Most men returning from deployment had the occasional image or idea they couldn’t dismiss. He had it under control. His symptoms weren’t anything to worry about unless they didn’t go away. He slid his trademark lazy smile onto his face hoping it was good enough to get past Lon’s radar. “You’re right. I guess I just feel sorry for Carmine—it’s a tough break. It sucks, and I wouldn’t want it to happen to anybody.”
Lon appeared satisfied. “Right. In case a bone marrow transplant will help, Davy will take blood samples from anyone who wants to donate. In the meantime, see if there’s anything Carmine or his family need.” Lon shoved out of his chair. “But while you’re at it, plan to get away. You know I’ll approve leave anytime you ask. We call the world of operations the ‘real’ world, but if we really believe that’s reality, we’re in trouble.”
Chapter 2
Sessoms Corner, North Carolina
THE TRAILER HE GREW UP IN COULD HAVE FITTED, with room left over, into the double parlor of the late Victorian house where a wedding breakfast for Jax and his bride Pickett was taking place. A corner of Do-Lord’s mouth kicked up in amusement. The most room would have been left at the ceiling. Decorated with intricate crown molding, these ceilings were easily fifteen feet.
Painted a cheerful lime green and filled with comfortable upholstered sofas and chairs as well as what even he recognized as priceless antiques, these were clearly rooms to be lived in, not just displayed to company. The house had been in the family for over a hundred years, and oil portraits of ancestors, not all terribly good, were scattered among hunting scenes and landscapes.
By the time he’d helped himself to the sausage casserole, fruit compote, fried green tomatoes, venison loin in gravy, and grits on the table in the dining room, the autumn leaf design on the porcelain plate was completely obliterated. He carried it very carefully across priceless Oriental carpets, grateful he wasn’t expected to balance it on his knee. The warm sunny day, unusually balmy for November in North Carolina, had allowed the hostesses to set tables outside on the wide porches where thick white paint gleamed on columns and rails.
A light breeze carried the scent of autumn leaves and the earthy tang of newly-dug peanuts. It fluttered the peach tablecloths and played with pretty girls’ hair. A couple of the girls smiled invitingly. He smiled in return, but he set his plate down at an empty place at the table where Jax’s bride, Pickett, sat with two of her cousins. Pickett looked bright as an autumn leaf herself with her gold tumble of curls and orange silk dress.
Last night at the wedding rehearsal, Jax had caught him watching Pickett and leaned over to say, “Pickett’s mine. Get one of your own.” Jax’s words kept reverberating in his mind. They popped up at the oddest, and sometimes most inconvenient, times. Jax had said them in jest—well, partly in jest. Jax laughed when he said it, but there wasn’t a doubt in Do-Lord’s mind he’d also been warned away.
Jax had it wrong. Do-Lord liked Pickett. He thought she was perfect—for Jax. During the rehearsal he hadn’t been eyeing Pickett so much as trying to understand how she came to be best friends with Emmie Caddington, who was the maid of honor. Pickett and her sisters, who were her other attendants, were all remarkably pretty, remarkably poised women, while the friend had to be one of the blandest people he’d ever seen. It was like she intended to be a nonentity, but in a reverse way she stood out precisely because there was nothing about her to draw the eye. Still, birds of a feather flock together. Puzzling how she could be Pickett’s friend was a way to keep himself entertained through the interminably silly proceedings.
SEALs believed in rehearsal. A practice run for the ceremony was the first item on the three-day wedding agenda that had made total sense to Do-Lord—until he found out it was bad luck for the bride to rehearse her own part, so she sat on a pew, while the maid of honor pretended to be the bride. SEALs rehearsed one another’s roles all the time. But unless they thought Emmie would marry Jax if Pickett was out of commission, making her rehearse Pickett’s role in addition to her own didn’t make a lick of sense.
He also hadn’t seen why Emmie, whose arm was in a cobalt blue sling (the only colorful thing about her) had to mime bending down to straighten Pickett’s train, which as maid of honor was one of her duties. She shouldn’t have been doing it at all. Being able to use only one arm made her clumsy, and it had to hurt like hell. He was standing right there, he could move the damn train. He’d give her credit. She hadn’t complained once, but he’d been so irritated after a while, he’d had to find a way to take his mind off it.
Pickett smiled and indicated the empty chair when she saw him approach the table. Do-Lord carefully laid his fork to the left of his plate and put his knife on the right. Chiefs were taken in hand by older chiefs as soon as they were promoted and taught table manners that could get them through a formal seven-course banquet. The wedge of quiche on Pickett’s plate looked untouched. Offering to serve others before seating oneself was good manners, but it was genuine concern that made him ask, “Can I get you anything from the buffet?”
Pickett shook her head. “Thank you, but I have to leave in a minute. Jax and Tyler will be here soon, and I can’t let Jax see me. Bad luck, you know.”
Oh yes, the notion that it was bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding. There seemed to be no end to traditions and superstitions surrounding a wedding. No limit to how seriously intelligent, educated people took them. “Why is it bad luck?”
“Because, if he sees her, he might change his mind,” one of the cousins joked with a horsey laugh. Between guys a jab like that might be a sign of affection, but Do-Lord didn’t miss the way she flicked her eyes to see if the punch connected.
Pickett laughed too, but the corners of her mouth looked tight.
He pretended to think it over. “Naw. That cain’t be it. A smart man like Jax? He knows he’s getting the prettiest girl here—don’t you think?” Do-Lord kept his country-boy smile until she dropped her eyes.
“Everybody has always said Pickett’s sister Grace is the beauty of the family. Pickett’s the smartest.” The other cousin covered Pickett’s hand. “But I have to say, Pickett you look the prettiest today I’ve ever seen you.” Meaning what? What was the matter with these people? “I’m so happy for you,” she added with a genuine smile.
Pickett squeezed her cousin’s hand in return, then folded her napkin. “Well, I don’t know what my bad luck would be, and I don’t want to find out. I’m going to take my leave now.”
In a few minutes the other two women excused themselves.
Alone at his table at last, Do-Lord checked the master schedule of events he’d loaded into his smart phone, cross-referenced with directions to every breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dance, and the names of the hosts with degree of kinship to Pickett’s family. Etiquette demanded he thank his hostess before departing. As soon as he found at least one (there were twelve), he could return to the hotel and nap awhile.
Do-Lord returned his phone to his belt and hefted his empty plate. It didn’t seem right to leave it on the table.
“Here, I’ll take that.” Pickett’s grey-haired great-aunt spoke from his elbow. Her complexion was artfully preserved. Except for the obviously young, all the women appeared at least twenty years younger than they probably were. “Isn’t it nice the weather has cooperated? On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, you never know what the weather will do. But with Pickett’s sister Grace directing the wedding, why am I surprised? Everything she does is perfect.” The old lady rattled on in seemingly inexhaustible chatter. This was the woman he was looking for. He called up the correct leave-taking phrases and waited for an opening. “Nobody else could have pulled off a wedding with only a month’s preparation,” she continued. “It won’t be what it could have been, of course, but Grace swears Pickett wanted a small wedding. You should have seen the weddings we did for Pickett’s older sisters,” she sighed. “Still, family has to rally at times like this, don’t you think?”
/> Do-Lord wouldn’t know. His family had consisted of himself and his mother. When Social Services had returned him to his mother, he’d made sure any shortcomings about his home life were never noticed again. Theoretically, he must have had grandparents, cousins, maybe aunts and uncles, but not a one that he knew of had ever rallied.
“Yes ma’am.” He used the smile older ladies in almost any culture reacted well to. “Having family you can count on makes all the difference.”
Emmie Caddington was looking for a man. In a very short-term-goal, temporary sort of way, that is. Right now, before the wedding breakfast could break up, she needed to find Caleb Dulaude, the one everybody called Do-Lord.
Eastern North Carolina men carry nicknames like Potlikker and Choo-choo to their graves without loss of dignity. Among them, a name like Do-Lord was unexceptional, but somehow, she couldn’t make herself use it. Despite his down-home persona, his rust-red hair, and the tan-over-freckles skin of an outdoorsman, there was an austere integrity to his features, not as obvious as handsomeness, that made the name all wrong for him.
Whenever she saw him she longed for her pencil, or better yet, pen and ink to trace the relationships of broad, rather prominent brow ridges and longish nose, uncompromising cheekbones, and mobile mouth. When he was a boy, he’d probably been on the homely side. Bony features like his would take some growing in to.
Even the unconscious flexing of her fingers as she mentally drew him started up the throb in her shoulder. Having her right arm immobilized in a sling while a dislocated shoulder healed was the reason, the only reason, she needed him. If she hadn’t been in denial about how long it would be before her arm was usable, she wouldn’t have waited so long before seeking him out.
Of course, she might not have been in denial, if the thought of being anything but carefully polite to him wasn’t anathema to her. He and those like him represented everything she thought the world would be better without.
Pickett’s sister Grace, her knit dress of lapis silk jersey nailing the “dressy casual” the invitation had called for, halted Emmie’s attempt to thread her way through the crowd around the buffet table.
Every few millennia nature reaches the apex of an evolutionary line and produces a creature so perfect, so exquisitely adapted to its ecological niche, that it seems the environment was made only to be a setting for it.
Such a creature was the exceedingly well-named Grace. She was absolutely everything a young matron of her class should be. She was beautiful, smart, alarmingly competent, and tireless in her devotion to her family and her life’s work, which was (as the oldest of the sisters and her mother’s right hand) to present them to the world as polished and perfected as she could make them. Aiding her mission, she had the sublime confidence of one who has never questioned, or needed to question, her place in the great scheme of things.
“Where are you going,” Grace asked, “and with that look on your face?”
Emmie wasn’t sure what expression might be on her face, but she didn’t miss the look of exasperated affection with which Grace swept Emmie’s beige Land’s End blazer and matching beige skirt. Emmie wasn’t by nature rebellious. With her logical mind, the thousand slippery rules governing style were simply incomprehensible. By the time she’d entered college she was already a true eccentric—a nerd who couldn’t even conform to the rules of nerd-dom. She had accepted her singular state and come to prefer it. Accepting it was easier than trying to fit in.
She always bought generic clothes, efficiency and comfort being her wardrobe goals. Catalog shopping saved time since everything already matched, and the clothes, never in—or out of—style, lasted for years.
This morning she hadn’t been able to move her arm enough to hook her bra, so she’d left it off. She’d added the blazer over her white blouse, hoping to disguise the deficiency.
Her outfit wouldn’t have incited envy, but it would have passed muster as dressy casual on the campus of UNC-Wilmington where she was a junior faculty member. It was wrong for the breakfast.
Emmie didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t tell Grace, of all people, the truth: she was looking for Caleb. Grace would want to know why, and she wasn’t a good liar. To lie well one had to understand a society’s unwritten expectations.
Grace waived her hesitation aside. “Forget I asked. Do you have a ride back to Mother’s house?”
“Yes.” She would if she could find Caleb, at any rate. Emmie had an otherworldly innocence, plain and fresh as warm milk, that made men twice her age, balding deacons and loan officers with grown children, hit on her. The good thing about it was that people rarely questioned her intentions.
“Fine, just remember it’s going to take a long time to dress.” Fortunately, before she could add more admonishments, someone interrupted to ask Grace for an opinion about some wedding detail. Emmie made her escape with a little wave.
She could have screamed with impatience when Pickett’s sixtyish cousin Annalynn planted herself in her path, determined to pump Emmie for news.
“Pickett’s finally getting married! Can you believe it? And to a real hottie!” Annalynn gushed. Annalynn gushed about everything, but she needn’t sound as if a miracle had transpired. In Emmie’s opinion, Pickett was far too frequently relegated to “poor thing” status. Her relatives still saw Pickett as the baby of the family, the chubby, frequently-ill teenager with unruly hair and her nose stuck in a book.
Emmie nodded but refused to reply.
As college freshmen Emmie and Pickett were nerds together and soon best friends. Pickett’s health and figure had improved once she learned to control her diet. She discovered a haircut that made the most of her exuberant gold curls and overcame her nerdishness with her warmth and compassion. It was no surprise to Emmie an attractive man could fall in love with Pickett.
She was surprised at Pickett’s choice in a groom: a SEAL. Take everything bad about the military, multiply it by ten, and you had a SEAL. Pickett had always sworn up and down she’d never marry a military man—it was something they’d always been in perfect agreement about—and yet, Pickett had changed her mind. It deeply, deeply scared Emmie. Nothing could ever change the fact that she loved Pickett with all her heart, but she wasn’t sure how they would maintain their friendship. Once Pickett was absorbed into the military-industrial complex, she would become part of a culture antithetical to Emmie’s most basic beliefs.
Pickett would tell her she was worrying about events that hadn’t happened yet, and that she would never allow anything to threaten their friendship. None of this was anything Emmie was going to discuss with Annalynn.
Patience wasn’t Emmie’s strong suit. Once she had a goal in mind, she tended to fix on it to the exclusion of all else. She didn’t have time to trade party chatter with Pickett’s cousins, aunts, uncles, and assorted others whose degree of kinship was distant enough to confound the most determined genealogist, but who, nevertheless, qualified as family. It seemed like every one of them had stopped her. Emmie was utterly sick of explaining why her arm was in a cobalt blue canvas sling. Once the wedding breakfast broke up, the high-ceilinged rooms of the late Victorian house would empty quickly. If Caleb left before she talked to him, all her plans were ruined. There was a very small window before she had to get rigged out in the bridesmaid getup Grace had chosen.
The sling was rubbing the collar of the beige blazer against her neck again. Her wardrobe goal was efficiency and comfort, but she’d sacrificed comfort today for clothes she could get into unaided. She regretted the decision to add the blazer, but since she couldn’t hook a bra she didn’t see what else she could have done.
The worst part about the blazer was that it encouraged her hair to work its way under the sling. Painful tugs accompanied any incautious movement of her head. Emmie adjusted the sling impatiently and scanned the thinning crowd, while trying at least to appear to listen to Annalynn. Impatient as she felt, Emmie didn’t want to be rude. From the first time Pickett had brought
her home for a college holiday, these people had hugged her and teased her and admonished her as if she belonged.
“I guess you’re next.” Failing to get Emmie to talk about Pickett, Annalynn tried another subject. “When are you going to find yourself a man?”
“Actually, I’m looking for a man right now. Have you seen Jax’s best man?”
Emmie caught the avid interest that widened Annalynn’s rather watery eyes and gave herself a mental slap. She’d done it again! Sometimes she got so focused on her goals she forgot to consider how others would interpret her words and actions. The story that she and the best man were an item would make the rounds before the opening ta-dums of the wedding march.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she protested with a pained laugh. “But I really am looking for him. I need to speak to him before he leaves.”
“I saw him on the front porch talking to Lilly Hale,” Annalynn panted, thrilled to be fostering a romance. “Run quick. I think he was taking his leave.”
“Aunt Lilly Hale, can I borrow Caleb for a minute?”
Do-Lord felt the odd little internal shiver, like the supercharged air of a thunderstorm, a half-second before the woman appeared at his elbow. Without turning, he knew Emelina Caddington, Pickett’s best friend and maid of honor, stood beside him.
Something about her irritated him, something besides the way she called him Caleb in her cool, precise voice, oddly devoid of southern accent. Nobody had called him Caleb since he left Alabama. He’d joined the Navy the day he turned eighteen, and since then he’d been Dulaude. Do-Lord to his friends.
She wasn’t attention-worthy in any way except for her wide blue eyes that gave her the look of a serious, intelligent kitten. Appealing image, but it was canceled by her shapeless clothes and sensible shoes.
Spinsterish. The old-fashioned word fit her and matched her name, Emelina. Beside Pickett’s tall, elegant sisters, almost awe-inspiring in their cool, blonde beauty, or Pickett herself, the sweetest, most feminine thing he’d ever seen, Emmie didn’t rate a second glance.
Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle Page 32