Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle

by Mary Margret Daughtridge

  Despite her irritation at his aggrieved tone, she allowed he had some right to be upset. She had given tacit, if not explicit, consent to spending the night with him. In simple fairness she had thought she should pay for the room. Dealing honestly and equitably meant a lot to JJ. Now, whether he knew it or not, he was doing her a favor. With every whiny word, any guilt she felt for backing out dissipated further.

  In the last hour or so, she had realized she had a much larger problem than not wanting sex tonight.

  Before tonight, she had convinced herself the very tame attraction she felt for Blount was what she wanted. Any time she’d found herself recalling the night of unleashed passion she’d shared with Davy, she intentionally made herself characterize it as tawdry and reinforced her sense of shock at herself, her shame. She repressed any memories of being in such perfect physical accord that her body sang.

  Tonight he’d said his name was David, and she had to admit, with his scars and new air of gravity, a name like Davy no longer fit him. She had gotten rid of him in her mind, and yet tonight she hadn’t been with him for five minutes before she craved his arms, his kisses. And arousal had begun melting her bones.

  She hadn’t felt the smallest fraction of that when Blount kissed her.

  She had no choice but to marry Blount, but she was beginning to doubt if she would ever want sex with him. And if refusing to have sex once they were married wouldn’t be backing out of an agreement, she didn’t know what would.

  “When we’re married, will you insist on spending all our money on good works?” Blount broke in on her thoughts. Having failed to provoke her into an argument, he was trying a different tack.

  JJ clamped down on the urge to snap. “Our money? I thought we had an understanding. My money will remain mine. Yours will be yours—to do with as you please.”

  “You mean the prenuptial agreement? Are you still set on that?”

  “Correction. I’m not ‘set’ on it. I’m demanding it.” He had agreed to it, although nothing was signed yet. JJ tried to soften her tone. “This discussion indicates we need to have money matters spelled out between us, don’t you think?”

  “Of course. All couples should discuss how they will handle money, but do we really need lawyers?”

  “If we should talk about it, what’s the objection to formalizing what we agree to? Unless you don’t intend to keep your word.” Even as she spoke, all the pieces that had been coming together tonight clicked into place, and JJ realized she was right. No matter what they agreed to, he would try to weasel, and no matter how much she gave him, he would always think he was owed more. The sick, black dread she’d steeled herself against earlier on the beach broke through again.

  Not wanting to look at Blount, JJ focused on the nightscape out the passenger window.

  It was late. The businesses along Military Cutoff were closed. Streetlamps glared on empty parking lots. The car’s headlights bounced off wisps of fog whenever they crossed over one of the swampy creeks. For long stretches, fewer streetlights and the thick canopy of trees draped with Spanish moss made the thoroughfare darker. On the curb, a lone man, barely visible, walked hunched, as if he was carrying something heavy.

  She craned forward to get a better look.

  “JJ, you’re misunderstanding what I’m trying to get at. A marriage cannot succeed in an atmosphere of distrust—”

  “Blount,” she interrupted him. “Was that man carrying a dog?”

  “I didn’t notice. As I was saying—”

  “Stop. We have to go back.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “No, Blount, I’m not hallucinating. If it was a dog, it had to weigh sixty pounds. He wouldn’t be carrying it unless it was sick or hurt. We have to see if we can help.”

  “I meant crazy to think I’m going to stop. In this neighborhood?”

  “We don’t have to get out of the car. We’ll just find out what’s going on and see if we can call someone for him.”

  “Call the police yourself. Let them take care of it.” He gave the car more gas.

  JJ turned as much as the seat belt would allow, trying to keep the man in sight. “For God’s sake, Blount! The man’s hands are full. He can’t attack us. Are you afraid the dog’s got a switchblade on him?” She glanced back at Blount and saw the set, disapproving line of his lips. Realization dawned.

  “You don’t intend to stop, do you? No matter what I say.”

  “No. It’s good to be generous, but you can’t go around impulsively—”

  “Turn the car around, Blount, or I will call the police. I’ll tell them I’m being kidnapped.”

  He gave her a furious look and, with jerky movements, slowed the car enough to make a U-turn in the almost deserted street.

  Chapter 16

  THE MAN, BAGGY JEANS DROOPING OVER RUN-DOWN cowboy boots, stopped walking when they pulled alongside him. Sure enough, in his arms he carried a reddish dog that looked like a chow-lab mix. The dog’s big square head hung over the man’s arm. From time to time, the animal stiffened as long shudders ran through him.

  JJ lowered her window less than a hand’s width. “What’s the matter with your dog?”

  “Don’t know. Just found him like this. Some’un’s been poisoning dogs in my neighborhood.” The man had the deep-grooved, hollow cheeks of someone who had spent too much time in the sun, smoked too many cigarettes, and drunk too much whiskey. Thinning graying hair was pulled back in a ponytail. His faded denim jacket and jeans hung on his slight frame. He shifted the dog higher up his chest.

  “Where are you going with him?”

  “Car won’t start. I’m hoping my buddy lives over on Ewell will give me ’n’ Snake a ride to the vet’narin.”

  Snake? JJ repressed a shudder at the macho moniker. No dog in the world had ever looked less like his name. But that was none of her business. She didn’t have to name him; she just needed to help him. “Is your buddy expecting you? Couldn’t you call him?”

  “No’m. I ain’t been working regular for some time. Phone’s been shut off.”

  “Ewell is a good ways from here.”

  The man shrugged as much as a man with a sixty-pound dog in his arms could. “It’s near ’bout as far to the pay phone as to my buddy’s house. Figured I was just as well to pick up Snake here and start walking his direction,” he added with philosophical acceptance of a life that had never been easy.

  “What’s your friend’s number? I’ll call him.”

  She put the cell phone on speaker and dialed. In a few minutes she heard, “Yo! I’m not here. You know what to do,” followed by the beep of voice mail.

  “Don’t even think about it!” Blount shook her arm less than gently. “We’re not going to take him to the vet.” He shot a suspicious glance at the man and lowered his voice to a hiss. “I draw the line at letting a man that dirty—much less a dog that’s sick and likely to throw up—into the car.”

  “Got it covered,” she agreed, already dialing. “I’m calling Ham, my grandfather’s handyman.”

  “Ham,” she said as soon as he answered. “I need you to bring your pickup. I’ve got a man with a sick dog that we need to transport to the emergency vet. Throw some old towels or a blanket in the back.”

  She gave Ham the location and hung up. “He’ll be here in a few minutes,” she told the man. “Why don’t you put the dog down and rest your arms.”

  At her suggestion, the man carefully laid the dog in the grass. Squatting beside the animal, he kept one thick-fingered hand on him, while with the other hand he pulled on the bill of his stained Evinrude cap. “Name’s Grady, ma’am, and you, you’re one of God’s own angels.”

  Blount spoke through gritted teeth. “You have the situation all taken care of. Now can we get out of here?”

  “We’re going to wait for Ham.”

  “Come on, JJ! Enough is enough.”

  “When Ham gets here,” she told him. “Not before.”

  In less than ten minutes,
the headlights of Ham’s big, red Chevrolet truck penetrated the frozen atmosphere within the Miata. JJ had her seat belt unhooked and was out the door before Blount could say anything—fortunately for him.

  Ham climbed down from the cab. “Blankets ain’t clean,” he said going around to the back of the truck and opening the tailgate. “Had to take ’em off my bed. Reckon a dog won’t mind.”

  “Off your bed? I told you to bring old ones.” JJ took the wool blanket he handed her and folded it down to pallet size for a dog.

  Ham grunted. “Don’t got nothing but old ones.”

  Together, Ham and Grady shifted Snake onto the blanket. Taking the four corners like a stretcher, they lifted him to the truck’s bed. Grady climbed on beside him. The dog’s shudders were coming at longer intervals. JJ didn’t know if that was a good thing.

  “Here’s something to cover him with.” Ham passed him a knitted, cotton summer blanket. Clearly, Ham had stripped his entire bed for a dog.

  JJ went back to the Miata, where a stiff-faced Blount stared straight ahead. Rigid with disapproval, he hung onto the steering wheel as if the car wanted to run away and he was holding it back by main force. Wonderful. He hadn’t gotten his way so now he was sulking. What an ass. She retrieved her purse and quilted, Waverly tote from behind the seat.

  “What are you doing?” Blount yelped, breaking his stony silence. “Get back in the car!”

  JJ, respecter of good machinery, if not of its owner, closed the car gently. “Earlier, you asked if I was crazy. Apparently I was—I thought I could marry you. Fortunately,” she gave him her sunniest smile, “in the last several minutes, I seem to have had a miraculous recovery.”

  “Come on, JJ. Don’t do this. This is another example of your impulsive sentimentality. You’re going to regret this.”

  “Not as much as I would regret being married to you.”

  “What about your grandfather?”

  JJ went cold. “What about him?”

  “He thinks you’re going to marry me. What are you going to tell him?”

  “I’ll tell him I realized I could have you or a dog. I chose the dog.”

  Chapter 17

  BY THE TIME HAM AND JJ TRANSPORTED GRADY AND Snake to the vet, waited while the dog was stabilized, took Grady home, and then drove to JJ’s cottage on Topsail Island, she was too tired to do anything but strip and fall in bed.

  In spite of her late night, JJ woke when the red rays of morning sun rising over the ocean filled her bedroom. She loved having her first sight in the morning be the ocean. She always opened the curtains before she went to sleep—even when, as now, she knew the sun would wake her before she’d slept long enough.

  JJ slipped into the thigh-length silk gown she kept always close at hand—because really, you never knew—and padded into the cottage’s kitchen.

  By today’s standards, when newer cottages were the size of mini-hotels, this one was small, only three bedrooms, but as promised, it was elegantly decorated in shades of periwinkle, sand, and pale coral. The kitchen area of the great room boasted every gourmet chef’s dream appliance. Floor-to-ceiling windows took up the entire front wall, making the house seem continuous with the beach and flooding the interior with light even on the grayest days.

  Outside the window, the rising sun tinted the light fog, present most autumn mornings, a pearly pink. As the sun climbed higher, the fog would draw back until it was a solid-looking cloud out over the ocean. For now, it drew the horizon closer and forced the watcher to notice only what was close at hand. Only the sea oats atop the dunes next to the deck were clearly visible. They stood motionless.

  JJ watched day come while she waited for the coffee to drip.

  She often had a fancy that the alternating land and ocean breezes were caused by the land breathing. In the daytime, air rushed into the land; at night, it rushed out. Moments of utter stillness like this were the relaxed pause before the invigoration of the next in-breath.

  This morning, she felt as if she, too, hung between the night and the day, between one breath and the next. She kept waiting for the gasp when the terrible reality of what she had done would burst upon her.

  Idly, JJ pictured herself as a cartoon character with a huge wave rising up behind her, cresting, beginning to curl over her. Only, in the cartoon, the hapless character was always blissfully oblivious to the wave. That was the joke.

  She, on the other hand, was completely conscious of the onrushing tsunami. She knew it was there and knew it would sweep away and destroy everything when it crashed down.

  For a long time, like a cartoon figure, she had managed to run ahead of it, but in one moment of impatience and intolerance, she had stumbled, and now it was gaining. Not only was it coming closer, but it also seemed now the disastrous wave was pulling her toward it.

  The coffeemaker hissed and sputtered, signaling the end of the drip cycle. She left the window to pour herself a cup and then returned to look out again, holding the cup against her heart while the coffee warmed the slick china of the mug from within.

  In a few minutes, the quiver of one tall sea-grass stalk and the swaying of another told her the great cycle of inspiration had started again.

  For a year, she had tried so hard to shape a future that compromised between her grandfather’s demands and Caruthers’ needs. She’d been so sure only Caruthers mattered. And yet, in one lightning flash of passion, she had dumped the well-being of Caruthers in an argument about a scruffy mongrel and his equally scruffy owner.

  JJ drew a deep breath. Her mind could not encompass the enormity of the tidal wave of change about to crash down on her head, but she accepted that it was going to. Still, for the first time in a long time, the sense of being slowly and relentlessly strangled had eased.

  After watching the fog dissipate for a few more minutes, JJ poured herself more coffee and perched on a stool at the counter. Habitually, she reached for a list pad, but the feeling of unreality persisted. For once, she had difficulty thinking of anything that really needed doing. She filled the first four lines with doodles.

  Finally she wrote, “Call vet, check on Snake,” which led to thoughts of Ham’s generosity—or unworldiness, she wasn’t sure which. He had assured her he’d be warm enough last night, and fortunately the mild Indian summer weather had held. Winter was coming though.

  She wrote, “Blankets for Ham,” then checked her watch. If she called right now, she could probably catch Esperanza before she left for mass.

  “Esperanza,” JJ asked, when she heard the housekeeper’s Mexican-flavored English, “do you remember when you complained that Lucas wouldn’t let you replace the blankets on his bed?”

  “Yes, Miss JJ. They’re so faded. But he don’t let me, still.”

  “Can you go to that bed specialty store at the mall this afternoon and get some new ones? Get sheets, too. Use the household charge—I’ll authorize it. And I’ll pay you for your time.”

  “Oh, Miss JJ. You don’t got to pay me. I love that store. But, you don’t want to pick them out?”

  “No. I don’t live there anymore.”

  “Miss JJ.” Esperanza’s sigh came over the line. “When you coming back? He don’t let me do nothing except clean and cook him breakfast. He say leave his dinner in the refrigerator—he’ll heat it up. But he don’t. He don’t eat half of it.”

  Esperanza had been with them since before her grandmother died. When JJ had moved out, she’d increased Esperanza’s hours from a couple of days a week to full time. She couldn’t stand the thought of her grandfather alone in the big house.

  He’d never done for himself while her grandmother was alive, and now, no matter how willing, he wouldn’t know how to. A thousand details would slip away because he wouldn’t know to attend to them before they became problems. And like a lot of old people, he constantly suffered sticker shock, and not just on big-ticket items. He got upset over the cost of what JJ considered trifles and refused to buy ordinary things needed to keep the hous
e in good order.

  Lucas wasn’t an easy man to live with. He’d always been autocratic and demanding, and he’d seen himself as entitled to the final say about everything. But he’d also always been willing to listen to advice. Only JJ and Esperanza saw how irrational and intransigent he had become in the last couple of years.

  “I know what he’s like, Esperanza. Just do the best you can.”

  Esperanza hesitated. Then, practical woman that she was, moved on. “Well, I think he needs blankets and a down comforter, too, and if I’m going to pick out the sheets, I’m going to buy the Egyptian cotton, 800 thread-count kind that cost four hundred dollars!”

  “You are one dangerous woman,” JJ chuckled at Esperanza’s idea of rebellion. “Go for it! While you’re at it, get him some new towels, too. Box up the old stuff, and I’ll be by to pick it up in the morning.”

  “I knew it! What are you up to?”

  “Ham needs new linens, but if I buy him new, new ones—even from Target, he’ll say they’re too nice to use. He’ll probably sell them to some flea-market dealer.”

  Esperanza tsked. “That’s the truth. Mr. Lucas, he looks after Ham, but he don’t think about things like sheets. You, you look after Mr. Lucas. You look after the car place. You look after all the peoples there. Who’s looking after you?”

  Chapter 18

  “SO. YOU’VE KICKED ANOTHER ONE TO THE CURB.” HER grandfather barked from behind his desk. “Well, I’m done helping you.”

  Courtesy demanded she stop to speak to her grandfather when she picked up the linens for Ham, so here she stood in the doorway of his home office. The shield she had put up to guard her feelings held, mostly. After all, she knew where Lucas got his information. “Esperanza told me Blount was here yesterday,” she affirmed. “What do you mean, ‘helping me’?”

  “He came by here a month or so ago. Showed me the prenuptial agreement you wanted him to sign. Pretty upset.”