Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle

by Mary Margret Daughtridge

  Emmie slid under the covers he held for her, bemused. She kept thinking he was going to drop her at any moment. Politely make his excuses and leave, and he kept not doing it. Once their roles in the wedding were fulfilled, no one, least of all her, expected him to stay by her side. But here he was. Which made her think of a question she needed to ask.

  “Why did you accept the invitation to the open house? You don’t want to go, do you?”

  “Why not? Don’t you usually go?”

  “Not if I can help it. The party is absolutely bottom tier—five hundred supporters who’ll be flattered to be invited to the great man’s house.”

  “You’re not flattered.”

  “No, and I’m not one of his supporters.”

  “I didn’t mean to put you in a bind. I—uh”—he forked up a bite of pie—“I wanted to see you again. Accepting the invitation seemed easier”—he shot her a mischievous look—“than coming out and asking for a date.”

  Emmie’s tilt meter hit the red zone. She knew she wasn’t at her sharpest right now, fuddled by alcohol and pain meds. A lot of what had happened today was a blur, and those feminine instincts other girls seemed to have in abundance had been left out of her DNA. Pickett and other friends had told her she was unaware when guys were coming on to her—but this was over the top. She was supposed to believe he was interested in her, personally?

  She almost choked on her incredulity. “You want a date?”

  “Emmie, you must realize we’ve got something going.”

  “You don’t even like me.”

  “What do you think that heavy petting session was about?”

  She dismissed that. “Even I know a man will take what’s offered. I wasn’t exactly holding you off—and you sure didn’t keep going.” She knew she was right, knew there’d been a moment sometime today when his attitude had changed, and it hadn’t had anything to do with her. But she couldn’t think what it was. She fell back on what she knew. “You don’t like me.”

  “I didn’t when I first met you. I thought you were cold and snooty. I’ve gotten to know you today, and I really would like to see you again.”

  She wanted him to explain, but her tired brain couldn’t form the questions. She clenched her teeth to hide a yawn, but it didn’t work. He saw it.

  “You can hardly keep your eyes open. If you don’t want to go to Calhoun’s, we don’t have to. I’ll call you in a couple of days, okay? Go to sleep now.” He stacked the plates together and stood. He bent to give her a careful kiss on the forehead. “I’ll bring in the wedding presents, and then I’ll let myself out.”

  With a final good night, he closed the door behind him.

  Chapter 15

  “EMMIE, ARE YOU AWAKE?” PICKETT’S MOTHER’S VOICE came from the bedroom door.

  Emmie rolled over and pushed herself to sitting. “Umm. Come on in.”

  Mary Cole Sessoms entered, belting a smoky gray all-weather coat that perfectly complimented her stylish silver hair, around her slender middle. “I’m on my way to church for the early service. You don’t have to get up if you don’t want to, but if you do, there’s coffee made and some of Floris’s cinnamon buns defrosting on the counter. Lyle’s still asleep, and Grace won’t be here until later to organize the presents, so you have the house to yourself. Take it easy this morning, okay? You’ve been such a good sport.”

  Emmie felt heavy and out of it, aware she’d slept more deeply than since she’d injured her shoulder. Just this once she’d like to stay in bed and snooze, but once Emmie was awake, she was. She’d never been able to laze in bed and rarely needed an alarm clock.

  She fumbled for the tiny china clock on the nightstand.

  Nine-thirty. She’d slept later than usual. She padded to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The princess from last night had turned into a hag with hair mashed on one side and standing straight up on the other, and black smudges of mascara under her eyes. Sic transit Gloria Mundi. All her worldly glory of makeup and style had indeed passed. Maybe when Lyle got up she’d know how to restore what the night had taken away.

  Once she’d washed her face and combed her hair, she didn’t look a lot better. Her face was pale, her eyes dull, and her hair was still flat on one side and bumpy-looking on the other. One good change—her shoulder felt stiff, but didn’t hurt. Davy had been right when he said that if she took the pain medication on a schedule, she would rest more deeply and heal quicker. He’d also promised that her body would adjust to the Vicodin after a couple of days, and it wouldn’t make her so groggy. She hoped so. She had rarely felt so out of it. Her shoulder gave a twinge, letting her know that it could hurt if she didn’t take her meds.

  She pulled on the powder blue terry robe, another item purloined from Grace’s six-four husband. Like the pajama top it was roomy enough to slip into without twisting her shoulders. It hung almost to the floor and the sleeves were so long that Grace, who thought of everything, had pinned them back practically to the shoulder seam with safety pins.

  Emmie pulled the cobalt blue shoulder harness over the whole and headed downstairs to the kitchen.

  The microwave heating her cinnamon roll dinged at the same moment the doorbell bonged. It bonged twice more as she made her way down the hall to the front door, confirming Emmie’s assumption that some member of the family had forgotten their key. No one else would drop in for a visit at this hour on Sunday morning.

  The fan and sidelights admitted the gray light of the drizzly morning, but when she opened the door no one was there.

  She closed the door, and the bell sounded again. Finally, it penetrated her mental fog that she was hearing just one note, not the full Westminster chime. Which meant someone was at the driveway door.

  By the time she had traversed the hall again, banging could be heard. Without even a thought that she should find out who was on the other side first, she opened it.

  Caleb, with Davy at his shoulder, stood there framed by the deep green twining smilax Pickett’s mother had trained to cover the stoop.

  Both men were dressed in jeans. Davy’s were faded almost white along the seams. At the fly, darker blue streaks, where the jeans had worn into permanent folds, pointed like arrows to his package. Davy wore a tee shirt that displayed his chest development and the girth of his biceps. He’d might as well have had a sign that read, “I’m a stud.”

  Caleb’s jeans were newer, not tight-fitting, and ironed. He had paired them with a dress shirt open at the throat of some close-to-white olive shade that brought out the green in his eyes and the same rust-flecked tweed sport coat as yesterday. No one could miss the strong column of his neck or mistake the confident set of his shoulders. He looked exactly right.

  Caleb’s eyes swept over her taking in the lopsided hair, her pale and puffy face, the shapeless man’s bathrobe. His smile was tentative. “Sorry for the banging. Did we get you up?”

  “No, I was awake,” answered Emmie a split second before she realized if ever there was an occasion to lie, it was this one. Too late, she saw the faint sneer that twisted Davy’s too-perfect smile. She should have said she was sound asleep and thinking the house was on fire, had rushed to the door. She should have said an evil witch stole into her room as she slept and turned her into a Simpson refugee. She should have said—anything at all, except the truth. Like a character in a fairy tale, all her gossamer had turned to cobwebs. This was why if she gave herself a birthday party, somebody else would be the guest of honor. She tugged the lapels of the robe together. “May I help you?”

  “Grace called this morning to say a whole table full of presents were left at the country club. She asked me to pick them up and bring them here. Can you open the garage door? It’s started to rain. Don’t want the presents to get wet.” He paused, clearly expecting something from her, but Emmie couldn’t imagine what. At last he asked, “May we come in?”

  “Um, sure.” Emmie stood aside to admit them. “I’ll open the garage door, if I can remember where the
button is.”

  Caleb walked unerringly to the small button beside the door that opened into the garage. “This it?”

  After she’d shown them the formal living room where the gifts were displayed, she placed her hand on the newel post of the stairs. “I’ll just go upstairs and get into some clothes.”

  “Fine. We’ll bring in the presents.”

  Emmie was at the door of her bedroom when she remembered her cinnamon roll still in the microwave. She couldn’t take her medicine until she ate it. She reversed her steps and was almost to the foot of the stairs when she heard the men’s voices coming from the living room.

  “I don’t know who I feel sorrier for, you or Lon.” She heard Davy laugh.

  “What are you talking about?” Caleb asked.

  “You know Jax’s ex-mother-in-law? She got loaded at the reception. She wound up spending the night with Lon in his hotel room.”

  “I’d suggest you don’t spread that around.”

  “She’s a lush, but at least she’s beautiful.” Davy pursued the subject, ignoring Caleb’s warning. “But you, you were stuck with the dork last night.”

  Caleb mumbled something Emmie couldn’t hear, but that Davy laughed in response to. “I admit,” Davy said as he chortled again, “she looked better last night, but good God, man, even with great hooters, that’s a pity fuck if I ever saw one!”

  All the nasty snickers she’d ever heard reverberated so loud she hardly heard Caleb when he rumbled, “Shut up, Davy.”

  Emmie gripped the balustrade tight enough to leave dents in the polished oak. Her heart beat so hard she was afraid she was going to pass out—or explode. Her fingertips tingled as if she’d had an electric shock.

  Then Caleb growled. “Go get the last of the presents.”

  Oh, God! Davy was going to come into the hall and see her. He was every reason she had preferred to be invisible. Or make sure she only dealt with the Davys of this world from a position of authority. She knew she needed to run back upstairs, but she couldn’t make her feet move.

  And it was too late anyway. Throwing some remark over his shoulder, Davy exited the living room and saw her at the foot of the stairs.

  Who knows what confluence of events makes a turning point in someone’s life? Later, Emmie wondered if the fact that she was on the third step from the bottom, which put her head higher than his, was the deciding factor, since it made her literally look down on him. Maybe the flood of adrenaline pounding through her system had burned out something. Maybe it was the fact that she saw in his shocked brown eyes and the embarrassed red of his smooth cheeks just how young—how young and callow—he was.

  At any rate, although a second before she would have slunk away to nurse her wounds in private, she wasn’t going to do so now. She had had it.

  “Go into the kitchen and pour yourself some coffee,” she directed firmly.

  “I’m sorry—” he stammered.

  “Accepted,” she snapped. “Go get some coffee.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Can I bring you some?”

  She acknowledged that he was now on his good behavior with a small approving nod, while she said coolly, “I’ll get some later, thank you.”

  Caleb, hearing their voices, appeared in the living room doorway. With a look he dispatched Davy.

  In some private corner of her mind Emmie admired the unquestioned power with which he did it, but admiration was not uppermost in her mind. Right now, she had something to say, and she was going to say it.

  Chapter 16

  DO-LORD WATCHED THE SLENDER WOMAN DESCEND the last few steps of the staircase. Her bare feet made no sound, and as the hugely oversized bathrobe dragged on the Oriental runner, it opened with each step to expose shapely ankles and narrow feet. The rich reds and blue jewel tones of the carpet set off the translucent porcelain whiteness of her skin.

  He wasn’t a foot man.

  He thought men who fixated on one or another part of women were strange.

  He couldn’t believe how those white, almost delicate-looking feet, with toes and sole a shade of pink he’d only seen on the inside of a shell, turned him on. But the steely look in her wide light blue eyes convinced him this wasn’t the moment to tell her so.

  “A pity fuck?” she enquired coolly, one slender hand resting on the newel post. “That’s what I was? Did you think you were doing your good deed for the day?

  “Do SEALs get merit badges for sacrificing yourselves to make a girl’s day? Oh, no,” she answered her own question, “that would be juvenile—you get a ribbon, maybe a shiny medal.” She descended the last step. “Do you have a ceremony accompanied with backslapping and arm-punching for meritorious fucking above and beyond the call of duty? Or do you just earn enough snigger-rights to keep your arrogance fluffed to maximum?”

  Wait a minute. She had a right to be angry—Davy’s remark would be insulting to any woman, even if it was true. He was willing to let her get it off her chest, but she had gone too far. “I’m not arrogant.”

  Emmie stared at him, her mouth open, her wide cloud-colored eyes transfixed. Then she laughed. “If you think that, you’re not merely arrogant, you’re an arrogant idiot. And a jerk. Or would jerk be redundant? I’m afraid it would. Why don’t I ever have a thesaurus when I need one? Wait! I could still use jerk if I used a colon. ‘Arrogant idiot colon a jerk.’”

  He knew what she was doing. Disappearing into her head. Wrapping herself with the cloak of academe. It accused him as nothing else could have. Having her castigate him like a fiery queen was bad enough, but watching her seem to fade away as if she was turning herself into a ghost was worse.

  There was just enough truth in her accusations to heat his cheeks. Not that he had thought she was pitiable, but he had thought she probably didn’t get much—and yeah, some good sex would probably be good for her. So he didn’t need to feel guilty if he seduced her to get what he wanted. She wasn’t going to get hurt, and he’d make sure she got something out of the deal—that was more his thought. He’d assured himself she’d be willing, and she’d enjoy it.

  But he had hurt her, never intending to. He was too much a SEAL to push the responsibility off on Davy’s thoughtless remark. It was his actions which Davy had interpreted by his own standards that occasioned it.

  She hadn’t done anything to deserve careless treatment. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t withdraw. I liked you better spitting erudite sarcasm.” He grinned. “Actually, ‘meritorious fucking’ was pretty good.”

  Emmie’s lips opened in amazement, and a flush of anger returned to her cheeks. “You have the nerve to tell me when you liked me better?”

  That was more like it. God, she was pretty with her cheeks glowing and her eyes sparkling. He threw a little more gas on the flames with a cocky smile. “What can I say? Us arrogant jerks are like that.”

  “Well, I liked you better when I didn’t know you at all.”

  For the first time, one of her barbs landed in an unprotected spot. It was amazing how sharp it stung. “That’s not true.”

  In wordless acknowledgement that she had been goaded into saying more than she meant. Emmie looked away. “So,” she said, her eyes not quite meeting his for the first time, “You didn’t get your fuck, did you? Now, that’s a pity. Will you cry all the way to the base? No, you’ll probably go beat somebody up. More manly, you know.”

  Every operation goes to shit thirty seconds after it hits the ground. Staying flexible and remembering the objective was the key. And if you weren’t going to reach the objective, but you were going to get your tail shot off trying, the smart course of action was to pull back.

  On the other hand, SEALs succeeded by going in where nobody in their right mind would. “Does this mean you’re not going to have sex with me?”

  Emmie raised her eyes heavenward. “I do not believe your audacity! No!”

  “Okay, does it mean you won’t go to Calhoun’s open house with me?”
/>   For a moment Emmie couldn’t remember what he was talking about. In her opinion, Calhoun hadn’t meant the invitation, and she hadn’t meant her acceptance. It was just one of those conversational forms, beloved by Southerners, like “Y’all come back!” She had dismissed it. Apparently, Caleb hadn’t. She was tempted to say “no” just to spite him.

  Then a better idea came to her. Her heart chugged into a different rhythm. If she was shocked by Caleb’s audacity, she was stunned by her own. The whole idea behind a pity fuck was that the girl was supposed to be abjectly grateful for being used.

  She remembered the dress last night and the way members of Caleb’s team had grouped about her. She remembered the rush of feminine power. Her grandmother used to tell her that beauty was only skin deep. Yesterday, she found out her grandmother was mistaken. Beauty was nowhere near as deep as skin. It could be painted on with a brush.

  She also remembered the suspicion that Lon and Davy were herding her and that Caleb had acted like he was staking a claim she had never agreed to. Had she not had yesterday’s experience, she would have been crushed this morning. Instead, she was mad, and she thought it would be nice to give this SEAL a little taste of his own medicine. It would be nice to have him importuning her. He could beg for her favors—and then she’d make it clear that she knew she could do better. No. Being deliberately cruel wasn’t in her. But she would enjoy telling him no.

  She fingered the bathrobe’s bulky lapel. “I haven’t decided yet. Why don’t you give me a call next week?”

  “Are you playing games now?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? You’ve been playing some kind of game with me since you met me.”

  “If I call, are you going to say yes?”

  Emmie was tempted to give up the game. She was taking a risk by upping the stakes. He might not call. He might decide she wasn’t worth the trouble. If it hadn’t been for that arrogant look, that assurance in his lazy, smiling drawl that he already knew the answer, she would have. As it was, she gave him what she hoped was a mysterious smile. “You’ll have to call to find out, won’t you?”