“Still a little sore.”
“Are you really going to baby-sit Jax’s mother-in-law while you’re on limited duty?” Davy asked, aware he was stalling. “That woman is a drunk.”
“Ex-mother-in-law,” Lon corrected. He wasn’t going to discuss the arrangement he’d made with Jax to supervise Lauren’s visits with her grandson. “Lauren’s trying to turn her life around. That’s not easy. I guess you’re thinking about when we hustled her, drunk, out of the wedding reception when Jax and Pickett got married?”
“Umm-mmm.” Davy’s murmur might have been an affirmative, might have been an invitation to Lon to keep talking. It was a sound he’d gotten good at in the last several months. If he could keep people talking, sometimes he could figure out what they were talking about without revealing that he had lost track of the conversation. The silence between them lengthened. Davy rolled the cold red, white, and blue can between his hands. Lon was waiting for him to start.
“So what are you going to do?” Lon asked after he’d heard the whole story.
“I don’t know. A chance to earn the money I need by getting married—it still feels like a practical joke—one that God is playing on me.”
“Listen, losing your mom so soon after nearly dying yourself is bound to make you examine your life. But you need to chill. You’re taking on too much. Eleanor and Harris are adults—help them if you can, but let them figure out how to stay in school.”
“That’s not the way Mom would see it. Anyway, Riley’s just fourteen. My mom’s will names me guardian. You know what that school is costing.”
“You can get help. The Navy has a lot of support for sailors with special-needs kids.”
“It’s still better for him if he stays in his school. Riley doesn’t handle change well.”
“So what do you want?” Lon asked after a while.
“I just want my life back. I feel like the person I’d been all my life died in Afghanistan, and now I’m walking around as someone I don’t recognize. I want out of this limbo I’ve floated in ever since I was shipped back. I want to operate again. When I’m a SEAL, I know who I am. I know where I belong. Even the bad days are good. Now, I wake up every day hoping today’s the day I’m finally going to feel like myself again.”
He couldn’t explain what he had to do. He didn’t try. His mind squirrel-caged as he tried to find his way through all the variables. It settled on the one moment of—he sought a word for that incandescent, miraculous peace he’d felt when he’d walked into the living room and there she sat.
Joy.
And then she had said, “I want to marry you.” It had felt like a joke, but now he thought it was a sign.
Whenever he had thought about getting married, it had seemed like a vague possibility in some unimaginable future. He wasn’t against it; he just hadn’t been able to see it. He’d always put off the thought for when he’d had enough of operating. Until then, being faithful through the inevitable separations would be too much of a hardship. Operate single, and have all the sex he wanted, or operate married, knowing he got none until he got home. It was a no-brainer.
Marriage was a sacrament. He’d feel dirty turning it into a commodity. But a marriage on paper only? Maybe it was the answer to what had looked like a hopeless problem. He had told himself it was time to man up. To take care of his family—if he made sure no money came to him—he could go through with it.
“I don’t want to do it on her terms,” he told Lon. “Will you help me come up with a counteroffer?”
Chapter 23
“THANKS FOR THE RIDE,” DAVID CALLED TO LON. HE waited until Lon drove off to knock on the paneled redwood door of JJ’s beach cottage. Lon hadn’t been crazy about what David was proposing to do. David didn’t like it either, but it solved his problems. With a clear conscience, knowing his brothers and sister were taken care of, as soon as he was healed up, he could have his life back.
The door opened. A wet tendril of dark hair hung over the one green eye he could see peeking through at him. Through the crack of the door, he could smell her, warm and moist from her bath. Girly soap and shampoo and clean woman essence—it went to his head and weakened him with longing. “Aren’t you ready?”
“It’s only four-thirty. I wasn’t expecting you until five-thirty. I was in the shower.”
Shit. Had he gotten the time mixed up again? His problem wasn’t forgetting. He remembered, but when he got to appointments, he was wrong. He should have written it down—not that even that always helped, because sometimes he wrote it down wrong. Didn’t matter. With Lon gone, he couldn’t offer to go away and come back. A little surprise might be to his advantage. He pushed against the door. “That’s okay. I’ll wait.”
She let go of the door in favor of clutching together the lapels of the white terry robe she wore. Which was a damn shame. The glimpse of leg he’d gotten was fine. He watched the action with a knowing and very appreciative smile.
She fell back a couple of steps, but she didn’t let him fluster her. “Come in,” she invited, ignoring the fact that he was already in. “Why don’t you have a seat while I put on some clothes?” She waved him toward a grouping of sofas and chairs near the huge windows that looked out on the ocean and took up one wall.
Trained in situation awareness, he took in the layout of the room, the position of every door and window, every structure that could conceivably hide a shooter. Moisture escaping from the bathroom intensified odors. The room was full of her personal smell. Through the open door to her bedroom, he could see the red leather jacket and green wool slacks she had been wearing earlier, now draped across the foot of the bed, the yellow heels on the floor beneath them.
Reconstructing the scene, he could imagine her stepping out of the heels, undressing, walking naked to the bathroom. Just for a second, he could see how her round, high breasts tipped with large, velvety-brown areolas swung as she bent over. He inhaled reflexively as his whole body tightened. Damn. There went that feeling that he knew her again. His imagination had never been that good before. The head doctors talked about a lowering of inhibition thresholds as a result of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, but he’d thought they meant acting more emotional.
Focus. This was no time to start thinking with his dick. People who paid you thought they owned you. He had to make sure JJ knew she wasn’t going to get a lapdog. To cover his reaction, he gave her a deliberately suggestive chuckle. “Don’t get dressed on my account.”
Her green eyes narrowed, and the corners of her lips tightened. “Trust me, I’m not.”
JJ toddled toward her bedroom with as much barefoot dignity as she could achieve while holding fistfuls of terry robe together at the waist and top of her thighs. She hadn’t been able to find the sash. Comfortable naked, she’d rarely used the robe since she’d moved to the cottage. Drat the man for destroying her carefully orchestrated scenario.
She’d had a dress all picked out. One that said she was fully aware of her power and able to be in charge. She had intended to take him to one of the gourmet restaurants on the sound side of the island for a nice dinner over which they could come to terms.
Now she had to regroup. She took a deep breath and focused on what she wanted, not what wasn’t working. She had achieved part of her goal. He was here. He hadn’t said no.
As if delighted with the change in plan, she put a smile in her voice and called over her shoulder as she gained the dressing alcove, “I put some soft drinks in the refrigerator, or you can pour yourself something at the bar. I’ll be out in a minute.”
In the bathroom, she abandoned her plan to blow-dry her hair straight and then iron it into silky smoothness. Her thick hair would take too long to dry completely. Instead, she dried the ends enough to prevent them from clinging wet and cold to the back of her neck and shoulders, then combed her hair back and clipped it at the nape.
She did take the time to slick on some lip gloss and a little mascara. In the vanity mirror, she checked the blac
k wide-leg jeans and baby-doll top she’d grabbed on the way into the bathroom. It wasn’t what she had intended to wear for this meeting, but he didn’t need to know that. The jeans showed off her most excellent butt, one payoff of her ballroom-dancing hobby.
When she came out of the bathroom, she grabbed the initiative. “Can I take your early arrival to mean you’re eager to accept my offer?” she asked over her shoulder as she slipped on lollipop-red Manolos.
“Not exactly.”
JJ whirled at the sound of his voice right behind her.
He leaned against the opening of the dressing alcove, a can of Coke in one hand. He gave her a slow, frankly approving appraisal.
He was trying to rattle her to gain an advantage. She told her heart to slow down and her body to ignore his proximity. As if she’d expected him to turn down her first offer, she gave him a knowing smile. “And yet, you are here,” she told him. “Sounds like we need to talk. I think I’ll have some wine.”
She led the way into the great room. A glass of white wine already stood on the placemat at one end of the dining table. Piled with papers, the other end of the table had slowly turned into JJ’s home office.
He grinned. “I already poured your wine.”
“How did you know I’d want it?”
“Open bottle in the fridge. Wine glasses in the dishwasher. You told me you had bought soft drinks, which made me think you didn’t always keep them on hand.”
“Oh. Thanks. Can I get you something else?”
He lifted the Coke can. “This is fine.” He pulled the prenuptial agreement from a back pocket and tossed it on the table before seating himself. “You can tear this up. I’m not signing it.”
The trick to staying in control of a negotiation was to remain flexible. JJ ignored the icy weight in her stomach and smiled ruefully. “Too bad. Out of curiosity—how large would the offer need to be to be attractive?”
He laced his fingers around the Coke can as if he needed to anchor them. “Here’s the deal. I don’t want your money, and I don’t need it,” he stated in a flat, throaty growl. “I won’t take a cent from you. Not now, not ever. No perks, no expensive presents.”
He was turning her down. The tsunami loomed closer. JJ fought dry-mouthed panic to say smoothly, “But you want something or you wouldn’t be here.”
Her phone, where she had left it on the granite countertop, made a loud buzzing noise. She had set her phone to vibrate since she didn’t want any distractions. It was probably Blount again. She swallowed her frustration.
“You want to get that?”
“Let me see what it is, then I’ll turn it off.”
But the text message read GF 911.
She had bought Ham a cell and taught him to text, but he had neither the patience nor the comfort with technology to learn anything fancy. They had settled on a few simple codes. GF 911 meant an emergency concerning her grandfather.
“I’m sorry. I have to take this,” she told Davy as she punched in Ham’s number. “What is it?” she asked when he answered on the first ring.
“Lucas and me, we’re at the hospital. He had some shortness of breath.”
“Is he okay?”
“I think he is. The doctor’s in with him now.”
Davy was listening to her half of the conversation with frank interest. If only she could have finished negotiations with him before this call. If they broke off now, the deal was going to go cold. But neither her grandfather nor Ham dealt well with modern medicine. Ham shut down and became robotic. Lucas combated helplessness by giving orders. “Is Esperanza with you?” she asked Ham.
“She’s got the flu. Lucas sent her home.”
“So he was home alone and called you? He should have called 911. No, forget I said that. At least he had the sense to call you. He didn’t attempt to drive himself.” She would deal with the guilt that he hadn’t called her, later.
She came to what had always been a foregone conclusion. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, but I’m on Topsail. It will be thirty minutes—at the very least.”
“Trouble?” Davy asked when she ended the call.
“My grandfather. He’s in the ER with shortness of breath. I guess you and I will to have to talk later. Maybe I can—”
“How ’bout if I ride with you? Thirty minutes, you said. That should be plenty of time.”
“You know what emergency rooms are like. I have no idea how long I will be.”
“No problem.”
“But what if you miss your ride? Don’t you have to be back at the base by a certain time? I guess Ham could drive you back here, or I could ask—”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not a problem. I can get myself where I need to be.”
Fear for her grandfather, relief that this window of opportunity with David wasn’t lost, hope that her life could get back on track again produced a roller coaster of emotions. “Okay. Okay! If worse comes to worst, there’s always a plane. I’ll call my assistant and have her check flights to—Norfolk? Is that the best airport?”
He closed his fingers over hers and gently forced her to close her phone. “I said I’ll take care of it. I can look after myself. Do you always make yourself responsible for everyone?”
The warmth of his fingers spread up her arms. The man exuded reassurance. “I guess I do.” She thought about it a second and chuckled tiredly. “Actually, most of the time, I am responsible.”
“No. It’s my duty to get myself back to base. Mine alone. Now, do you have a raincoat or something? There’s weather coming in.”
The cloud ceiling had lowered, and an early dusk turned the pines beside the road black. At Hampstead, where 210 left U.S.17, the stoplights bounced and swayed in the gusts. The closer they got to Wilmington, the heavier the five o’clock traffic became.
Even though the cockpit of JJ’s red Lexus was roomier than many sports cars, with David in the passenger seat, it suddenly felt small. He wasn’t taller than average, but somehow there seemed to be an awful lot of him. Even separated by the gearshift, their shoulders almost touched. She was aware of his masculine scent and the warmth his body heat added to the small confines.
She hadn’t brought up the subject of marriage again. She usually faced things head on. She was the kind of person who liked to hear the bad news first. Though it might be cowardly, if there wasn’t a chance they could come to terms, she didn’t want to know—not right now.
Instead, David had asked her questions about her grandfather’s heart condition, and she’d wound up telling him her grandfather’s entire medical history. He was a good listener. JJ tapped the breaks when an SUV pulled out in front of them. The speed limit through here was 45, but she wasn’t doing even that. A fine mist covered the windshield. She switched on the wipers and headlights. She sighed.
“Are you okay?” he asked in his dark, smooth, comforting voice. He sounded like he really cared.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I am. For the past year, I’ve lived with my eyes on the future and one goal: find a man I could marry so I could save Caruthers. I didn’t hope… I didn’t despair… I didn’t anything. I just kept moving. In the last forty-eight hours, it’s all falling apart, and I can’t seem to put it together again. I can’t even find all the pieces.”
JJ waited for David to say something. The car filled with the hiss of tires on wet pavement. The swish-slap of the wipers.
“I’m so angry at him.” There. She’d finally said it.
“Your grandfather?”
“I don’t want to care that Lucas is sick, but I do. We had an argument earlier today. I’m afraid it caused a heart attack or something, and now he’s in the hospital and it’s my fault. And here I am, rushing to the hospital—rushing as much as I can in five o’clock traffic—which I wouldn’t be in, not like this, if I hadn’t moved to the beach to get away from him.”
“Why did you dump the idiot?”
“The idi—? Oh, Blount.” She sniggered. “Lost m
y mind?”
“Seriously. Why?”
Why. JJ had asked herself that over and over. David’s “why” wasn’t an accusation the way hers had been. It was a simple request for information. She searched for how to explain it. “Watching Emmie and What’s-his-name get married—”
“Do-Lord.”
“Anyone could see how in love they are, how right for each other. I’ve never been in love like that—have you?”
“Like that? No. Not yet.”
“And Jax and Pickett. The air between them sizzles.” “So, you were envious of them.”
“Maybe. Partly. I could have dealt with that. But then I almost kissed you. And I thought, ‘Where did my integrity go?’”
“Huh.”
JJ wouldn’t have thought one grunt could contain that much satisfaction. She stole a sideways glance. She’d already noted that the scarred side of his face was less moveable, but even so, she could see the way he held back a smile.
JJ laughed against her will. “Oh, wipe that smirk off your face!”
“One almost-kiss, and you ditch him? Come on, girl, a kiss that powerful is smirk-worthy.”
“It’s not, and that’s not the way it was.” She smacked him on the arm with the back of her hand. “It’s just that when I couldn’t make myself spend the night with him because I felt so guilty, he got pissy and acted like a jackass.
“I had to threaten to call 911 and say I was being kidnapped before he would stop the car to help a dog. A dog.” Her ire rose again at the memory of Blount’s cowardice. “Nobody was asking him to run into a burning building. A phone call was all it took. And I lost my temper.”
“I’ll bet that doesn’t happen much. How did it feel?”
“Better than most sex I ever had.”
“Huh.”
“Are you smirking again?” she asked dangerously.
“No, ma’am! Not me!”
“You are. I can feel you over there, laughing.”
Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle Page 72