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  He rose. Gesturing to the overweight white cat, he said, “I thought you were a dog person.”

  No one else could have made her smile right then. “So did I.” She ran her hand down the length of Casper’s back. “A dog would have let me know you were here.” Casper purred, utterly content. “Why are you here?”

  “Good question.”

  The wind crooned, a foghorn sounded. And Mya sighed. “Thank you, Dean.”

  “I didn’t do anything I shouldn’t have done a long time ago.”

  He came toward her, all male swagger and masculine intent. He, too, smelled like the ocean breeze and fog and the island. Stopping a hairbreadth away, he bent down and kissed her gently, the cat purring between them.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mya.”

  He let himself out while she was still smiling. Headlights flickered on the living-room wall. Tires crunched over the crushed seashell driveway. Mya was falling in love. Or perhaps she’d never fallen out of it. Regardless, she couldn’t remember when tomorrow had held such promise.

  This week, Sunday dinner was at Dean’s house. And as he always did when it was his turn to feed this small army, he ordered pizza. As usual, he took a lot of ribbing from his sisters-in-law. As usual, the boys loved it.

  It had rained part of the afternoon. Like all true Down Easterners, the Lakers did their fair share of complaining about it, especially the kids, who were confined to the house. It didn’t make for a very quiet afternoon for any of them.

  Mya didn’t mind. In fact, she enjoyed the warmth of the fire, the complaints and the laughter, the rejoinders and the food and the scent of melting cheese, even the pungent odor of damp dogs.

  Gretchen had developed the photographs she’d taken all week. Accustomed to being photographed and then being forced to view them, the kids had done so quickly. But Elle lingered over them, utterly silent and serious. Mya wondered what she was thinking.

  She knew what Dean was thinking.

  Every time his gaze met hers, the pull was stronger. Being in the same room with him sent anticipation and a heady sense of urgency racing through her. If there hadn’t been a blind woman, a photographer, four kids, two men and three dogs between them, she would have walked straight into his arms.

  She really needed something else to do. She rose at the first whimpers Kaylie made upon awakening from her nap.

  “I’ll get her.” The steely determination in Elle’s voice stopped Mya in her tracks.

  Everyone else heard it, too, and stopped what they were doing. Even the dogs roused. Mya felt pinpricks of trepidation.

  When Elle returned with Kaylie, Dean was at Mya’s side.

  Kaylie held out her hands to him, and he lifted her easily into arms. Suddenly, Elle didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. Like a warrior without her shield, she moved from one foot to the other. Awkwardly, she cleared her throat.

  “Something wrong, Elle?” Ruth asked from a nearby chair.

  Elle glanced around the room. Since the eldest Laker had asked, she started with her. “I’ve spoken to Dr. Andrews.”

  All eyes were on her. Even the little boys’.

  “The test results are in,” she said.

  “Who matches?” Brad asked.

  She shook her head. “Nobody.”

  “None of our bone marrow matched yours?” Cole stumbled to his feet. “Not even mine?”

  His arrogance was overshadowed by the enormity and gravity of what was lurking behind Elle’s eyes as she said, “’Fraid not.”

  “Are they sure?” Millicent asked.

  For some reason, Elle’s gaze went to Mya. “I’m sure,” Elle said.

  Elle wasn’t prepared for the warmth and weight of Dean’s hand on the back of her neck. He squeezed gently, his palm grazing the new lump.

  He wasn’t prepared, either, for he went perfectly still.

  She looked at him. The question in his eyes nearly buckled her knees.

  “I was wondering how I was going to tell you.”

  “Tell us what?” one of the boys asked.

  “You know that treatment you all bullied me into agreeing to? It starts again pretty soon.”

  “How soon?” somebody asked.

  “You’re leaving?” somebody else said at the same time.

  “But you’re coming back, right?”

  Mya stood on one side of her, Dean on the other. “Of course she’s coming back,” Dean said sternly.

  Everybody knew better than to make something of that.

  And Elle said, “I’m taking the early ferry in the morning.”

  Silence.

  Finally, Mya said, “How long have you known?”

  “A couple a’ days.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Sylvia asked.

  Looking around the living room at these people who’d been strangers a month ago, Elle said, “I didn’t want to spoil your reprieve.”

  Evidently, Dr. Andrews wasn’t afraid of spoiling anything. He didn’t sugarcoat anything, and he sure as hell didn’t mince words.

  “Okay, Elle,” he said. “I believe that covers everything for now. Do you have any questions?”

  Elle sat completely still, quiet as a mouse. Mya sat still, too, but she wanted to scream, “Why?” Better yet, “Why Elle?”

  Bryce Andrews wasn’t one of those physicians who hid behind a heavy desk. He sat in a straight-backed chair opposite a sofa where Dean, Mya, Elle, Kaylie and Millicent were lined up stiffly. The test results were back. As Elle had said yesterday, none of the Lakers matched Elle’s bone marrow close enough to be a donor. There were alternatives, the doctor had said, treatments, options. As the hospital scents and sounds closed in on Mya, she concentrated on taking one breath, and then another.

  “The lymphoma is getting more aggressive. My treatment plan is aggressive, too. I’ve reviewed your chart Dr. Patel’s office forwarded, and we’ve conferred at great length. I’m starting you off with intrathecal induction. We’ll hit the cancer cells, and hit them hard. We’re going to do everything we can to get you back into remission. We’ll buy you some time, get you on the allogeneic blood cell transplant list. I have a room reserved for you on the sixth floor. If you have no more questions, you can go to Admitting.”

  “Today?” Elle’s voice quavered.

  “This morning.”

  “I planned to begin tomorrow.”

  Dr. Andrews shook his head. “Today. By tomorrow, the medicine will already be starting to eradicate those new cancer cells. You can’t afford to wait, Elle.”

  The words held warning, planting doubt and fear where there was already more doubt and fear than any of them could bear. It was a glorious May morning outside, but a cold, dark despair followed Mya as she made her way with Elle, Kaylie, Dean and her mother, down the elevator, through a labyrinth of hallways, to Admitting. Elle’s expression was stoic. Mya wasn’t fooled. Millicent cried softly. Mya didn’t allow herself that luxury. Dean looked shell-shocked. Mya knew the feeling.

  Perhaps Kaylie sensed the tension. Or perhaps she didn’t like hospitals any better than Mya did. Whatever the reason, she wanted nothing to do with the place, and cried inconsolably. Elle couldn’t hold her, and the baby didn’t want Millicent or Dean. For once, only Mya would do.

  “Take her home,” Elle said.

  “What?” Mya called over the forlorn cries.

  Elle looked up from the papers she was signing, straight into Mya’s eyes. “This is no place for a baby.” She was choking up, and fighting it so valiantly. “I can’t take her home. Would you?”

  Mya didn’t want to leave her child, not even for this precious baby. She turned to Dean, who was having every bit as much trouble with his voice as Elle was. “I’ll stay with Elle, Mya.”

  Millicent stepped forward. “So will I. We’ll all do our part, whatever that is. It’ll change from day to day, honey, but we’re in this together.”

  Mya did something she did far too rarely. She hugged her mom.


  She left the hospital with Kaylie. Keeping a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, she maneuvered through traffic, her foot steady on the gas pedal. Kaylie cried all the way. Alone in the car with the baby, Mya joined in.

  The atmosphere in Mya’s living room was subdued. She didn’t remember a day passing so slowly. Millicent had called several times with updates. And Suzette and Claire came over as soon as school let out for the afternoon. Mya didn’t know how she would have gotten through the afternoon and evening without them.

  Kaylie had clung to Mya, refusing to warm up to the other women. It was unusual behavior. These were unusual circumstances.

  With every tick of the kitchen clock, Mya was reminded of the drip of the chemicals seeping into Elle’s veins. Every so often Suzette spouted all the positive words Mya needed to hear. Mya knew things were serious when Claire joined in.

  Kaylie had finally calmed down after supper. She’d refused a nap all afternoon, and by eight o’clock, she’d wanted to hold her own bottle, and had only needed to be changed and put to bed.

  Mya didn’t know what she needed, until a knock sounded on her door, and Suzette opened it to Dean. He looked as lonely and haggard as she did.

  “How is she?” she asked.

  “Sleeping. How’s Kaylie?” he asked.

  “Sleeping.”

  Since Mya was obviously beyond social niceties, Claire made the introductions while she was steering Suzette toward the door.

  Later, Mya would vaguely recall her friends saying goodbye. But right now, she had eyes only for Dean.

  For a moment, time stood still.

  They started toward each other. Meeting in the middle of the room, they stepped into each other’s waiting arms.

  CHAPTER 16

  D ean had known before he pulled out of the hospital parking lot that he wouldn’t be returning to the island tonight. He’d kept his eyes on the street, the horrors of the day buried in his gut, and a single thought in his mind.

  Mya.

  He hadn’t considered the possibility that she wouldn’t be alone. Her friends, Claire and, what was the other one’s name—Susan or something like that—had taken one look at him and cleared out, so that now it was just him and Mya in a dimly lit room. There was no question, spoken or otherwise, no answer except the one in her eyes as she came to him, her arms going around him, his arms going around her, their lips finding the one thing they both needed.

  He’d kissed her often this past week, and every time was an indulgence. This was different. It began full-blown, raw and savage, hard and searching, and so reckless he felt her tremble. Their bodies melded, thighs, bellies, chests, mouths. Desperate for more, they wound up in her bedroom. The place didn’t matter. They didn’t talk. They barely thought. What they did had nothing to do with discovery, almost nothing to do with giving pleasure or receiving it. Seams tore, buttons popped. That didn’t matter, either.

  He wanted her. Hell, he’d always wanted her. Tonight wasn’t about wanting. It was about having. It was about taking. It must have been the same for her, because she took, too, every bit as demanding as he. Her bare thighs braced against his, her breasts cushioned against his chest, her nipples hard. He was harder.

  Mya gasped, responsive and impatient. She was in the center of a whirlwind, a spinning frenzy of giving up control and simply feeling, experiencing, being. There was no time to explore, to arouse, to savor. It was as if Dean understood that doing so would have driven her stark raving mad. The adolescent love she’d known for the boy he’d been, with all its sweetness and sentimentality had turned into something smarter, hotter, riskier. “I’m afraid,” she whispered.

  “Not of me.”

  She hadn’t considered that. But no, she wasn’t afraid of Dean. She was afraid of… She gasped as he made them one, and she didn’t finish the thought that had had something to do with Elle.

  He was rough. But not too rough. He was a driving force, when a driving force was exactly what she craved. He didn’t whisper words of love. And neither did she. Her passion was strong. His was stronger. She fell apart, and still she craved more. More is what he gave her. And more is what she gave him. More open-mouth kisses, more recklessness, more savage abandonment, more passion, more everything. He took it, and gave it all back to her, until she was holding on for dear life. And he was holding on to her.

  What they did was too intense to be called making love. They didn’t speak of the future. Neither wanted to think about the future. What they did had nothing to do with the future anyway. It had everything to do with this moment. It had everything to do with sex. What they did was their damnedest to tangle the sheets and burn up the shower and the living-room floor and burn off the fear in the pits of their stomachs and in the backs of their minds.

  What they did had everything to do with a kind of love at the very core of human nature, the kind of love everyone craved and sought and few experienced. Neither said it out loud. They’d never said, “I do.” But they did love each other, and they were committed to each other, and had been since they were kids. Elle’s conception nearly twenty years ago had forced them to bypass the rest of their childhoods. Her return had brought them back together in a way they couldn’t have done on their own.

  Eventually, they stilled. It wasn’t that they were sated. They were spent. And together, they finally slept.

  In the middle of the night, she woke up to discover the cat asleep at her feet and Dean’s side of the bed empty. She found him standing at Kaylie’s crib in a wan shaft of moonlight, watching the baby sleep, as if by guarding her, he could guard Elle.

  “God, Mya.”

  “I know.” Taking his hand, she led him back to bed. They came together all over again. This time it was poignant, not savage, slow, not frenzied, a gentle joining of two lost souls finally together again.

  Afterward, Dean covered them both. They’d made love when they were still teenagers. Then they’d had to hide, sneak, steal moments for their passion. They’d never spent an entire night together. Until now. Turning her on her side, her back to him, he fit his body close to hers. There was so much he wanted to say to her. He’d always had trouble with words. Touching her tonight had filled in the spaces inside him where words never seemed enough. She’d never asked for words. Once upon a time, she’d wanted his word, and that was completely different.

  “Mya?” he whispered, ready to give her the one thing, the only thing she’d ever required of him. “I won’t let you down this time.”

  The wind sighed and the house creaked. She must have been asleep.

  Out of the darkness, she whispered, “I won’t take this lying down.”

  “I can try, but I have to warn you I’m pretty much spent.”

  She swatted him.

  And he sobered, for he realized she was referring to Elle. “What are we going to do?”

  “We need to go public with our story, with Elle’s plight. Somebody, somewhere has to match our daughter’s bone marrow. We’ll take it to the press, to the tabloids, to television if necessary. We’ll take it to the moon if we have to.”

  “We’ll find the perfect match, Mya. We have to.”

  And once again, finally, in that darkest hour before dawn, they both found the oblivion of sleep.

  Two days later Dean’s and Mya’s and Elle’s pictures were on the front page of the “Living” section of the Portland Daily. Suzette’s sister worked at the paper, but she hadn’t needed to pull strings or call in favors. This was exactly the kind of story the media loved to sensationalize and bring to its readers.

  Wire services picked up the pulse of their story. Within three more days, the paparazzi arrived on Mya’s doorstep and at Brynn’s and on the island. Mya and Dean and Millie and all the Lakers talked to them. They talked to everybody. If it meant finding a match for Elle, they would talk to the devil himself.

  Dean and Mya were coming out of the hospital a week after Elle’s treatment began when yet another cluster of reporters descended u
pon them, one of them sticking a microphone in Mya’s face.

  “How is your daughter?”

  “Do you refer to her as your daughter?”

  “I understand you gave her up for adoption shortly after her birth.”

  “Do you regret that decision?”

  Mya looked from one reporter to the next, and in a deadpan voice, she said, “I’ll tell you what. Go get tested. It only requires a little poke and a tiny bit of blood work. If you match her bone marrow, I’ll answer your question. In fact, I’ll give you enough for an entire book.”

  “Is that a bribe?”

  Dean took over from there. “It’s a promise. Elle needs you. She needs one perfect match. I’m begging you. We’re begging you. Please be tested.”

  The entire clip was aired that very night. Everyone cheered for the stunning woman with the short blond hair and spitfire personality and the dark-haired man with the fierce blue eyes. By the next day, people everywhere were lining up to be tested.

  Which was what Mya was telling Elle as she lay in the hospital bed, hooked to a machine that delivered the chemicals into her bloodstream. Mya tried so hard to be positive. It was Aristotle who’d said, “Hope is a waking dream.”

  Few people could argue with Aristotle. But then, Aristotle probably hadn’t held his child while her slight body was racked with shivers, or while her stomach turned inside out, while she moaned and tried so valiantly to be strong.

  Dr. Andrews had said the treatment would be aggressive. In her worst, most violently ill moments Mya was terrified the chemicals would kill Elle if the cancer didn’t. The antinausea drugs didn’t help. Dean, Mya and Millie took turns staying with Elle and Kaylie. They answered the telephone and drove and sometimes they ate and even slept.

  Days passed. Elle was so sick she didn’t even cry when her hair started falling out. Mya cried. She cried in the middle of the night and on the way to and from the hospital. She cried every time Dean’s mother called. But she never cried in front of Elle.

  Holding an ice chip to her daughter’s dry lips, she wished it was her. Dean was her rock. Nearly two weeks after treatment began, he stood on one side of Elle’s hospital bed, Mya on the other. Elle lay on her side, her face resting on her bent arm. She held so utterly still, as if not moving might relieve her horrible nausea.