What she said was true. SEALs tended to be insular, to socialize only with each other, for that reason. Only another SEAL could understand things they couldn’t put into words. Lately, with his terrible secret weighing upon him, a secret even another SEAL wouldn’t understand, he had felt out of sync even with them. The real world, the world of operations, was harsh and unforgiving. Any man who wasn’t one hundred percent on board with a mission endangered them all, and other SEALs were likely to be harsh in dealing with him. Hell, he agreed with them. He knew how they would feel about his lapse because it was how he felt.
The real world was a world closed to women. He’d enjoyed this afternoon with her. He’d enjoyed the respite of a couple of hours with her in a world outside the real one. She wasn’t unattractive. He once read that to people unable to perceive magic, fairies appeared as plain, colorless, negligible creatures. Some would say that was Emmie.
Not him. He liked the way her looks were composed of the simplest ingredients—magic that required no adornment. White skin so perfect it didn’t look real, wide blue eyes the color of honesty, and hair that sometimes wasn’t a color at all. It seemed to be made of skeins of light. He liked to watch thoughts flicker across her face. He was on the point of asking her what she was thinking when she sighed. “Well, I’d better go in. Someone has seen your truck by now.”
“Are you going to be okay?” He unhooked her seat belt and swung her knees around. He didn’t know why he asked that. Yes, he did. Turning Precious Cargo over was sometimes hard. Not usually, but sometimes under extreme conditions people showed how special, extraordinary, and courageous they were, and it could be hard to yield responsibility for caring for them.
He could get her in and out of a car without jolting or jarring her shoulder, but he didn’t trust anyone else would. She accepted his help now without comment. When he spread his hands around her tiny waist, she no longer tensed; instead, she leaned into him. He didn’t want to let her go once her feet touched the ground, he wanted to pull her closer.
He didn’t like the complexity of his reactions to this woman. He needed to get clear and stay clear about his objectives. Sure, it was a plus that he found her attractive. He wouldn’t have to fake his interest, not at all. He sank his fingers deeper into her soft-firm flesh and rubbed his thumbs across the feminine curve of her stomach. But he had to remember at all times he was on a mission, a private mission that had been too long coming.
He wondered if it was too soon to kiss her. She accepted his right to touch her, a right he was willing to bet she accorded few others. He could tip her head up, and he didn’t think she would stop him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a curtain on an upstairs window move. Reluctantly, he dropped his hands from her waist. Not now. He would wait until she showed him she wanted it.
Unless she took too long. He wanted the signs to be unmistakable that they belonged together and he had admittance to the family circle when she introduced him to Teague Calhoun.
“Where on earth have you been?” On the second floor landing, Pickett leaned over the polished balustrade of her mother’s two-story colonial. The same terry bathrobe Emmie remembered from their college days was clasped at the throat with one hand, but her golden curls were drawn up in a knot, both artless and sophisticated, and her makeup had been applied by a master. Emmie’s breath caught to see her friend looking as beautiful on the outside as Emmie already knew she was on the inside. “Grace is about to have a cow. You didn’t answer your cell phone. What happened to you?”
Still stunned by her friend’s beauty, her heart overflowed with love. Bemused by the thought that Do-Lord had been about to kiss her there in the driveway and confused because he hadn’t, her mind went blank. Emmie never had been able to lie worth a damn.
“We drove around for a while, then Emmie showed me how to get to the country club,” Do-Lord answered, placing a comradely hand on her shoulder. Now, why hadn’t she thought to say that? It was even the truth, if you didn’t count the parts that were left out. “Jax knew where we were. Haven’t you talked to him?”
Pickett’s peachy skin took on a coral tinge, then her eyes lit with her ever-ready humor. ‘We, um, we didn’t talk about Emmie.”
“Emmie, you’re finally here.” Grace, also in a bathrobe (only hers was silky pale blue with white piping on the man-tailored collar and cuffs) appeared from one of the bedrooms to stand beside Pickett. Her hair and makeup were also perfect, but then Grace always looked perfect. “Trish has already finished everyone else’s hair and makeup.” She lifted her wrist to check the diamond encrusted watch she wore. Grace was well-named. Unmarred by any trace of jerky impatience, the gesture was fluid and elegant, and unmistakably chiding.
An apology was clearly expected, but Emmie would choke on the words if she tried. She wasn’t sorry. Furthermore, it was Grace’s blind spot that had necessitated her actions. After they had finished with the cake, they’d been further delayed while Emmie sought out the country club’s chef. A plate of gluten-free food would appear at Pickett’s place at the reception.
Do-Lord’s fingers tightened on Emmie’s shoulder in a soft squeeze. “Let me be the one to apologize,” he urged her, as if he didn’t know hell would freeze over before the words passed her lips. Only she could see his eyes dancing with devil lights. To Grace he said, “We were enjoying ourselves and didn’t think about the time.”
He brushed a kiss across her temple—the second time he’d kissed her like that, and she knew no more what to think than the first time. “Go get beautiful. I’ll see you later.”
“You haven’t said a word since you walked in the door,” Pickett whispered as she herded Emmie ahead of her sisters toward their mother’s master suite. They had commandeered the humongous dressing area as the only space large enough to hold them all. “What’s going on?”
“Tell you later,” Emmie whispered back as the Sessoms “girls,” Grace, Sarah Bea, and Lyle, crowded in behind her.
Pickett’s mother had been examining the back of her hair when they entered. She laid the hand mirror down. “I see you’ve located my prodigal, adopted daughter. All my girls together, and the Baby is getting married. Do you realize this is the last time we’ll be together like this?”
There was one of those little silences, no longer than an inhale, in which whole pages of things go unsaid. Whether accidentally or deliberately, Mary Cole Sessoms had omitted her unmarried daughter, Lyle, from consideration.
Lyle had never officially come out to her family. It was one of those things everyone knew and no one talked about. Lyle was next in age to Pickett, and maybe because so many years separated them from their older sisters, Grace and Sarah Bea, she and Pickett were closer to each other. As a result, in private (and with Emmie) Lyle and Pickett had discussed Lyle’s lifestyle. Pickett had urged Lyle more than once to assert her right to be who she was. Lyle, though, chose to live in New York City rather than face sticky moments—like this one—over and over.
Emmie with her insider-outsider point of view could tell that everyone did love Lyle as she was, and in their own way, showed their acceptance. They politely inquired about Lyle’s significant others, and had Lyle been involved with anyone at present, would have invited her to be part of this wedding. On the other hand, no one saw Lyle’s relationships as cause for celebration. Whenever Emmie was invited to a family party, the inviter always added, “And isn’t there a nice boy you’d like to bring with you?” Nobody asked Lyle whether she wanted to bring a nice girl.
Pickett got that I’m taking over now look in her eyes. Uh-oh. When Pickett looked like that, she was getting ready to set people straight. Emmie had seen it enough times to read it easily, but she wasn’t sure how often her family had. As she’d told Caleb, Pickett didn’t assert herself around her family. When she disagreed, she subtly moved away from them.
“Don’t y’all wish,” she asked brightly, “same-sex unions were legal in North Carolina, and we could all come together like this fo
r Lyle?”
Emmie didn’t think Pickett’s relatives wished anything of the kind. Their denomination was not so vocally anti-gay as some, but conservatism in the area ran deep. They had come to terms with the fact that Lyle would never marry, and to the community, they presented a united front of support. That might be as far as they could go.
“I wish,” said Mary Cole in the tone of someone settling an argument, “for all my daughters to be happy. It isn’t possible to treat all one’s children the same. Each child is different and has different needs.”
“Then trust me. I’m happy the way I am! I don’t want to get married to anyone. Pickett’s starry-eyed right this minute—she doesn’t know what she’s getting into.”
“Yes, I do,” objected Pickett.
As one, all her sisters and her mother turned to her. “No, you don’t,” they said in unison.
Everyone laughed longer and harder than the moment called for. Laughed until they had to grab tissues. Mary Cole cautiously dabbed under her eyes then looked up to catch Pickett’s laughing but slightly affronted expression. “Oh honey, we’re not doubting your competence. It’s just that nobody knows what the future will bring. Now, I need to check on some last minute things, and y’all need to concentrate on getting Emmie fixed up.”
Extra chairs had been added at the long vanity with its ceiling-high mirror, where the stylist, Trish, stood surrounded by the implements of her trade. Beyond scissors, comb, and hair dryer, Emmie didn’t recognize most of them.
The closet doors opposite were also mirrored, and with the women doubled and tripled by reflections, Emmie felt like a mud hen surrounded by a hundred birds of paradise.
The bird of paradise was, strictly speaking, a flower, not a bird, which somehow made the simile more apt. And more depressing. She wasn’t even the same species as these women. No, not species, phylum. She visualized the taxonomy charts she’d studied in Biology 101. No, plants and animals were a different kingdom. Her evolution had diverged from theirs so long ago, they weren’t related at all. The degree to which she didn’t belong among these exemplars of the feminine arts was inescapable. Nor did she wish to belong. She had found her place among the utilitarian desks of the classroom. Against the institutional beige of her natural habitat, she blended in perfectly.
“Since we don’t have much time to get Emmie ready,” Grace broke in on Emmie’s contemplation of the forces of natural selection, “we will have to be efficient. The best way for someone to shampoo her hair is in the shower, don’t you think?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Emmie was in absent-minded professor mode,” Lyle, torso wrapped in a fluffy white towel, explained to the others from where she leaned, nonchalant in her partial nudity, against the vanity. “Come out of your ivory tower,” she admonished Emmie, not unkindly, “and try to focus on the mundane matter of getting this show on the road.”
“Your hair, Emmie. Trish wants it washed. The easiest way will be for someone to shampoo it for you while you’re in the shower.”
Emmie’s heart thudded heavily in her chest, and her shoulder throbbed with each beat. Though they had roomed together for four years, even Pickett had never seen her naked. She hated to be looked at.
“That won’t work, Grace,” Pickett spoke up. “Emmie is modest. We can’t ask her to—”
“Well, she can’t bend over a basin. It won’t take but a minute.”
“Okay, I’ll do it then,” Pickett put in. “You won’t mind too much if it’s me, will you?” she asked Emmie.
Emmie swallowed her rising panic. “I can do it by myself. Really.” Her arm wasn’t useless, just painful.
Grace ignored her. “Trish has worked a miracle with your hair, Pickett. I’m not going to let you ruin it. You know how your hair gets in humidity.”
“Well, I’m not going to let you make her uncomfortable.” Pickett’s ocean blue eyes turned stormy. Pickett too frequently let her sisters take advantage of her good nature, but in defense of her friend she became a tiger. “Emmie doesn’t have to do anything—”
Lyle, the sister next in age to Pickett, opened the door to the bathroom. “Come with me, Emmie. The rest of you, give us ten minutes.”
Lyle waited for Emmie to pass in front of her, then closed the door behind them. She sat on the turquoise tile rim of the huge whirlpool tub massed with tropical foliage. She tucked the large Turkish towel she wore more securely over her breasts then held the free ends together while she crossed her long slender legs.
“I have three words for you: Suck. It. Up. I don’t know what you’ve been off doing with that homage to the power of testosterone, but we’ve got forty-five minutes until we have to be at the church. My baby sister wants you in her wedding. You, your participation, is the only thing she has insisted on. But I was watching her face. She was one inch from telling you that you didn’t have to be the maid of honor—all because you don’t want to accept help getting dressed. You’re not going to ruin Pickett’s wedding by looking like you were dressed by chimpanzees.”
“Dressed by chimpanzees!” That was a little harsh. She was always properly covered, and nothing clashed. Still, the glimpse she caught of herself in the dressing room mirrors surrounded by Pickett and her sisters had accused her. Even in various states of undress, they looked sleek, soft, yet sculpted.
Lyle went on as if Emmie hadn’t spoken, “And you’re not going to give her cause to feel guilty by further injuring your shoulder.”
“I can do it. I’m only a little slow—”
Lyle cut her off with a look of compassion, respect, and irritation. “Oh, you’re courageous enough to try hooking a strapless bra with a dislocated shoulder, I’ll grant you that. But sometimes love requires the sacrifice of our shortcomings.”
“Strapless bra?” Emmie’s cheeks grew numb as she felt the color drain from her cheeks. Visions of people pointing at her breasts, boyish sniggers, and crude gestures assailed her.
“What did you think you would wear under a dress styled like that?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think.” When she’d agreed to be Pickett’s maid of honor she hadn’t thought further than being expected to wear a dress of Grace’s choosing and stand in place. How she would look had seemed immaterial, since all eyes would be on Pickett anyway. Too tired to stand any longer, Emmie sank down on the rim of the tub beside Lyle.
“Grace and I disagree about a lot of things,”—in a rare, kindly gesture Lyle laid her hand over Emmie’s—“but I will say this, her taste is infallible. She wouldn’t put you in anything unbecoming. Or immodest,” she added, coming closer to the source of Emmie’s distress.
Emmie saw girls all the time on campus boldly wearing little breast-hugging tank tops that left no doubt about the precise amount of their endowment. When she emerged from her scholarly daze for long enough to notice these girls, their unrestraint amazed her. She knew she could never wear anything like that. She would die.
However, faced with displaying her breasts for three hundred wedding guests to stare at, the prospect of one woman seeing her naked in the privacy of a bathroom seemed almost negligible—proving that even total mortification was relative. The gallows humor wrung a pained laugh from her.
Misunderstanding the cause of Emmie’s laughter, Lyle stood. “I don’t have time to convince you everything is going to be okay. It really boils down to this. You’re going to have to trust us, and let us help you.”
It was close to something Caleb had said. She was caught up in forces beyond her control, about to be thrust into a spotlight on a stage she had abdicated many years ago. She wasn’t helpless though, unless she refused assistance when it was offered.
The shortcoming she’d had to sacrifice to accept Do-Lord’s help was temporary. Her arm would heal, and she would be normally competent again. The shortcoming she had to sacrifice now was her bone-deep incompetence in the feminine arts.
The insights were rushing at her faster than she could ass
imilate them. The best way to fight off a sense of being overwhelmed by an enormous task was to choose one short-term goal.
Emmie stood and faced Lyle. “What do I have to do right this minute?”
“If you like, I’ll leave you alone so you can undress and get in the shower. You can even cover yourself with a towel while I soap your hair.”
Emmie almost grasped the opportunity to avoid the small mortification. With Lyle’s cooperation she could probably keep a towel draped around her throughout. Then she remembered gym class and the contortions she’d used to dress and undress without ever baring herself. Would letting someone see her naked for a few moments really be more agonizing?
“Or, I can stay here and help you with all of it.”
Emmie kicked off her low-heeled pumps and reached for the Velcro tabs that secured the sling. “I could use your help.”
Chapter 10
“YOU KNOW, IF I TOOK SOME WEIGHT OFF,” TRISH remarked, running her comb through the long wet strands of Emmie’s hair, “I think your hair would have some natural wave.”
In the shower, letting Lyle’s cool, impersonal, but always gentle, fingers free her from her clothes, and following Lyle’s cool, impersonal, but always gentle, commands to turn around or bend a little, a feeling of unreality had come over Emmie. She had waited for the dreaded hot, sick feeling of being looked at, steeling herself to bear it, and it had never come.
Now she felt as if deep inside, a strut that supported all the internal fabric of her existence, had lost its steel. On the inside she wavered and fluttered as she never had before. She didn’t like the feeling very much, but it made her reckless.
“Cut it,” she told Trish.
Trish traded an amazed look with Grace that let Emmie know they had been talking about her. Probably what a lost cause she was. Grace looked stunned, but hopeful.
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