SEALed with a Ring

by Mary Margret Daughtridge

  Men talked. Having spent her whole life in a male dominated industry she knew. If they had no personal experience of a woman's willingness, they speculated. If they did, they bragged.

  Though sex without marriage might no longer soil a woman, the double standard was alive and well. Men respected women known to be selective in granting their favors, and that respect colored their every interaction.

  If he wanted to brag, he wouldn't have to embellish. The absolute truth was as salacious as anyone could want. She had no desire to remind him.

  The best thing would be to find Blount and get the two of them out of there. She wished she hadn't sent him to get her pashmina shawl from their hotel room a few minutes ago. Instead, she wished she'd used being a little chilly as a good reason to move their evening to the next phase.

  "Don't look so worried," Pickett urged, chuckling. "Mother is a hopeless matchmaker. I'm not going to push guys at you. A SEAL wouldn't be to everyone's taste. Anyway, Mother, Jax is fixing to drag me out of here. I'm pregnant," she explained to JJ. "He thinks I get tired. To tell you the truth, I do."

  "Does this mean you're going to listen to reason and not try to stay at the Snead's Ferry house while all the con struction goes on this weekend?" her mother demanded.

  "Yes, ma'am." Pickett turned to include JJ in the con versation. "Some of the men are going to help Jax finish a bathroom in the Snead's Ferry house this weekend. Then on Monday he'll take them diving on that ship wreck the last hurricane uncovered. Wisdom being the better part of valor, I'm going to stay here at the hotel."

  "Alone?" Mary Cole fussed. "I thought you would spend the weekend with me."

  "Being alone sounds wonderful. These days, anytime Jax is gone, Tyler's grandmother, Lauren, wants to come over to visit with Tyler."

  "Is the tension between Jax and Lauren wearing you out?"

  "No, ma'am, but this weekend Tyler is with his cous ins, and Jax is here." A wicked light appeared in her deep aqua eyes. "And I," she tapped her chest, "intend to make the most of it."

  A harsh-featured man with cold gray eyes stepped up beside Pickett. His eyes warmed when they rested on Pickett. He responded politely when Pickett introduced him as her husband, Jax, but it was clear he had eyes only for his tiny wife. "I warned you ten minutes ago it was time to get you off your feet, but did you listen? No. Now there are going to be consequences."

  "Ooh! Consequences." Pickett fluttered her eyes. "I like the sound of that."

  "Off your feet. Now." He swept her up into his arms.

  Pickett reflexively put her arms around his neck. "Jax, for goodness sake! Put me down."

  Jax ignored her and turned to his mother-in-law. In a long-suffering voice, he told her, "You have no idea what it takes to keep her in line."

  Pickett gave him a narrow-eyed look. "Does this mean you intend ravishment?"

  "Guaranteed."

  Pickett swept a regal hand. "In that case, carry on!"

  JJ followed Jax's progress as he threaded his way through the crowd, carrying his precious burden in strong, sure arms. Her heart pounded uncomfortably, and she had a strange lump in her throat.

  Swamped by shame that she had dived into sex for a few hours of forgetfulness, JJ had pushed the details of the night with a man whose last name she didn't know from her mind. But if she were being honest, it hadn't been all hot monkey sex. For so many men (women, too, for all she knew), sex was hardly more momentous than a good sneeze. There was a certain satisfaction as a strong urge was relieved, but it wasn't anything worth stopping for. He, however, had been a man determined not merely to do it but to enjoy it. A man for whom sex was fun, and with a serious, focused playfulness, he had constantly engaged her, whispering sex words and naughty suggestions. At the memory, she smiled in spite of herself, feeling weak in the knees.

  "Are you sure you don't want one of those?" Mary Cole inquired, not having missed how JJ's eyes fol lowed the couple so obviously in love and secure in their love.

  JJ shook her head. The weak in the knees part was what she needed to remember. "He looks hard to manage."

  "You have no idea what a strategic thinker my daughter is. Unless I miss my guess, she set that whole thing up."

  "Anyway, I'm here with someone else tonight. I ought to go find him."

  "Did I see you with Blount Satterfield? Are you two getting serious?"

  JJ read a look of disquiet in the other woman's eyes that made her answer less affirmatively than she might have. Mary Cole was one of the few people who knew of JJ's grandfather's ultimatum. "Possibly. Why?"

  "Oh… nothing. He dated Emmie for awhile, that's all."

  JJ nodded. "I gathered he and Emmie were colleagues."

  "Is that what he told you?" Mary Cole made a sound that in anyone less ladylike would have been a snort. "It's true as far as it goes. But they also went together for long enough to make her think he was serious, and then he dumped her—went out with someone else very publicly, without so much as a by-your-leave."

  From what JJ had seen of the barefoot bride and her far-from-traditional wedding, JJ doubted if Emmie and Blount had ever suited one another. Breaking up was probably best for both of them. Still, he'd given the im pression that he hardly knew Emmie.

  "There are always two sides to any story," she told Mary Cole. "I'll bet he just wasn't really involved and assumed she wasn't either. I don't think he's the kind to have deep feelings for anyone."

  Mary Cole's brows drew together. "Even you?"

  "Even me. Frankly, I like that about him. I don't need to worry he'll feel jealous of my involvement with Caruthers."

  "You mean you really are serious about him?"

  "You sound upset. You're the one who told me maybe my grandfather was right. You said I should consider one of the men he had picked out."

  "I meant I didn't think you had tried very hard on your own to find someone to marry. How could you ex pect to get to know a man if you saw him, at most, every two or three weeks? It's no surprise your relationships petered out before they ever got off the ground."

  It was almost word for word what her grandfather had said. JJ tossed a long-fingered hand in a frustrated gesture. "Get real, Mary Cole. You know what it's like to be the fe male head of a large business. You have to do everything a man would do and everything his wife would do."

  "Of course I do, but the insurance agency is not my whole existence. As long as I live, I'll regret that the needs of the business made me neglect Pickett."

  JJ knew the story. "You did what you had to," she reassured Mary Cole, "to save the agency from bank ruptcy after your husband died. A lot of people, not just Pickett, were depending on you."

  "Maybe. But maybe I was also using work to bury my grief and my fury at him for dying suddenly and leaving us in that condition." She raised blue eyes heav enward. "An insurance agent who let his own insurance premiums lapse!"

  "No matter how you felt, you didn't have a choice about what you had to do."

  "There are always choices."

  The older woman was sincere, JJ knew, but their situ ations weren't the same. "I thought you agreed with me that this was the best way."

  Mary Cole sighed. "JJ, I'm not trying to argue with you. I'm on your side. I'll say this for your grandfather: he's not all that smart about women, but Lucas knows men. I thought he would select men who had the basic qualifications, and you would choose the one you had a real attraction to. I didn't mean you should marry some one who didn't love you!"

  JJ's grandfather had taught her how to run a car busi ness, but Mary Cole had taught her how to be a busi nesswoman. JJ admitted to a little hurt that her mentor didn't seem to be proud of her. It made her say, a little stiffly, "Since Blount and I are making a deal, I feel it's best not to let the decision be clouded by strong emo tions. But I respect him. In time, I expect that will grow into real affection."

  Blue eyes dark with distress, Mary Cole squeezed JJ's hand. "Oh, my darling JJ, what has happened to you?"

&n
bsp; Chapter 11

  ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HOTEL PATIO, DAVY HELD the cold beer bottle to the outer corner of his eyebrow where the red flashing pain had lodged. The doctors said his fractured eye socket was still healing and the pain would go away. He hadn't died in Afghanistan, but he wondered how long it would be before he felt alive again.

  He hadn't been shipped home in a box. Instead it was his mother who had lain in a coffin only weeks after his first surgery, and Davy had become responsible for a much younger brother.

  Now everybody wanted to know his plans, while he was trying to understand something he'd never looked into before. In the deepest part of himself, he had always known the present was all he had. Now it felt as if he was living someone else's future.

  Lon, always looking after everybody, had talked him into coming to Do-Lord's wedding, saying it was better than brooding in his tiny three-room apartment while he had thirty days of convalescent leave. Davy wasn't so sure. These days following conversation, particularly in a group, took concentration. It was easier to let his mind drift away.

  Garth Vale, a.k.a. Darth Vader, and who, like his namesake, was extremely fast and extremely dangerous, saw the action. "You got a hangover, already?"

  "Hangover from the 'Stan. Headache. I still get them."

  Garth nodded and hoisted his cane in salute. Being a SEAL was hard on a body. They all had paid with pain for their place among the world's finest warriors. Garth had been wounded in the same action Davy was and now had titanium where part of his thigh bone used to be. Hospitalized together, they'd gotten in the habit of hanging out. Garth was an officer and Davy enlisted, but that wasn't the same barrier among SEALs as in other services.

  SEALs had a reputation for being clannish, for having their own hangouts, for not liking to mingle even with other Navy personnel. The reputation was deserved, but the charge of elitism and arrogance that often went with it wasn't. The simple truth was that life as a SEAL put them outside the mainstream. Even if they could talk about what they did, which they couldn't because everything they did was secret, most people couldn't understand it or even believe it. When they had time to relax, they relaxed with SEALs.

  Gradually Davy and most of the other SEALs had gravitated to a corner table partly hidden by masonry pillars and sheltered from above by an overhanging bal cony. It was no accident that the space had three exits and anyone approaching the table was clearly visible, while the table was in shadow. In some countries, eat ing out was the most dangerous thing SEALs did. In an unfamiliar place, they trusted only each other.

  "Did you ever see that movie, Wedding Crashers?" Garth asked. "Do you think going to weddings is a good way to get laid?"

  "What are you asking him for?" a SEAL whose name Davy couldn't call up snickered. It was embarrassing how often he couldn't recall people's names and was greeted by name by people he'd swear he'd never seen before. While in the hospital, it hadn't been a big prob lem—most people there had been strangers.

  Since he was on convalescent leave, hanging out in Little Creek where more people knew him, it happened more frequently and was harder to cover up. He hoped the problem would go away on its own while he was on leave.

  "All Doc's got to do to get laid," the SEAL contin ued, "is go anywhere girls are. Even getting hit by an RPG couldn't blow all the 'pretty' off that face the girls love so much." Davy wished he could think of the guy's name. It was right there.

  "Hey, Doc, you think you've still got it—now that you got the scar and your cheekbone looks a little lumpy?"

  The guys had always ribbed him about his looks. Intensely competitive men every one, at a glance they could estimate the height, weight, and fighting condition of every man they met—and what it would take to win against him. Unsurprisingly, their competitiveness included attracting females. It stood to reason his friends wouldn't ignore, or dismiss as unimportant, the change in his features.

  Davy fingered the thin y-shaped scar that angled across his cheek from the corner of his mouth to his ear. The short leg of the y creased the cheek vertically. His cheek was as smooth as plastic surgery could make it, but there was no doubt that the perfect regularity of his features was gone for good.

  "What do you look like when you smile?"

  Davy obligingly spread his lips in a grimace. The other men watched his cheek crumple.

  "Shit. You lost your killer dimple!"

  "I've still got everything that matters," he parried, taking a confident swig of his beer.

  What he didn't say was that ever since his injury, something felt… flat. Not The Admiral, thank God. But despite its reflexive interest in attractive women, get ting it on with a girl lacked… He had actually ignored signals from a couple of nurses in the hospital—even once or twice pleaded a headache as an excuse. Him. A headache. It would be funny if it weren't pathetic.

  Vic Littletree whistled under his breath. "Babe alert! Three o'clock."

  Davy looked to his right and almost swallowed his tongue. "That's no babe," he corrected reverently. "That's a goddess."

  The men were silent in appreciation of the vision the crowd on the patio had parted to reveal. Her back to them, she strolled not hurriedly, but purposefully, among the other guests. Her coffee-brown hair tumbled in loose, silky curls to her shoulder blades. Her short sleeved dress, the dusty purple of ripe plums, was almost demure in its restraint.

  She had no need to advertise her sexuality. It was there in the unconscious sway of her hips, the asser tive set of her shoulders. Tall and statuesque, there was plenty of her, and every millimeter was in exactly the right place. A man would have no fear of crushing her or having a hard time finding her in bed.

  He could imagine shaping the warm flesh of those hourglass curves with his hands—as if he already knew what she felt like. His whole body tightened. Weird—his imagination had never been that good before. He didn't take time to examine the feeling. It felt too damn good to feel a flood of genuine arousal for him to question where it came from.

  He willed her to turn so he could see her left hand. Bare. Relief made him lightheaded. He didn't poach, not only because he thought there was plenty to go around and saw no need to covet what some other man had. He also believed marriage vows were sacred and hard enough to keep without interference from the outside. He sent thanks to whatever luck had kept her free. He might have howled if she had been taken.

  He set his beer bottle on the plastic table. "Stand back, guys. This one's mine."

  "We get to watch the operator operate!"

  "We'll see how much the scar handicaps him."

  "All right, I say we start a pool. How long is it going to take him? An hour?"

  "Thirty minutes."

  "Uh-oh. Subject is being approached from the right. Sorry, Doc. Looks like somebody's ahead of you."

  Davy took his eyes from the woman long enough to watch as a man, with a shawl or something draped over his arm, approached her and handed it to her. What an idiot.

  "No, she's not taken," Davy chortled. "See that? The schmuck blew it. He should have wrapped the shawl around her himself."

  "Oh. Right! So he could put his arms around her."

  "Are you going to go over there and muscle in?"

  "Uncool. I don't want a pissing match with him; I want her. A fool like that will leave her alone again. When he does, I move in."

  Across the patio, the woman turned. A face, so exqui site it was hard for him to breathe, turned toward him. She radiated feminine strength in the modeled cheek bones, high intelligent forehead, and very determined chin with the tiniest hint of cleft.

  The sudden return of sexual interest was explained. What she had would bring a man back from the dead. And he knew her!

  Every cell in his body recognized her. He'd heard people talk about seeing someone across the room and suddenly, indisputably, knowing they were the one. Elation and anticipation, far more complex than lust, expanded through his chest. And something that felt like relief heated his eyes wit
h unshed tears. He had found her, the one for him.

  "Darth, stay on her. No matter what, keep her in sight."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Somebody here is bound to know her. I'm going to find out what her name is."

  "Here's your shawl. What did you call it?"

  "A pashmina." Smiling her thanks to Blount, JJ swirled the woven length of fine wool and silk around her shoulders. Woven in shades of lavender, blue, and earthy gold, it was gossamer light and amazingly warm. "Thanks for getting it from the room."

  Now, without sounding too ditzy or like she didn't know her own mind, she had to convince him she was ready to go to the room. In a few minutes she would say the shawl wasn't warm enough and invite him to go with her.