SEALed Forever

by Mary Margret Daughtridge

  Though he smiled, he also shook his head and shrugged. He managed to make the movement of his broad shoulders innocent, mischievous—and sexy as hell.

  Bronwyn couldn’t suppress the tendency of her own lips to curl upward. “And I’m just supposed to believe you because you’re one of the good guys?”

  “I am.”

  She let go of her exasperation with his evasiveness. He wasn’t going to tell her anything he didn’t want her to know. There were too many questions floating around and no way to know if turning Julia over to the police would increase her danger. Sometimes the only way to make a diagnosis was to do nothing but wait and see if the patient got better or worse.

  Aware she was making herself into an obstacle in the path of a man who saw obstacles as challenges, she told him, “It’s obvious this child needs protection, but I don’t know from whom—you or someone else. If you do have a plan for what happens next, you’d better start modifying it. The only person I’m sure I can trust is myself. Until I know more, I’m not letting her out of my sight.”

  ***

  She was adorable. Gutsy. Having told him what was what, she bent her attention back to the baby. He liked the graceful curve of her neck accentuated by the deep red strands that had slipped from her ponytail. He didn’t know what to call hair that color. It wasn’t the rusty brown color usually called red. It was more like black with a red glow—like coals with fire smoldering deep within. If he touched it, would it be warm? He smiled inwardly at his fancy. Soon he would touch it. He would move the strands and kiss the tender white space behind her ear.

  Even in a grubby T-shirt and set against the kitchen’s shabbiness, she glowed the way paintings by the masters glowed. He could imagine just what it would feel like to sink into that glow.

  Sun Tzu, author of the millennia-old Art of War wrote, “Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” The baby had to be stashed somewhere. If Bronwyn would be happier keeping an eye on her, he could let her. If the baby could be here, so could he. He’d only tried to cover his tracks so that anyone looking for her would have to go through him.

  Best of all, he didn’t have to leave and figure out later how to get back in Bronwyn’s good graces.

  Bronwyn looked up and caught him watching her. “Why are you smiling?” She demanded suspiciously.

  “I’m not smiling.”

  “Yes, you are. Not your lips. Your eyes or something. Anyway, you shouldn’t be. I suspect I’ve ruined a lot of your plans.” She avoided a flailing baby hand that was going for her nose. “Uh-oh. Have I ‘stepped into your parlor’?”

  “Are you going to ignore the fact that I told you I’d like to kiss you?”

  “I think I should, don’t you?”

  “I’m not going to let you.” He went over to her and squatted on his heels before her, resting his hands on the curved wooden arms of the chair. Caging her. “I am going to kiss you.”

  He watched her face carefully. He was taking shameless advantage of his superior strength and her handicap of having a baby in her arms—and it didn’t bother him one bit.

  Bronwyn had managed him; she had confronted him; but she hadn’t once backed off. And even now, with him absolutely inside her space, she didn’t look alarmed. She looked… curious.

  He leaned forward, and still her eyes held his. Which was good. He caught the moment when her pupils flared and her gaze flicked to his mouth. Yes. She was waiting for him to kiss her.

  He’d intended a peck, just enough to put her on notice. If he had seen fear, he would have settled for her cheek. Seeing no resistance, he settled onto his knees. He knew what kneeling before her meant, even if she didn’t. Now he found her lips with his, intent upon learning her.

  Ignoring frantic hunger for this slow, sweet feeding, nothing touched but their lips. Time hung suspended. Their breath mingled, warm and moist. He stroked her lower lip with his tongue, and she opened, and then he was searching the silken recesses of her mouth.

  ***

  Arms full of baby and bottle, she could neither push him away nor move closer. Pressed against the chair back, she couldn’t even move her head. All she could do was let him kiss her, let him have complete control of the kiss—the timing, the pressure, the rhythms of it.

  His lips were soft, softer than they looked, and he touched them to hers in a way that wasn’t sexual at all but more like the kind of kiss that seals a bargain.

  But when he was done, he didn’t draw away. He stayed right there, lips hovering just above hers. If there had been any of civilization’s manufactured scents on him, cologne or aftershave, they were long gone. A dank, ditchwater smell rose from his clothes. Its earthiness made the warm masculine essence of his skin a little salty, musky, and dark, all the more primal. Moist puffs of his breath landed on her lips like a different kind of kiss.

  The deep secret reaches of her body went liquid; heat bloomed in her breasts and her inner thighs. The muscles of her neck went lax. The clinician’s corner of her mind recognized yielding, submission. How odd.

  Now he touched her with his lips again, a brushing slide that traced the contours of her mouth and made her inhale, and then his tongue was hot on her lower lip, hot, stroking velvet.

  The baby squirmed. A tiny fist tugged at her T-shirt. Bronwyn readjusted the angle of the bottle. And even so, her whole attention never left what he was doing.

  ***

  The dog pushed her shaggy head into the space between their bodies, batting them apart with her wet nose. Bronwyn’s body felt heavy, tight, over-full in some places, empty in others. She looked into Garth’s eyes. His eyes were deep, ink blue. The golden-oak skin of his high cheekbones gleamed. His lips glistened with moisture. Bronwyn had no idea how to read the intent expression on his face.

  “What is it, Mildred?” she asked the dog. “Are you jealous?”

  Mildred shook her head and snorted impatiently. She whined and butted Bronwyn again.

  “Then what do you want? Do you want to go out?”

  Mildred whined again.

  “Oh. My cell phone is ringing.” Bronwyn couldn’t believe it hadn’t even registered. “Would you…?”

  Garth rose from his knees in one smooth display of strength and grace.

  He disconnected the phone from the charger and carried it to Bronwyn. It was JJ.

  “I need to warn you,” Bronwyn told her friend after they had exchanged greetings. “We might not have but a minute. This phone’s battery isn’t holding a charge for some reason.”

  “Then what I called about will keep,” JJ responded instantly. “Tell me how the move is going.”

  “Weird, that’s how. Very, very strange. But listen, I’m really glad you called. I need to ask you—what kind of man is Garth Vale?”

  “Garth?” JJ didn’t attempt to hide her surprise. “David’s best man? That Garth? Why do you want to know?”

  Bronwyn was aware of Garth leaning against a counter and frankly listening to every word. “Please. I just need your opinion.”

  “I don’t really know him… Hey, hon, Bronwyn wants to know about Garth Vale.”

  “David’s there? I’m sorry, I didn’t know he was coming home. I wouldn’t have called you—” JJ’s time with her SEAL husband was rare and precious. “You didn’t have to return my call.”

  “He came in tonight. Let me let you talk to him.” Before Bronwyn could protest, she heard the phone being handed off.

  “Hey, Medicine Woman.” JJ’s husband’s voice was as dark, velvety, and melting as the best chocolate. Bronwyn hadn’t known him before he was wounded, but JJ said now that his scars had faded, he was even better-looking than before. It didn’t seem fair that he had such an scrumptious voice, too. Even so, David’s voice didn’t have the effect on her breathing that Garth’s did. “What’s this about Garth?” he asked.

  Bronwyn jerked hers
elf back to business. “I need to know if I can trust him.”

  David laughed. “Hell, no. He’s a SEAL. Don’t believe a word he says. No matter what he’s told you, he’s only interested in one thing.”

  David’s sunny insouciance always made Bronwyn laugh. She also felt herself blushing. “I didn’t mean that kind of trust.”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  “I mean, if a situation was serious…”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Not yet. I need to get my eyes wide open, or I might be. But it’s not my safety that’s at stake. It’s a baby’s.”

  “A baby’s.” David waited for her to elaborate. When she didn’t, he chided, “You’re not giving me much to work with.”

  “I can’t tell you more. It might make you and JJ accomplices.”

  “You’re committing a crime?”

  “Sort of.”

  “With Garth?”

  “Yes.”

  “And a baby’s safety is at stake. Is, or was, the baby on a plane?”

  “Yes. How did you—?”

  “Nevermind. He doesn’t drink to excess. He doesn’t gamble. He doesn’t hang out in low dives. He doesn’t even cuss much. He’s a straight arrow. He’s a solid officer, a better operator. He’ll never sell you out. When he takes men down range, they get the job done, and they all come back. I would trust him with my life. More important: I would trust him with JJ’s life.”

  “Give me the phone back,” JJ, in the distance, demanded. “What’s going on?” she asked when she had taken possession. “What kind of trouble are you in, and what does a baby have to do with it?”

  Bronwyn felt a twinge of unwilling sympathy for Garth. Explaining where a baby came from was hard if you couldn’t tell the whole story. “I don’t want to get you mixed up in it. With your grandfather sick, you have enough to deal with. Is he worse? Is that why David has come home?”

  JJ’s elderly grandfather had had a heart condition for years. Episodes of shortness of breath had increased in the past couple of months.

  “Granddaddy’s about the same. David’s home this time because he’s teaching a course in battlefield medicine at Lejeune.” Camp Lejeune was the marine base close to the beach house JJ rented on Topsail Island. All medics in the Marine Corps were, in fact, navy hospital corpsmen assigned to the marine battalions. Although stationed at Little Creek, Virginia, David took every temporary assignment to Lejeune that he could so that he and JJ could have more time together.

  “Now, don’t change the subject. And stop trying to protect me,” JJ ordered. “It doesn’t matter how busy I am, I always have time for you. You suddenly have a baby. All right. Whatever is going on, you’re doing the right thing. You don’t have to explain anything. All I want to know is how I can help.”

  Bronwyn warmed clear to her toes. Her friend’s reaction was quintessential, practical JJ, letting her know that she respected Bronwyn’s right to make her own choices, and regardless, JJ was always, always on her side.

  JJ’s faith in her was the affirmation Bronwyn needed to go with her gut and trust Garth. Her duty to protect the child superseded her duty to obey the letter of the law. Her unpreparedness suddenly struck her. She huffed a shaky laugh. “Jay, I don’t know what I need. I’ll be keeping her a couple of days, I guess. Maybe more. Babies need a lot of stuff. I don’t even have a place for her to sleep, much less an infant car seat, and—isn’t there something called a bassinet? I don’t even know what that is. Do you?”

  It was JJ’s turn to chuckle. “’Fraid not. But the car seat is something I can take care of. Let me give you a loaner. You don’t want to buy one if you’re keeping her only a couple of days.”

  “I hate to put you to that trouble.”

  “No trouble. I’ll have someone run it over in the morning.”

  “What do you mean, ‘run it over’? You’re in Wilmington.”

  “Honey, you’re used to believing ‘all the way across town’ is too far to go. Trust me, it won’t be long at all until you too will think nothing of driving fifty to a hundred miles just to go out to dinner.”

  “All right. Thanks. A car seat would be a big help.” Bronwyn quickly checked the phone’s battery. It seemed to be holding. “Now tell me your news.”

  “You know the big party to celebrate our wedding that we’re planning? David and I have set a date. We held off because we wanted both Garth and you to be here and we figured Garth’s schedule might be the hardest to work around—but we can’t find him. I can’t believe you asked about him.”

  Bronwyn glanced over at Garth who was leaning against the counter, his dark face inscrutable, making no secret of the fact that he was listening to every word. “Can’t find him?”

  “I suspect there’s more to it than David is saying—you know how many security issues go with being a SEAL—but that’s the bottom line. Nobody seems to have heard from him in a while, and no one knows where he’s living.”

  Though he moved not a muscle, she could almost feel Garth willing her to keep silent.

  But if his own friends weren’t in on what he was doing, how many more layers were there to this story? How many underwater currents that would pull the unsuspecting swimmer this way and that?

  If there was one thing she had learned it was that the more secrets one had, the more guarded one became; and the fewer people who were admitted to the center of one’s life, the lonelier one became. She had gone down that road with Troy, whose undercover work had forced her to watch every word she said about him.

  When there was no telling what stray comment could expose him to danger, it had been easier to say nothing. When everyone else talked about their plans for the weekend, she had kept her mouth shut. A lot of people she had worked with hadn’t known she and Troy were serious—she had talked about him so seldom.

  JJ had been her lifeline, a center point of clarity, the one person she didn’t need to watch what she said to. If there was a soul on the face of this earth she trusted, it was JJ. And if there was one person she refused to be separated from by keeping secrets, it was JJ.

  The baby, Julia, was her patient. Not telling JJ details about her was one thing. Garth wasn’t her patient. She wouldn’t keep silent when she had information JJ needed to know. Bronwyn met his ice-colored eyes and took a deep breath. “I know where he is.”

  Chapter 17

  The art of giving orders is not to rectify the minor blunders and not to be swayed by petty doubts.

  —Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  It was a good thing, Garth discovered, to like the woman he intended to marry. He had never doubted that he would, but he’d always assumed he’d get to know her before he had to make up his mind if he liked her or not. He hadn’t realized how much liking would help when she went and did exactly what he didn’t want her to.

  He hadn’t wanted anyone, particularly any old friends in the navy, to know he had come to Bronwyn with a baby in tow. It was too good a story not to repeat.

  She had revealed his location, but he had listened to Bronwyn’s conversation long enough to learn she skillfully stuck to the truth and yet didn’t link his presence to the baby in any way. That would have to be good enough. The trick was to stay focused on the objective and not get hung up on the details. Any plan that kept the baby safe and kept him close to Bronwyn was fine with him.

  Julia had slowed down on her bottle. He held out his arms. “Here, let me take her. Talk to your friend.”

  Julia squirmed and fussed and refused to nestle into the crook of his arm—the way he had carried her earlier. She felt firmer and stronger than she had before. He brought her to his shoulder and discovered she balanced herself upright very well. Anchoring herself with fistfuls of his shirt, she studied her surroundings, her wide, slate-blue eyes much clearer.

  “You want to have a look around? I agree.
”

  He glanced into darkened rooms on the ground floor as he took the hall to the stairs. He finally found the light switch beside the front door, which was closed and locked as he had left it. Bronwyn probably didn’t understand the old-fashioned mechanism. He’d show her how to operate it, but it would be better to replace it with something more secure.

  Even with the power on, the two working bulbs in the brass chandelier did little to dispel the gloom of the cavernous space. He’d get replacement bulbs when he went to the hardware store for the lock.

  None of the switches seemed to turn on a light at the top of the stairs.

  “Ga-agh?” Julia loosed her clutch on his shirt to fling an uncoordinated arm toward the dark landing above. Despite her lingering wooziness, she appeared to be focused intently.

  “You want to go up there?”

  The plump little body undulated like a stadium fan doing a wave.

  “All right, a quick look-see.”

  In a bathroom at the top of the stairs he found a working light. He left it on while he explored the upper floor. Like the downstairs, the rooms were sparsely furnished with old wardrobes and massive beds too heavy and too old-fashioned to be worth the trouble to move.

  In the bedroom that looked out at the front of the house, he found clothes in the closet and the bed partially made with green sheets. He flipped the switch by the door but nothing happened. He put it on his mental list of repairs. For now, from one of the other bedrooms, he retrieved a fat little lamp, its base made of knobby white glass. The bed was just what he was looking for. The curved mahogany headboard, almost as tall as he was, and the footboard that came above his waist made it look like a gigantic sleigh. If he shoved it against the wall the mattress would be enclosed on three sides.

  “What do you think, Julia? Want to sleep up here?” The baby bounced on his forearm, leaving a trace of warm moisture. “You need a change, young lady.”