Once Upon a Matchmaker (17 page)

Was she real? Or was he just imagining her again?

She’d been in his dreams more than once since they’d made love. And each time, he’d only become aware of that after the fact. After the dream was over and he woke up.

That made it harder to hold on to.

Each dream about her had surprised him, as if he hadn’t expected her to haunt his mind like that, not when he’d made such a conscious effort
not
to think about her during his waking hours.

But he had no control over the night.

It wasn’t that he’d felt disloyal to Ella when he’d made love with Tracy. Ella had been a selfless woman and she would have wanted him to move on, to find someone new. To find someone to care for their sons. The problem was that he didn’t want to experience ever again that gut-wrenching emptiness that had swallowed him whole when Ella had died. He was old enough to know that love seemed to go hand in hand with that awful specter, the specter of losing the one who meant the most to him.

He’d already put himself out there because he loved his sons and, of course, Sheila. He was determined not to put himself out there because of a woman. To love only to lose. Once was enough, thank you.

But his subconscious, which had wantonly pulled Tracy into his dreams, taunted him with the fact that he had no real control over that.

Love was a mysterious force that had many slaves, but no master. God knew that he certainly didn’t have a say in it. He’d fallen hard for Ella and now he felt himself falling hard for Tracy, as well, God help him.

He could, of course, go on running from striking up relationships, but something told him that he was pretty much doomed. The yearning for Tracy had all but become a fact of life for him.

God knew, even in his weakened state, he was extremely glad she was there.

“Are you real?” he asked her hoarsely.

She’d been sitting here in his room for the past hour, waiting for him to open his eyes. Praying that the doctor hadn’t made a mistake and that he
was
going to be all right.

Tracy rose from the vinyl chair and came over to his bed. Ever so gently, she cupped his cheek and smiled into his eyes. “Welcome back, stranger.”

“Yeah, you’re real,” he murmured. And then, with a sigh, his eyes closed again. He was fast asleep.

Tracy’s mouth curved as she shook her head. “Not much of a conversationalist, are you?”

He went on sleeping.

Tracy knew she should leave. She had a ton of case files to catch up on, not to mention that she wanted to stop by Micah’s house and reassure the boys in person that their father would be all right.

She had some very good reasons why she should be on her way, but she was still recovering from her own ordeal. Waiting for word about his surgery while struggling not to think the worst had taken a great deal out of her. She felt too tired to drive.

It was really no contest. She decided to stay a little longer, just to recharge.

And to watch him sleep.

She smiled to herself. Seeing Micah’s chest rise and fall was exceedingly comforting and reassuring. He was going to be all right. She’d gotten him to the hospital in time.

Happy beyond words, Tracy sat down again.

Chapter Thirteen

“S
ee, I told you he was all right.”

“But he’s not moving.”

“He’s sleeping, stupid. See? His chest is going up and down. That means he’s alive.”

Unlike the first voice, the second two voices did not blend in with his dream.

Until this very second, as the voices filtered into his semiconsciousness, Micah hadn’t even realized that he
was
dreaming. He’d vaguely thought that he was just experiencing disjointed bits and pieces of something he couldn’t quite get hold of.

Since his wife had died, if he dreamed at all, it was to relive that awful day when she’d left him standing alone by her hospital bed, feeling incredibly helpless and lost. And so angry at the world he could barely contain it.

But just now—whatever “now” was—the woman in his dream hadn’t been Ella. There’d been a different face, a different voice echoing off stage that he’d somehow
known
belonged to the woman. And there had been no despair, no sense of anger, just a strange, strong sensation of…hope.

That was it.

Hope.

And it was
her
voice he’d heard in his head, her voice he’d felt in his soul.

Tracy’s voice.

But at the very end, it had been joined by smaller, childlike voices. His sons’ voices. Which was when he’d opened his eyes.

Joy as well as a sense of well-being filled him as he looked at his sons being brought in by Tracy. His aunt was right next to her. The boys had wide, relieved smiles on their faces as they came running up to him, jockeying for the same space next to him right beside his bed.

“I want to be next to Daddy, I’m older,” Gary cried, pulling rank.

“No, I want to be next to him,” Greg cried. Unlike his brother’s voice, which was filled with self-importance, his voice was trembling.

“Boys, your daddy has two sides,” Tracy gently pointed out.

Taking Gary by the hand, she circumvented the foot of the hospital bed and led the boy to the left side of the bed. The boy had to share the space with an IV drip, but he was small enough not to need much room. To give the boys their moment, she moved a couple of steps back, assuming the place of an outsider, rather than the person who had been instrumental in arranging everything for the past three days. Ever since she’d brought Micah to the emergency room.

Each boy grabbed one of Micah’s hands, grasping it between both of theirs and hanging on as if to keep him from suddenly leaving them. It was obvious, despite Gary’s blustery bravado, that both boys had been very afraid that he’d be taken away from them just like their mother had been.

“We missed you, Daddy,” Gary declared loudly.

“Yeah, missed you, Daddy,” Greg echoed, not to be left out.

“And I missed you guys,” Micah told them, squeezing each little hand that clutched at his. “All of you,” he added, looking first at his aunt, then at the woman who had ushered his sons into the room. The woman who had infiltrated his sleep.

Much as he wanted to see the boys, Micah couldn’t help wondering if she was breaking some sort of protocol bringing them in. He’d learned that she was the kind of woman who made things happen the way she wanted them to, not necessarily the way they were
supposed
to.

“Are you sure it’s okay for them to be here?” he asked Tracy.

“Well, I had to smuggle them in inside my purse,” Tracy deadpanned, “but I’m fairly certain it’s okay.” And then, unable to maintain her serious face, she grinned. “Don’t worry, it’s safe for them to be here. Last anyone checked, appendicitis wasn’t catching.”

He knew that, he just thought that Gary and Greg might be too young to be allowed on the floor. But, since he was in a single-care unit, there was no other patient in the room who could have been contagious.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sheila nod authoritatively, backing up Tracy’s cheerfully stated assurance.

Belatedly, he realized that his sons were talking to him.

“Did it hurt a lot, Daddy?” Gary asked him. “When they cut the bad thing out of you, did it hurt?” There was concern in the young blue eyes.

“I didn’t feel a thing,” Micah told the boy. He steered the conversation away from him and any fears they still harbored, hoping to dispel them. “So, what have you two been up to while I’ve been lying around here?” he asked.

The boys gleefully threw themselves into answering his question. The next fifteen minutes were spent with each boy trying to talk louder than his brother, relaying their exploits. Micah had expected to hear about video games, television shows and playtime spent with a few of their friends who lived nearby in the development. What he
wasn’t
expecting was a report about “all the neat places Tracy took us to. She even made Aunt Sheila come with us,” Gary informed him importantly.

He’d proceeded, with Greg’s input, to tell his father about the amusement park Tracy had taken them to in San Diego as well as the new animated movie that had opened in the local theater that weekend.

Greg came closer to him and confided in a whisper that nonetheless carried throughout the room, “Tracy’s a lot of fun, Daddy.”

His eyes momentarily meeting Tracy’s, the corners of Micah’s mouth curved in more of a grin than a smile as he told his younger son, “You don’t know the half of it, Greg.”

After a few more minutes of nonstop details, Sheila stepped forward and interrupted. “Boys, your dad looks a little tired.” She looked from one boy to the other. “Why don’t we let him rest?”

Looking disappointed, the two boys dutifully nodded. And then Greg piped up, “Can we come back and see him tomorrow?”

“I’m afraid not, boys,” Tracy told them.

Gary’s shoulders drooped. “Why not?” he asked.

“Because,” Tracy said, then paused for half a beat before breaking her big surprise, “your dad’s going to be coming home tomorrow.”

The boys lit up like Christmas trees. For his part, Micah was stunned.

“Really, Daddy?” Greg asked excitedly.

“Tracy said so, so it’s gotta be true,” Gary maintained.

Greg was still a little uncertain and eyed his father questioningly. Micah responded by saying, “What she said,” as he nodded at Tracy, although his uncertainty was clearly evident in his face. This was the first he’d heard about being discharged. Was she just trying to placate his sons?

“I talked to the doctor this morning,” Tracy explained to her semiskeptical audience. “And he said that your daddy’s healing really well so there’s no reason not to let him come home. So he’ll be there before you know it,” Tracy promised.

“I’ll take the boys outside,” Sheila offered amid their cheering, then added, “Let the two of you have a few minutes alone.”

Not waiting for a response, the older woman took each little boy by the hand and ushered her grand-nephews out of the room.

“Thanks for bringing them,” he said to Tracy when the boys’ echoing goodbyes faded, and his sons had left the hospital room.

She shrugged carelessly, as if she couldn’t take credit for a matter that had been really out of her hands. “It was either that, or risk having them hike out here on their own. They wanted to see that you were doing all right with their own eyes. I’m afraid that you seem to have raised a couple of skeptics,” Tracy concluded with a soft laugh.

His sons weren’t the only ones who were skeptical. He’d gotten very restless in the past few hours. “Am I really going home tomorrow?” he asked her, adding, “I haven’t been able to see the doctor yet today.”

It wasn’t for lack of trying. He’d asked the nurse on duty several times if his doctor was coming in to make his hospital rounds and if not, could he get a call put through to the man’s office. The nurse had told him that as far as she knew, the doctor was due in sometime before six. To Micah, that was code for “before the end of the world.” So far, the man hadn’t been by to see him.

“I cornered him early this morning, just as he was coming into his office,” Tracy told him.

She had plenty of practice, ambushing witnesses who were reluctant to testify at one trial or another. Because of that, she’d learned how to be both resourceful and persuasive. The former often required being several steps ahead of her quarry.

Micah looked at his attorney with more than a little admiration in his eyes. The woman knew how to get things done. Rather than off-putting, he found her take-charge attitude both compelling and stirring. A few more pieces of his dream came back to him.

He smiled broadly. “Remind me to fire you when I get a little stronger.”

She knew exactly what he was referring to. Trying to look serious, she still couldn’t help smiling. “Don’t bite off more than you can chew,” she warned him.

“I wasn’t planning on chewing,” he told her, humor highlighted in his eyes. “Unless, of course, you want me to.”

She laughed then and shook her head.
This is just temporary. Enjoy it but don’t get used to it. He’s just vulnerable right now. Like you are.

“One step at a time, Micah,” she advised. “Let’s get you home and healed first.”

He caught her hand. Lacing his fingers through hers, he looked at her. Didn’t she realize that she was good for what ailed him?

“Haven’t you heard?’ he asked her. “Making love with a beautiful, intelligent woman is all part of the new healing plan.”

“No, I haven’t heard. Sounds intriguing,” she admitted. “But right now, I have to get your tribe back home and then duck into my office for a few hours.” She didn’t even want to think about what had to be piling up on her desk. The past three days, because of the boys—and Micah—she’d been out more than she’d been in. “My contact at the police department said that they think they might be getting closer to breaking this identity theft case.” She looked at him pointedly. “I don’t have to tell you that once they do, once the whole story comes out, you’ll be exonerated.”

Other than his sons’ welfare, clearing his name had become the most important thing in the world to him. But right now, while still very important, it wasn’t in quite the same life-or-death category as it had been only a month ago. Things had happened. Things that placed his life in a different focus than it had been before.

He’d begun to feel again, feel in a way he had been so very certain he would never feel again. He’d been convinced that those particular emotions had been numbed, disconnected. Severed.

But he’d been proven wrong.

He thought of all that this woman he hadn’t even known a short while ago had done for him. For his family. “Saying thank-you doesn’t seem like nearly enough,” he told her.

Tracy shook her head. “I’m superstitious about things like that,” she admitted. “Don’t thank me yet. Save your thanks for when we put this whole thing to rest,” she cautioned.

“All right.” His eyes smiled into hers. “But I can practice saying thank-you.”

The man was wonderfully incorrigible. With so little encouragement, she could become entirely used to this, to his family…