Let It Be Me by Becky Wade (top young adult novels .TXT) 📕

“I see.” Leah possessed a single clue regarding the identity of her birth parents: the list of DNA matches YourHeritage had provided. If she did some detective work on the site using the family trees her biological relations had made public, adding logic and a process of elimination . . . she might be able to deduce her parents’ surname.

“I’m very sorry that this happened to you,” Donna said. “I can only imagine how upsetting this has been.”

“Thank you.” She pegged Donna as smart, principled, decent. Whether those qualities would prove true remained to be seen.

What didn’t remain to be seen? Sebastian’s status as a powerful ally. He was more than a match for Donna, or, she’d guess, just about anyone. His hands were laced together in his lap. But no telltale white pressure marks marred his fingertips.

It was dark by the time Sebastian returned home that night. Starving, he stuck the premade dinner his meal service had left for him into the microwave, then stared at the light behind the appliance’s see-through door.

Like a tugboat, his mind pulled him to Leah.

He’d been starstruck, sitting across the table from her this morning. He wasn’t someone who got starstruck. But he couldn’t think of a better word to describe the effect she had on him.

He suspected that she was the smartest person he’d ever met in his life, and he wasn’t exactly an academic slouch. Nor were his medical school classmates and teachers.

He’d found himself wishing he could get a glimpse of what was going on inside her head. In The Matrix, the characters had been able to download knowledge directly into their brains. That’s what he’d like to do with Leah . . . hook a cable from her head to his so he could import even a portion of what she knew.

He sensed she had more intelligence, more integrity, more optimism, and more compassion than he did. However, she was also crazier than he was if she believed that dating and romance weren’t for her.

He’d bet a million dollars that, with the right person, she could experience physical attraction as powerfully as any other woman. Maybe with him, she could—

That is, with Ben. Maybe with Ben she could.

The microwave dinged, and he opened the door to find that it contained nothing. No dinner.

What had he done with his food? It wasn’t sitting on any of the counters. He opened the refrigerator. Not there. Not in the freezer, either. He pulled back the pantry door and spotted it.

Instead of warming his meal as he’d intended, he’d been so distracted by Leah that he’d put it in the pantry.

Great, Sebastian. Really sharp. He sighed irritably and placed it in the microwave.

He’d guess Leah’s nerdiness had been obvious when she was younger. These days, only a shadow of it remained. He’d seen it in the candid, old-fashioned way she spoke. The way she tipped her chin up, just a little, when thinking. The way she moved her hands.

She might be a professor at heart, but she resembled a pin-up girl on the outside.

He’d been frozen in place by her striking eyes. Her hair looked like she’d ridden in a convertible with the top down, then combed her fingers through it—a style so casual that it contrasted with her very tidy clothing. There hadn’t been a single wrinkle in her shirt or skirt, and both had been modest . . . so much so they were almost fussy. Yet, strangely, he found her clothes just as sexy as her hair.

After they’d left Donna McKelvey’s office, they’d stopped at a different area of the hospital so that Leah could fill out record request forms and receive a waiver to forward to her mother.

When she’d informed him that she planned to contact an attorney in Misty River about pursuing a court order, his body had bristled. No way could he stand to the side and watch an attorney gouge Leah’s bank account. Especially because he didn’t feel he’d repaid his debt to her in full.

He’d said that his attorney friend Jenna owed him a favor. The technically true part of that was that he had an attorney named Jenna. He’d told Leah that Jenna would reach out to her soon and asked Leah to include him when she returned to the hospital. As good as Jenna was, he was the only one of the three of them who had experience with hospital administrators.

The microwave finished, and he peeled back the container’s packaging. Italian meatballs and marinara sauce over zucchini noodles. He carried the steaming food to his living room and filled his big screen with a replay of the Manchester United versus Liverpool soccer match from last season. Leaning back, he crossed his feet on the coffee table.

His apartment looked and felt like the sort of place that would go for top dollar on Airbnb. He’d hired a friend of a friend of a friend to design it for him, and she’d done a good job. The modern pieces of furniture worked fine. The building was new. He had a sixth-floor view of downtown and could walk to the hospital from here.

Even so, he didn’t like the apartment much. Nothing about it was personal.

He only felt at home in two places. Ben’s family’s house and his own house in Misty River.

Ben.

He frowned while chewing, the light of the TV screen glowing on his face. He’d texted Ben days ago to let him know he was helping Leah with issues of hospital bureaucracy. He’d texted Ben again today to say that the hospital meeting had gone well and that at least one follow-up meeting would be needed to secure the information she wanted.

Ben had answered with a brief thanks both times. Since the farmers market, Sebastian had seen Ben once, when they’d gone to a Braves game. There’d been a slight unspoken strain between them. Ben, who usually talked about Leah a lot, hadn’t mentioned her that day. Neither had Sebastian. They’d both had to work a little too