SEALed With A Kiss: Heroes With Heart

by Low, Gennita

“I don’t know.” She didn’t, either. Her former dates and boyfriends were like wobbly-kneed boys on a basketball team, afraid of their own shadow. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Can I tie you up?” He was watching her to be sure there was enough of a green light to go forward.

  “Would you stop if I said no?”

  All of a sudden he flinched in pain, whirled off her body and sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her.

  What did I say?

  Into his hands he said, “I’m not ready for this.” He got up and started dressing, eyes averted.

  “Luke. Wait a minute.”

  “No, Julie. This won’t work. I’m not ready for this. I cannot be trusted.”

  She ran around to face him as he bent over to slip on his pants. Instinct told her it was best not to touch him or get too close. She could feel the boiling of something dark and oily inside him, something caged he was trying not to release.

  The look he gave her shafted her heart with a javelin. His eyes squinted like they were standing in a sunny room—too sunny. But his jaw was tense. His soft, full lips were creased into a thin line and his breathing hitched. He held the tops of his jeans tight-fisted as he pulled them up quickly and slipped the black tee shirt over his head.

  Julie knew she shouldn’t stop him. She knew that it wasn’t sex, or even compassion he wanted tonight.

  It was distance.

  Chapter Thirteen

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  Luke wasn’t as careful as he should have been as he exited the gravel driveway and headed out onto Warm Springs Road. He nearly collided with an SUV full of soccer players and a very scared mom behind the wheel. Her panic, splashed across him as his headlights lit them up, spurred him to overcorrect, nearly landing him in the ditch on the other side. But the soccer kids and their driver were safe.

  Smoke billowed from under the hood of his Mustang, until he recognized the smell of burning rubber from his tires. The soccer mom was well on her way out of the area, honking a couple of times. He was sorry he’d nearly scared the poor woman to death.

  I’ve almost lost it.

  He was grateful he’d only had one beer at Nick’s house. Didn’t stay for the ice cream because—because—

  Because I wanted to fuck Julie senseless. He’d been so fixated on her that it had been the only thing on his mind when he’d left Nick’s place.

  He was suddenly out of options. And he knew he couldn’t be alone.

  He dialed Nick.

  “Oh, good, you decided to join us for ice cream after all,” Nick said.

  At first Luke just tried to restore his breathing.

  “Luke. You all right?”

  “No.”

  “Talk to me. Better yet, get your butt over here.”

  “Okay.”

  “But I gotta ask you, first. You packin’?”

  “No.”

  “I’m searching you before you step into my house, hear?”

  “I deserve that.”

  True to his word, Nick did a quick frisk to check for weapons before he unlocked his front door and let Luke inside. There had been an unfortunate incident last year where someone came home and shot up a Team guy’s family, and ever since then they’d been required to take protective action. Luke didn’t see a vest underneath Nick’s shirt, but he wasn’t sure.

  “Your keys.” Nick held out his hand.

  “I’m not giving you my fuckin’ keys.”

  “Then you go outside and kill yourself for all I care. Now quit messin’ with me and give me your God. Damned. Keys.”

  Luke surrendered his keychain.

  “So what happened?”

  “I don’t know, man. I’m just a mess.”

  “Alcohol or coffee?” Nick said as he walked to the kitchen. “You choose. But you’re not leaving here tonight, or if you do, you walk, understood?”

  “Not coffee. I need to settle down.”

  Nick pulled out four long-necked beers from the refrigerator, brought them over to the couch placing two on the glass table in front of Luke and two in front of his spot next to Luke.

  “So what happened, Luke? You went to see the girl…and?”

  “And I got spooked.”

  “Fuck sake, Luke. Now you’re pissing me off,” Nick said as he took a deep swig.

  “I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop. I wanted her, hard.”

  Nick was pensive. “I feel you.”

  “It was too hard.”

  “So you pulled away because you weren’t sure you’d be able to stop yourself from hurting her? Is that what you’re sayin?”

  Luke shrugged. The beer tasted good. He could almost feel the tissues in his stomach absorbing the alcohol. He was suddenly filled with unspeakable sadness. He looked away.

  “It’s the thing, Luke, not you. You’re going to have to work on it. I can see it in your face, the way you hold yourself, man. You got those peaks and valleys, the highs and then those awful lows. You have to form a practice to take care of it. And you’re not gonna want to do it, man. But it’s just like PT. Hell, it’s just like the BUD/S training. You don’t just fuckin’ stand there in your shorts and expect they’ll award you the Trident.”

  Luke had never thought about it that way. Nick was making some sense.

  “You’re gonna have to train yourself back to some place—I can’t call it normal, because there’s no fuckin’ normal out there. Just some place where you’ll feel you can trust yourself again. And only then is when you can trust someone else.”

  Luke did feel glimpses of what his life used to be like, and what it could be like again. Without all the dreams. Without the mood swings. And he didn’t want to be coping with life using a jar full of pills, either.

  “You gotta want to get well more than anything else in the world,” Nick said. “And you gotta stop trying to control it and just let it be. Quit dissing yourself for not being better. You’re wounded.”

  Luke didn’t like hearing that at all.

  Nick picked up on it. “Yeah, you don’t care for that label. Well, it’s not like you lost a leg or an arm or something. Part of your soul leaked out, and you’re gonna have to learn how to compensate.”

  Luke must have given him a puzzled look.

  “You’ll need help with that. Counseling. No shame in getting help. Just like in our training, no one gets through on his own. This is no different. Honest. I mean on my own, I was one sorry sonofabitch. I was headed nowhere, man.”

  He and Nick talked until two in the morning. They ran out of beer after the second six-pack was consumed, but Nick forbid them going to the store for more. The point wasn’t to get drunk, either, so they didn’t open wine or get into Nick’s special stash of bourbon.

  “Just means it’s time to go to bed,” Nick said.

  He showed Luke to the downstairs bedroom, which had a fireplace and private bath. He got the fire started and then threw a towel at him. “Wash up before you sleep on my wife’s expensive sheets, okay?”

  They embraced briefly. Nick eyed him suspiciously. “You going to be all right? I’m not going to have to do anything heroic tonight, am I? I’m tired as hell.”

  “Thanks, man. Appreciate this.”

  “And you sleep in tomorrow. Sleep is good for you. Got your pills?”

  “Nah, I’m not going to need them. I’ll take a shower and just crash.”

  “And no fuckin’ leaving until the morning, after breakfast, right?”

  “Right.”

  Luke stripped off his clothes for the second time tonight. He couldn’t help but remember what it had felt like to see Julie’s naked body beneath him as she anticipated a beautiful lovemaking session. He loved watching her need him. That’s what he saw there. And he wanted in the worst way to fill that need, scratch that itch. Just that it wasn’t right. It would have felt as good as heaven, but that still didn’t make it right.

  He let the warm water sluice over his body. He lathered up with some lemon shower gel and
then enveloped himself in the fluffy towel sheet that reminded him of how Julie would smell. Wrapping it around his waist, he walked barefoot into the bedroom.

  A sea of pillows covered half the bed. He carefully stacked them onto two overstuffed chairs nearby. Dropping the towel, he slipped between cool sheets and watched the even gas flame of the fire. He was looking for answers in the golden flickering plumes, aware that that wasn’t the right place to find them.

  You have to treat this like a practice, Nick had said. Well, that’s one way of looking at it. He had never thought getting well was something someone would have to practice. He thought it was something you just had to wait and let your body do.

  He tucked his head back onto the firm pillows, watching the fire patterns on the ceiling dancing back and forth. As his eyes closed, he heard the crack of an automatic, but was too tired to open them. Besides, his sleep was taking him to the noise, not away from it. He was back there. Blood on his hands. Camilla in his arms, the red liquid warm against his thighs. He realized he’d not remembered that she’d looked up at him.

  She watched him, her eyes, surprisingly, not full of pain. He could see she knew she loved him more than he loved her. He was doing the right thing, but his feelings for her weren’t as strong as his sense of duty and honor. His goal was to never let her feel unloved, even if he had to spend his life pretending. He would be a father to a child he hadn’t planned on raising, because it would make her happy.

  Because it was his duty.

  For the first time in his dream, he searched her eyes. As the red blood trickled down the right side of her mouth over her startlingly flawless white cheek, her red blood-stained lips called to him and he heard her voice.

  Goodbye, Luke.

  Julie didn’t want to be alone in her bed, but she didn’t want to expend the energy to drive anywhere on the off chance she would see someone she knew. She thought about calling one of her teacher friends in San Diego, but checked the clock first. It was only nine o’clock. Numbness set in as she took a hot bath and then slipped on a comforting flannel nightie. She called her co-worker, Annalise, who picked up on the first ring.

  “Well that makes two of us who don’t have dates, then,” Julie forced herself to say.

  “So what else is new? How’s it going up there, Julie?”

  “Oh, okay, I guess.”

  “Any cute new guys hanging around? Your brother has some hunky friends down here.”

  “I’ve been busy with the arrangements. Mom has me pretty tied up the next two days, going back and forth to San Francisco and Oakland airports to pick people up, get them to their hotels. I could probably become a chauffeur or do wine tours if I lost my teaching job.”

  It grated on her that, even though she had a master’s degree, she could only get a sixty percent contract to teach. That way, the school district didn’t have to pay benefits. Although if it hadn’t been for that, she wouldn’t have had a job at all, since enrollment was declining.

  “Speaking of which,” Annalise’s voice now sounded conspiratorial. Julie’s mind drifted back to the afternoon session a few days ago in Dr. Connor’s office. She didn’t pay attention to Annalise until the words, “and she said he wanted you fired.”

  “Who said that?” Julie asked.

  “The girl was talking about it in school the last day, how you weren’t coming back. You haven’t had a conversation with Connors I don’t know about, have you?”

  “No. I even asked him. But you know, the guy won’t give me a straight answer.”

  “Well, Julie, maybe he doesn’t know.”

  “One thing’s for sure, he isn’t going to risk his job. Just wish he’d jumped in, been more proactive with the family.”

  “He probably thought it would all blow over,” Annalise said.

  It is going to all blow away. Everything is going away. Sharp, warm tears filled her eyes. That’s when it hit her, she’d been holding on to her strong side, holding everything in, and what she really wanted to do was have a seriously sloppy, slobbery cry.

  Suddenly it didn’t matter if Annalise had information about her job. Her job could take a flying leap. The prospect of teaching in San Diego, a place where she’d loved living, was suddenly unappealing. Especially because she’d be looking for him everywhere. It would not give her any rest. Better to go away, perhaps back up to Oregon, or try to come home and get a job up here. Then Colin and Stephanie could come visit her here, where Luke wouldn’t be. Except there’d be pictures of him she wouldn’t be able to avoid. Stories about what he was doing. Who he was sharing his life with.

  Someone other than her in the picture.

  Annalise finally got that Julie wasn’t listening. “Hey, kiddo. What’s going on? You called me, but I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to say a word. You just like listening to me go on and on about boring things down here? I thought you’d have a great adventure up there. I was hoping for it, anyway.”

  “Thanks, Annalise.”

  No. Nothing much is going on except my heart is broken.

  Again.

  She wiped tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “I’m going to go now. I’ll give you a call later in the week. You doing anything exciting?”

  “I’m thinking when you get back we’ll go to Vegas for a weekend. That sound good to you?”

  “Sounds perfect. Girl’s weekend out. Just what I think I need.” She continued brushing the tears from her face. “Thanks for picking up. Take care.”

  Chapter Fourteen

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  White linen tablecloths graced rounded patio tables surrounded by folding chairs decorated with pink and green ribbons Julie had tied all by herself. There were one hundred of them. She’d tied the balloons all along the approach to her parents’ house, along the mile-long driveway through oak and madrone trees.

  Colin and Stephanie had made a wooden arch out of pieces of fallen tree branches in the woods surrounding the estate. It was rough-hewn, but they’d covered it with garlands of flowers and more wide satin green and pink ribbon. A dance floor had been laid down over her parents’ lawn yesterday, and Julie had settled fifty votive candles in little metal boats that would float on her parents’ pool glowing in the dark.

  Her mother’s garden was in full bloom, even more abundant than in years past. She’d planted golden yellow black-eyed Susans and white Shasta daisies around her blooming purple and pink hydrangeas, which stood easily six feet tall. An array of snapdragons and sweet Williams dotted the front levels of the raised rock garden walls. In between, large South African lilies sent off a heady fragrance. The gardeners had worked furiously over the past week and everything, including the multiple colored pots overflowing with annuals, looked like it had been trimmed with a pair of scissors. There wasn’t a blade out of place, and yet the gardens had an exuberant, joyful look. Bench seats built into the rock walls were shaded with burgundy and green umbrellas, stuck into plastic piping embedded in the base of the seats. At night, the solar lights would come on and give it the magical glow they’d worked so hard to achieve.

  She was still putting on finishing touches when her mother came out onto the patio.

  “Julie, you’d better get inside and get dressed. People will be arriving in a half hour.”

  The sounds of the caterers clanging around in her mother’s kitchen drifted through the opened doorway. She surveyed the chairs and umbrellas she’d decorated and called it good. Behind her mother came two young men carrying the flowers for each of the tables and the buffet, sending her scooting out onto the patio.

  “Oh, my God, I totally forgot the flowers!” her mother exclaimed as she dropped her shoulders and looked at Julie with her head cocked.

  “That’s cutting it rather close, I’d say. The boys better be careful they don’t encounter guests on the driveway on the way down,” Julie said as she watched the flower handlers set their box down and place little sprays at each table.

  The driveway was single-lane
d. They’d hired a couple of high school boys with walkie-talkies to manage the traffic, and to drive guests up and down in a trailered golf cart for the faint of heart or legs. The property owner at the bottom had agreed to loan his bare land to serve as a parking lot. When Julie was in high school, partygoers had driven off the steep hill and wound up entangled in oak trees, lucky that their descent had been halted by the sturdy trunks.

  “Good point. I’ll go let them know.” Her mother darted back into the house.

  The sky had remained cloudless on this beautiful June afternoon. A gentle breeze fluttered the ribbons, made the tall flowers of her mother’s garden bob as if nodding at her in agreement. She’d always thought her wedding would look like this. Today she could look at it all, and actually feel happy for her brother and fiancée. The sting of Luke’s rejection had dulled as she sternly reminded herself that this day wasn’t about her and her feelings, it was about her brother’s. She would not let anything interfere with that.

  She ran upstairs and began showering, washing and styling her hair and rubbing Tuscan Orange body crème everywhere. She took out the pink box and peeled back the peach tissue inside, revealing a light pink brocade corset. It hugged her waist, making it easily two inches smaller, made her already flat tummy even flatter, and rode down her hips and rear. She attached her pink stocking with the adjustable garter clips. The corset boosted her breasts up and gave her a luscious cleavage to accentuate her small waist.

  Julie drew the lovely silk and voile bridesmaid’s gown over her head, smoothing it down her breasts and waist, making her body shudder under the hush of the cool fabric. She zipped it up the side and walked in a cloud of pink to the bathroom to do her makeup.

  She applied creams, powder, added some dusting powder with sparkles in it for her shoulders, and used a pearlescent face powder. She lined her eyes in dark brown pencil, added a bronze eye shadow at the corners. With a generous serving of mascara, eyebrow gel and a last minute fluff up of her long curls held tousled by spray gel, she looked at herself in the mirror. Nodded. It was as good as it was going to get.