He should have been suspicious when Lon had come into the bathroom where he was finishing painting and said, “There’s a woman who says she knows you. In the living room. I suggest you talk to her.”
Now here he stood in grubby shorts and even grubbier running shoes, shirtless because it was stuffy in the windowless bathroom, spattered with blue-green droplets of something called Spruce Mist, and his hair matted and gray with sanding dust.
Her air of self-possession didn’t alter. She smiled politely. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What cameras?”
She was a cool one. He raised his hands in mock surrender. “You got me, okay? I didn’t see it coming, and you can tell the guys they gave me the best laugh I’ve had in weeks. This is one hell of a practical joke. How’d they get the senior chief and you to go along with it?”
“I’m not joking.”
Either she was one hell of an actress or she was serious. Or nuts. Regardless, it was time to call this to a halt. He crossed his arms over his chest knowing it made him look intimidating. The scar on his cheek added to the effect. One thing about his little gift from the Taliban, he didn’t have to work to look tough anymore.
“You want to marry me?” He loaded his tone with sarcasm. “The other night you said you were engaged. Close to it anyway. Now you want me? What the hell are you up to?”
A shadow flickered in the intense green depths of her eyes, but they didn’t waver. “Let me make myself clearer. I am in need of a husband, whether I want one or not. I’m prepared to offer you a lot of money.”
Whoever had come up with this little gag had gone too far. His worry about how he was going to scrape up the money for his little brother’s tuition wasn’t funny. Nor was the implication that someone had been talking about him. He made his voice hard. “What makes you think I need money?”
With one graceful hand, she batted the question away. “Most people want more than they have.” Not taking her eyes off his, she said, “Would you sit down, please? Glowering at me really won’t help.”
Davy had started to settle into the green leather easy chair near the fireplace before he caught himself. Shit. He was too dirty to sit on the upholstery. He’d almost sat down just because she told him to. This lady had thrown him more completely than anything—even his mother’s unexpected death. He straightened slowly. “You’re not joking.”
Her full lips tightened. “I said I wasn’t.”
The lady wasn’t used to having her word doubted. He smiled—yeah, he liked knowing he’d discomposed her a little. If she could do it to him, he could do it to her. He didn’t like the feeling that he had been set up, or that this woman, Lon, and God knew who else—everyone but him—knew what was going down.
Still he didn’t need to be so heavy-handed. He knew his way around women, and when it came to the fair sex, he’d much rather make love than war. “Pardon me while I put on a shirt, and then let’s go out on the porch,” he suggested, “where I can sit without ruining anything.” And where, just in case this was a joke, hopefully there were no cameras.
On the porch, he indicated one of the rockers pulled up near the railing for her. Instead of taking the chair beside it, he settled a hip on the rail in front of her.
To make the point that he wasn’t going to be messed with, he was deliberately crowding her space, intimidating her, but he didn’t want to scare her to death, so he folded his hands loosely on his thighs. People relaxed better when they could see his hands had been taken out of play.
He weighted a smile with carefully calibrated sexiness. “Okay, you’ve gone to the trouble to find me here. Maybe you’d better begin at the beginning. But first,” he added a charmingly diffident chuckle, “I’m sorry, but… you mind telling me your name again?”
Twice. He’d come on to her twice, and he still didn’t know her name. It wasn’t flattering, but it was reassuring in a way. For her, their first meeting had been an aberration, and if she gave him the benefit of the doubt, maybe hooking up without so much as a preliminary drink was unusual for him, too.
Now all doubt was eliminated. She could dismiss the last of her reservations about the wisdom of her proposal. When it came to women, it was obviously out of sight, out of mind for him. She didn’t need to fear she would be raising false hopes or keeping him from finding the right woman—her reasons for eliminating Henry and the lawyer as candidates.
Obviously, he was one of those men for whom the woman in front of him was the right one. And she left no more lasting impression than a plane does on a radar screen once it moves out of range.
The way he perched on the rail, lazily swinging one leg, the long muscles of his thigh knotting and smoothing out under their covering of black hair, said he intended to dominate and trusted his charm was sufficient to let him get by with it.
This wasn’t going at all the way she had imagined it in her head. She’d planned a rational discussion in which she would explain what she needed and what she was offering. The nice man who had answered the door had been perfectly polite, but by the way he had smiled at her so kindly, she’d known he thought she was one in a long line of girls who ran after Davy. She doubted if his scars had changed a thing. Her pride had gotten up.
And then David had come in, and oh, my God—she’d seen him in full daylight. He may have been Davy when she knew him before, but he was David now.
His bare shoulders and chest were speckled with blue-green paint. His khaki shorts rode low on his hips, as if he’d lost weight.
His face was thinner, too. Before, the flair of his jaw had given his face weight and kept the perfection of his features from being pretty. Now, honed by God knew what sufferings seen, suffering endured, it had rock-like strength. Then he had recognized her, and joy had blazed across his face. In a face tanned by foreign suns, his teeth had flashed white, and his brown eyes, which should have seemed dark, were full of light.
Desperate to get things back on a track she understood, she’d said the first thing that came into her mind. And he’d laughed. Long. Uproariously.
Now he’d managed to arrange how they sat so she felt trapped. She hated to feel trapped. She hated to feel like her back was to the wall.
She stiffened her shoulders. Her back was to the wall or she wouldn’t be here, but she was tired of letting others make the moves while she adapted. If she was going to do this, she was going to do it her way.
“My name is JJ Caruthers.” She scooted her chair back and stood so forcefully the rocker threatened to tip. “Stop trying to tie me up with sexy charm. It won’t work any better than the tough-guy act you tried a minute ago. I’ve come here to make you a deal.”
He stood when she did. Now they were hardly a hand’s width apart. He smelled, not unpleasantly, of paint and drywall dust and working man. JJ’s stomach did a backflip. She knew his smell, and every cell in her body responded to the memory. She searched his face for the man she’d known before. The man she had thought she would be dealing with.
Before, with perfectly proportioned features and skin so smooth and fine-grained it had a light sheen, he’d looked plastic. Now, damaged, in that totally unfair advantage men had over women, he was actually better looking. The scar matured him. It revealed him as the kind of man who would walk into the kind of danger that left scars like that.
He fingered the red line, and she knew she’d looked at it too long. She felt herself coloring. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare, but it does change you. Now, I do have a proposal for you, and I think it would be worth your while to listen. So can we both sit down” —she eyed the rockers significantly—“and get to business?”
Davy could not believe what he was hearing. “Are you telling me your grandfather is making you get married—and you’re letting him get away with it? This is twenty-first-century America, woman! Forced marriage isn’t legal. Fight him.”
“Fight him!” JJ slapped her forehead. “What’s the matter with me? Why didn’t I think of that?” JJ rolle
d her eyes and huffed a pained-sounding chuckle. “Do you think I haven’t spent the last year looking for a way out? There isn’t one.”
“Okay, okay. You did think of fighting him. But he’s got to be crazy.”
“His lawyer solemnly swears that if I challenge Lucas’s competence, he’ll call the whole town to testify that Lucas is as wily as ever. I won’t win, but a trial will provide grist for Wilmington’s gossip mill for a couple of years. I’ll destroy my reputation, his reputation, and the family business’s reputation. I can’t win, but I can lose everything.”
So this was all about holding onto an easy life and not airing dirty laundry. “Lose everything, huh? What’s he going to do? Cut you out of his will? What’s the matter, little rich girl? Would you have to go to work?”
JJ gave him a reproving look. “I’ll overlook your nasty tone. I didn’t explain myself very well. The car business has been hit hard the last year or two. When carmakers fail, there’s a ripple effect throughout the whole economy. Dealerships go belly-up, too.” Her words were mild, but her eyes blazed with green fires.
“I’ve kept Caruthers strong, and because of the business, one hundred families have paid their mortgages. They still have homes. They’ve gotten the medical care they needed when they needed it, because they still have insurance. They’re not afraid of the future. They still have pensions. Their kids are still in college. Christmas is good at their houses.
“And that’s just the start of the prosperity and peace of mind Caruthers generates. It doesn’t include the Little League teams, the United Way campaigns, the civic improvement projects it spearheads.”
“But still, you’d get married? To save a business?”
“Throughout the ages, women have married for reasons that have more to do with protecting property and providing for those who depend on them than with love. For me, this business and the people who are part of it are inseparable from my family. It is the soil my roots are set down deep into. Yes. I will do what it takes.”
Her green eyes lit with passion; her voice throbbed with fervor. That cool exterior hid passionate depths. He could see her like a latter-day Joan of Arc, mounted on a black horse, dressed in chain mail, fearlessly moving into holy battle.
“One more question. You’re a beautiful woman. Are all the men in Wilmington blind or something? With your looks and money, I bet men would line up around the block if you put the word out.”
“It’s possible,” she acknowledged.
“Then, why me?”
“I’ve already tried putting the word out—as much as I’m willing to. Strange as it might seem,” she quirked an ironic eyebrow, “I don’t really want to be wooed for either my looks or my money. I’m not an ornament for a man’s ego, and I don’t want someone kissing up to me so he can move up a few price points on the loafers he buys. I prefer a straightforward business arrangement. What you see on the table is all there is. No hidden agendas, no hidden expectations. As for why you—you’re a SEAL.”
“A lot of women who are marriage-minded think that’s a problem.”
Her full lips moved in the first genuinely pleased smile he’d seen. She leaned forward eagerly. “No, it’s perfect! I don’t know why I didn’t think of this solution a year ago.”
“Then clue me in, how ’bout it, because I don’t see the connection.”
“It’s obvious the business won’t allow me to live anywhere but Wilmington. I understand you’re out of the country most of the time, but even when you’re here, there are no SEAL bases in North Carolina. We won’t have to live together except in the most nominal sense. I can be married to you and not need to see you more than a couple of times a year.”
That killed any hope that she was harboring a secret yearning for him. “Damn. That’s cold.”
She looked down and blushed—which was interesting. “I didn’t mean to sound indifferent to your welfare. Let me put it this way. You would also be free to live as you please. Get married one day, return to your old life the next. I don’t expect you to be faithful—although I would appreciate discretion.”
“What’s the catch?”
“You’ll have to sign a prenuptial agreement. Whatever payment we agree on, that’s it. I don’t intend to support you the rest of your life.” She pulled a paper from her briefcase. “I have it here if you’d like to read it.”
He waved it aside. He could read it, sure, but he’d have to go over it several times to comprehend it. Better to do that when he was alone.
She knew when to be silent; he’d give her that. In fact, he’d bet she was a hell of a businesswoman. She waited for his decision, her perfect features composed, a tiny smile at the corners of her mouth. Her green gaze was steady but just a touch weary, he thought.
The strange, nagging feeling that had rolled around the edge of his consciousness like a basketball circling and circling the rim finally dropped in. Her eyes were the same color as the little girl’s in Afghanistan! It hadn’t made sense that he would feel so moved by a woman he had barely met—a woman obviously able to look after herself. But if she reminded him of the child, that explained it. The death of a patient had rarely left him feeling so helpless or inadequate, or made him wish more wholeheartedly that he could have done more. It felt unbelievably good to have solved at least one mystery in a brain that half the time seemed to belong to someone else.
“You know, your eyes are the same color green as a little girl’s in Afghanistan.” He touched his cheek. “I don’t remember getting this. Seeing her is the last thing I remember before coming to in a hospital in Germany.”
“You don’t look like that’s a happy memory.”
“She died. In childbirth. Fourteen years old. Forced into marriage with a man in his forties. So many things could have saved her. If she hadn’t been forced into marriage. If her husband had at least waited to get her pregnant. If someone had recognized that a pregnancy in a girl that young is high-risk. If a competent midwife had been available. If it hadn’t been forbidden to let a man, not her husband, look at her—even to save her life.”
“You,” she whispered, looking at him with unflinching kindness. “You were the ‘man.’”
He nodded and swallowed, unable to speak.
She averted her eyes, a courtesy he appreciated. Since his injury, emotions sometimes caught him unaware, spilling over before he knew they were so close to the surface.
Even when he had control again, she continued to look into the distance.
She chewed her lip, scraping at it slowly and thoughtfully with her upper teeth. It didn’t look like a nervous habit—more something she did when she was thinking deeply. Mostly she seemed to have the strength, poise, and power of an older woman. It turned him on, big time. This gesture though, this made her look young, earnest, and vulnerable. It went straight to his softest soft spot.
After a while she said, “I understand. My marriage problems must seem picayune compared to that. I’m not a victim of oppression. Legally, I can’t be forced. Because I didn’t like the choices I saw, I refused to acknowledge that I was making a choice. But I am. The one that seems to be in the best interests of the most people.”
There was a quiet dignity about the way she spoke, neither arguing nor pleading her case. He liked it. In fact, he liked her. He liked the passion with which she embraced responsibility for those in her care. He liked her ability to stay focused on her goals even when he goaded her. He liked that she didn’t candy-coat. He was aware of her allure, but she didn’t use it to get her way. They were from different worlds, and yet it was surprising how well he understood what mattered to her.
No, she wasn’t being forced. And when all was said and done, she wasn’t proposing marriage. She was making a deal. It was time to get down to terms.
“How much money are we talking about?”
Chapter 22
“HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK A KITCHEN RENOVATION LIKE this costs?”
Lon ran a practiced eye over the room, figu
ring costs on the glowing, hand-rubbed cherry cabinets, the state-of-the-art appliances, the green granite countertops. As a sideline, Lon flipped houses. In the booming housing market in San Diego, he’d made some serious money. “Sixty, seventy thou.”
Davy whistled silently.
“It’s a good investment. In this location, they’ll get back every penny.”
“I thought Pickett’s mother gave them the renovation as an enticement to keep the house, not sell it.”
Lon’s smile held a touch of cynicism. “She said it was a wedding present, but, yeah, that probably was her real agenda. She wants to give them a reason to always come back here, no matter where Jax is stationed. I’ve gathered Mama Sessoms likes to hold on to her kids.”
Davy wondered if his mother had wanted to hold on to her kids—not him—his half-brothers and sister. Somehow he always thought of them as her children. She would have moved heaven and earth to get anything they needed—he knew that. Which circled his thoughts back to how he was going to provide for them. “Is it going to take a kitchen re-do to get my mother’s house to sell?”
“Kitchens and baths sell houses, no doubt about that, but even if it does sell, you won’t realize the kind of money you need.” Lon had helped him with settling his mother’s estate. He knew how things had been left. “Want something to drink?” Lon asked, going to the refrigerator.
“I need to finish painting the bathroom.”
“Done.”
“You finished it?”
“Finished, brushes washed, everything.”
“Thanks, bro.”
Lon grabbed two cans of Pepsi from the refrigerator and set one in front of Davy. He pulled a stool opposite Davy and perched on it, gingerly pulling his pants leg away from the groin. After a day doing the same work Davy had, Lon’s cargo shorts were pristine. Davy didn’t know how he did it.
“How’s the leg?” An injury at the top of the thigh, requiring stitches, was the reason Lon was here, not diving with the rest of the guys.
Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle Page 71