Chapter 4
FOUR
Holy. Shit.
Chloe was in Harry’s arms, crying so hard she was having trouble breathing. Harry was bent over her, holding her tightly, crying too. Mike had never seen Harry cry, ever. Not even when he’d come back from the war almost dead from terrible wounds and it had hurt him to breathe.
“I can’t believe this.” Harry pulled away and held Crissy—Chloe—by the shoulders, tears streaming down his face. “Oh my God. Is it you? Is it really you?” He didn’t wait for an answer, just pulled her into another bear hug.
But he didn’t need to ask. The resemblance was there, something almost tangible, which was why he’d been so frozen. Harry’s heart had been frantically sending him signals his head couldn’t accept.
They were brother and sister, all right.
When you knew it, you couldn’t miss it. Male and female, yin and yang, but the same stock.
It was amazing to Mike that they were clearly siblings and yet Chloe was so feminine and Harry was all male.
But there it was—the same coloring, the same color eyes, even the cast of their faces was the same.
The Keillor kids had been like that. Three young brothers, clearly siblings, looking so much like their dad, but with a bit of their mom in there. A family, visibly bound by blood. His heart gave that familiar kick when he thought of them. He suppressed it, pushed it right back down again.
Harry and Chloe were making a lot of noise, words coming out so fast they were garbled, hard sobs, sharp laughter.
Sam stuck his head in, frowning, looking ten years older. Nicole had had a hard time expecting their first child, Merry, and she was having a hard time with the new one, too. Sam’s nights were as sleepless as hers.
“What’s all this racket—hey!” He gaped at Harry and Chloe, clutching each other, crying their hearts out and laughing, at the same time. It wasn’t every day he saw his brother Harry holding onto a woman and weeping.
Mike could almost see the gears moving in Sam’s head. Slowly. Sam was having problems processing the scene, unusual for a former SEAL. SEALs aren’t easily surprised and don’t usually have problems processing things. Sam must be really sleep-deprived.
Harry lifted his head, joy all over his wet face.
He grinned at Sam. “Sam, meet my sister Crissy.” He looked down at her. “Or do you want us to call you Chloe, honey?”
Chloe glowed, like a little sun. “Chloe,” she said softly. “Please.”
Sam blinked, shook his head, as if the idea were too big for his brain to contain it. “Crissy? But, but isn’t she…”
Dead. He’d been about to say dead. Chloe turned fully toward Sam. Once that idea that Harry and Chloe were brother and sister was in your head, the truth was right there, on their faces. Unmistakable. The truth made flesh.
“Oh my God,” Sam breathed, eyes wide. Seeing it.
“Yeah.” Harry swiped at his face. “Yeah. Wait till I tell Ellen. And Grace!” He looked down at Chloe. “Honey, you have a niece. A beautiful little niece. Grace Christine. Named for you.”
Chloe’s face crumpled again, her shoulders shook. She buried her face in Harry’s now-wet shirt, sobbing quietly.
Sam walked in warily. Though he’d been married over two years now, for him a weeping woman was still the equivalent of a block of C-4 with the detonator in and the timer counting down. But before he reached them, Marisa rushed into the room.
A weeping woman. Marisa was hard-wired to react.
She came in bristling, shooting filthy glances at Harry, Sam and Mike, men who’d dared make one of her women, one of the Lost Ones, cry.
She put her arms around Chloe’s shoulders, glaring ferociously at the three men.
Marisa weighed one twenty dripping wet and was fifty years old.
But none of them, highly-trained former soldiers that they were, would dare take her on when she was in Protective Mode.
“What’s going on here? What did you men do to this poor girl—” She began furiously, getting right up into their faces.
“She’s my sister, Marisa,” Harry said at the same time. “Come back from the dead.”
Marisa’s face went utterly blank. They never talked about it, but everyone in the office knew Harry’s story. Knew that the loss of his little sister had been a tragic hole punched though his heart all his life.
“Mamma mia,” she whispered, reverting back to the language of her childhood. She pulled away to look Chloe in the face, holding her by the shoulders. Eyes flicking from Chloe to Harry and back. “Mamma mia.”
“Davvero,” Chloe said unexpectedly, smiling, wiping away the tears that were streaming down her face.
Marisa whooped, kissed Chloe on the cheek and did a little jig. Mike stared. No one had ever seen cool, calm Marisa so excited, so joyful. “Una sorella ritrovata! A lost sister! Found! And she speaks Italian!”
“Solo un poco, very little.” Chloe smiled, wiped her eyes again. “I only studied it for a year.”
“Hey, what’s going on?” Two beautiful women stuck their heads in the room, looking puzzled.
Nicole and Ellen. Ellen had probably been working with Nicole on her accounts.
Besides singing for them, Ellen kept the books of Nicole’s translation agency and of RBK.
Mike always thought that was a great twofer.
Ellen rushed over to her husband, seeing the tears running down his face. “Harry!” She sounded more shocked than worried. “What’s wrong, darling? Are you hurt?”
This last was said slowly, as an afterthought, because though he was crying, Harry clearly wasn’t hurt. He started laughing and wiped away some tears, though more fell.
Chloe turned to smile at the two women, hope and light in her golden eyes. Mike had never seen anything so luminous. It was as if she had a light source glowing inside her. Her smile was heartbreaking, the smile of someone who wasn’t used to happiness.
“Come here, honey,” Harry called to Ellen. He opened one arm, the other around Chloe. When Ellen was by his side, in his embrace, he kissed her cheek. Ellen and Nicole were no dummies. Both of them were looking at Chloe, then Harry, then back at Chloe. Understanding that something was up, but what?
“Honey,” Harry said to his wife, then gave a sort of laughing cough, as if whatever was in his chest was too big to express but had to come out.
“I know you’re going to find this hard to believe, but this is…
Crissy. My sister. Back from the dead. Only now she’s Chloe.
” He threw his head back and laughed again.
Both Ellen and Nicole gasped.
Mike was barely paying attention to them, to Sam and Harry.
He moved closer. He couldn’t help it. Chloe was light itself and he was helplessly drawn to it, to her.
There was some kind of aura there, something he’d never seen in anyone else before, something that drew him in without any volition on his part.
His legs moved without him willing it, his entire body moving toward the light, moving toward something it had never had before and instantly recognized as something it craved.
Harry was holding Chloe and Ellen in his arms. Everyone was talking all at once, the noise level amazing. Marisa had drawn away from the group and was wiping her eyes, smiling. Sam bent down to her.
“Marisa.” With any other woman, Sam would have maybe laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. They were all affected, Marisa as much as anyone. But Marisa didn’t like being touched by a man. She still had scars from her husband’s touch.
She stood ramrod straight, was back to her prim and proper persona. She nodded her head soberly at Sam. “Mr. Reston.”
Sam looked at Harry, in a knot of happy women, Chloe, Ellen and Nicole, all of them talking loudly and happily, then met Mike’s eyes.
Sam had clearly taken a decision. He turned to Marisa. “RBK closes for the next two days. Full pay for all employees. Cancel all appointments for today and tomorrow, with apologies. We open again on Monday.” When Sam looked at him, Mike nodded his approval.
Oh, yeah. Finding the sister you thought long dead—yeah, that qualified for a holiday. And when that sister was Chloe Mason…hell yes. Celebrations were definitely in order.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Marisa’s voice was bland, but there was a rosy blush under her olive skin. She’d caught the Bolt happiness bug.
They all had.
“Well, then Wordsmith closes down, too,” Nicole said, smiling.
Her translation agency was across the hallway from RBK.
“I’ll sub-contract out my own translations for the next couple of days.
I can always check on things from home. This calls for a real celebration.
And you, Ellen—” She looked sternly at Harry’s wife, a notorious workaholic.
Sometimes you had to pry Ellen from the spreadsheets of Wordsmith and RBK with a crow bar.
“No accounting. None. I don’t want you near a computer until Monday. ”
Ellen laughed. “Absolutely! Are you kidding? Working when I have a sister to welcome to the family?” Ellen was hugging Chloe.
“Oh man,” she said. She had that rosy blush too.
“Wait till you meet Grace, Chloe. Your niece. You’re going to love her.
This is so great! Another aunt for her. Nicole can share aunt duty! ”
“I love aunt duty.” Nicole bent down to kiss Chloe’s cheek.
She was much taller than Chloe and Ellen, and moved a little awkwardly, her belly starting to get in her way.
“But I’ll happily share. And I can’t wait for you to meet our daughter, Meredith.
Merry.” Nicole smiled at her husband, then Harry. “This is so great. I have no words.”
Which for Nicole, a professional translator, whose stock in trade was words, was really something.