He fingered the red line, and she knew she'd looked at it too long. She felt herself coloring. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stare, but it does change you. Now, I do have a proposal for you, and I think it would be worth your while to listen. So can we both sit down" —she eyed the rockers significantly—"and get to business?"
Davy could not believe what he was hearing. "Are you telling me your grandfather is making you get mar ried—and you're letting him get away with it? This is twenty-first-century America, woman! Forced marriage isn't legal. Fight him."
"Fight him!" JJ slapped her forehead. "What's the matter with me? Why didn't I think of that?" JJ rolled her eyes and huffed a pained-sounding chuckle. "Do you think I haven't spent the last year looking for a way out? There isn't one."
"Okay, okay. You did think of fighting him. But he's got to be crazy."
"His lawyer solemnly swears that if I challenge Lucas's competence, he'll call the whole town to testify that Lucas is as wily as ever. I won't win, but a trial will provide grist for Wilmington's gossip mill for a couple of years. I'll destroy my reputation, his reputation, and the family busi ness's reputation. I can't win, but I can lose everything."
So this was all about holding onto an easy life and not airing dirty laundry. "Lose everything, huh? What's he going to do? Cut you out of his will? What's the matter, little rich girl? Would you have to go to work?"
JJ gave him a reproving look. "I'll overlook your nasty tone. I didn't explain myself very well. The car business has been hit hard the last year or two. When carmakers fail, there's a ripple effect throughout the whole economy. Dealerships go belly-up, too." Her words were mild, but her eyes blazed with green fires.
"I've kept Caruthers strong, and because of the busi ness, one hundred families have paid their mortgages. They still have homes. They've gotten the medical care they needed when they needed it, because they still have insurance. They're not afraid of the future. They still have pensions. Their kids are still in college. Christmas is good at their houses.
"And that's just the start of the prosperity and peace of mind Caruthers generates. It doesn't include the Little League teams, the United Way campaigns, the civic im provement projects it spearheads."
"But still, you'd get married? To save a business?"
"Throughout the ages, women have married for reasons that have more to do with protecting property and providing for those who depend on them than with love. For me, this business and the people who are part of it are inseparable from my family. It is the soil my roots are set down deep into. Yes. I will do what it takes."
Her green eyes lit with passion; her voice throbbed with fervor. That cool exterior hid passionate depths. He could see her like a latter-day Joan of Arc, mounted on a black horse, dressed in chain mail, fearlessly moving into holy battle.
"One more question. You're a beautiful woman. Are all the men in Wilmington blind or something? With your looks and money, I bet men would line up around the block if you put the word out."
"It's possible," she acknowledged.
"Then, why me?"
"I've already tried putting the word out—as much as I'm willing to. Strange as it might seem," she quirked an ironic eyebrow, "I don't really want to be wooed for either my looks or my money. I'm not an ornament for a man's ego, and I don't want someone kissing up to me so he can move up a few price points on the loafers he buys. I prefer a straightforward business arrangement. What you see on the table is all there is. No hidden agendas, no hidden expectations. As for why you—you're a SEAL."
"A lot of women who are marriage-minded think that's a problem."
Her full lips moved in the first genuinely pleased smile he'd seen. She leaned forward eagerly. "No, it's perfect! I don't know why I didn't think of this solution a year ago."
"Then clue me in, how 'bout it, because I don't see the connection."
"It's obvious the business won't allow me to live anywhere but Wilmington. I understand you're out of the country most of the time, but even when you're here, there are no SEAL bases in North Carolina. We won't have to live together except in the most nominal sense. I can be married to you and not need to see you more than a couple of times a year."
That killed any hope that she was harboring a secret yearning for him. "Damn. That's cold."
She looked down and blushed—which was interest ing. "I didn't mean to sound indifferent to your welfare. Let me put it this way. You would also be free to live as you please. Get married one day, return to your old life the next. I don't expect you to be faithful—although I would appreciate discretion."
"What's the catch?"
"You'll have to sign a prenuptial agreement. Whatever payment we agree on, that's it. I don't in tend to support you the rest of your life." She pulled a paper from her briefcase. "I have it here if you'd like to read it."
He waved it aside. He could read it, sure, but he'd have to go over it several times to comprehend it. Better to do that when he was alone.
She knew when to be silent; he'd give her that. In fact, he'd bet she was a hell of a businesswoman. She waited for his decision, her perfect features composed, a tiny smile at the corners of her mouth. Her green gaze was steady but just a touch weary, he thought.
The strange, nagging feeling that had rolled around the edge of his consciousness like a basketball circling and circling the rim finally dropped in. Her eyes were the same color as the little girl's in Afghanistan! It hadn't made sense that he would feel so moved by a woman he had barely met—a woman obviously able to look after herself. But if she reminded him of the child, that explained it. The death of a patient had rarely left him feeling so helpless or inadequate, or made him wish more wholeheartedly that he could have done more. It felt unbelievably good to have solved at least one mystery in a brain that half the time seemed to belong to someone else.
"You know, your eyes are the same color green as a little girl's in Afghanistan." He touched his cheek. "I don't remember getting this. Seeing her is the last thing I remember before coming to in a hospital in Germany."
"You don't look like that's a happy memory."
"She died. In childbirth. Fourteen years old. Forced into marriage with a man in his forties. So many things could have saved her. If she hadn't been forced into marriage. If her husband had at least waited to get her pregnant. If someone had recognized that a pregnancy in a girl that young is high-risk. If a competent midwife had been available. If it hadn't been forbidden to let a man, not her husband, look at her—even to save her life."
"You," she whispered, looking at him with unflinch ing kindness. "You were the 'man.'"
He nodded and swallowed, unable to speak.
She averted her eyes, a courtesy he appreciated. Since his injury, emotions sometimes caught him unaware, spill ing over before he knew they were so close to the surface.
Even when he had control again, she continued to look into the distance.
She chewed her lip, scraping at it slowly and thought fully with her upper teeth. It didn't look like a nervous habit—more something she did when she was thinking deeply. Mostly she seemed to have the strength, poise, and power of an older woman. It turned him on, big time. This gesture though, this made her look young, earnest, and vulnerable. It went straight to his softest soft spot.
After a while she said, "I understand. My marriage problems must seem picayune compared to that. I'm not a victim of oppression. Legally, I can't be forced. Because I didn't like the choices I saw, I refused to acknowledge that I was making a choice. But I am. The one that seems to be in the best interests of the most people."
There was a quiet dignity about the way she spoke, neither arguing nor pleading her case. He liked it. In fact, he liked her. He liked the passion with which she embraced responsibility for those in her care. He liked her ability to stay focused on her goals even when he goaded her. He liked that she didn't candy-coat. He was aware of her allure, but she didn't use it to get her way. They were from different worlds, an
d yet it was surpris ing how well he understood what mattered to her.
No, she wasn't being forced. And when all was said and done, she wasn't proposing marriage. She was mak ing a deal. It was time to get down to terms.
"How much money are we talking about?"
Chapter 22
"HOW MUCH DO YOU THINK A KITCHEN RENOVATION LIKE this costs?"
Lon ran a practiced eye over the room, figuring costs on the glowing, hand-rubbed cherry cabinets, the state of-the-art appliances, the green granite countertops. As a sideline, Lon flipped houses. In the booming housing market in San Diego, he'd made some serious money. "Sixty, seventy thou."
Davy whistled silently.
"It's a good investment. In this location, they'll get back every penny."
"I thought Pickett's mother gave them the renovation as an enticement to keep the house, not sell it."
Lon's smile held a touch of cynicism. "She said it was a wedding present, but, yeah, that probably was her real agenda. She wants to give them a reason to always come back here, no matter where Jax is stationed. I've gathered Mama Sessoms likes to hold on to her kids."
Davy wondered if his mother had wanted to hold on to her kids—not him—his half-brothers and sister. Somehow he always thought of them as her children. She would have moved heaven and earth to get anything they needed—he knew that. Which circled his thoughts back to how he was going to provide for them. "Is it going to take a kitchen re-do to get my mother's house to sell?"
"Kitchens and baths sell houses, no doubt about that, but even if it does sell, you won't realize the kind of money you need." Lon had helped him with settling his mother's estate. He knew how things had been left. "Want some thing to drink?" Lon asked, going to the refrigerator.
"I need to finish painting the bathroom."
"Done."
"You finished it?"
"Finished, brushes washed, everything."
"Thanks, bro."
Lon grabbed two cans of Pepsi from the refrigerator and set one in front of Davy. He pulled a stool opposite Davy and perched on it, gingerly pulling his pants leg away from the groin. After a day doing the same work Davy had, Lon's cargo shorts were pristine. Davy didn't know how he did it.
"How's the leg?" An injury at the top of the thigh, requiring stitches, was the reason Lon was here, not div ing with the rest of the guys.
"Still a little sore."
"Are you really going to baby-sit Jax's mother-in-law while you're on limited duty?" Davy asked, aware he was stalling. "That woman is a drunk."
"Ex-mother-in-law," Lon corrected. He wasn't going to discuss the arrangement he'd made with Jax to super vise Lauren's visits with her grandson. "Lauren's trying to turn her life around. That's not easy. I guess you're thinking about when we hustled her, drunk, out of the wedding reception when Jax and Pickett got married?"
"Umm-mmm." Davy's murmur might have been an affirmative, might have been an invitation to Lon to keep talking. It was a sound he'd gotten good at in the last several months. If he could keep people talking, some times he could figure out what they were talking about without revealing that he had lost track of the conversa tion. The silence between them lengthened. Davy rolled the cold red, white, and blue can between his hands. Lon was waiting for him to start.
"So what are you going to do?" Lon asked after he'd heard the whole story.
"I don't know. A chance to earn the money I need by getting married—it still feels like a practical joke—one that God is playing on me."
"Listen, losing your mom so soon after nearly dying yourself is bound to make you examine your life. But you need to chill. You're taking on too much. Eleanor and Harris are adults—help them if you can, but let them figure out how to stay in school."
"That's not the way Mom would see it. Anyway, Riley's just fourteen. My mom's will names me guard ian. You know what that school is costing."
"You can get help. The Navy has a lot of support for sailors with special-needs kids."
"It's still better for him if he stays in his school. Riley doesn't handle change well."
"So what do you want?" Lon asked after a while.
"I just want my life back. I feel like the person I'd been all my life died in Afghanistan, and now I'm walk ing around as someone I don't recognize. I want out of this limbo I've floated in ever since I was shipped back. I want to operate again. When I'm a SEAL, I know who I am. I know where I belong. Even the bad days are good. Now, I wake up every day hoping today's the day I'm finally going to feel like myself again."
He couldn't explain what he had to do. He didn't try. His mind squirrel-caged as he tried to find his way through all the variables. It settled on the one moment of—he sought a word for that incandescent, miraculous peace he'd felt when he'd walked into the living room and there she sat.
Joy.
And then she had said, "I want to marry you." It had felt like a joke, but now he thought it was a sign.
Whenever he had thought about getting married, it had seemed like a vague possibility in some unimagi nable future. He wasn't against it; he just hadn't been able to see it. He'd always put off the thought for when he'd had enough of operating. Until then, being faithful through the inevitable separations would be too much of a hardship. Operate single, and have all the sex he wanted, or operate married, knowing he got none until he got home. It was a no-brainer.
Marriage was a sacrament. He'd feel dirty turning it into a commodity. But a marriage on paper only? Maybe it was the answer to what had looked like a hopeless problem. He had told himself it was time to man up. To take care of his family—if he made sure no money came to him—he could go through with it.
"I don't want to do it on her terms," he told Lon. "Will you help me come up with a counteroffer?"
Chapter 23
"THANKS FOR THE RIDE," DAVID CALLED TO LON. HE waited until Lon drove off to knock on the paneled red wood door of JJ's beach cottage. Lon hadn't been crazy about what David was proposing to do. David didn't like it either, but it solved his problems. With a clear conscience, knowing his brothers and sister were taken care of, as soon as he was healed up, he could have his life back.
The door opened. A wet tendril of dark hair hung over the one green eye he could see peeking through at him. Through the crack of the door, he could smell her, warm and moist from her bath. Girly soap and sham poo and clean woman essence—it went to his head and weakened him with longing. "Aren't you ready?"
"It's only four-thirty. I wasn't expecting you until five-thirty. I was in the shower."
Shit. Had he gotten the time mixed up again? His problem wasn't forgetting. He remembered, but when he got to appointments, he was wrong. He should have written it down—not that even that always helped, be cause sometimes he wrote it down wrong. Didn't matter. With Lon gone, he couldn't offer to go away and come back. A little surprise might be to his advantage. He pushed against the door. "That's okay. I'll wait."
She let go of the door in favor of clutching together the lapels of the white terry robe she wore. Which was a damn shame. The glimpse of leg he'd gotten was fine. He watched the action with a knowing and very appre ciative smile.
She fell back a couple of steps, but she didn't let him fluster her. "Come in," she invited, ignoring the fact that he was already in. "Why don't you have a seat while I put on some clothes?" She waved him toward a grouping of sofas and chairs near the huge windows that looked out on the ocean and took up one wall.
Trained in situation awareness, he took in the layout of the room, the position of every door and window, every structure that could conceivably hide a shooter. Moisture escaping from the bathroom intensified odors. The room was full of her personal smell. Through the open door to her bedroom, he could see the red leather jacket and green wool slacks she had been wearing ear lier, now draped across the foot of the bed, the yellow heels on the floor beneath them.
Reconstructing the scene, he could imagine her stepping out of the heels, undressing, walking n
aked to the bath room. Just for a second, he could see how her round, high breasts tipped with large, velvety-brown areolas swung as she bent over. He inhaled reflexively as his whole body tightened. Damn. There went that feeling that he knew her again. His imagination had never been that good before. The head doctors talked about a lowering of inhibition thresholds as a result of traumatic brain injury, or TBI, but he'd thought they meant acting more emotional.
Focus. This was no time to start thinking with his dick. People who paid you thought they owned you. He had to make sure JJ knew she wasn't going to get a lapdog. To cover his reaction, he gave her a deliberately suggestive chuckle. "Don't get dressed on my account."
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