“I’ve never been more serious,” Emmie gave him one of her cool, spinsterish looks. “But in a way, it is a trick-and unless we do something, the joke will be on Pickett. Grace ordered the cake from a regular bakery.”
“Too ordinary, huh?” These people’s games in which they displayed their wealth and superiority had stuck in his craw more than once. He couldn’t sympathize with their scrabbling one-upmanship when they already inhabited the top of the heap.
“On the contrary. Only the best will do.” Emmie flicked her fingers disdainfully. Her tone, loaded with sarcasm, showed her ready comprehension, and he liked her better for it. “And that’s Grace’s excuse. Sacre Bleu’s cakes are the most beautiful and the best tasting to be found south of the Mason-Dixon line. Unfortunately, they’re also made with wheat flour.”
Do- Lord circled his hand to urge her to wind it up. “And that’s a problem because…”
“Pickett has celiac disease, which means she can’t eat anything with wheat flour as an ingredient.”
When Do- Lord had observed Pickett pretending to eat, but in actuality leaving food untouched, he had assumed she avoided fattening foods. Now he reassessed her restraint. “Does everyone know she has this problem?”
“Oh, yes. You’re thinking about the food that’s been served this weekend, aren’t you?” Again, Do-Lord was startled by her ready comprehension of his thought processes. He must be slipping if she was reading his face that easily. “The roast turkey,” she continued, “served on top of dressing and covered in gravy at the rehearsal dinner last night was my personal favorite for least-edible foods for Pickett. Although I must say this morning’s buffet runs a close second. There weren’t two foods on the table she could safely choose. There’s a delicious-you’ll pardon the pun-irony in feeding the guest of honor food she mustn’t eat, but must smile in gratitude for.”
“So you’re saying she’s not going to be able to eat her wedding cake either.” He shrugged. “Nobody ever died of malnutrition from not eating wedding cake.” The things these people found important never ceased to amaze him. “Big deal. She’ll handle it like she always does.”
“You don’t understand.” Turning away from him, Emmie scanned the wall of photos until she found the one she was looking for. She pointed to a picture of a bride and groom laughingly shoving cake into one another’s mouths. “See? She’ll have to eat it.”
The tall white cake served at wedding receptions today was, in previous centuries, the bride’s cake, whereas the wedding cake was traditionally a fruitcake, filled with nuts and… When he’d researched wedding customs, he’d passed over the rituals with the cake, assuming all his duties would be over by then. Now he examined the photo more closely.
The tiered wedding cake stood in the foreground of the photograph, a frosting fantasy on fluted pillars. Only the head and shoulders of the bride and groom were visible behind it, and behind them, laughing guests gathered around.
The bride, another cousin he presumed, looked a bit like Pickett. It was all too easy to imagine Pickett in her place, but instead of laughing as the bride in the picture was doing, smiling the strained smile he’d seen again and again on Pickett’s face this weekend.
“When Jax feeds Pickett the cake she won’t refuse to eat it with everybody watching,” Emmie explained. “She’ll sacrifice herself rather than ruin the fun for everyone else. She won’t want to hurt Grace’s feelings and make a spectacle.”
A piece of “normal” behavior that crossed all cultural lines was eating whatever was offered. In operations where SEALs had lived with locals, he’d eaten stewed rat-not bad-and goat’s eyes-kind of tasteless really-and chili so hot his asshole had burned for a week. Do-Lord understood Pickett’s desire not to call attention to herself by refusing. In some places the insult of refusing food could get you killed. At best, refusal branded you forever as an outsider.
“Wait a minute. Pickett doesn’t want to hurt Grace’s feelings? Isn’t that backwards?”
Emmie rubbed the spot between her brows, smoothing away the line trying to form there. “Yes, it is, and if you talk to her about it, even she sees it. But Pickett is one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. She always thinks of others first. She’s not going to choose a moment like that to stand up for herself.” Emmie smiled sadly. “Pickett won’t die from one bite of cake.”
“What will happen?”
“Her stomach will hurt, but not immediately. It won’t start for eight hours or so. Then she’ll spend the next twenty-four hours in the bathroom. Her honeymoon will be ruined.” Emmie raised her honest blue eyes. Do-Lord had never before considered that honesty might have a color, but if it did, it would be the soft, summery blue of Emmie’s eyes. “But it might not be that bad,” she finished. “It isn’t always.”
Do- Lord began to understand how everyone could be aware of Pickett’s problem, but pretend it made no difference. They wouldn’t have to suffer, or even watch Pickett suffer, the consequences. “The perpetrators will get off scot-free in other words.”
“Perpetrator is too strong a word. I don’t think anyone means to do Pickett harm-in fact, I’m sure they don’t.” Emmie countered with a scholarly judiciousness. “Having an outsider’s perspective, I can see the family blind spots. They believe a tablespoon or two, or just a bite, won’t hurt. All the aunts, uncles, and cousins have gone to a lot of trouble to show their support of Pickett. Grace has worked miracles to pull this wedding off in such a short time. She honestly believes she’s making sure everything about Pickett’s wedding is perfect.”
“And so, you think the solution is to bring in a ringer for the cake.” Do-Lord struggled against a chuckle that wanted to break loose.
“I would do anything for Pickett. I can’t change the people, but with your help, I can change the cake.” Emmie paused while she freed her hair from underneath the sling. “If anybody is going to give Pickett at least one moment of unalloyed, lighthearted fun at her wedding, it’s going to be me, and, ‘should you choose to accept this mission, Mr. Graves,’” Emmie intoned the line from the old Mission Impossible TV show, “you.”
And they accused SEALs of being cowboys! Emmie’s means of dealing with it had to be the most overly elaborate solution he’d ever heard tell of.
Laughing, Do-Lord raised his hands and backed away. “Hey, I admire your desire to ride in on a white horse and save your friend from embarrassment or an upset stomach, but this isn’t my problem. Not yours either. It’s Pickett’s and Jax’s.” He’d bet Jax hadn’t given any more thought to the wedding cake than he had. Less, if anything. Jax thought like an officer-meaning he gave orders and expected others to manage the details.
&n
bsp; “Then you won’t help me?”
Something about the expression in her eyes, some look he could only call loneliness, made him gentle his tone. “You’re trying to build a million-dollar mousetrap. All I have to do is tell Jax not to feed Pickett the cake. If Jax knew what was going down, he wouldn’t care what the tribal rituals are. He’d put a stop to it.”
“If you do, Pickett will wind up embarrassed and tense because somebody-probably a lot of somebodies-will make jokes about why they won’t eat the wedding cake. And then, if she attempts to explain, they’ll be embarrassed because their jokes called attention to her ‘affliction’-”
“‘Affliction?’ You’ve gotta be kidding.”
“- and then Pickett will be more embarrassed.”
She was right about that. Jax would put a stop to any teasing, too-but likely by causing heads to roll.
On the other hand, making an end-run around the system that allowed the problem to discreetly disappear was much more a Chief’s approach, especially when everyone needed to respect everyone else in the morning.
Screwball as it was, Emmie’s scheme had a certain quixotic appeal-like a reverse practical joke. He’d been pissed by the cousins’ sly devaluing of Pickett, and while the remedy didn’t administer the justice they deserved, he’d like to know he’d put one over on them.
“I just want Pickett to have the same kind of fun everyone else gets to have, without hurting anybody’s feelings or putting anyone in the wrong.”
To his surprise, Emmie was winning him over. His irritation with her had vanished as soon as she grabbed his arm. Maybe because in the last few minutes he’d begun to think she was interesting. Plain, yes, but female, definitely. A wedding cake heist was the most entertainment he’d been offered this weekend. Good deeds of this kind were notorious for backfiring, though.
To gain time while he thought it over, Do-Lord pretended to study the wedding cake picture. The photo beside it was of the same couple taken from a slightly different angle. This time the flash had illuminated more of the bystanders. One smiling face, just past the bride’s shoulder, arrested his attention.
His heart beat harder, and the small of his back prickled as sweat popped out. His country-boy smile widened.
“Is that Teague Calhoun, the senator?”
Emmie moved closer to see what he was looking at. “Um-hmm. He’ll be coming to Pickett’s wedding too. His wife is a cousin on Pickett’s grandmother’s side, I think. Her mother’s mother,” she clarified, as if that made all the difference. She snickered, but not unkindly. “Everybody calls this Aunt Lilly Hale’s ‘bragging wall.’ She’s got a president up here somewhere.” Emmie reached past him to point out the famous face in a group of men dressed in hunting camo. “I’ll bet that wedding photo, while nominally of Aunt Lilly Hale’s granddaughter, made the cut because Uncle Teague is one of the richest men in North Carolina, in addition to being a senator.”
And she knew him. Do-Lord’s heart rate kicked up again. What were the odds? A plan formed in his mind, but he had to know one detail first. “Is Teague Calhoun really your uncle, or just somebody else you call ‘uncle?’”
“Not really. I sound like I claim kin to a lot of people I’m not related to, don’t I?” Rose color suffused Emmie’s cheek, as if she was embarrassed. The touch of color emphasized the blue of her eyes and called attention to the porcelain clarity of her skin. He’d seen a lot of porcelain in the last few days, and now he understood what those romance writers meant. He didn’t think he’d ever seen prettier skin in his life. “Calling him ‘uncle’ is just another habit I got into, but in this case it’s because my grandmother was a friend of his. Why are you so interested in him?”
Emmie claimed kin to a host of people she wasn’t related to, whereas the only person he knew for sure he was related to, didn’t claim him at all. It was just one of the many, many differences between them. Do-Lord ignored the relief he felt that she was no relation of Calhoun’s.
“Just surprised, is all.” Do-Lord decided to give her part of the truth. He was starting to realize that Emmie, unworldly and detached though she might appear, saw a great deal. “My unit was detailed to protect him one time.”
“Isn’t it strange how no matter where you go, you seem to meet the same people over and over? Or at any rate, people who seem to know the same people you do? Teague Calhoun was executor of my grandmother’s estate-not that I think he did the actual work. He has ‘people.’ I never expected to see him again once the estate was settled, but it turned out he’s at all Pickett’s family parties. The important ones,” she added cynically, “where all the important people will be seen.”
Karmic circles, she was talking about. Groups of souls who reincarnate together to work out debts left over from past lives. Reincarnation made a lot of sense to Do-Lord, but he’d never considered that he and Calhoun might have karmic ties that would bring them together over and over until they learned their lessons. Until the moment Calhoun had appeared in Afghanistan, he’d never met the man.
Karma or not, the evidence was in front of him that the unfinished business between him and Calhoun couldn’t be ignored. It wasn’t going to stay buried even though he’d refused one opportunity to even the score.
He had to think. Do-Lord fought the distraction of her feminine scent. She stood just behind him, still studying the wall of photographs. He wondered if she knew how often she encroached on his space, or what it meant.
In spite of the fact that she irritated him, he was starting to like her. She was abrupt, but he suspected that was because she was as goal-driven as he was, and had as little patience with meaningless chatter. She was as loyal to Pickett as he was to Jax. Where she gave herself, she gave herself completely. Briefly, he wondered what it would be like to tease her into full sexual awareness of him, to stroke that heat he sensed into flame.
The thought was amazingly hot, but he dismissed it. While some SEALs seemed to think wearing the Trident entitled them to sex anytime they wanted, he didn’t use women. Sex wasn’t hard to come by for any SEAL. There was never any reason to take advantage of a woman who didn’t know the score. But that didn’t mean he would turn away this opportunity the universe had sent him. She had the background he needed, and the entr?e into a strata of society he couldn’t touch-yet anyone could see she wasn’t one of them.
And right now she needed him. A smart Chief made sure more people owed him favors than he owed favors to. Do-Lord had been wondering ever since Afghanistan how he would get closer to Calhoun in a way that wouldn’t implicate other SEALs. Now he knew.
Chapter 4
“I’m in.” A conspiratorial grin turne
d Caleb’s eyes a devilish shade of golden. “What do we have to do?”
He was going to help her. The sudden relief from the tension of the last hour left Emmie almost giddy.
A lot of people thought, because she didn’t pay attention to the same things others did, Emmie wasn’t observant. She couldn’t tell the difference between a Mercedes and a BMW, a Rolex and a Timex, and didn’t know why anyone would waste time shopping when slacks could be ordered from catalogs. The surface of things didn’t interest her.
She had noticed that though he spoke with a country accent, his English was grammatical. He employed an inexhaustible vocabulary of smiles, and despite meticulous courtesy, until these last few minutes, he’d barely tolerated her.
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain. The quote from Hamlet popped into her head. She didn’t think he was a villain, exactly, but she knew beyond doubt he used that particular smile to cover his thoughts rather than to reveal them.
There was more to him than met the eye. A lot more. The thought was a little shivery, but intriguing. He had reasons of his own for assisting her. So be it.
“The cake I ordered is waiting to be picked up at the UPS office. We’ll take it to the country club while no one is there and substitute it. Simple, really.” “What will we do with the other cake?” “Pack it in the box the substitute cake came in. I spent hours on the Internet locating a baker who would make a gluten-free cake identical to the one Grace ordered.” And maxed out her Visa to get the cake made and here on time. “I made the plan before I hurt my arm, though. My cake will have to be assembled.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of Murphy’s Law? Anything that can go wrong-”
Sealed with a promise Page 5
