Free The Matchmaker by Kay Hooper

that in more than thirty years I've never seen eyes like mine in a single face?"
    With a stab at humor, Noel said, "You've always struck me as odd, Cy."
    His friend didn't smile in return. "I suppose I have."
    "Hey, I was joking."
    "No, you weren't." Cyrus did smile then, faintly.
    A little uncomfortably, Noel shrugged. "All right, but what's that have to do with anything? We're all peculiar in our own ways."
    "Yes, but most people can trace their peculiarities to a definite source. They can point to their ancestry as the reason they look and behave as they do; why they're tall or short, dark or fair, calm or bad-tempered. You yourself got those eyebrows from your grandfather."
    "Family trait," Noel said automatically, then stopped when he realized his was a response Cyrus had never been able to make. "I'm sorry, Cy . I never thought."
    "I never did either. Just as I never thought about the fact that the date I celebrate as my birthday is actually the anniversary of the day Tate took me in. I was a few weeks old then, apparently, so my actual birthday is sometime in October." He sighed. "The point is , none of that ever troubled me until the package came."
    "I wish there was something I could say—"
    Cyrus waved a hand in dismissal. "There isn't. And there's no one I can ask to find the answers I want, unless I somehow manage to find out who sent me the package. That's the only glimmer of a clue I have to any part of my heritage. Tate tried to find my mother in the weeks after I was left on his doorstep, and if he couldn't find her then, I'm not likely to have much luck almost thirty-two years later."
    "You have to try, for your own peace of mind."
    "Yes, I know. And I will. But even the basic answers I need aren't as important as. .. What disturbs me most of all is the cane itself."
    Noel frowned. "What do you mean?"
    Cyrus hesitated, but Noel was the closest friend he had in the world and he needed to tell someone, if only to check his grip on reality. "It's a feeling I've had since the package came," he said slowly. "A feeling I can't shake no matter how often I tell myself it's absurd."
    "What feeling?"
    "The feeling that there was a mistake made some where along the way, something wrong I should know about. I looked at the cane, and I realized there was something I should understand about it, some knowl edge I'm supposed to have. I felt it. It's almost as if something inside me knows the cane was supposed to be the final piece of the puzzle. Only there are too many other pieces missing, and I can't even guess what to do with that one."
    Noel's frown deepened. "Cy, what you're saying is definitely strange."
    "Strange isn't the word for it." Not even to Noel was Cyrus willing to admit the cane seemed to have triggered other things as well, even stranger. His "whims and notions" were more frequent now and far more troubling. Some were literally compulsions, like this house he had to build.
    He didn't know how or why, but he was certain beyond any doubt that the house in which he'd grown up would not be standing come winter. He knew. There was nothing he could do to save the house. Whatever was meant to happen to it was already... decided. Events had been set in motion, a pattern woven, and the destruction of the house was a part of it.
    That was another thing, his peculiar recognition and understanding of patterns. He looked at places and felt the history of them, looked at people and sensed the ties that bound them and the emotions that drove them— sometimes even caught glimpses of what he believed were their futures. It seemed instinctive, yet he'd never been conscious of it before, not like this, not so strong and certain. He didn't like it.
    He'd been changing since the first night he'd spoken to Julia, beginning with his strange dreams of pain; since he'd received the cane all the sensations and emotions had been growing stronger every day. Patterns. He was in the grip of one. He felt as if he were a pawn on a