“Hell Tim, my fucking car’s been stolen!” Weed roared.
“Locatelli, you idiot, you didn’t drive your car.”
“Did we drive yours?”
“We took a cab. You’re the genius that said we’d be too drunk to drive home. You’re too drunk, but I’m not.”
Do-Lord doubted that. True, Weed acted drunker, but both were in DUI territory. Anybody who had distributed moonshine since he was ten was a fairly good judge of sobriety.
“You know what the Master Chief says. ‘A SEAL’s gonna git drunk. A SEAL’s gonna git in fights. But a SEAL that gits drunk and gits in fights and gits caught, ain’t gonna be a SEAL for long.’”
“Too late now.” The more sober of the pair pulled his buddy by the arm. “Come on, time for us to become one with the shadows.”
“What about the kid?”
“They catch him with us, and they’ll nail us for contributing to the delin… the lelinq… the you know, of a minor.”
Light bulbs went on in both bleary sets of eyes. “Hey kid, how are you getting’ outta here?”
“My car.”
Tim and Weed looked at each other. The more drunk one spoke. “Did you hear him? He’s got a car.”
Now both turned to him with giant, slightly loopy grins. It was the grins that decided the matter—full of sly goodwill and drunken opportunism, yet innocent of malice.
These were men he understood. They would have fit right in to the world he had come from. A world on the wrong side of the law where men looked to get away with everything they could, and took advantage of any weakness they saw. But they also had a largeness of spirit and a sense of purpose that made them assume—however mistakenly—that they should rescue him. He pulled his car keys from his jeans pocket. “Come on. Looks like it’s my turn to save you.”
The three scrambled into the car, the older men crouched low in the backseat. Do-Lord drove away slowly.
They let him spend the night in their digs, and a friendship was born. Tim Johnson and Louis “Weed” Locatelli. Weed was so called because someone once remarked he was crazy as a horse who had been eating Loco Weed. It quickly got shortened to Weed.
They were tougher, smarter, and more streetwise than anyone he’d ever met. They had every quality life had taught him to respect. They were exactly who he wanted to be. They weren’t criminals. They were SEALs.
Now he was at another turning point. With Emmie at his side he could enter into another area of society. A kind of society that lay at the other end of the bell curve—that of the rich and powerful. “The rich are different” as F. Scott Fitzgerald had said. Emmie understood them, got their nuances. And best of all, despite her insider status, she wasn’t one of them. And if there was the added possibility he might get laid, well, that just meant he might get lucky indeed, so the smile spreading over his face every time he thought of Emmie was explained.
She had been just what he was looking for—although he hadn’t known it.
He killed the engine and checked the dashboard clock. He was early.
Emelina was ready early. Twenty-eight minutes early by the clock on the computer, the only clock in her tiny house that displayed the correct time. Emmie caught sight of the woman in the mirror over her dresser. She felt like her home had been invaded by a doppelganger. She couldn’t connect any feelings about herself to the woman she saw. Anxiety about how long it would take had made her get dressed far too early, and now she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. To top it off there seemed to be a strange woman in the house.
The absurdity made her laugh out loud. The woman in the mirror got the joke and laughed too.
Though she’d already memorized it, she studied the checklist Grace had given her. “You’ll start thinking about some arcane theory and forget to fix your hair or put on mismatched shoes,” Grace had said.
Emmie would have been insulted if it weren’t true. But at least this once she hadn’t forgotten anything. Hair, makeup, dress, shoes—even her lingerie coordinated with the total picture. Total picture. That’s what Grace had insisted on. “Don’t look at your waist or hips or fixate on one area. That’s the mistake so many women make. Look at how the proportions and all the elements go together.”
She’d also said, “You don’t have to look trashy and cheap in order to look sexy. This is about strategy. Men only want an easy woman if they don’t want her much in the first place. It’s in your best interests to eliminate the men who don’t want you much. Trust me. You want to send a message that any man who wins your favor will have to come up to your standards.”
This way of thinking about man-woman interactions was new to Emmie. In the past she’d never thought about it at all. She’d dressed to make sure no one would notice her.
Her heart beat a little harder every time she caught sight of herself in the mirror in the cherry red dress Grace had picked out. Long-sleeved and unadorned, its simple wrap design outlined the shape of her breasts and fastened with just two buttons at the waist, before flaring into a skirt that floated around her knees. “Just what we’re looking for,” Grace had announced. “Demure but not girlish. Trust me, any man will look at those two buttons and the way the overlap of the skirt moves and be fascinated.”
She still didn’t feel connected to the woman in the mirror, but why a man would want a date with that woman was obvious. She had practiced the posture Grace had taught her. Her shoulders were over her hips. At first it had felt awkward, like she was leaning backwards, but in a day or so, she had realized how much more balanced her whole body was and how much easier many movements were. Grace had showed her not how to “hold” her head but how to balance it on her neck so that it pivoted, turned and tilted—able to move with the slightest effort.
She was ready early, and she couldn’t keep staring at herself in the mirror. She needed something to occupy her mind. Otherwise, she’d be a ball of nerves when he arrived.
Her little house consisted of four rooms all in a row. Living room, kitchen, bedroom, bath. In the kitchen, on the way to the living room, she stopped at the stove and set the timer to go off five minutes before Caleb was due to arrive—just in case she got caught up in something and lost track of time.
Over half the living room was taken up by her desk space, and to anyone else’s eyes it was untidy. Books, piled four deep, lay open face-down on it. Printouts of Internet articles were tucked between pages. In spite of its disarray she didn’t dare tidy it since there was a filing system of sorts in the piles.
The rest of the room was orderly, but now she wished she’d brightened it with some Christmas greenery and a few candles. If Pickett were here, she would have, but it had been hard to think of having Christmas without her. She missed Pickett terribly. It was easier to forget about Christmas and focus on her makeover goals.
She sat at the computer and took it out of sleep mode to study what she thought of as remedial conversational English.
Hello. Did you have a nice trip? Was the traffic heavy? It’s nice to see you. Isn’t it a nice day? The word “nice” figured heavily. “The purpose isn’t to share information. It’s like saying, ‘Okay, I see you. Do you see me?’ And you say, ‘Yes, we see each other, and we’re working on an agreement about whether to keep talking or not.’” Anyway, that’s how Pickett explained it in their last phone call.
The doorbell made it’s rusty, grinding sound. For one craven moment Emmie considered not answering it. The future was at the door, and in spite of everything, Emmie didn’t feel ready. This was the moment that would put to the test all her shopping and primping, trips to makeup counters, and beauty salons. What if she had failed? What if she was still an object of scorn? Her heart pounding, she opened the door.
The sight of him in a slate gray blazer and brown slacks stole her breath and did something funny to her knees, while short-circuiting large parts of her brain. Not one of the phrases she’d practiced came to mind.
Chapter 19
IT WAS EMMIE WHO
OPENED THE DOOR, HE WAS SURE IT was. Nothing could change the wide, uptilted blue eyes. But the hair wasn’t beige anymore. It was some shade of streaky blonde that made him think of cream swirled into honey. And the dress. It was a red that made him think of juicy, luscious things. It was as unadorned as anything he’d seen her in, and it exposed only a vee of skin at the chest. It wasn’t revealing, but no man could see it without thinking—obsessing—about the body beneath it.
Do-Lord knew clothes. It was the discrepancy between his unkempt, neglected state and his IQ that had caused Social Services to remove him from his mother. He’d been returned to her because there was no real grounds to believe he was in danger, but after that experience, he studied the other kids’ clothes. He saw how their clothes told who they were, where they came from, and how much money their parents made. The need for clean jeans and shirts, a haircut, and shoes had led to his first job. He had loved the Navy’s dress code. It took out all the guesswork of wearing clothes that fit in. The correct attire for every conceivable job and occasion was prescribed in detail down to the underwear.
Becoming a SEAL had added another layer of understanding. SEALs often traveled undercover. Their clothes, jewelry, and haircuts had to match their cover identity. He still had five different ID’s, but they were all passports.
There was much to know about clothes—not only what to buy, but how to wear them. With Lon as his personal wardrobe mentor, he refined his knowledge of cut and fabric, quality and tailoring. He knew the thread count in the cotton of his light yellow shirt and the slate blue blazer he wore was a fifty-fifty blend of pashmina and silk.
In the last two weeks, Do-Lord had discounted the way Emmie looked at the wedding, though he’d enjoyed it. It was a costume chosen by someone else so she could play a part—it wasn’t her. He’d remembered Emmie in shapeless beige, and Emmie swallowed by a terry robe with the sleeves turned up with safety pins. He’d remembered Emmie, the shy fairy-spirit, whose magic was invisible to inhabitants of the ordinary world, but who, like all competent fairies, could enchant.
He didn’t know how or why she’d changed, but no one could say that the way she looked now wasn’t her. The whole outfit made you see the woman wearing the clothes, not the clothes. In some way she was more richly and truly herself than she had been before. He had created his whole game plan to utilize the fact that although she had access to Calhoun’s world, she wasn’t part of it. Now she was.
His plan had been fair and equitable. A single woman, particularly a plain one, gains status by having a male escort. Emmie would garner more respect accompanied by him, while her obvious brains and refinement would confer status and legitimacy on him by association. In the semi-social, semi-professional gathering they would be joining, their alliance would benefit both.
He’d planned to keep things light, at first. She was leery of being touched. He’d accepted that he would probably lose ground in the interval before he saw her again. He meant to give her nothing to regret, to bind her to him mostly with people’s expectations of seeing them together. Then eventually, if she dropped him, he’d be known. He’d have connections of his own.
That plan was toast. She didn’t need him at all the way she looked now. In fact, having him in tow would be a liability.
He needed a new game plan. He was going to have to capitalize on the fact that she wasn’t indifferent to him. She’d been eager for his kisses. He had to push the timetable forward, to bind her to him with sensual chains. He knew intuitively that where she gave herself, she would be loyal.
Emmie watched Caleb’s gaze sweep from the top of her head to her toes and back in undisguised masculine assessment. She’d always hated when men did that, measuring her with their eyes to see if she fitted their standards. The arrogance. It didn’t have quite the same effect today. Not when the one doing it was Caleb. There was a pleasurable flutter and an interesting heat. Instead of looking away and frowning, she did as Pickett suggested—she returned his gaze.
The whole sexual dynamic took a quantum jump. With no will of her own, her shoulders went back, and it felt like her bra got tight. Good lord! She hadn’t known that would happen.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“Not a pity-fuck then.” Cripes! She hadn’t meant that to come out. She remembered now she hadn’t even said, “Hello, how are you?”
“I wish you would forget that. Davy is an idiot. He hasn’t figured out what makes a woman worthwhile.”
“What does make a woman worthwhile?”
He braced an arm on the doorframe just above her head and leaned close. She could see the freckles under the tan of his cheeks, a lazy twinkle of appreciation for her challenge in the golden green and brown of his eyes. The whole spoke of a confidence in his masculinity that weakened her knees. He chuckled. “You don’t waste time on small talk, do you? May I come in?”
“Are you still mad about what you overheard?” he asked once they were standing in her tiny living room. “Davy really didn’t know what he was talking about. He’s cocky and full of himself, but don’t judge him too harshly. Life will knock that out of him. I never agreed with him. When I look at you, pity is not what’s on my mind.”
As if he couldn’t help himself, as if his hand was drawn by osmotic pressure that had to move from high concentration to low concentration, he touched the side of her neck with one forefinger. “Are we clear about that?” He stroked from near her ear down to where her neck curved into her shoulder. “Because if there’s any doubt, any doubt at all, we have to remove it.”
After a tiny foray under the shawl collar of her dress, he traced the angle of her jaw. “Now, are we on the same page?”
Stark desire gave his craggy features a graven look. A look she’d never seen before, but had no trouble recognizing. No matter what he was hiding from her, and she still felt there was something, it wasn’t the truth about his attraction.
Emmie could now explain what might have been wrong with previous relationships. She hadn’t felt as if she were being swamped by repeated waves of desire. She wasn’t sure she liked it. She felt out of control, caught up by vast tidal forces that made her goals seem puny, pale, and insignificant. If she had felt this way before, she would have fought it.
But even as she considered that, he wrapped his hand around the nape of her neck, and drew her to him. Without one single thought of fighting the attraction, she moved toward him.
“You didn’t answer me.” His burnt-umber voice was grittier than ever, and his eyes were close enough to see all the specks of blue and green, gold and brown, in the iris. His breath came in warm, moist puffs against her face. “You know what’s happening here. You know what’s going to happen. Say it.”
“Yes.” He was going to kiss her. Her heart pounded. Her lips opened of their own accord.
“And you want it. Say it,” he demanded.
“Yes.”
His lips came down on hers, fierce and hungry, while he laid his hand on the middle of her back and pressed her into full contact. His taste was in her mouth, and his smell filled her head. It made her a little dizzy, and she stumbled slightly when he used his other hand to scoop her hips closer. There was nowhere to go except into him, against his hard chest and his hard thighs. She inhaled his clean, musky smell and relished the total competence with which his arms enclosed her.
He lifted her onto her tiptoes until the notch at the top of her thighs matched the fullness of his erection, which he ground against her with blatant intent.
The kiss went on and on. He groaned. “God, I wanted this,” he said as he dabbed kisses and little licks down her neck. No one had ever licked her before. When he reached the juncture to her shoulder, he let her back down on her feet and with one hand opened the buttons at her waist. He pushed the two halves of the dress aside and closed a hand over her breast, kneading it insistently.
The timer on the stove buzzed.
Caleb lifted his head. “What the hell is that sound?”
/> “The timer on the stove.”
“You’re cooking something?”
“No.”
“Good. How do you turn it off?” He traced the rim of her ear with his tongue, even as he moved her toward the stove.
But forced to think, to allow awareness of time and place back into consciousness, the forward momentum was blocked. The implications of what they were getting ready to do intruded. They had gotten pretty far from her game plan. She’d thought they would get to this point eventually, but not the minute he walked in the door. And by the time they did, she’d have made her decision whether to tell him to get lost or not. Now it was all mixed up.
“Stop… wait…” Emmie pushed against his chest and avoided his devilish tongue, little as she wanted to. “I don’t do one-night stands. I don’t even do two-, three-, or four-night stands.” Caleb finally stopped kissing her. “And I don’t do afternoon quickies either.”
“Okay, I rushed you.” Caleb rested his forehead against hers. “Sorry.” Once his breathing evened out, Caleb drew back until he could look into her eyes. His irises were dark green in the afternoon light coming in the kitchen window. Russet color rode high on his cheekbones. His eyebrows drew together in a frown. “Wait. Are you saying ‘no sex?’” He looked perplexed. Stunned even. “See each other and never have sex? I don’t want that. In fact, I don’t think I could.”
Emmie pushed a little further away lest she succumb to the desire to soothe away the lost, bewildered note in his voice. And she couldn’t look into his eyes either, because of the distracting way her heart pounded whenever she did. She needed to be rational, despite the fact that she was feeling more than a bit bewildered herself. From the moment she’d seen him at the door, nothing had gone as she had planned. He was supposed to court her and realize just how desirable she was and when he was smitten—oh, she liked the sound of that—she would tell him she wasn’t interested. If she wasn’t. She wouldn’t cut off her nose to spite her face, after all.
Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle Page 45