Look, Mom, you did your best. When Daddy died you had to save the business from bankruptcy. And I got left to my big sisters to raise. At least I had them.
It wouldn’t help.
They had done their best, but the nagging sense that Pickett was not quite up to the family standard had settled like a mildewed blanket on the very real love they shared.
Her mother felt guilty because she’d neglected Pickett, so now she tried to over-mother. Too bad knowing all that didn’t make a bit of difference. Because it always felt like she never did anything in a way her mother could sincerely approve.
Pickett wondered what her mother would say if she knew Pickett would not be alone during the storm, but with a Navy SEAL she had just met yesterday. No, she knew what she would say and that’s why she wasn’t going to tell her. There was a lot to be said for living where one’s family couldn’t know what was happening on a daily basis.
She didn’t need to listen to her mother’s warnings and cries of doom.
“Look, Mom. I need to get off the phone. Someone’s coming soon.” Her mother would assume she meant a client, and would accept that business came first. Pickett winced at the knowledge that she was being deliberately misleading. “I’ll call you as soon as the hurricane passes, okay? And make sure you take care of yourself.”
The air was like a moist blanket, hot, thick, and eerily still. Between bursts of whirring cicadas, it was so quiet that she could actually hear waves hitting the beach over on the island in that odd booming cadence that heralds a storm.
A pot of lantana under one arm and a begonia under the other, Pickett struck out for the garage, crossing the drive just as Jax’s Jeep Cherokee pulled up to the back door.
Her heart kicked against her breast bone. Oh Lord, what had she done? How had she forgotten the moment she’d looked around in the deli and seen Jax watching her?
Her gut had told her in that very minute that he was a dangerous man.
“Listen to your gut,” she always advised her clients.
She had to tell him he couldn’t stay, and do it right now. Pickett started across the drive.
SEVEN
Jax was out of the Cherokee, reaching through the rear door into the backseat.
Now. Before he got Tyler out of the car, she had to tell him he couldn’t stay. Letting a stranger she had chanced upon into her house was too dangerous. The rough clay of the flower pots dug into her palms. She set them at her feet. Now.
Childish wails, interspersed with hiccupping sobs, issued from the car. The wails escalated to screams. “No! The hurr’cane’s going to get us! We have to run away! Let me go!”
Jax held the little flailing hands in one big hand, confining the squirming body in one muscular arm. The ease with which he held the child was apparent, as was the fact that he only used enough strength to confine, not overpower.
Ruddiness stained Jax’s bronze cheeks. “I’m sorry about this meltdown. His grandmother is the nervous sort. She really managed to scare him.”
Unless Pickett missed her guess, what his grandmother was, was the idiotic sort, who was not happy that Jax was going to Pickett’s and had attempted to manipulate the situation by getting Tyler upset. That was low.
Pickett made her decision.
“Tyler,” Pickett used the voice a client once said was steel encased in goose down. “Tyler, look at me.” Drowned gray eyes peered at her from the reddened, tear-streaked face. “Now feel your daddy’s arms. Your daddy’s arms are warm, aren’t they? And you can feel how strong they are.” The little body relaxed slightly, allowing the strength to hold him. “Your daddy will keep you safe. Your grandmother was scared of the hurricane and so she had to run away. But your daddy is not scared, he is strong and he can keep you safe. Now let’s get your things in the house, because we have a lot to do.”
In the house she introduced Tyler to Lucy and Patterson, and assured him that she really did have a duck. Quackers was nowhere to be seen but would show up at dinner time.
“I think I’ll let the two of you share my room and I’ll use the day bed in my office,” she forestalled Jax’s protest with a wave. “I’m afraid you’d be pretty miserable on the day bed and Tyler will be more secure in a strange place if you’re with him. Anyway, it’s only for one night.”
Jax shouldered the luggage and followed Pickett down the cool, dim hall, admiring the view of Pickett’s backside.
Who would have thought those classically restrained slacks and man-tailored blouses concealed a lush, utterly feminine body? Full breasts tapered to tiny waist then flared again to rounded butt, softly hugged by green running shorts.
Her legs were all shapely curves flowing from trim ankles to substantial thighs. He knew women worried about heavy thighs but personally he found that evidence of womanly strength erotic.
He jerked his mind from the implications of strong, yet soft thighs, and made himself take in the furnishings of the room.
The antique four-poster was piled with the most pillows Jax had ever seen.
“Plus je vois les hommes, plus j’adore mes chiens.” He read the saying on the pale green needlepoint pillow in the center.
“The more I know about men, the more I love my dogs,” he translated. He gave a snort of laughter, and turned to Pickett. “I wouldn’t have figured you for a misanthrope.”
“That’s a housewarming present made by my sister Lyle who lives in New York. I think she meant it as a joke, although with Lyle you’re never sure.” She tilted her head. “You recognized the quote. Are you fluent in French?”
He nodded absently. “Why so many pillows?”
Was she blushing? What brought that on? Her eyes moved from the bed to him a couple of times. She shrugged. “I like pillows. But feel free to move any that you don’t want.” She put her hand on the doorknob. “I’ll leave you to get settled. Be aware that this house was built long before central heat, so every room, including the bathroom, opens into the adjoining room as well as into the hall. For privacy, make sure you close both doors.”
The latch clicked behind her. She liked pillows. Standard pillows, a long pillow that crossed the width of the bed, big pillows, and small fluffy pillows. Pillows of plush velvet and pillows covered with crocheted lace. Jax felt his body tighten, again. He could imagine her naked, her peach skin bare against that white lacy cover-thing, as she curled among all those pillows.
Whoa. That was so not going to happen. There was no reason to pursue women who might have regrets afterward. That just led to messy complications.
There were too many women who were delighted to throw themselves into bed with any SEAL. Lately, though, the look of sexual calculation he saw in women’s eyes when they learned he was a SEAL had become a turnoff.
It was best to stick with the kind of women who wanted him to be gone by morning. And yet being with some woman he wouldn’t remember in a week or a month no longer seemed worth doing. He’d found a few women whose company he enjoyed in addition to the sex. Women who could accept the very loose arrangements he was able to make, but even those never lasted long. How long had it been?
There was Joanie. The last time he called she mentioned she’d found someone who was around on a more regular basis. Six, seven months ago. Before Afghanistan.
Okay, so maybe he was horny. Maybe that’s what was making Pickett look so good, in spite of the fact that she was exactly the kind of woman he stayed away from. It wasn’t her full breasts that made his palm curl at the thought of testing their soft weight. It wasn’t the way she seemed to be all soft curves, all feminine to his manliness. It wasn’t the way her sparkling aqua eyes looked at him, guilelessly aware of the attraction, and yet, as if she saw him, not some SEAL stud package. He was just horny. Yeah. That was it.
Well, he liked sex as much as the next man, but he had never been the kind of man who allowed his hormones to control him.
And in spite of her patina of gracious hospitality, he could tell she was still wary of him.
Any move on his part could spook her, make her tell him to go, and he didn’t want that to happen. Not while she could work what looked like magic with Tyler. She had calmed the little guy with just a couple of sentences, while nothing he had said in the thirty-five-minute trip from Wilmington had had any effect on the screams issuing from the backseat.
It was ironic that while his SEAL buddies, strong and superbly competent men everyone, went with him into dangers unimaginable to most people, and trusted him with their lives, his small son only trusted him after a hundred-pound woman told him to.
But maybe that was normal. How the hell was he supposed to know? He’d never been around little kids much, didn’t remember a lot of his own childhood before he had met Corey. He wished Corey were here. Corey knew more about almost everything than most people, but more than that, he had a way of cutting through to what really mattered.
Back in Little Creek, his decision had looked so easy. Simple. Go to North Carolina and get the custody papers notarized. The only reason he’d come to North Carolina was Commander Kohn’s insistence that he visit Tyler. Lauren’s suggestion that they meet at her Topsail beach cottage, instead of her house in Raleigh, had seemed a little odd, but he’d had no objection.
Jax hadn’t been around Lauren much, never for any extended time. Had Danielle ever told him her mother drank too much? He didn’t think so, but she certainly did now. Too much, too often.
Still, he knew plenty of rock-solid, dependable men, women too, who hit the officers’ or enlisted clubs the minute they were off-duty. Heavy drinking was a way of life for some in the Navy. As long as they did their jobs he didn’t begrudge them—or Lauren, who had just lost her daughter—whatever helped them make it through the night.
Jax had closed down a lot of bars himself, until he realized hard work and long hours were more effective than scotch in blotting out his pain in the months after Danielle left him.
From what Jax had seen, drinking didn’t interfere with her care of Tyler. She bathed, and fed, and clothed Tyler adequately. More than adequately if he counted the number of new clothes and toys she’d bought him.
Sober or loaded though, now that he had gotten to know Lauren better, one thing was clear: he couldn’t stand her. But did that matter? Jax wouldn’t have to live with her. Tyler would, but he couldn’t tell how Tyler felt about his grandmother. He couldn’t tell how Tyler felt about anything.
Tyler was not the boisterous little extrovert Jax remembered. The child who drifted, silently absorbed in his cars, along the edges of a room was hardly recognizable. In a way Jax liked it better when Tyler went ballistic. At least he felt like he understood that child.
Jax didn’t like mysteries. He preferred problems he could get his hands around. The uneasy feeling that something important was happening before his eyes and he was missing it crept through his chest again.
Jax realized he had been standing in the open closet door staring sightlessly at Pickett’s clothes. There were not many. A few pairs of slacks, some blouses, that jacket he’d seen her in.
A couple of dresses wrapped in plastic were pushed to the back. There was room to spare for the hanging clothes he had brought. So different from the overflowing closets he remembered Danielle having.
The closet smelled like her. A subtle smell of lilies or something, and sunshine, and softness, and feminine essence. Just for a second he could imagine himself, naked, satisfied, replete with lovemaking, smelling that scent of her on his own skin. His lower body tightened. He glanced at the bed piled with seductive softness, but also with one small pillow at the very center that warned, “The more I know about men, the better I love my dogs.”
Damn.
On a whim he picked up the pillow and sniffed it. It smelled like her too.
A night of smelling her without having her.
Damn.
EIGHT
They worked through the afternoon, clearing the yard of lawn chairs and other items that could become missiles once the wind picked up, ferrying hanging baskets of ferns and wandering Jew to the garage. Tyler tagged after them for a while, asking questions, and manfully carrying small items. Once his interest in that flagged, Pickett showed him how to play fetch with Lucy.
Lucy, who adored fetch, was willing to agree that enthusiasm was as important as a strong pitching arm. The Frisbee couldn’t sail very well in the unpredictable gusts, but the fly ball proved to be a great success, as Tyler got the hang of making a toss that Lucy could grab out of the air.
“What’s with your three-legged dog?” Jax indicated the large German shepherd mix with his head.
Pickett smiled. “He doesn’t take his eyes off you, does he? Truth is, he lives here, but I’m not sure he’s my dog yet. I haven’t had him long, and he won’t come in the house. Sometimes he’ll let me touch him, but he never asks for affection.”
Jax noticed the wistfulness in her voice. That bothered her—that she had affection the dog wouldn’t let her give. “How long have you had him?” Jax bent to pick up a large pot of pale purple flowers.
“Oh, don’t bother with those petunias. The urn is too heavy to blow around and they’ll die back soon anyway. I was just going to kiss them goodbye.”
Jax hoisted the plant higher. “Show me where to put it.”
“I guess we’ll have to put it in the garage. The shed is pretty full.”
Hobo Joe paced them, always out of arms’ reach, always keeping them in sight. “So what about the dog?”
“I found him at the other end of Folkstone Road. If I hadn’t glanced right where he was lying, I would never have seen him. His black and tan blended perfectly with the tall brush he was in. Actually, what I saw was the blood, something red in that brush and it just didn’t look right.” Pickett opened the garage door. “So I stopped the car, and went over to see what it was.”
“He’d been hit by a car?”
Pickett shook her head. “The vet says he’d been shot.” She pushed her shoulders back as if pushing away a thought. “Anyway, he was unconscious and the leg—it was this obscene-looking thing with the bone showing and sort of hanging.” She shuddered, then looked up at Jax, her eyes troubled. “I’m going to tell you the truth: I wished with all my heart that I was the kind of person who could just walk away. I did not want to touch him.”
“But you did touch him.”
Pickett made a what was I going to do? face. “I had to, to find out if he had a heartbeat. And then it wasn’t so bad. I had a bunch of clothes I was carrying to Goodwill, so I made a tourniquet. But then I had a problem. I knew I couldn’t pick him up. I had an old rain coat I could put him on and drag him. So that’s what I did.”
Jax measured the dog, measured Pickett. He probably weighed one hundred pounds, close to if not more than Pickett did. “You got him in the car by yourself?”
“You know that saying, ‘coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous?’ Well, just as I got him on the raincoat, Isabel, who runs a junk shop down on Highway 17, saw my car and stopped. We did it together.” Pickett rolled her eyes. “Now I had a huge dog and a huge vet bill to go with him.”
“You already had two rescued dogs and you brought home a third—just like that?”
“Makes me sound a little strange, doesn’t it?”
“Not strange. Caring. Courageous.”
Pickett shook her head. “Don’t give me too much credit. I wouldn’t have touched Hobo if I’d seen another way.”
Jax wandered over to a section of the garage behind where the cars were parked. All sorts of household detritus was crammed in, thick dust testifying to how long it had lain undisturbed.
Pickett saw his interest. “You’re looking at something else I haven’t wanted to touch. You should have seen what was crammed in the house. My great-uncle had the property and I don’t think anything had been thrown away for fifty years.”
Jax bent down to look under the pile. “You have a generator.”
“I do?”
Jax pointed.
“Oh, that. I guess it’s a generator. There’s no telling when’s the last time it worked.”
“You have a generator. What are we doing standing here talking?” Jax handed her a card table, covered with spider webs, which instantly flopped a leg.
“Yechh! Spider webs! I hate spider webs.”
“Sorry.” Jax shifted and sorted old suitcases, a toaster with no cord, part of a plow, a chamber pot. “Hot damn!” He smeared the dust from the manufacturer’s name. “The Army still uses these. This is a workhorse.”
The enthusiasm, not to say joy, in his voice was unmistakable. Pickett rubbed spider webs from her hands and shook her head. There was no accounting for taste. The junk people paid Isabel good money for proved that … And Isabel did have a bed Pickett would be willing to take off her hands.
“Do you like it?” Pickett inquired politely. “If you want it, you can have it.”
Jax stared at her blankly for a moment. “Pickett, you want it. It. Makes. Electricity,” he softly emphasized each word.
“Yes. I. Know,” Pickett matched him perfectly, the dimple appearing at the corner of her mouth. “It. Doesn’t. Work.”
Jax grinned. “It’s going to.”
Pickett stuffed the package of frozen hamburger Jax had brought from the cottage into the freezer compartment. He’d also brought an ice chest full of ice. Putting bags of ice into the refrigerator once the power went off would extend the life of her perishables. In fact, she should put some in now, so they’d stay frozen longer. To make room she pulled out the loaf of whole-wheat bread she kept on hand for guests and set it on the counter to thaw. One good thing about having company for a hurricane: she had a better chance of using up her food before it went bad.
Pickett found gallon plastic bags and opened the ice chest. It was going to be a miracle if Jax could get the ancient generator running. She chuckled soundlessly. What was it about men and smelly mechanical things? You’d have thought he was a teenager handed some cherry bombs when he saw the grimy thing lurking among the cobwebs at the back of the garage. It was a leftover from her great-uncle’s tenure of the property, so there was no telling when it had last worked.
Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle Page 7
