Michael's Discovery - By Sherryl Woods Page 0,67

I’ve outlasted my usefulness,” she said quietly.

“Don’t say it like that,” he said, hating how the words he’d been struggling to form sounded when she said them with such an air of resignation. She looked as if she might be fighting tears, but she kept her gaze steady.

“But that’s the bottom line, isn’t it? You want to go on from here on your own.”

“Kelly, you’re an incredible woman. You deserve the best and I don’t have anything to offer you. I’m getting out of the navy. I have no idea yet what I’ll do next. It would be wrong of me to ask you to sit around and wait while I figure things out.”

For a moment, it looked as if she might argue. Michael braced himself to try to counter whatever she said. Instead, though, she sighed, her expression unbearably sad.

“As long as you believe that, then you’re right, you don’t have anything to offer me.”

She stood up, fiddling nervously with the pen she’d been using to make notes on his therapy, not quite looking him in the eye. “Michael, the only thing I ever wanted or needed was your heart.”

Chapter Fourteen

Kelly hadn’t known it was possible to feel so empty inside. Just when she’d thought she’d finally found something real and permanent and remarkable, Michael had deliberately yanked it away. And why? Because he was so convinced that he was nothing without his stupid uniform, without a job that put his life at risk.

She blamed the Devaneys for having done that to him and she hated them for it. She prayed when Ryan, Sean and Michael eventually found their parents that she would be granted five minutes alone with them to given them a piece of her mind for abandoning those three young boys and destroying their sense of self-worth in the process. It was little wonder that Michael thought he wasn’t worthy of being loved by her, when his own parents had drilled that lesson into him at such an early age.

She sighed and turned to find her brother studying her with a worried expression. “What?” she demanded. “Why are you even home tonight? Shouldn’t you be with Moira? You’ve been spending all your free time at her place lately.”

Bryan held up his hands. “Hey, don’t jump down my throat. I just came over here to ask you if you’d like to come to the pub tonight with Moira and me. Word is you’ve been holed up here for days now, refusing to go anywhere, including work. Moira’s worried sick. Your clients are about to rebel. They don’t like any of the substitute therapists she’s assigned to them.”

Kelly felt a momentary pang of guilt. She knew her clients shouldn’t have to suffer because her life was falling apart. “Then I’ll go back to work,” she said eventually. She could avoid Michael if she only scheduled patients on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at the clinic.

“When?” her brother pressed.

“Soon.”

“Whatever that means,” he said. “In the meantime, what about tonight? Come with us. You have to start getting out sometime.”

She frowned at him. Either he was being deliberately insensitive or he was an awfully lousy psychologist who couldn’t even read his own sister.

“Are you crazy?” she asked sourly. “The pub is the very last place I’d ever show my face.”

It was his turn to sigh. “I thought so,” he said, sinking down in a chair across from her. “Your crummy mood obviously has something to do with Michael. You might as well tell me, Kelly. What did he do to you? I’ll kill him.”

“Stay out of it,” she ordered. “I don’t need my big brother fighting my battles for me.”

“Then fight them for yourself,” he said mildly. “Come with us tonight. Show him that you’re not about to let him ruin your life.”

“My life is not ruined just because Michael Devaney broke up with me,” she said fiercely.

“Then prove it.”

“I don’t have to prove anything to anybody. I don’t want to come to the pub. That’s a little too in-your-face for my peace of mind.”

“You like it there.”

“I liked it there when I was with Michael,” she corrected. “If you’d been paying the slightest bit of attention, you’d know that I opted out of spending time there a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t want to have to answer a lot of questions when I eventually wound up in exactly the position I’m in now, cast aside by a man who’s too self-absorbed or too scared to make a commitment to