Ready. He thought about the endless training and preparation that made up most of the life of a SEAL. Being ready, rehearsing, practicing to move instantly and correctly in any situation was the essence of SEAL training and philosophy.
Being ready. He hadn’t been prepared to be a father when Tyler was born, as Pickett had so gently pointed out last night. And he wasn’t ready now. But he was sick of feeling like he’d just washed out. And he was tired of watching Pickett save his fumbles with Tyler, while he didn’t even know what she had done.
Jax zipped himself back into the clinging, clammy parka, grabbed a can of gas, and headed back into the storm to refill the generator.
Pickett poured what was left of the coffee into a thermos. This would be a good time to check her email. She was through the connecting door to her office, which was set up in what would usually be the dining room, when she stopped. No computer. The generator wasn’t strong enough to power more than the refrigerator, the well pump, and a few lights. For once, she was glad she didn’t have the money to replace the ancient gas kitchen stove. Cooking wouldn’t be a problem. But it was funny how when the power went off, the only things you could think of to do required electricity.
Tyler, making truck noises, played in a corner by the bookcases. The outside door banged and a gust of moisture-laden air swooshed into the room.
From her seat at the desk, Pickett could see Jax standing just inside the kitchen door. Dark hair was plastered against his head, and rivulets ran down the silky-straight hair that covered the defined muscles of his legs. He toed off sodden sneakers without unknotting the wet laces. He used a dish towel left on the counter after breakfast to dry his legs and feet, then swabbed the puddle he had left on the floor.
Time expanded while her awareness contracted to this one man. Masculine, elemental, coming in wet was so much a part of his life that it required no thought. He could live in storm and wildness and wind and water, then methodically tame himself, stripping the wildness till he was once again a creature that could walk about in a house.
An illusive memory tickled the edge of her consciousness. There were myths about sea creatures—seals, come to think of it—who from time to time would leave the sea and change into humans. Pickett smiled at the whimsy of the thought.
Jax looked up, caught her looking at him, and smiled a smile of pure masculine satisfaction. He tossed the towel in the mudroom, and walked barefoot into the office.
Pickett reminded herself that those selkies—that’s what those magic seals were called—liked to mate with humans, but they always wanted to return to the sea.
“How is it out there?”
“Wet. Not as bad as it could be, but you and Tyler don’t go out until I give you the all clear.”
Pickett tried not to snort. Like she needed him to tell her not to go outside in a hurricane. And if she did lose her mind and decide to go out, she didn’t need his permission.
A heavy gust slapped rain against the house so hard it sounded like gravel.
She might not need his permission to go out, but she would need his help. She giggled. It would come down to the same thing. “Aye-aye, sir! Are Hobo and Quackers okay?”
“They’re fine. Hobo is under the porch, and Quackers apparently has decided to sleep though it.”
Tyler hadn’t acknowledged his father’s entry in any way. He merely continued to drive his toy cars along the window sills, making car noises and, when he drove them over the edge, appropriate crashing sounds. Jax’s eyes rested briefly on his son, flickered with pain, then returned to Pickett. Jax gestured with his head to the kitchen. “Are you busy? Can I talk to you for a second?”
“Sure.” Pickett got up from the chair, and laying her book aside, walked toward him. “Would you like a cup of coffee? We can go in the kitchen.”
Jax took the cup of coffee Pickett had poured him from the thermos and glanced at the door to the living room to make sure it was closed. He leaned against the counter. “I need some advice.”
So often when people said they wanted advice, what they really meant was that they wanted someone to solve their problems. Pickett had plenty of experience with that, but her well-honed intuition told her this man was unlikely to ask someone else to do what he perceived as his job. On the other hand her intuition also said this man wanted something from her.
Pickett pulled one of the ladder-back chairs from the table and almost sat before she realized her mistake. It was necessary that she not subordinate herself to this man. His energy already dominated the room. If she sat, he would be in an even more dominating position. She kept one hand on her chair and gestured toward the chair opposite with her other hand. “About … ?”
“You seem to know what to do with Tyler. How to talk to him. What to expect from him. How do you know these things?”
“Is that what you need advice about?”
“Yes. I’ve realized that the things that you know are the things I need to learn. I’m square in the middle of a goatfuck here.”
“Goatfuck.” Though acquainted with earthy language, the expression was new to her. She tried to keep her expression neutral, but could not suppress an inner spurt of humor. “Is that a technical term?”
Jax’s lips twisted. “Sorry. It’s what we call an operation where everything is going wrong. I’m messing up with Tyler. I want to be his father but I just don’t know how. We don’t know each other very well, and that’s my fault, but I want to fix it. I thought I would just come down here and we would hang out together, and get to know each other, and then I would know what to do with him.” Jax gave a snort full of self-disgust. “Pretty naive, huh?” He looked down at the floor, and shoved his hands into the pockets of his khaki shorts. “What bothers me is that he’s paying for the fact that I don’t, I mean I really don’t, know what to do with him. Not like you do.” Jax looked up to meet Pickett’s eyes. His own were level, intense with desire and determination. “You make it look easy. But I’m willing to learn. So how do I learn?”
Thoughts jostled and elbowed for space in Pickett’s brain until she felt a little dizzy and battered. He stood there erect, broad shoulders squared, barefoot, his damp hair furrowed where he had pushed his hands through it, and the image she had was of a man, standing at attention, addressing his commanding officer, admitting to the failure of a mission. Unflinching. No excuses.
Somehow she bet this man had not often had to admit he’d screwed up, and even more rarely, was he forced to admit incompetence. Everything about him spoke of mastery and a self-assurance that bordered on arrogance. Her heart beat harder at the combination of courage and humility it took for him to ask for her help.
He did, indeed, want something from her, and a part of her was shocked that he would ask for it so directly. But in the face of such directness, her generous nature could not fail to respond. She couldn’t keep her distance.
Pickett realized she had been silent too long. The slightly heightened color across his cheekbones had receded, his lips tightened. She shook herself mentally.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you hanging. I got lost in thought for a moment there.” She slid into her chair and indicated the other chair again. “Please. Sit down.” She added a smile.
Instead of taking the chair across from her, Jax went around the table to sit in the chair adjacent to hers. One that placed his back to the wall and gave him a view of both doors. She wished he hadn’t done so. Though not an unusually large man, there was something about him that seemed to take up a great deal of space, so that her awareness constantly prickled at his proximity.
His brown forearms with their straight, black hair rested on the golden oak. The hair grew in a slant down the long-fingered hands that lightly caged his coffee cup. The hair looked so silky, gleaming softly in the watery light, that Picket wondered what it would feel like to run a finger across it, feeling the slide of the hair, the warm skin underneath. The alternating play of muscle and tendon.
Wh
at was she doing thinking about body hair? Pickett jerked her mind’s eye away from the picture that had appeared unbidden, the fly of his shorts unzipped, black curling hair … Embarrassed heat rose in her cheeks, even as she squashed the thought. Sheesh. What was the matter with her?
What were they talking about? Parenting skills. Yes. She was a professional. She could do this. She covered her embarrassment with a little laugh.
“I probably seem a little distracted to you. Actually I am. I’m a marriage and family counselor, right? You’d think people would ask me every day how they could learn to be better parents. But they don’t.”
“What do they ask?”
“They want to know how to make their child stop being a problem, how to make their child behave, get better grades, not be defiant.”
Jax looked at her from under lowered eyebrows. “Is that what I should have asked?”
“No. In fact, they should ask what you asked. Just as you said, the child is paying the price for their ignorance. Sometimes it seems like the major part of what I do is get the parents ready to learn.”
Pickett took a sip of her coffee. “Your question made me leap over about ten steps.”
Jax shifted in his chair, as if he was getting ready to speak. “Wait,” she held up a hand, “there’s more. I was also thinking that a counseling relationship would be inappropriate in the context of our living together—in the same house, I mean.”
Goodness, she was rattled again, and now she sounded like she was babbling. “That’s a long way of saying that I’m impressed that you would ask and I will be happy to help you, in a context of friendship,” she finished in a rush.
Something that looked like irritation flickered across Jax’s face. Then he nodded as if he had made a decision.
Pickett pressed on. “What you’re wanting isn’t easy, you know. Being a good parent is a long, arduous, scary, occasionally heartrending process, and at each stage it’s like you need to learn how all over again.”
Jax’s eyes crinkled in a way he had of smiling without moving his lips. It was the same expression he’d worn when she told him the generator wouldn’t work.
He pointed to the motto on his shirt. “SEALs have a saying. ‘The only easy day was yesterday.’ How do we start?”
ELEVEN
Here,” Pickett handed Jax the heavy book, pulled from one of several cartons in the otherwise empty upstairs bedroom. The rain sounded much louder up there as it pelted the long windows unsheltered by the porch. Earlier Jax had accessed weather satellite pictures on the internet using his laptop, which showed that the area was only getting a glancing blow from the hurricane. The eye had come ashore sixty miles or more to the north. Winds, except for gusts, had never reached hurricane force, and were already diminishing.
Crumbling plaster and chipped paint revealed what the downstairs must have looked like before Pickett started renovation. She had apologized on the way up the stairs for its condition, saying that she’d run out of money before running out of rooms to be renovated. So, in spite of the antiques and oriental carpets, she didn’t have as much money she appeared to. It explained the few clothes in the closet, the outdated kitchen and bath.
Pickett was bent over a carton that was bigger than she was, sorting through books, her running shorts pulled tight across her delectable bottom. Jax had read recently that the base of the spine was a little-appreciated erogenous zone for women. The tightening in his groin said it was working for him. He could stroke that little indented place, then slide his hands lower, opening … Jax forced his thoughts back to what Pickett was saying.
“Most of my parenting-skills books are in my office at the base. These are on child development. The one I just gave you, the Braselton, is the best one to start with.”
Jax turned the book in his hand. It looked to be about five hundred pages and there were pictures of children on almost every page. “You learned what you know from this book?”
“Some of it. It’s about the stages of child development. Every child is different, but all children grow through fairly predictable sequences. You can avoid a lot of head-banging—yours and theirs—by knowing what to expect. Braselton is actually a good beginning place. You’ll understand other books on parenting better for having read it.”
The spat of rubber-soled sneakers sounded on the stairs seconds before Tyler appeared in the open doorway. “Whatcha doing, Pickett?” As usual his son showed no signs of noticing him. He ran, untied shoelaces flapping, to the windows, where he pressed his nose against the glass, attempting to see through the raindrops.
“I’m showing your daddy some books. What are you doing?”
“I came upstairs to find you.” He turned and looked slowly around the room. “Hey! You know, this is a great room!”
The pine floor was bright and gleaming from recent refinishing, but otherwise Jax thought the room was bare and dreary. He slanted a puzzled glance at Pickett, who shrugged her eyebrows. She had the most expressive face.
“This can be my room. I can sleep up here and you and him can sleep downstairs.”
Now it was Pickett who sought Jax’s eyes and he who shrugged, but he couldn’t hide his satisfaction at the picture that rose in his mind. Pickett tucked against him in her bed while Tyler slept in a room above. Deeper peach tinged Pickett’s cheeks as if she had read his mind or had similar thoughts of her own.
Clearly rattled and trying to cover it, Pickett swiveled smoothly on her toes while maintaining her deep knee bend. Holding out her arm, she called Tyler to her. “Come here,” she patted her knee. “Let’s tie those shoes.”
“I don’t like my shoes tied. I like my shoes untied.” Despite the verbal protest, he sidled closer to Pickett and leaned an arm on her shoulder while setting a sneakered foot on her knee. It was the kind of thing he did that made Jax feel crazy and off-balance.
“I know.” Pickett sounded calm, cheerful even, as she snugged up the laces. “And you can untie them as soon as you’re downstairs. But they need to be tied when you’re on the stairs.”
“Why?” That was the other thing. The “why” questions that went on and on when he did acknowledge his father’s existence.
“Because they could make you fall on the stairs, and you would mash your nose, and then you would cry, and then I would cry.”
“But why?”
“Why would I cry? Because I would be sad if you got hurt. And so would you, so we have to tie your shoes.” Pickett was looking at the shoe she was tying. She didn’t see Tyler’s startled head jerk, as if it was almost unbelievable that someone might care if he got hurt. Jax had been close to throwing up with relief when he’d snatched Tyler from the path of the car. And he’d gone eyeball-to-eyeball with him to let him know how furious he was. And scared the kid into wetting his pants, instead of letting him know how important his safety was. Shit.
Pickett finished double-knotting the sneaker. “Other foot.”
Tyler planted a tiny hand on each of Pickett’s cheeks and turned her face toward him. “Would you be sad, Pickett? Really?”
Sad didn’t come close to how Jax would have felt if he’d found Tyler’s perfect little body lying in the street, bleeding, and too still. But it was probably the word Tyler would have understood.
Suddenly conscious of how seriously Tyler was taking their exchange, Pickett met his eyes solemnly, while her fingers looped together the laces of the second shoe.
“Yes, Tyler,” she met his eyes solemnly. “I would. Really.”
“Okay,” Tyler inclined his head like a king conferring royal favor, “you can tie my shoes.”
Pickett’s shoulders shook as she double-knotted the second sneaker. Tyler apparently didn’t realize that both his shoes were now neatly bowed. “Thank you,” said Pickett, as humbly as barely suppressed mirth would allow. “All done.”
Wide gray eyes studied blue ones that sparkled like the ocean on a sunny day. Then Tyler gave a childish giggle, high and free, and flung himself a
gainst Pickett. She caught him, hugging him close.
Longing that started deep in his gut shot all through Jax. He blinked away wetness. Right that minute he couldn’t have said exactly what he was longing for. Maybe he wanted Tyler to hug him, or Pickett to hug him, or maybe he wanted to hug them both.
When Tyler was a baby he had been so easy to hold, to hug. The chubby little arms would wrap around his neck and the soft little body mold to his chest.
When Tyler was two he loved to yell “Catch me!” and launch himself. Jax would catch him, then throw him squealing into the air, while Danielle fussed that he would get hurt or that Jax would make him upchuck.
The baby was gone now. Lost. Thin golden arms grasped Pickett, and a lengthening torso relaxed against her as they swayed together, giggling. Would he lose the little boy too? Jax’s fingers tightened on the heavy book. The only easy day was yesterday.
“Are you hungry?” Pickett included Jax in her question. She held out her free hand to Jax while keeping the other around Tyler. “Let’s go downstairs and get some lunch.”
Jax stood, then reached out a hand to pull Pickett to her feet. She was perfectly capable of getting up alone. He had never seen such a combination of grace, strength, and agility. It felt like a milestone. He’d touched her before but it was the first time she’d offered herself to be touched.
He wanted to touch her. Oh yes, he did. But it startled him how much he also wanted to be inside the circle of easy affection she threw around Tyler so effortlessly.
And he wanted her to help him regain his son.
Altogether, he was beginning to want entirely too much from this woman with the laughing ocean eyes.
Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle Page 10
