Her feelings for him, she finally realized, were permanent. She would have to go back to her life eventually. In the meantime, she was going to use one piece of what she had learned this morning. She would live to the fullest today.
Chapter 41
ON WEDNESDAY, JJ LEFT CARUTHERS AT NOON TO GO home to the Topsail cottage.
Lauren had finally called, full of apologies for having missed JJ’s message. She readily agreed JJ could have a dog in the cottage, so JJ stopped by her grandfather’s house to pick up Brinkley.
With her awareness that life was fleeting, and that no matter how hard she tried it could not be held onto, she kissed her grandfather good-bye. She still didn’t like his methods he had used to make her see that Caruthers wasn’t the whole of existence, but she couldn’t argue with the results, temporary though she knew they were.
He kissed her in return. He said something he’d never said before. “Your grandmother would have been so proud of you. I’m so proud of you.”
Once at the cottage, David walked Brinkley prior to settling him down, while JJ enjoyed the warmth of the sunny deck. The calendar had turned. People were beginning to say, “Christmas is just around the corner,” but the deck of the cottage, facing south, captured all the heat of the sun. JJ slipped off her sweater.
She turned to smile when she heard David come through the sliders.
“Is Brinkley okay? You don’t think walking him on the beach hurt him?”
“He’s fine. I’ve given him his morphine, but I’m spacing doses further apart. I think in a couple of days, he’ll be able to do without it.”
In a couple of days, David would be gone. Her mind jumped to the future. But she would not be sad about what hadn’t happened yet. She was absorbing a different message from the one she had learned at her parents’ death. Everything could change in an instant. She had learned to be afraid of the future and to hold on with both hands to the most permanent thing she could find.
It was still true that everything could be lost in an instant. But that particular truth could also set one free.
She held out her arm, inviting him to come and stand beside her at the deck rail.
He carried her purple pashmina shawl, which he draped over her shoulders.
“I’m not sure I need this,” she told him, touched at his care. “It’s amazing how much the sun heats this deck even on the coldest days. I’ll bet it’s seventy degrees.”
“You might need it.” He stood behind her and pulled her back into contact with his front. “Are you warm enough?”
“Um-hmm.”
He pulled her blouse from the waistband of her skirt. He ran his hands under her shirt and holding her against him, cupped her breasts.
“I want you,” he said in that voice she had no defense against. “Here. Now.”
“David, we can’t. It’s broad daylight.”
“How far away is the pier?”
“It’s almost exactly a mile.”
“Do you see anyone on the beach between here and there?”
“No. But—”
He turned her in the other direction. “How about that pier?”
“More like three miles, I think.”
“And…?”
Despite her rising excitement, she tried to force some steel into her voice, “I don’t see anyone in that direction either. But that doesn’t mean—” Her protest lacked a certain amount of conviction. He had only to touch her, sometimes not even that, for her body to begin to ready itself for him.
“Cottages on both sides are empty. We can’t get much more alone than we are right this minute.” He loosened a couple of buttons of her blouse. She understood the purpose of the shawl. It preserved her modesty and covered the action of his hands.
“What if we never get this opportunity again?” He whispered against her neck. “You’re getting wet, right now, aren’t you? Just thinking about it.”
She was. Her heart was pounding. She pressed her bottom into closer contact with him. Against her buttocks, she could feel his hardness through her skirt, through his jeans, calling for entry.
“Brace your hands on the rail,” he urged. “That’s right. Lean over. Move your feet apart.”
Unhurriedly, as if the action were accidental, unconsidered, he drew up the back of her skirt. An errant breeze evading the barricade of the house cooled the backs of her thighs. She understood the purpose of the shawl now. If anyone were looking up from the beach—which she was glad there wasn’t because there was still time to refuse, and she didn’t want to—all they would see would be the wide shawl draped from her shoulders to the deck.
He worked the silk of her panties over her high, round butt. They drifted down her legs to make a puddle of red lace around her ankles and the yellow stilettos she wore. She’d worn these shoes the day she had announced she wanted to marry him. He did appreciate this woman’s sense of style. “Step out of them.”
When she had, he gently folded up the back of the skirt to make the fine wool frame the treasure he sought. “Widen your stance a little more, Jane.”
“You can see…”
“Seeing is part of it. You know that. Do you want me to tell you how pretty this is? Blushing for me? Glistening because you’re turned on.”
He ran his hands under her blouse. Unhooked her bra. She grabbed for her front with one hand. “No, keep both your hands on the rail.” He leaned over her. He pushed the cups up, freed her breasts to drop their full weight into his hands. Plucked the nipples into hard peaks and then rolled them between thumb and forefinger. “Wouldn’t you like to feel me in you while I do this?” He smiled at the inarticulate gasping reply. “I can’t hear you. What did you say?”
“I said yes.”
“Good.”
He gingerly lowered the zipper of jeans that by now were far too tight. He had trained himself to put on protection one-handed. He was never more glad. It allowed him to keep one hand playing over her. The sight of his own hand touching her swollen folds, the slick dew covering his fingers, was almost enough to make him come.
David was a man who loved sex. If he numbered his fantasies, this would make the all-time top ten. Again that crazy déjà vu feeling, like an earthquake deep in the bedrock of his being shaking him awake. The feelings seemed to get more far-fetched and yet more real all the time. Impossible though it was, he knew the fantasy hadn’t been about some nameless, faceless woman. It was JJ in the sun, and he had fantasized the right to have her in the daylight and open air.
Carefully he spread her with one hand and positioned himself with the other. He grasped her hips to stabilize her. Slowly, relishing every centimeter as her tight, hot velvet took him, he made fantasy real.
JJ dropped her head, her neck no longer able to support its weight. Her whole awareness was on the place where they were joined: the sense of fullness, of heat, of pressure. She knew what she was: a woman completely yielded to a man’s possession. Out of control.
She not only let it happen, she gloried in it, and if she was honest, gloried in the edginess of being in the sun and open air, the risk of being seen. Caught.
Caught in what? Letting her husband make love to her? Daring, yes. Illicit, no, enjoying sanctioned sex.
Each thrust moved through her whole body.
“You’re coming, Jane.” Sometime in the last week, Jane had become his very private sex word, a name he only used when they made love.
God, she was. The walls of her passage squeezed with every withdrawing stroke. The crests of water made of light rose higher. She waited for the wave to break, to crash over her head, and still it rose higher. The waiting was unbearable, the intensity unbearable, the knowledge that when it came it would take everything in its path, unbearable.
“That’s so good,” he praised.
“Harder,” she said, determined to claim the blessing she had been given.
He covered her, his hands on her breasts as promised. His breath was a harsh rasp in her ear. She was
encompassed, inundated, the tsunami finally meeting its promise of destroying everything. It took her, and she gave herself to the taking.
Her legs threatened to buckle. He was heavy. Still he took. Still she took. Of this moment she took all there was. His fingers dug into her hips. He plunged wildly. Into the sunlight he hurled a triumphant shout.
Hardly more able to stand than she, he circled her waist as her trembling legs gave way. She gulped great shuddering breaths. She was so limp he feared this time he had gone too far. But he knew his Jane. Was attuned to her, body and spirit, as he had been to no one before. He pushed her skirt down. He prayed a wordless prayer. And then his legs refused to hold them anymore. He heard the sound he had been waiting for. Her laughter.
He lowered them to the deck, and there they sat with their backs to the railing, legs splayed out in front of them, howling with laughter.
The sun slid further down the afternoon. The ocean whispered of eternity. A line of pelicans glided overhead riding the thermals created by the cottage roofs. They honked their rusty-hinge honks, unfazed by the doings of humans.
Brinkley woke and wandered to the sliders to look for them, puzzled that they were out and he was in.
“Admit it,” JJ demanded. “Doesn’t he look more intelligent now that his name is Brinkley?
On Thursday, she had a meeting with the man from the bank that handled their floor plan. When she was done, she told her manager she would be gone for the rest of the day. She and David walked Brinkley. They ate scallops. During the afternoon, the sky and ocean turned dark, gunmetal gray. Rain turned the boards of the deck dark.
As day turned to night, there was less and less to say, because there was more and more that couldn’t be said. They made slow, careful love and fell asleep early wrapped in each other’s arms.
On Friday, it was still raining when they got up. They ate the pancakes David fixed. They sat at the counter in the kitchen.
JJ cut her pancakes into smaller and smaller bites. It didn’t help. They still felt like they lodged against the tight place in her throat with every attempt to swallow.
“When is Brinkley supposed to get his stitches out?” David asked.
“Tuesday.”
“Tuesday?”
“That’s what the vet said.”
David looked confused, then whatever question he had, he let go. “Will you be able to manage him by yourself? Maybe you’d better call Ham.”
“I won’t be keeping him. The rescue organization called. The woman who’s been out of town will be back Sunday. She’ll pick him up sometime Monday.”
“You’re going to let him go? Grady gave him to you.”
“I trust them. They have a no-kill policy. They’ll find him a good home.”
“He has a good home. With you.”
“No.” She couldn’t explain why she couldn’t hang on to Brinkley. Couldn’t make him into the sea anchor of her life to keep her from drifting. She was moving under her own power now.
She cut a piece of pancake into a smaller bit. “You have your last post-surgery appointment today?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“Why would I?”
His eyes, especially the left, had that tight look it got when he was in pain. She had learned not to mention it, as she had learned not to notice his occasional lapses. “I just don’t think you should go alone. What if it’s bad news?”
“I’ll deal.”
That closed that subject.
He petted Brinkley and told him to be a good boy. Short, prickly hair was beginning to come in around the dog’s sutures. David ran gentle fingers along it.
“This has been good,” David told her as she walked him down the cottage steps to his car. “I have a lot to thank you for. Knowing you’ve got my back with Riley—it means as soon as I’m operational, I can get my life back.”
Stay, her heart said.
He didn’t want her to say he wasn’t ready to return to duty, and she didn’t have the right. He had lived up to his part of their bargain and more. Caruthers was safe, and, because of him, she no longer needed to cling to it. She had found a freedom to move on—with Caruthers, and past it. Now she had to set him free to live the life he wanted. To regain the life he felt he’d lost. She wasn’t part of that.
She kissed him carefully. The wrong touch could be agonizing when whatever was causing his pain started up.
He kissed her in return, already seeing a world she could only dimly imagine.
Stay, her heart said. Let me protect you and keep you safe.
He climbed in his car and drove away.
Chapter 42
CMDR. KOEHLER TURNED DAVID’S HEAD FROM ONE SIDE to the other. He had him smile, frown, make chewing motions, purse his lips.
“Pretty good,” he pronounced. “Looks like you have full use of the masseter—that’s the muscle that flexes when you clinch your teeth—but you’re a corpsman—you know that. Purse your lips again. Still not perfectly symmetrical, but it looks like you compensate well enough to keep your spit in. And it may continue to improve.
“Cosmetically, the result is good.” He consulted the chart. “The other reason we revisioned was we thought a portion of the trigeminal nerve might have been entrapped by scar tissue and be causing the neuralgia you’ve been experiencing.” He pressed all along the trigeminal nerve pathway. “How’s the pain now?”
“Better. None at all the last week. Steadily diminishing before that.”
Koehler leaned against a cabinet. His dark, intelligent eyes narrowed. “Would you tell me?”
“Would I tell you what, sir?”
“Would you admit if the pain weren’t improved? I know how you SEALs are. You deny pain anytime you think it will keep you from operating.”
There wasn’t much David could say to that. It was the truth. To become a SEAL, a man had to be willing to push past pain, past exhaustion, past being cold to the bone. He had to want to be a SEAL more.
“So what do you really think?” Koehler asked. “Do you think you’re ready to operate?”
David thought he’d been a little too positive earlier, so he tried for judicious now. “I’ve kept up my weight training, but it’ll take a while to build up stamina. Otherwise, I’m good.”
“How about the mild TBI? Your records say the symptoms resolved by eight weeks post-injury, but blast TBI symptoms can have delayed onset.”
“Want me to recite the months of the year backwards?” David grinned, naming a common TBI screening task.
Koehler folded his lips in a grimace. He shook his head. “My gut tells me you’re not fit for duty.” He studied David’s chart again. “No pain at all for the last week, you say? A week isn’t very long. If you are getting better I don’t want you to do anything that could set you back. Okay, I can put you on LIMDU—”
Broken legs, arms, ribs, wounds put SEALs on limited duty all the time. Other SEALs understood how much the man wanted to operate and would help as much as they could.
But if he accepted limited duty, he had to accept that he couldn’t operate in his present condition.
“Tell you what. Instead of LIMDU, just note you want to see me again in a few weeks. With two back-to-back deployments, I’ve got leave saved up. How about I take that? I’ll use it to get back in training. When you see me next, I’ll be a hundred percent.”
Koehler paused in the notes he was making. “What are you covering up?”
“Not a thing.” David added his best gleam-in-the-eye smile. “I’m a newly married man. Spending time with my new wife will be all the therapy I need.”
Chapter 43
JJ WAS LATER THAN SHE SHOULD BE WHEN SHE FINALLY got to Caruthers. After David left, she had sat on the sofa in the great room, strangely unable to move, not thinking of anything, watching the ragged gray clouds move over the gunmetal gray ocean. Without the sun coming in the sliders, she grew cold, and still she didn’t move until Brinkley got up
and nudged her hand, whining.
At Caruthers, cars ranged row on row through the lot, reflecting gray light from a dull gray sky, and not a customer was in sight. Rainy days were not good for the car business.
“You brought the pooch,” Kelly called from her position at the concierge desk.
“I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him by himself all day. Ham will be by to pick him up in a little while. Send him up to my office, will you?”
“Sure.”
“Kelly, I noticed Red’s car isn’t here. Have you heard from him?”
“Uh, no.”
The short answer wasn’t like the normally chatty Kelly.
“Isn’t he on today’s rotation?”
“I don’t know.”
Another short answer. JJ became aware that through out the showroom, people had paused in their work.
“Is there anything I need to know about?” Although her assistant Katherine was tireless and efficient, Kelly often had a better reading on what was happening over all.
“I just had two phone calls in a row, that’s all. They wanted to know what would happen to their warranty if Caruthers was sold.”
A warning chill ran down JJ’s spine. “What on earth made them ask that?”
“There’s a rumor going around. A couple of people have told me they’ve heard it and asked me if it was true.”
If they only knew what she’d gone through to keep the dealership secure. “You told them not to worry, didn’t you? Caruthers isn’t being sold.”
Kelly’s eyes didn’t quite meet JJ’s. “I wasn’t sure.”
Her own people were doubtful about Caruthers’ sta bility? “Well, it isn’t. And you can tell anyone else who asks you heard it straight from me.”
JJ didn’t need to be a mind reader to guess the meaning of the compliant smile that passed across Kelly’s face. She didn’t believe her boss. She was thinking, if the rumor was true, but the sale not ready to be announced yet, that’s exactly what JJ would say.
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