Pickett glanced out the window. “He’s still under the magnolia. I think he pretends the roots are highways for his cars.”
“That’s what I mean. It’s like your mind has put a tracking device on him. No matter where you are or what else you’re thinking about, you are also aware of him.”
Pickett tipped her head in a considering look. “You notice that?”
“I notice everything about you.”
Shoot. Just when she had him figured, the relationship, or lack of one, firmly settled in her mind, he said something like that. How was she supposed to keep herself from wanting him to stay with her forever?
The kitchen suddenly felt ten degrees hotter, driven up undoubtedly by the look in his eyes. She hadn’t seen him move and yet now they were touching thigh to thigh and his hard, warm palm was cradling her jaw.
“I want you.” His voice was little more than a growl. “I want you so much. Right now.”
He feels lust. Do not read anything else into it. But even as she issued firm instructions to herself, she felt herself growing moist, her body preparing to receive him.
Pickett reached a hand to smooth Jax’s hair—okay, to give herself the pleasure of touching its silky thickness. She could feel his erection pressing against her belly.
She chuckled ruefully. “I think you’ve got me caught between a rock and a—” she brushed back and forth across the hard bulge—“hard place.”
Jax clamped her bottom in strong fingers to hold her tighter against him and repeated the motion. His pale eyes in his brown face glittered with equal parts amusement and sexual intent. “Okay, what’s the rock?”
“Think small boy. Hungry, tired, fussy. Coming in here any minute.”
The deep breath Jax took pushed his chest tighter against her breasts, making Pickett nearly groan. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, and stretched a brown arm to pull forward the other chopping board. “Okay. But don’t think I’m going to forget where we were. Do you want me to start cutting up the chicken?”
In a few minutes Pickett visually measured the pile of broccoli, onion, pepper, and snow peas and pronounced it sufficient. She brought the conversation back to how Jax could arrange for Tyler to live with him.
“How do you plan to make a home for Tyler in Little Creek?” Pickett studied the arrested expression on Jax’s face. “What?”
“Make a home. I hadn’t thought of it as making a home.”
“What would you call it?”
“I don’t know. Living where I live maybe.”
“So where do you live?”
“I have an apartment. I don’t exactly think of it as home, it’s just the place I go.”
“Hmm.” Pickett set the pan on the heat.
“Up to now, all my thinking has been around finding someone to care for him when I’m gone. When I’m at the base, it’s no biggie, he can go to daycare, but SEALs have to be ready to go ‘wheels up’ in four hours.”
“Wheels up?” She took oil from the cabinet and added it to the pan. “Like in a plane?”
“Or a helo—helicopter. SEALs constantly train, and our operations, well, they’re not exactly scheduled a year in advance.”
“How long are you gone?”
“A few days. A few weeks. Every two years there’s a six-month deployment.”
Pickett swirled the oil around the pan. “Hmm.”
Jax leaned against the counter, arms crossed over his massive chest, one brown bare foot crossed over the other. “You know what? You scare the shit out of me when you go ‘Hmm.’ I wish you’d just say what you’re thinking.”
“I was imagining what it would be like for Tyler. You wake him up in the middle of the night and tell him you’re leaving but you can’t tell him where you’re going or how long you’ll be gone. Who’s going to reassure him that everything’s going to be okay?”
“I will. I always have a cell phone. I’ll call him and talk to him.”
“So you don’t see yourself just going off and leaving him?”
“No, that’s what I want to stop doing.”
“Hmm.” Pickett raked the onions and peppers into the pan. “Wait. I didn’t mean ‘hmm.’ I was processing.”
“What were you processing?”
“That this is such a big change for you … ” She turned to face him. “Why does it scare you when I say ‘hmm,’” she twinkled a little grin, “hmm?”
He gave her a sexy, sharkish grin in reply, but not before she caught sight of a look she couldn’t define. Vulnerability? Loneliness? The timer for the noodles dinged before she could pursue it. “Dinner’s ready. Call Tyler in.”
Jax studied the woman sitting across from him. The setting sun filled the kitchen with a pinkish glow. A bar of gold light touched the gold of Pickett’s hair with fire, emphasizing even further her vivid peach and blue and gold coloring. As always, she responded with animated interest to Tyler’s prattling, and he responded to her by talking a blue streak.
Well he knew how that was. Jax found himself telling her things, and thinking over things she said more and more. Sometimes he thought it was like she had an extra set of senses that brought her information about the world, that made her notice things he’d completely overlooked. He had no idea where her mind was going next most of the time.
“Think of it as Chinese spaghetti,” she told Tyler when he asked what was on his plate. Chinese spaghetti. He would have told the kid it was food. Jax forked up another bite. Fresh ginger and a little tang of lemon.
She listened, really listened, to everything he or Tyler said, and then she thought about it. He should have known she’d come back on his remark about being scared when she said “hmm.” He should have kept his mouth shut. But that was what happened around her. Things came out of his mouth that he didn’t know he was going to say—hell, that he didn’t know he thought.
So why had he said it? It wasn’t that he was intimidated by her intelligence. He liked smart women. Sex was a lot sexier when his mind was as engaged as his body.
No, that wasn’t it. It was—the truth when it hit made his stomach do a back flip—he cared what she thought. Really cared. Pickett was the most nonjudgmental person he’d ever met. She never imposed her values on others, but she still had extremely high standards, and damn if he hadn’t started caring about whether he was living up to those standards. Dammit, he knew the first time he saw her, Pickett was high maintenance. Turns out he was wrong about what made her high maintenance, but his gut hadn’t lied.
It wasn’t that she pouted or cried, or wanted him to show interest in things he wasn’t interested in. She didn’t demand that he account for his time, or show up with just the right present. He’d figured she was the kind who would fall in love and then have an endless list of demands that he change into someone different from who he was.
That’s why he’d made sure she knew what she was getting with him.
But now, he wasn’t even sure she was in love with him. She cared about him, sure, but she seemed to give her generous heart to everyone she met.
Nope. Turns out this lady was high maintenance because she’d somehow gotten inside his skin. Things that made a difference to her were beginning to make a difference to him. It was like he was carrying her around with him all the time, and that was changing him, making him think and do and say things he didn’t mean to do.
It was going to take a couple of weeks to make all the arrangements for Tyler. He might even have to ask for extended leave. During that time he really needed someone Tyler trusted—someone like Pickett—to leave Tyler with while he got his plans shaped up.
But once he had things set up, he had to get Tyler and himself out of there, pronto. Things were getting out of hand.
Tyler was telling Pickett about his swimming lesson. His cheeks glowed with health now underneath his tan, and the little ribs were not so visible, the bones of his little shoulders not so pointy. His account of his prowess owed a lot to imagination but he was lear
ning. He trusted the water now and his favorite part of every lesson was when Jax would swim breaststroke, the workhorse stroke for SEALs, with Tyler on his back.
Pickett was right about one thing. Everything about where and how he lived would have to change when Tyler came to live with him.
For starters, he’d need full-time live-in child care. And his two-bedroom apartment wouldn’t be large enough. He had to find a new place to live, a nanny/housekeeper, a school for Tyler, and who knew what else.
He began to mentally assemble his team, sorting through whose skills made the best fit with the task to be accomplished.
Chief Petty Officer Lonnie Swales had a genius with logistics that would come in useful. Caleb “Do-Lord” Dulaude had a way of knowing where apartments were available. Jax didn’t doubt he could ask Do-Lord and Lon to help him with a personal problem. SEALs were closer than brothers. If he needed their help, they would help him.
They would come from the ends of the earth if they needed to, but fortunately, they were right here, on a training exercise that Jax had been scheduled to participate in.
“Pickett,” he spoke across the table, “some of my platoon are at the Marine base on a training exercise. Do you mind if I ask them to come over?”
“Not at all. How long have they been in the area? You could have invited them anytime.”
“Unfortunately when you’re training, you have weekends off but that’s about it.”
“You mean you’re training twenty-four/seven?”
“You have time to sleep, but that’s about it.”
“Well tomorrow’s Friday so ask them. If you want to we can grill hamburgers or something. I believe I would like to meet some more specimens of the genus: Navy SEALs.” The light of intellectual challenge suddenly brought a sunny sparkle to the ocean of her eyes. “I could find out if you are the way you are, because you’re the same,” she raised a gold eyebrow, “or because you’re different.”
Jax ignored her deliberate provocation, then slyly raised the ante. “Don’t you mean phylum, not genus?”
Pickett rolled her eyes, then huffed out a breath. “Why did you have to say that? Now I’m not going to be able to go to sleep until I look it up.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Jax’s heart rate doubled before he had the bedroom door fully closed.
In the golden radiance of the bedside lamp, the high-posted bed glowed like an island of light floating in an intimate darkness. Pickett sat on the bed cross-legged, even sexier than he had hoped for in white lace camisole and matching lace panties. It was all he could do not to pant. White lace did it for him every time.
Pickett didn’t look up from the large book in her lap, although he sensed she knew he was there.
“What are you doing?” Jax pulled his T-shirt over his head one-handed, never taking his eyes off her.
“I’ve looked up genus and phylum, and now I’m looking up species.” Pickett shot him a sultry glance that said she enjoyed what he was thinking, but was determined to play her little game. “I need to get them straight if I’m going to properly classify you,” she added in an erudite tone.
Jax lifted the heavy dictionary from her hands, closed it, and set it on the floor. Then he carefully pulled off her little round reading glasses. “I’ll tell you how to classify me. Put me in the horny category.”
“Ah!” Pickett’s eyes sparkled like the ocean in bright sunlight, even though she tried to maintain a scholarly expression. “I shall name the species the Eastern Seaboard Broad-chested Horny SEAL! Then I can present a learned paper on his mating habits.”
Jax seized her under her arms and flipped both of them so that he was lying down and she was straddling him.
As always Pickett was amazed at how absolutely secure she felt in the face of his vastly superior strength. It was as if instead of his strength being a threat to her, he always offered it in her service.
“Don’t move.” She pressed her palms into the hollows of his shoulders. “If you struggle, you will only hurt yourself.” The lazy-lidded amusement in his eyes told her Jax enjoyed her pretense that she could pin him as much as she did. “Now that I have such an excellent specimen of the Horny SEAL in my possession, I must examine him.”
The way the lacy white camisole snugged around her pretty breasts had him salivating from the moment he stepped into the bedroom. Her nipples were just barely visible as slightly darker smudges, but already the tips were pushing against the white flowers. He could smell her growing arousal.
Trust Pickett to be turned on with brainy sex games.
“I think you should remove your specimen’s shorts. Strictly in the interests of science, you understand.”
Her hand stopped its careful measuring of the bulge under his zipper. Her eyes widened. “Are you saying I may have discovered a Horny SEAL Erectus? This is too wonderful. I can be published in Scientific American.” She flopped back to lie on top of his legs. “I am overcome with the thrill.”
Jax sat up and began to draw the tiny bikini panties over her hips, letting his fingers tangle in the dark gold curls as he did so. “Let me tell you what else you’re going to be overcome by …”
He dropped the panties on the floor, stood briefly to divest himself of his shorts and came back down on top of her. He whispered in raunchy detail exactly what he had in mind.
“Oh no!” Pickett wailed. “This is a dark day for science!”
Jax stopped swirling his tongue around the velvety areola of her breast to look into her eyes. They glittered with fun even as the lids lowered in sensual anticipation.
“I’m almost afraid to ask, but why?”
“After extensive research, I’m going to write the world’s most learned paper, and now, because of you, it’s going to be unprintable!”
Once his breathing had returned to normal and he could move again, Jax reached across Pickett to turn out the lamp, then drew her next to him again.
He liked the time after lovemaking with Pickett as he never had with anyone before. Maybe it was because it never seemed completely over. Even when he had just had her, he still wanted to touch her. His hand, almost of its own volition, traveled over her breasts, down her belly, to let his fingers comb lazily through the still-damp curls at the apex of her thighs.
He gave a soft tug and was rewarded with one of Pickett’s sexy little humming sounds.
“You like that?”
“Um.”
“Do you like it better here or here?”
“There. If you keep doing that you’re going to get me turned on again.”
“And that would be a problem, how?”
Pickett chuckled, a lazy, sated, totally sensual sound. “I’ve been thinking about something you said tonight. You said your apartment isn’t what you think of as home.”
“It isn’t. It’s just someplace to leave my things. I’m not there much.”
“Then where is home? Do you still think of your father’s house as home?”
“No. It wasn’t ever home.”
“So where is it? Home, I mean.”
“I don’t know.” She was getting a little too close to what he was thinking about in the driveway earlier. “Do I have to have a home?”
“Most people do. Tyler’s going to need one.”
“Well, I don’t have one, all right?” Uh-oh. He sounded a little testy. Maybe if he answered her she’d get off it. He made his voice sleepy, almost bored sounding. “I guess the last place I really felt like I was home was Corey’s parents’ house.”
“Oh yeah. They bought you a bed and checked your homework. They were your real family.” Pickett yawned. “Do you visit them much?”
“No. I joined the Navy the day after Corey’s funeral.”
“They just let you go?”
She sounded incredulous. What was with her? This was old, old stuff.
“They wrote a couple of times. I couldn’t think of what to say so I didn’t write back.” I couldn’t give them Corey back.
“So when Corey died you lost everything?”
“Huh?” Time to give her thoughts another direction. He rolled her on top of him so that he could stroke that downy place at the base of her spine. That always made her melt.
Big mistake. Her eyes were colorless in the moonlight that was just beginning to come through the window, but they were darkly troubled.
She pulled up on her elbows to look more fully into his face. “You lost your best friend, who was closer than a brother, and you also lost the only parents you knew, and you lost the only place you called home? Whoa!”
It was like she had taken her dainty little foot and with one well-placed kick broken the lock on the door between that time and this one. He sucked in his breath as all the pain, the yawning nothingness came flooding through. He couldn’t let her see, and in a second, being Pickett, she would. Then she would want him to talk about it. And if he talked about it right now, he’d probably start to cry. Besides, he didn’t want her sympathy. He wanted her. He took her mouth in a deep, plundering kiss.
After a moment her tongue sought his with equal greed. “Are you trying to distract me?” she murmured against his lips.
He slid tickling touches along her cheek, then bit into her soft earlobe, instantly soothing the sting with his tongue. “Um-hum.”
Pickett pulled back as if she was trying to read his face in the dark. “Well, if you’re trying to keep me from pointing out the connection between losing everything at once and a job that keeps you too busy to notice you don’t have a home and makes you turn a relationship with your son into a job description,” she offered him the side of her neck, “it’s working.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Sprawled in the wide old porch rockers, the two SEALs who had accepted Jax’s invitation to dinner traded jokes and insults with Jax, while Pickett listened. The afternoon light faded from golden to violet, and Venus pierced the cobalt glow lingering in the west.
Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle Page 23