Sexual Healing for Three (2 page)

“And you will not have to.”

The figure waved his hand, and Chance suddenly felt light-headed. He caught a glimpse of himself collapsing to the floor below and closed his eyes against the heaviness. Distantly he heard his staff shouting for help and the sounds of several pairs of feet pounding into the room, more doctors and nurses he suspected, to assist.

He didn’t want to leave things like this, but he had no choice.

He had decided long ago wherever Donna went, he would follow.

Life was not worth living otherwise.

Sexual Healing for Three

11

Wantagh, LI – One Month Previous

Angela stood before her kitchen window sipping vanilla and hazelnut blend coffee as she watched Russ Merrick, the architectural landscaper, at work in her backyard.

She told herself if she wasn’t a happily married woman, she might have been excited by the sight of the man’s bulging biceps and his long legs and strong thighs encased in a pair of well-worn blue jeans as he toiled in the early spring sun. Not that she didn’t admire the man’s athletic build, of course, but Russ belonged to her sister. Or at least he would once Angela got the two of them together.

“Have we figured out a way to introduce your sister and the landscaper yet?” Her husband slid his arms around her waist and nuzzled her neck as he pulled her back against him.

Angela smiled, leaned into him, and placed her free hand atop both of his. He knew her too well, compliments of their more-than-a-quarter-of-a-century marriage. “I haven’t decided yet.” She took another sip of coffee.

“You could just invite her over for lunch or dinner one Saturday,”

Freddie suggested.

“An ambush? I like the way you think, but Donna’s so suspicious now. I don’t know if she’d go for it.”

“Wouldn’t you be suspicious after four marriages in almost as many years?”

“I suppose.” Angela closed her eyes, reaching out to Russ, dipping beneath his aura. He was a strong man—both emotionally and 12

Gracie C. McKeever

physically—determined and forceful. Angela thought her thoroughly bossy control-freak sister would have her hands full with hi—

Angela gasped, just avoided spilling her coffee, as she opened her eyes. She put her cup down on the kitchen counter to be on the safe side then slowed her breathing as much as she could before Freddie sensed something wrong.

She’d felt another male, a second spirit that belonged with Donna.

This had never happened before! Surely there was some mistake?

Angela closed her eyes again to tune into the new man’s life-force. He was younger than Russ by several years, but that wasn’t the interesting part. What was interesting was that she sensed a connection between the two men. Each possessed similar, strong auras, though Russ’s surrounded him in cascading rings of indigo and purple, and the other man’s surrounded him in shimmering waves of turquoise blue.

Brothers?

She was so shocked at the realization since Russ had never mentioned, never even
hinted
at a sibling. This and her own failure in sensing him got her curiosity percolating.

If they weren’t brothers, or half brothers, then certainly they were first cousins.

Freddie held her tight. “Something wrong, baby?”

Angela quickly shook her head. She didn’t know whether to share her little discovery with Freddie or not. She wasn’t used to hiding anything from him and didn’t want to start now, but this was so unprecedented.

There was something about the second man’s energy that drew her. She sensed a free spirit, someone in tune with his psychic gifts.

She couldn’t quite put a finger on what those gifts were yet, but she sensed their strength. Was there also Native American ancestry in his blood, or was he a practicing Wiccan? Or, better still, maybe he was both? Each was an interesting and surprising prospect in and of itself, all of which she was looking forward to confirming.

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13

Angela didn’t know why the surprising part, not when she had two fey brothers-in-law already and a brother and nephew who shared her psychic abilities. It just never failed to amaze her when she came across kindred, gifted souls.

Unlike her two sisters’ husbands, who had come into their gifts late in life, however, this newest man understood the powers he possessed, knew how to use them, and had been using them since he’d been a young child.

Two men were different in so many ways, but alike in the ways
that counted most.

Angela was still a little disconcerted about the whole situation.

She’d never before been one to make moral judgments. Okay, at least she hadn’t made them often. And she wouldn’t make any now. She was just a tool, she decided, one bred to do what needed to be done to find her siblings their soul mates and to get each together with said soul mate. That Donna had two just made things a little more interesting than usual for Angela, but nothing insurmountable.

She squeezed her eyes tight at her next vision, one of Donna and the younger stranger together at a hospital.

Angela didn’t sense any danger or pain, not to her sister or the man, just professional courtesy and an underlying affection and rapport, one born of constant contact and friendship. At this distance, she couldn’t tell how close the relationship or how long it had been in effect, and with Donna so notoriously private since childhood, Angela had little hope of learning anything from her sister about the man unless she pushed the issue.

Angela grinned when she realized how she would get the three together and that Donna, in her inimitable stubborn fashion and refusal to be manipulated, would play right into her hands. “I know what I’m going to do to get Donna together with them.” Angela realized her mistake when she heard Freddie’s sharp intake of breath behind her, and he caught her by the shoulders to turn her around and face him.

14

Gracie C. McKeever

“Did you say together with
them
?”

“Come.” She smiled, gently pulling from his grasp to take his hands in hers and lead him out of the kitchen, towards the living room. “This match is going to be a little different from the rest of my brothers and sisters. We’ve got some things to talk about.”

Sexual Healing for Three

15

“Looking forward to tonight as much as I am?”

Russ smiled and turned to Angela as she sidled behind him near the lighted paving stone fountain. She looked like she had swallowed the canary and his cage.

He loved her like a sister, had to love someone who had so much optimism and enthusiasm for life. Russ had been kicked in the teeth too many times, both literally and figuratively, however, to believe in Angela’s fate or her theories on soul mates.

They’d talked about her faith often during breaks when she’d bring him and his crew sandwiches and iced tea or whatever else the beverage of choice for the day was. He and Angela got into some serious philosophical discussions about spirituality and family that made him think about his brother more often than usual. So much so, Russ wondered if Angela was a conduit of some kind or maybe that she had the power to cast spells the way she had claimed.

Outside of his brother, he had never met a Wiccan before, his closest experience to the religion whatever he came across in the movies or on television. So to say Angela and her beliefs and gifts interested him in a purely intellectual way would be an understatement. He’d always had an open mind and been open to new ideas. Unfortunately, everyone else he came across wasn’t so open. It was the main reason he kept his appetites to himself and had for a long time.

“I don’t think my anticipation could ever match yours, Angela.”

She hooked an arm through his as they walked across the patio, through the garden blooming with vivid splashes of color from 16

Gracie C. McKeever

Angela’s perennials, toward the terra-cotta driveway. “You need to have more faith, Russ.”

He’d lost any faith he did have somewhere between his abusive stepfather running out on them when Chance was barely a toddler and his mother getting mowed down and killed by a hit-and-run driver almost ten years later. “I’m not much for spirituality,” he murmured.

“Oh pish-tosh. If you can sit and listen to me prattle about my New Age pagan beliefs, then you’re more spiritual than you think.”

“I find what you have to say interesting.”

“I think you might find some faith tonight.”

“Your sister going to give me religion?”

Angela chuckled. “More like
agita
.”

“This is how you treat the man whose company constructed your dream backyard?”

She patted his hand. “Blessings often come in disguise.”

So this Donna was a blessing in disguise, huh?

Russ wondered if her disguise resembled any of the other blind dates his ex-wife Suzie and her friends had fixed him up on in the past or if there was a family resemblance between Donna and Angela.

Sure Angela was a happily married woman and mother of five, but Russ still admired her fresh and easy beauty. Not to mention she was well preserved for a fifty-year-old. He should be so lucky if her sister had inherited the same excellent genes and looked half as good.

He’d almost come right out and asked for a picture, but since Angela had never offered, he hadn’t wanted to be uncouth—like Suzie and their daughter sometimes accused him of being—and broach the subject.

Physical attraction was actually the least of his worries. There were other darker elements of his personality that any sane woman might not want to deal with despite any attraction. The questions weren’t whether he would find Donna attractive or whether Donna would help him find religion, but whether or not his demanding preferences would send her off to seek refuge in the nearest convent.

Sexual Healing for Three

17

“So, I shall see you again in a few hours.” Angela unhooked her arm from his and patted his hand one more time as if to send him on his way.

Oookay.
He was being dismissed to go get good and ready for Donna the Man-eater. He could take a hint. He guessed he should count his blessings, except he was on his way home to an interrogation from the kiddies that would put Angela to shame. Talk about precocious.

Russ slid into the driver’s seat of his black Ford Explorer, waving to Angela as he started the engine and pulled out of her driveway.

In no more than ten minutes, he was pulling toward his driveway with a honk of the horn.

Wes and Kim halted their one-on-one, Russ’s thirteen-year-old daughter cradling the ball under one arm as he pulled into the space beside the makeshift basketball court in the driveway.

“Hey, Dad!” they chorused, rushing around to the driver’s side for what felt like some sort of double-team. Uh-huh.

Stand firm.
Suzie’s advice echoed through his head as he opened the door and got out of his SUV. Now standing firm in his business—

bullying contractors, facing down and finessing miserly bankers and accountants, delegating to and commanding his staff—he handled without blinking an eye. But at home as a part-time dad, he had a particular soft spot for his kids, especially his little girl. He had to be on guard with her at all times because once she batted those baby blues—a skill she had honed to deadly precision in the last two years—he was a goner.

“So can we order pizza for dinner?” His sixteen-year-old son dogged his heels as Russ headed toward the back door and entered the house.

“I’m sick of pizza.” Kim was right behind her brother and Russ.

“What would
you
rather have? Quiche? Tell her, Dad. Real men don’t eat quiche.”

“Well, we have had pizza every day since you’ve been he—”

18

Gracie C. McKeever

“You’re starting to look like one big hundred-and-forty-pound pizza. I’m going to start calling you pizza face.” Kim poked out her tongue and Russ had to bite his to keep from laughing out loud. He didn’t want to encourage the girl.

“That’s better than having bedhead.”

“I do
not
have bedhead! Dad!”

Oh, Wes had gone and done it now. You didn’t talk disparagingly about a girl’s hair or weight ever. Hadn’t he taught the boy anything?

“Look, guys, let’s compromise.”

“Great,” Wes grumbled as he plopped his lanky frame onto one of the wood-and-leather barstools at the maple island. “Guess that means pizza with”—he paused here and dramatically gagged like a cat with a furball stuck in its throat—“vegetables.”

“Vegetables are good for you,” Kim retorted.

“Not on a pizza.”

“How about I order one meat lovers for us guys and a—”

“Broccoli and mushrooms, please.” Kim daintily handed Russ the menu from Papa Gio’s as she took a seat at the island opposite her brother, and Wes made one of his famous goofy, rubbery faces at her.

“Eww. You are such a dork,” Kim stated.

“Takes one to know one.”

“Kids…”

“So, what’s on the agenda tonight, Dad? Got any new movies from Netflix?”

“You tell me, Mr. Shirker. Did you get the mail? You’ve been home all day,” Russ teased. Wes used to come on jobs with him all the time when he was younger, but since he’d gotten older, not so much. And this current stay, Russ didn’t want to bug the kid too much about coming to work since it was supposed to be a break, as Wes was so fond of reminding him. Besides, Russ half suspected the kid was sweet on one of the neighborhood girls and was playing things close to home to keep tabs on her.

Sexual Healing for Three

19

Kim confirmed his suspicions when she smiled sweetly and said,

“Not
all
day.”

“I only went over to the Bensons to hang out for a couple of hours, Dad. And I made sure to bring the brat.” Wes glared at his sister, and Kim stuck out her tongue again as Russ chuckled and took the cordless from its base on the wall to call for the pizza.

“So, did we get anything from Netflix?” he asked.