewhere deserted,” he growled.

I swallowed and nodded, that familiar heat blossoming inside me. He might have gone straight, but he hadn’t lost any of that bad boy dark charm.

“You realize,” I said as we drove out of the garage, “that in a couple of years, Kayley’s going to want to borrow this thing?”

“Over my dead body.”

***

That evening, we were out in the garden. It was just warm enough to be comfortable, though I’d put on a long skirt so my legs didn’t get cold. We were right in the middle of the rear lawn: I’d mowed it short at the front, but at the back I’d left the grass long and sowed some wildflowers. With bees buzzing around, it was practically a meadow.

Kayley was doggedly chasing a butterfly, trying to get it to land on her finger. Her hair had slowly started to grow back and we were already debating what sort of cut to go for, once it got long enough to style.

Sean suddenly grabbed me around the waist and picked me up, making me yelp in surprise, bare feet kicking in the air. Then he tumbled us backwards to the ground, hauling me onto his lap so that I was sitting astride him. I blinked into the setting sun and felt him run his hand through my hair, making it catch the light. “God, you’re beautiful,” he muttered.

I leaned forward until I was lying full length on top of him, my head on his chest. “I didn’t think this was possible,” I murmured. “Being this happy. I mean, even before it all started, back before I met you. When it was just Kayley and me...I didn’t think we’d ever be a family again.”

Sean gave a low
mmm
that vibrated against my cheek. I raised my head and looked down at him because I knew that
mmm.
“What? What’s on your mind?”

He gazed at me for a long time, running his fingers through my hair. “Family,” he said at last.

“You thinking it’s time to track down your brothers?” I asked cautiously.

He shrugged those massive shoulders. “I dunno. It’s been a long time. The whole thing’s a mess...but….”