He shook his head, trying to dislodge the feelings of self-disgust. The gray light that seeped through the open weave of the curtain hinted at dawn. The red numbers on the bedside clock read six-thirteen. He had time for a run.
He pulled on shorts and a T-shirt and was tying his running shoes when he realized he had no idea where he’d put the key card after unlocking the room. The increasing daylight showed him a room that was a shambles. He righted a lamp that had been knocked over—but not broken, thank God—and pulled his tie from where it draped over the shade.
Images from the night before assaulted him. Underneath a tipped-over chair he found his dress shirt. Oh, yeah, the part about the chair had been fine. He’d still had on his shirt when she’d pushed him into the straight wooden chair and straddled him, her long legs reaching the floor easily. Already joined, lodged hot and tight within her, he had pulled the silky material of her dress over her head and unhooked her bra to reveal the perfect roundness of her breasts. The large, velvety brown areolas had been clearly visible even in the shadowy room. In his need to feel them against his mouth, he’d hampered her efforts to unbutton his shirt. They had laughed—not just him, dammit, they had both laughed—batting hands out of the way, moving together.
He felt the pockets of his slacks when he found them beside the bed. Nothing. His navy sport coat, unbelievably, was near the bathroom, and now he remembered standing on it when he’d blocked her way to the bathroom door.
And she’d defended herself with a shoe. And warned him not to make her regret it more than she already did. Only at that point had he realized how completely things had gone to shit.
The card wasn’t in the sport coat either.
He hung up the coat. It was the only one he had and he didn’t want a dry-cleaning bill. The key card wasn’t on the dresser or the nightstand; it must have fallen on the floor. He gathered the bedspread from the carpet at the foot of the bed and shook it. The card fluttered to the floor. So did a scrap of brown lace.
Her panties. Thong, actually. He picked it up and spread it over his hand. The tiny flesh-colored triangle of transparent silk sported a running horse bordered by a rounded-off rectangle. Unless he missed his guess, that was a ’64 Mustang logo embroidered smack-dab over the crucial spot.
Damn, he wished he’d seen that on her. He wished he’d insisted they turn on the lights and take their time. He wished she hadn’t… He shook his head at the futility of the thought. He wished a lot of things. None of them made any difference.
He didn’t want to keep the thong, but he didn’t want the maids to find it when they came in to clean. If he didn’t have any idea who the woman was, they couldn’t, and yet he needed to protect her privacy. It was the least he could do.
He crammed the thong in his shorts pocket thinking he would toss it in a public trash can on his run. He wasn’t one to collect souvenirs. Despite his Don Juan reputation, he wasn’t motivated by the thrill of the chase. He really did just like sex.
Back in his room after his run, he showered and shaved and pulled on clean but worn jeans and a white T-shirt. After only a tiny hesitation, he retrieved the thong from the pocket of his discarded shorts.
He stuffed the silky trifle deep into a pocket of the navy blazer he’d worn the night before. After he’d passed the third trash can, he realized he wasn’t going to toss the thong, and he didn’t want to leave for the base until he found out the girl’s name and at least tried to make sure she was all right.
Davy felt better now that he had a plan.
Davy’s improved mood had gone sour again by the time he rendezvoused with Do-Lord in the hotel’s coffee shop. Do-Lord was spiffy in new-looking jeans and an open-collared dress shirt topped by a sport coat.
Davy’s plan to ask other wedding guests if they knew his mystery woman’s identity had been a complete washout. He had even defied all common sense—an enlisted man didn’t draw an officer’s attention when it wasn’t in his best interests to do so—and approached the bride and groom when he saw them loading their car.
“Sorry.” Pickett shook her head when Davy’s unknown was described to her. “My mother knows everybody in a radius of one hundred miles—”
“And is kin to half of them,” Jax put in.
“No, if she were a cousin, I’d recognize her, I think. But Mother invited a lot of people she’s met through business—people I don’t know.”
Jax made a restive movement. His tolerance for having his honeymoon interrupted wouldn’t last much longer. He put a possessive arm around his bride’s shoulder and rested his cheek on the top of her golden curls. Pickett returned the caress by rubbing the back of her head against his shoulder. The movement exposed her throat and a line of tiny pink bite-marks.
If he’d had any doubt (he hadn’t), Davy now was sure Jax had had a good time last night—and with a woman who still wanted to be with him this morning.
Davy didn’t need the “get lost” look Jax aimed at him over the top of Pickett’s head. There was nothing to do but wish them both well.
Do-Lord, looking disgustingly cheerful, slid into the booth where Davy waited for him in the hotel coffee shop. “Before we head back to the base, listen. I just had a call from Pickett’s sister. She says a whole tableful of wedding presents got left at the country club last night. She wanted to know if I would go get them and take them to Pickett’s mother’s house. You up for it?”
Forty-five minutes later, wedding presents retrieved and stowed under a tarp in the back of Do-Lord’s big Ford Silverado, Davy and Do-Lord stood at the side door of a large brick colonial surrounded by a wide green lawn and sheltered by tall pines. The morning’s earlier overcast had turned to a light drizzle that was bringing down pine needles in a steady brown rain.
A spray of needles landed on Davy’s shoulder, pricking him through his T-shirt. “Are you sure anyone is here?” he asked when Do-Lord pressed the doorbell a second time.
“Even if everyone else has gone out, Emmie is staying here.”
A note of eagerness in his voice made Davy glance at him sharply. Do-Lord usually met the world with laid-back but distant good humor. “And you would know this, how?”
“I brought her home last night.” There was undeniable satisfaction in the smile that lurked in the corners of his mouth.
Sheesh, Do-Lord and Emmie had gotten it on last night, too. It just kept getting better. Lon hadn’t said anything about Lauren this morning when Davy had returned his car keys—but then, he wouldn’t. Davy bet they had shared more than a room, too.
A particularly nasty blend of chagrin and guilt crawled around in his stomach. SEALs were intensely competitive. Jax, Do-Lord, and Lon had all gotten lucky, and they all knew where the lady in question was this morning.
He, on the other hand, had had the most awesome sex of his life with a woman whose name he had neglected to learn. He’d had the best one of all and let her get away. If the guys ever learned about it, they’d laugh themselves silly.
“Where the hell is she?” He stamped his feet impatiently. All he wanted was to get this over with. “Ring the bell again,” he told Do-Lord.
“Give the girl a chance. Why are you so itchy?”
“I just want to get on the road, that’s all.”
“Got another hot date tonight?”
Davy imagined calling one of the girls who’d be glad to hear from him, but he knew a better way to blot out last night’s fiasco. “Nah. I’ve got a rating coming up. I need to study.”
Saying the words made Davy feel calmer. As soon as he was immersed again in his life as a SEAL, the river of time would flow over this incident and it would be as if it had never happened.
The sight of Emmie when she at last opened the door restored the rest of his good humor. Her face was puffy. Her not-quite-blond, not-quite-brown hair was stuck to her head on one side and standing up on the other. The shapeless terry bathrobe, a faded shade of blue, all but swallowed her, and it hung haphazardly because the collar
had been pushed up by the cobalt blue sling that was back in evidence.
What a charity case! He rapidly revised the mental picture he had of her and Do-Lord. Come to think of it, he couldn’t imagine Lon doing it with anyone as completely drunk as Lauren had been last night. Of the men he’d been comparing his performance to, that left only Jax.
Jax was the obvious winner in the satisfaction department, but hell, he’d had to get married to do it.
His inner equilibrium restored, Davy reverted to his hospital corpsman identity. Taking care of the wounded was what he did. “How’s the shoulder this morning?” he asked Emmie.
“Better. You were right when you told me yesterday that taking my pain medicine on a schedule would help. I did sleep better. In fact, I slept so deeply I’m a little groggy this morning.” She laughed sheepishly. “I could hear the doorbell ringing, but I couldn’t figure out which door you were at.”
“The dopey feeling is caused by the meds. Don’t worry. It’ll go away in a day or two.” He pointed to where folds of the bathrobe were caught under the dark blue sling. With all that excess fabric and a shoulder that hurt with every movement, it was probably the best she could do. “That looks uncomfortable. Want me to help you adjust the sling?”
Emmie looked down at the faded robe as if surprised to learn she had it on. She blushed. “I need to get dressed for real.”
Her cluelessness about how she looked had a certain dorky charm—but dorkiness wasn’t on the list of what Davy looked for in a girl. He doubted if it made Do-Lord’s list either.
“Be careful not to—”
“Put my hand behind my back, I know,” Emmie finished.
Do-Lord clapped Davy on the shoulder—hard enough to make the gesture a friendly warning. He subtly interposed his body between Davy and Emmie. “Let the girl go, Doc. I know how much you like to take care of the wounded, but—enough!”
Davy simultaneously realized two things. One: Do-Lord, whom Davy had always found hard to read, was broadcasting, loud and clear, his interest in Emmie. Davy didn’t get it, but there was no accounting for tastes.
And two: what was wrong, really wrong, with last night’s debacle was that he had failed.
Despite his reputation, he didn’t use women—at least not more than they used him. Because he did care what happened to them, he carefully stayed away from any girl who might mistake his intentions, and especially damsels in distress. They had a bad habit of thinking his willingness to try to help them fix their problems was the equivalent of an engagement ring. And when he had to let them down, he just felt like a jerk.
He had an alpha male’s tendency to take charge and believe he was responsible in any situation. On top of this, he had more than his share of nurturance and protectiveness. It added up to more than a desire to help others. It was more like “white knight syndrome.” He took plenty of teasing designed to remind him he couldn’t fix every situation or help every person.
He had learned to temper his natural tendencies with a certain amount of ruthlessness, but at heart he believed, had to believe, he was one of the good guys. Last night he hadn’t met even the minimum requirement. He hadn’t returned the woman in as good condition as he found her. Whatever her problem was, he was sure he had made it worse.
His failure settled one question for him, though. God’s gift to women he was not. If he could screw up an encounter with the most spectacular girl he’d ever met, fuck it. He was needed in Afghanistan.
Chapter 5
AT A LITTLE BEFORE SIX, IN THE UPSTAIRS BEDROOM WHERE she had slept since she was a child, JJ impatiently threw back the duvet. Lying in bed while going over what had happened last night would do no good. She shivered as the predawn chill coming in the open window washed over her naked skin.
JJ preferred to sleep in the nude. She was a restless sleeper. Anything she wore to bed seemed to get twisted around her during the night, winding tighter and tighter until a constricted, trussed-up, tied-down feeling woke her. In college she’d had four blessed years of freedom.
Sleeping in the buff had been out of the question, though, once she returned home. Her grandmother’s, and later her grandfather’s, illness meant she never knew when she would be needed and someone would come into her bedroom to waken her.
This was the first time she had slept naked since college. Technically, since she hadn’t slept, she still hadn’t done so—but that was going to change.
Chafing her arms, she scurried to the window, shut it, and closed the wide plantation blinds before switching on a bedside light.
With quick efficient movements, she made the cherry pencil-post bed and tidied the room. Near the head of the bed, her foot encountered Smiley’s orthopedic dog bed. For a long moment, she studied it with a funny what’s-wrong-with-this-picture feeling.
Then she remembered.
Yesterday had started with a call from her vet, with whom she had left her golden retriever of fourteen years, telling her Smiley had died. Smiley’s death wasn’t unexpected. She planned to ask the vet later that morning if it was time to put the dog to sleep. Still, her knees had gone rubbery, and the phone had become so slippery with sweat from her palms that she’d almost dropped it when she heard the news.
She had pulled herself together. With a few swift phone calls, she had postponed meetings with her sales manager and the president of the SPCA, moved a lunch meeting with the Azalea Festival Chair to breakfast, and shuffled everything in between. Not burying Smiley herself—whether her day was already packed or not—had never been a consideration.
After Ham, the Vietnam vet who did odd jobs for her grandfather, had dug the grave, she had laid Smiley to rest in his favorite cool, shady spot in the garden: at the foot of a fall-blooming, white camellia sasanqua. Burying him was wrenching, but oddly comforting, too. Smiley had been a good dog. He deserved to be laid to rest, not disposed of, like something used up.
While her grandfather, who had come outside in the unseasonably warm autumn sunshine to pay his respects, looked on, they had lined the grave with Smiley’s Carolina blue UNC blanket and laid him in it. In old age, his silky coat had turned more blond than golden.
A light breeze ruffled the beautiful wavy fur, giving the heart-clenching illusion that he had started breathing again. JJ knelt forward and rested her hand on his chest. Underneath the fur he was cold and the ribs were too stiff. She carefully pulled the edges of the blanket over him and smoothed it until he was hidden from her sight.
After that—after burying her dog—the thought of driving for an hour or so to another town to attend the wedding of a couple she hardly knew was almost unbearable.
Just this once, she would have disobeyed her grandmother’s dictum that an invitation, once accepted, became an unbreakable obligation. But Mary Cole Sessoms, the mother of the bride, was a good friend and JJ’s mentor.
She owed Mary Cole. Without Mary Cole to advise her, JJ thought she would have buckled under the load when she assumed leadership of Caruthers Automotive at the age of twenty-two. If the older woman wanted her at her daughter’s wedding, then by God, JJ would be there. And, no matter how she felt, she would put a smile on her face and act delighted.
At last, she and Ham had redistributed the pine-straw mulch over the newly packed earth. She shook the dry, shoe-leather hand Ham offered in condolence. Her grandfather squeezed her shoulder in sympathy. Each in his own way loved her; she knew that. Their small gestures of comfort was as demonstrative as either of them got.
You’d think burying the only creature who had unfailingly rejoiced when he saw her—and had never been afraid to show it—was bad enough. But then her grandfather had said, “Jane Jessup, would you come into my office after you wash your hands?”
And her day got a great deal worse.
Chapter 6
JJ HAD TAKEN TIME NOT ONLY TO WASH HER HANDS BUT also to shower and change into the Donna Karan satin jersey dress she intended to wear to the wedding. JJ considered looking beautiful, fashi
onable, and perfectly turned out to be part of her job description. She’d been satisfied with her appearance until the three-way mirror revealed a panty line that marred the liquid fall of the material across her butt.
Aware she was keeping her grandfather waiting, she rifled hurriedly through the tiny drawer containing thongs. At the back of the drawer her fingers closed over a silken pouch, a gag gift from Bronwyn, her college roommate.
They had made bawdy jokes about thongs embroidered with a famous carmaker’s logo in an eye-catching spot. Neither had guessed that in less than a year JJ would be the de facto head of the oldest car dealership in the state. That was almost six years ago. The frivolous little nothings had been crammed in the back of the lingerie drawer and forgotten.
The Ford Mustang one was an ecru color that would do. She stripped off the offending bikinis and pulled it on.
In twenty minutes, her strappy gladiator sandals with three-inch heels were carrying her down the curving staircase into the two-story entry with its Waterford chandelier and long, multipaned windows. The entry formed the center of the house. From there, she turned down the wide hall of her grandfather’s wing.
Her grandfather spent most of his time these days in his “office,” which still contained the massive walnut desk. Since little business was done there anymore, the office also now boasted recliners, a deep sofa, and a wide-screen TV. JJ thought it was really her grandfather’s man-cave.
The walls were lined with photographs of Caruthers in all its incarnations. Over the mantel hung the framed artist’s rendering of the modern white structure, built when JJ was seventeen. It lifted her spirits every time she saw it. She hadn’t needed her grandfather to tell her it would all be hers someday. In letting her help design it, her grandfather had made it hers. It belonged to her and she to it.
Her grandfather’s big, oxblood-leather desk chair was swiveled to face the long windows behind the desk. At her tap on the open door, he turned to face her. His still-shrewd green eyes peered over the tops of silver-framed reading glasses.
Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle Page 62