JJ knew the story. “You did what you had to,” she reassured Mary Cole, “to save the agency from bankruptcy after your husband died. A lot of people, not just Pickett, were depending on you.”
“Maybe. But maybe I was also using work to bury my grief and my fury at him for dying suddenly and leaving us in that condition.” She raised blue eyes heavenward. “An insurance agent who let his own insurance premiums lapse!”
“No matter how you felt, you didn’t have a choice about what you had to do.”
“There are always choices.”
The older woman was sincere, JJ knew, but their situations weren’t the same. “I thought you agreed with me that this was the best way.”
Mary Cole sighed. “JJ, I’m not trying to argue with you. I’m on your side. I’ll say this for your grandfather: he’s not all that smart about women, but Lucas knows men. I thought he would select men who had the basic qualifications, and you would choose the one you had a real attraction to. I didn’t mean you should marry someone who didn’t love you!”
JJ’s grandfather had taught her how to run a car business, but Mary Cole had taught her how to be a businesswoman. JJ admitted to a little hurt that her mentor didn’t seem to be proud of her. It made her say, a little stiffly, “Since Blount and I are making a deal, I feel it’s best not to let the decision be clouded by strong emotions. But I respect him. In time, I expect that will grow into real affection.”
Blue eyes dark with distress, Mary Cole squeezed JJ’s hand. “Oh, my darling JJ, what has happened to you?”
Chapter 11
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HOTEL PATIO, DAVY HELD the cold beer bottle to the outer corner of his eyebrow where the red flashing pain had lodged. The doctors said his fractured eye socket was still healing and the pain would go away. He hadn’t died in Afghanistan, but he wondered how long it would be before he felt alive again.
He hadn’t been shipped home in a box. Instead it was his mother who had lain in a coffin only weeks after his first surgery, and Davy had become responsible for a much younger brother.
Now everybody wanted to know his plans, while he was trying to understand something he’d never looked into before. In the deepest part of himself, he had always known the present was all he had. Now it felt as if he was living someone else’s future.
Lon, always looking after everybody, had talked him into coming to Do-Lord’s wedding, saying it was better than brooding in his tiny three-room apartment while he had thirty days of convalescent leave. Davy wasn’t so sure. These days following conversation, particularly in a group, took concentration. It was easier to let his mind drift away.
Garth Vale, a.k.a. Darth Vader, and who, like his namesake, was extremely fast and extremely dangerous, saw the action. “You got a hangover, already?”
“Hangover from the ’Stan. Headache. I still get them.”
Garth nodded and hoisted his cane in salute. Being a SEAL was hard on a body. They all had paid with pain for their place among the world’s finest warriors. Garth had been wounded in the same action Davy was and now had titanium where part of his thigh bone used to be. Hospitalized together, they’d gotten in the habit of hanging out. Garth was an officer and Davy enlisted, but that wasn’t the same barrier among SEALs as in other services.
SEALs had a reputation for being clannish, for having their own hangouts, for not liking to mingle even with other Navy personnel. The reputation was deserved, but the charge of elitism and arrogance that often went with it wasn’t. The simple truth was that life as a SEAL put them outside the mainstream. Even if they could talk about what they did, which they couldn’t because everything they did was secret, most people couldn’t understand it or even believe it. When they had time to relax, they relaxed with SEALs.
Gradually Davy and most of the other SEALs had gravitated to a corner table partly hidden by masonry pillars and sheltered from above by an overhanging balcony. It was no accident that the space had three exits and anyone approaching the table was clearly visible, while the table was in shadow. In some countries, eating out was the most dangerous thing SEALs did. In an unfamiliar place, they trusted only each other.
“Did you ever see that movie, Wedding Crashers?” Garth asked. “Do you think going to weddings is a good way to get laid?”
“What are you asking him for?” a SEAL whose name Davy couldn’t call up snickered. It was embarrassing how often he couldn’t recall people’s names and was greeted by name by people he’d swear he’d never seen before. While in the hospital, it hadn’t been a big problem—most people there had been strangers.
Since he was on convalescent leave, hanging out in Little Creek where more people knew him, it happened more frequently and was harder to cover up. He hoped the problem would go away on its own while he was on leave.
“All Doc’s got to do to get laid,” the SEAL continued, “is go anywhere girls are. Even getting hit by an RPG couldn’t blow all the ‘pretty’ off that face the girls love so much.” Davy wished he could think of the guy’s name. It was right there.
“Hey, Doc, you think you’ve still got it—now that you got the scar and your cheekbone looks a little lumpy?”
The guys had always ribbed him about his looks. Intensely competitive men every one, at a glance they could estimate the height, weight, and fighting condition of every man they met—and what it would take to win against him. Unsurprisingly, their competitiveness included attracting females. It stood to reason his friends wouldn’t ignore, or dismiss as unimportant, the change in his features.
Davy fingered the thin y-shaped scar that angled across his cheek from the corner of his mouth to his ear. The short leg of the y creased the cheek vertically. His cheek was as smooth as plastic surgery could make it, but there was no doubt that the perfect regularity of his features was gone for good.
“What do you look like when you smile?”
Davy obligingly spread his lips in a grimace. The other men watched his cheek crumple.
“Shit. You lost your killer dimple!”
“I’ve still got everything that matters,” he parried, taking a confident swig of his beer.
What he didn’t say was that ever since his injury, something felt… flat. Not The Admiral, thank God. But despite its reflexive interest in attractive women, getting it on with a girl lacked… He had actually ignored signals from a couple of nurses in the hospital—even once or twice pleaded a headache as an excuse. Him. A headache. It would be funny if it weren’t pathetic.
Vic Littletree whistled under his breath. “Babe alert! Three o’clock.”
Davy looked to his right and almost swallowed his tongue. “That’s no babe,” he corrected reverently. “That’s a goddess.”
The men were silent in appreciation of the vision the crowd on the patio had parted to reveal. Her back to them, she strolled not hurriedly, but purposefully, among the other guests. Her coffee-brown hair tumbled in loose, silky curls to her shoulder blades. Her short-sleeved dress, the dusty purple of ripe plums, was almost demure in its restraint.
She had no need to advertise her sexuality. It was there in the unconscious sway of her hips, the assertive set of her shoulders. Tall and statuesque, there was plenty of her, and every millimeter was in exactly the right place. A man would have no fear of crushing her or having a hard time finding her in bed.
He could imagine shaping the warm flesh of those hourglass curves with his hands—as if he already knew what she felt like. His whole body tightened. Weird—his imagination had never been that good before. He didn’t take time to examine the feeling. It felt too damn good to feel a flood of genuine arousal for him to question where it came from.
He willed her to turn so he could see her left hand. Bare. Relief made him lightheaded. He didn’t poach, not only because he thought there was plenty to go around and saw no need to covet what some other man had. He also believed marriage vows were sacred and hard enough to keep without interference from the outside. He sent thanks to whatever
luck had kept her free. He might have howled if she had been taken.
He set his beer bottle on the plastic table. “Stand back, guys. This one’s mine.”
“We get to watch the operator operate!”
“We’ll see how much the scar handicaps him.”
“All right, I say we start a pool. How long is it going to take him? An hour?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Uh-oh. Subject is being approached from the right. Sorry, Doc. Looks like somebody’s ahead of you.”
Davy took his eyes from the woman long enough to watch as a man, with a shawl or something draped over his arm, approached her and handed it to her. What an idiot.
“No, she’s not taken,” Davy chortled. “See that? The schmuck blew it. He should have wrapped the shawl around her himself.”
“Oh. Right! So he could put his arms around her.”
“Are you going to go over there and muscle in?”
“Uncool. I don’t want a pissing match with him; I want her. A fool like that will leave her alone again. When he does, I move in.”
Across the patio, the woman turned. A face, so exquisite it was hard for him to breathe, turned toward him. She radiated feminine strength in the modeled cheekbones, high intelligent forehead, and very determined chin with the tiniest hint of cleft.
The sudden return of sexual interest was explained. What she had would bring a man back from the dead. And he knew her!
Every cell in his body recognized her. He’d heard people talk about seeing someone across the room and suddenly, indisputably, knowing they were the one. Elation and anticipation, far more complex than lust, expanded through his chest. And something that felt like relief heated his eyes with unshed tears. He had found her, the one for him.
“Darth, stay on her. No matter what, keep her in sight.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Somebody here is bound to know her. I’m going to find out what her name is.”
“Here’s your shawl. What did you call it?”
“A pashmina.” Smiling her thanks to Blount, JJ swirled the woven length of fine wool and silk around her shoulders. Woven in shades of lavender, blue, and earthy gold, it was gossamer light and amazingly warm. “Thanks for getting it from the room.”
Now, without sounding too ditzy or like she didn’t know her own mind, she had to convince him she was ready to go to the room. In a few minutes she would say the shawl wasn’t warm enough and invite him to go with her.
“I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come,” he teased.
Had he read her mind? “What? Getting chilly?”
“You know, always expecting me to fetch and carry for you.”
JJ took a sip of her drink. This wasn’t the first time he’d acted a little put out, laughing but making the point that he thought he was indulging her excessively. She hadn’t expected or wanted lover-like behavior, but was he already so sure of her that he thought he didn’t need to court her at all? She wondered if Mary Cole was right about him.
“How does it feel,” she studied his face as she asked, “to watch an old girlfriend get married?”
He didn’t take his eyes from the crowd he was scanning. “What old girlfriend?”
“The bride, Emmie.”
“Oh. We were never serious. Colleagues, that’s all.”
“There’s gossip going around that you dumped her, callously.”
Blount’s snicker dismissed the rumor. “Who told you that? I didn’t dump her. We saw each other a few times casually. Then she got mad because I went to a departmental dinner with someone else.”
“Why didn’t you go with her?”
“I told you… we weren’t dating.” Hearing the touch of asperity in his tone, he backtracked. “Just, you know, getting together sometimes. You don’t know what she looked like in those days. I had to admire her scholarship—but, how can I say this? She wasn’t the kind of girl you want to show off.”
JJ understood the male psyche. She was the kind of girl men liked to show off. She used the fact to her advantage, but she had worked too damn hard to be who she was in her own right to want to be an ego prop for any man.
Blount gave a half-pained, half-philosophical laugh and continued. “I didn’t find out until too late that she’s extremely well-connected politically and the heir to a sizable estate.”
He sounded rueful, like he’d messed up.
“You mean,” she inquired in a carefully neutral voice, “if you’d known she was rich, you would have” —JJ made finger quotes—“dated her?”
Blount made a noncommittal sound and shrugged. “It wouldn’t have worked out between us anyway.” His tone said he was shutting the subject down.
One thing JJ’s grandfather had taught her was that the true art of making a deal lay in understanding what people really want. The key was getting them to talk about themselves.
She leaned against the patio railing in a way that made maximum play of her breasts and legs. For good measure, she lazily stirred her gimlet and then lifted the swizzle stick to her lips to lick off a drop. “It wouldn’t have worked out? Why not?”
“She has the money—though you would never have known it to look at her—and important friends, but she doesn’t use them. To get ahead. Look at her. She’s married a SEAL.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“You don’t think that’s going to earn her any points in an academic setting, do you? Anyone who does what those guys do has got to be a little short on brains and way short on better choices.”
“Actually, I’ve read there’s a minimum requirement of some college, and that many have degrees, even advanced degrees. Other careers are open to them.”
“Popular press,” Blount dismissed. It was a trump card he often pulled when she questioned his facts. In fact her information did come from the popular press. The foiling of a pirate attack by SEALs had generated several newspaper and magazine articles that had caught her eye.
She adjusted the shawl to cover more of her arms, although her chill wasn’t physical. She had accepted, even welcomed, Blount’s essential self-interest since it made him simpler to deal with, and she had thought their differences would make boundaries and expectations easier to define.
In the last several minutes, though, she had seen that he didn’t respect anyone. If there was one thing her grandmother’s lessons on deportment had taught her, it was to take note of how people treated others. Remember, she had advised, anytime they think they can, they will treat you the same way.
The tiny flicker of hope that, in time, she might have something resembling a real marriage with Blount dimmed out. The challenge would be to live with him the year her grandfather stipulated.
It had only been a glimmer of hope. It was amazing that something so small could have held back the sick, black dread that rose up now to fill her chest.
“Blount, I need to visit the ladies’ room, and I’m feeling a little chilled. I think I’ll sit in the lobby for a few minutes.”
“Why don’t you go on up to the room? I want to talk to Senator Calhoun about a bill he’s sponsoring—just show my interest, you know.” He glanced around the wedding crowd, which was beginning to thin. “Actually, there are a couple more people I need to speak to, but I’ll be up after a while.”
“Up where? Oh. The room.” For a moment she had forgotten they were sharing a room with the clear expectation that they would share more before the evening was out. She seemed to be looking at him from a great distance.
Insensitive as (she now realized) he was, he noticed something had happened. “I’ll hurry,” he reassured her with an intimate smile, patting a pocket. “There’s something special I want to ask you.”
He meant the proposal they both knew was coming. He must have the ring in his pocket.
The hard place inside her grew a little harder. She didn’t have to like him to marry him. Still, she wasn’t ready to be alone with him. Until she’d thought thing
s through she didn’t want to accept his ring and all that went with it. “I’ll come back,” she told him. “Or I’ll wait for you in the lobby.”
JJ Caruthers. JJ Caruthers. As Davy made his way through the thinning crowd back to Garth, he repeated the name. He liked it. Strong, up-front, challenging. It fit her.
Learning her name had been easy, which was good because, just as Davy had predicted, the idiot had already let go of her again. He was talking to an older man with thick silver hair. She was nowhere to be seen.
“She went toward the lobby,” Garth reported. “Then she turned and went the other way. Look, there she is. Looks like she’s going down to the beach.” He slapped Davy on the back. “Go get her, tiger.”
Chapter 12
AT THE FOOT OF THE CONCRETE STEPS LEADING DOWN to the beach, JJ balanced on one foot and then the other as she pulled off her high-heeled sandals. Sandals they might be, but she’d break her neck or at least an ankle if she tried to walk on the beach in them. She’d come down to the beach to be alone, to think. Disappointment made her eyes feel dry and tight, and made her cheeks stiff. JJ didn’t want to talk to anyone, not until she had her game face back on.
It was darker near the ocean—or as dark as it ever got with Wilmington just over the bridge. The glow of a thousand streetlights and parking lots smudged the velvet blackness of the sky and faded the stars. She hadn’t understood how much until over the last eleven months she had seen how different the night sky appeared on Topsail.
There were people who didn’t know what stars looked like. She had tried talking to Blount one night about how in the modern world, a tiny handful of people could travel to the stars, but millions of people could no longer see them. The price of progress.
In the faint wash of light from the hotel patio, a colorless sand crab scuttled sideways in alarm.
JJ wished she could walk down the beach and just keep walking. But if she was capable of walking away from her responsibilities, she wouldn’t have this problem.
Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle Page 67