The room erupted in laughter, applause, and a few whoo-hoos!
Emmie and Do-Lord shared a secret smile.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the band leader announced. “I give you Lt. Commander and Mrs. Jackson Graham.” The band swung into “The Way You Look Tonight.”
It was done. Emmie sank into a chair at one of the tables near the dance floor, so she could watch Pickett and Jax take their first dance as a married couple. Tears stung her eyes, but she didn’t want to cry. She wasn’t sad. She was happy for Pickett.
She and Pickett had seen this day coming for a long time. Planned for it, even. And promised each other that they would never let happen what they had seen happen with some of their other friends. She and Pickett wouldn’t lose their connection.
On the dance floor, Jax stopped pretending to hold a dance pose and put both arms around Pickett, letting his cheek rest on Pickett’s gold curls. He skimmed his palm down Pickett’s arm, and tears heated Emmie’s eyes again. Pickett had found someone who loved her, valued her, respected her. The gesture said everything about how he treasured her. It was right that Pickett had found someone to love her this way. Pickett had earned her moment. The scene blurred with tears Emmie refused to let spill.
She wasn’t emotional. Really. It was just that the wedding was over, and Emmie felt a little flat. Nothing rose to take its place. Emmie could feel herself fading back into the woodwork now that there was no longer anything she was supposed to do. She accepted her place on the edge of people’s lives. She knew how often others forgot she existed. She dressed so no one would notice her in an attempt to make it understandable for people to forget her. Occasionally, she feared she might forget her own self.
She wasn’t losing Pickett, but even if she thought she was, she loved her too much to mar her wedding with tears or trying to hold her back.
Her head felt more floaty than ever. Emmie touched the shorter ends of her hair. It was hard to keep her fingers away. Everything was strange. She was happy for Pickett, and they would talk, of course, but the course of Pickett’s life was altered now. So was hers. For many years she and Pickett had been not only best friends but each other’s emotional support. Emmie had even taken the job at UNC-Wilmington, at least in part, because Pickett lived in the area.
The thought of returning to her soulless apartment and going through the Christmas holiday before classes resumed in January had little charm. She and Pickett had always braved the crowds together for last minute gifts, helped decorate one another’s trees, and seen the New Year in together, either because they were at the same party or decided to forego that year’s offering.
Emmie had other friends, of course, but most were more colleagues than companions. With the excitement of Pickett’s wedding waning, she had time to consider the future, and Emmie’s future looked a little bleak.
She had focused on Pickett’s needs exclusively for several days. Perhaps it was the sudden cessation of her supporting role that made her see that her life wasn’t about her. If someone made a movie of Emmie’s life, she wouldn’t be the central character.
She lived her life in muted colors, staying in the background. She had thought it was the way she liked it.
But she looked around the beautiful room, and yearning stirred in her. She wanted the sense of color for herself, wanted the surges of sound, the glitter, the rich intensity of feeling a thousand emotions.
And she wanted it more than she needed to stay in the background.
“Would you like to dance?” Do-Lord’s question called attention to the fact that other couples were joining Jax and Pickett on the dance floor.
Yes, she wanted to dance. She wanted to feel the rhythm through her bones. She wanted to twirl and soar. She wanted the awareness of herself that quivered across her skin whenever his changeable eyes swept over her. “I don’t dance very well,” she felt obliged to say.
He nodded, and his eyes left her to glance around the room. He’d taken her apology as refusal. She could let the moment go by. It might already be too late, and the disappointment dragging in the wake of that thought stung her into action.
“But I’d like to dance anyway,” she said.
Chapter 14
“Okay if I clear this table?”
Caleb gestured his assent and looked at his watch. The first wedding he’d ever been to was winding down. Apparently, what he heard about people hooking up at weddings was true. Davy had, predictably, left awhile ago with his arm around a girl, and- big surprise- Lon had gone back to his hotel room with Jax’s ex-mother-in-law! Both of them were going to get lucky, which he wasn’t, even if Emmie was willing. It was too soon.
Emmie was no live-for-the-moment party girl. Letting her do something she might regret would be the biggest mistake he could make. Inserting himself as a sleeper, an agent who becomes part of a society, able to wait years to strike if necessary, made this his most covert operation ever. He wanted to be in solid and long-term with these people, and that meant he must build slowly. He could wait. He had no doubt he’d have his chance at Emmie, sooner or later, and he intended to enjoy it when he did.
In the meantime, the more they expected to see him around, the better. To that end he approached Grace. With an enlisted man’s sensitivity to lines of command he had observed that, without ceding one ounce of her power, Pickett’s mother delegated most of her authority to Grace. People more often looked to Grace for direction than to Pickett’s mother. Leaning closer to be heard over the band, which was playing to a thinning crowd of dancers, he said, “As soon as she comes back from the ladies’ room, I’m going to take Emmie home. Is there anything I can do for you, before we leave?”
“All these presents”-Grace indicated a table piled with boxes, all wrapped in white paper and tied with white bows-“have go to my mother’s house. Since you’re going there, do you have room for some?”
“I’m in my truck. I have room for them all.” He would make sure a couple got “left” in his truck, so he’d have to go back to the house in the morning.
“Would you? That’s great. Thank you. And thank you for looking after Emmie. She’s a member of the family, you know. And she’s been such a trooper.” Do-Lord could almost see Grace going down her mental list and checking items off. “Oh, and would you make sure she gets her next dose of medication? Emmie’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, but she lives in another world, you know?”
Do- Lord opened the door with the key he took from Emmie. Light glowed through the beveled glass pane of the door, illuminating the tired droop of her shoulders.
“Thanks for bringing me home. Pickett’s mother, and Grace, and Lyle, will stay at the country club until all the guests leave, but I admit, I was ready.” She stumbled over the threshold, and
Do-Lord put his arm around her.
“Here, let me help you up the stairs. Oh, come on,” he urged her when she protested, “letting you fall down the stairs would be what we call a career-limiting event.”
“‘Career- limiting.’ You sound ambitious.” She leaned into him, tacitly accepting help.
“Where you’re concerned, I am. Now, which room are you staying in?”
Emmie directed him to a room to the right of the landing. The wall switch turned on the bedside lamps, spreading pools of warm light across a mahogany bed with a lace canopy. An open suitcase and feminine items laid across a rocker spoke of temporary occupancy.
Emmie slid his jacket from her shoulders and handed it to him with her thanks. She looked around the room as if she was too tired to think of what to do next.
“While I’m here, I’m supposed to make sure you take your medicine. Where is it?”
“The bathroom.”
In the medicine cabinet of the adjoining bath he located the two prescriptions. “The label says to take these with food. Why don’t you get undressed while I go find you something?”
She nodded absently but continued to stand in the middle of the room looking bemused. “What’s the matter?”
“I just realized I can’t get out of this dress. The zipper is on the right under my arm. Oh well, Lyle can help me once she gets home.”
“That could be a couple more hours. I’ll unzip you.”
“Um, that’s okay… I can-”
“You can what? Sleep in the dress?” Do-Lord began working on the straps that held the sling in place.
“No, really.” She tried to step away from him.
“Nothing’s going to happen,” he snapped, a little testy that she still protested his help. “I’m not going to lie and say I don’t wish it could. But it’s not going to. Not tonight, anyway.”
“It’s not?”
Did she sound a little disappointed?
“No.” He lifted the sling away from her arm. It had rubbed off the makeup Trish had used to conceal the bruises around her shoulder. He skimmed a careful finger over the discolored skin. “You’re not ready, and even if you were, you’re not up to it.” He turned her to get a better look at the zipper. “How does this thing work?”
“You have to unhook the placket. The zipper is underneath.”
He slid his fingers into the hot, moist skin under her arm, bending his head close to see the tiny hook. Her woman smell came to him, and primal need started a slow, heavy thud of his heart. He noted her sudden in-breath and tiny shudder when his fingers grazed the underside of her arms. So she was sensitive there. He filed the knowledge for future reference.
The zipper parted, and Emmie clapped her hand to her breast to keep the dress up. Caleb turned her back toward him.
“Now the bra.” He pushed the material of the dress aside, baring her back and the hooks of the bronze bra. Her skin was silk, gleaming over the feminine shape of her back. If he hadn’t just promised nothing would happen, he would slide his hands around to cup the fullness he had just released. He let his hands linger only a second longer than he should have.
“What have you been sleeping in?”
“Grace brought me one of her husband’s pajama tops.
Something I can get into without lifting my arm. It’s hanging on the bathroom door.”
“Stay there.” Do-Lord found the pajama and the equally oversized robe hanging with it.
He bunched the sleeve together as you would a stocking and slipped it over her hand, then drew it up her arm. Moving behind her, he spread it over her back and draped it over the other shoulder. “Okay, put your other arm through.”
“I can’t without letting go of the dress.”
“Let go. I’m not going to look.”
Emmie snorted. “Do you think I believe that?”
Do- Lord reached around her neck and pulled the lapels of the huge garment together. “I’m going to look, but I’m not going to see much, okay?”
Emmie giggled. She released the top of the dress to put her arm through the sleeve. The dress slid down to snag on her hips.
It was the giggle that did it.
The pajama top, having been slept in for several nights, was full of her scent. He had fully intended to help her out of her dress without pushing for more. But with her womanly scent going to his head, he needed a taste of her sweetness. Just a taste to tide him over.
He walked around her. Swallowed in pinstripe flannel, she should have been the opposite of allure, and yet he longed for one taste, just one taste, as a parched man craves the cool replenishment of water. With deliberate fingers he buttoned the pajama top, hiding her from his temptation.
She watched him with the absorbed curiosity of a child. She didn’t chat. He’d noticed that before about her. If she had something to say, she said it. Otherwise, she watched and listened.
Loathe to stop touching her when he finished with the buttons, he settled the shoulder seams, then straightened the collar. Her hair was trapped, and he slid his hand under it to free it. His palms encountered the smoothness of her neck while the cool, sleek strands flowed over his knuckles. “I don’t even wear pajamas,” he told her, his voice a little husky, “but I think I might buy some-just so you can put them on.”
The tiny travel clock on the nightstand ticked loud in the breathless silence, and deep inside the house the furnace came on. The long-case clock that stood in the entry beside the stairs bonged once.
She raised those wide, innocent blue eyes, invitation and curiosity in equal parts in their depths. “Are you going to kiss me now?”
“Yes, I think I am.” He was a man. It wasn’t in his nature not to take what was offered, not when he wanted it with a wanting that clawed his insides and tightened every muscle. Even though it wasn’t a good idea. He should stay focused and remember he wasn’t looking for a roll in the hay. He needed to make Emmie his ally, and sex would bind her to him. It would work in his favor precisely because she wasn’t the kind of woman who casually took men to her body. But she was vulnerable tonight. Exhausted by constant pain, befuddled by unaccustomed alcohol and drugs, she might do what she would regret tomorrow. If she decided her pride was wounded, he understood her well enough to know he’d never get another chance.
He wanted to unsettle her and give her something to think about, but not something to regret. A kiss or two and he would stop. He threaded his fingers deep in her hair and cupped the back of her head. “Come closer.” He put his hand at her waist. He wanted to feel the softness of the breasts he had freed crushed against his chest and press himself against the notch of her thighs, but his hand encountered the crumpled top of her dress under the pajama where it had snagged on her hip. “Wouldn’t you like to step out of the dress?”
She looked down at the dress bunched around her hips as if surprised to learn she still was wea
ring it, as if she wondered how it had gotten there. She pushed at it left-handed. “Help me.”
He ran his hands under the flannel and tugged, but the dress wasn’t going to move. There was nothing to do but peel it away, his hands against her bare skin. He encountered lacy elastic. My god, she had on a thong!
No amount of telling himself to take it easy was going to restrain him. The slightly cooler skin across her hip, even silkier than her nape, called him to explore its textures and test the soft resilience of the flesh underneath.
At last the dress dropped with a silken whoosh to her feet, but not before sweat dampened his armpits and his heart chugged with driving demand.
He took her hand. “Step out of it.”
She did, and he pulled her to him. Good idea or not, he was not going to let her go until he’d had some satisfaction.
She came to him willingly, blue eyes wide with feminine curiosity. Just a taste, he promised himself. And if he wasn’t going to get enough to satisfy his hunger, he would make it last.
He nibbled at the corner of her mouth just as he used to nibble the edges of the cookies Mrs. McCrea brought to the library, his tongue licking to catch every crumb of sweetness until he found his way to the tender, moist center. He had known he would be even hungrier when the cookie was gone.
Afraid to break whatever spell kept her in its thrall, Emmie held herself very still. For days the big house had been full of clatter and banging doors, footsteps to and fro, excited voices of a constant stream of company. Now it had breathless waiting silence, even the soft sibilance from the heating duct ceased.
Whatever she had expected from this man’s kiss, it wasn’t this slow careful teasing with tiny touches of his tongue. His lips were soft, yet purposeful, and tiny prickles from his beard abraded her cheek. As if he sought a flavor hidden exactly there, his tongue burrowed deep in the corner of her mouth.
Sealed with a promise Page 15
