SEALed with a Ring

by Mary Margret Daughtridge

  "Okay." He opened the slider for her. "We go in on one condition."

  "What's that?"

  "We keep the lights on."

  He had a thousand fantasies, and the last hour had just added a thousand more. The most recent ones re quired light.

  She lifted the bundle in her arms. "I need to put these things in the dryer."

  His impulse was to take them from her and throw them on the floor. Slow, he reminded himself. She resisted being overwhelmed. He started toward the kitchen area.

  A light came on automatically when the door to the closet where the washer and dryer were stacked was opened. JJ quickly grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her sarong style.

  As she bundled the comforter and her clothes into the dryer, he leaned against the wall, enjoying the sight of her, anticipating all he wanted to do. It reminded of something he needed to ask. "Are you protected?"

  "Against what?"

  "I mean, are you on the pill?"

  "Yes, but…"

  "I know. There's still the issue of disease. Trust me, in the last few months, every inch of my body has had the once over. I don't have anything. And there hasn't been anyone in… I don't know… anyway, not since Afghanistan."

  "But would you remember?" Her disbelief was obvious.

  "Yes!"

  JJ crossed her arms under her breasts. "Remember every one, do you?"

  "For God's sake. I'm not lying. I'm not that shallow, either. I may have forgotten a couple of girls' names over the years, but I remember being with them. In fact the day I got this, the little girl I told you about with eyes like yours? She reminded me of—" There was that feeling again. That certainty that he knew something—if he could just put the pieces together.

  "What?"

  Of you. No, that was backwards. JJ made him think of the little girl, not the other way around. But the little girl had reminded him of someone, he thought. Someone he associated with a feeling of loss… regret… failure. "The worst mistake I ever made—"

  "Which was?"

  He didn't know. He could remember being in a hotel… with Do-Lord… but where? There had been so damn many hotels in so many countries. Suddenly he could see Jax and Pickett in front of a hotel, loading a car with baggage. When would he have seen that? Their wedding? JJ said the wedding was where they met, but, as usual, the images felt jumbled, out of order.

  They resisted all his efforts to sort them. He was probably making something out of nothing. The truth was, he constantly had feelings of déjà vu around JJ, as if something about her reminded him of someone, as if his unconscious were tapping him on the shoulder. But he couldn't ask her if there had been more to their meet ing than she had told him. It would prove everything she thought about him.

  "The time you failed to use protection?" JJ prompted, smiling with false helpfulness.

  "No, it was—" He stopped himself. He read the dis belief in JJ's eyes. There was no way to defend himself against her suspicion. If there was one thing that wasn't smart, it was talking about old girlfriends. "Never mind. Forget it. I'm happy to use protection. I always have been. It's easier to get in the mood when you're not wor ried about some pathogen hitching a ride."

  Chapter 35

  JJ ROLLED OVER AND SQUINTED AT THE RED NUMBERS ON the digital clock. She was by nature an early riser, but this morning she could have happily stayed in bed an other couple of hours.

  Throughout the night, David had been endlessly in ventive, playful, and tender by turns. Unhampered by any touch of fastidiousness, he had an earthy enjoyment of everything about her body and his.

  Her problem this morning wasn't that she didn't wish to stay with him. It was that she wanted to stay too much. Resolutely, she pushed back the covers and sat up. It was a good thing she planned to go to work today. She needed to be reminded of what was important. Of what her life was really supposed to be about.

  "Where do you think you're going?"

  A hard hand closed over her upper arm. With breath taking efficiency, she was tugged backwards, and in a second he had her draped on top of him.

  He smiled sleepily. Through the sheet, she could feel his morning erection.

  His hands closed over her naked buttocks and kneaded.

  She moaned.

  "Sore?"

  "Mmm."

  "Muscles or other?"

  "Muscles and other."

  "Wuss." But the rhythm of his hands changed to long, slow pressure that moved deep into the over-taxed muscles of her thighs and hips.

  "Lie back down on your stomach. I could do this better if you lie on your front and let me work on you properly."

  JJ stifled a moan when his talented fingers found a particularly tender place. "I can't. I have to get ready for work."

  "Work?"

  "It's what I do, remember?"

  "But…"

  "I mean it." She squirmed away from his too-skillful hands. "Let me up."

  "But you just got married. They can't be expecting you to come in today."

  "Would the Navy think you automatically got time off, just because you got married?"

  "No. But I don't own the Navy. Caruthers is yours. You make the rules."

  "I don't own it yet. Not for a year. And the fact that I make the rules means I have to be there when I am supposed to be."

  "Are you afraid something will happen to it if you're not there?"

  No, I'm afraid of what will happen to me.

  JJ knew the exact day she had become aware that having a future and Caruthers were the same—and if she wanted to have one, she had to cling to the other. It was the day the Daddy Carbucks had been found adrift, her parents missing. Before then, what would happen to her tomorrow or the next day or next week had been some thing her parents, in their own haphazard way, were in charge of. That day, she had realized that she had to look to the future for herself.

  Even had her parents not died suddenly, mysteri ously, she would still have eventually come to the same conclusion. They had not been good parents.

  Around David, it was much too easy to go with her feelings and to forget that Caruthers was her safe haven, her sure anchor. She had drifted last night in the timeless time—and there was no future in it. Literally.

  "Shit. You're not planning on any honeymoon."

  "Well, no, it's not like we need to— what do they call it?—bond. You'll be gone at the end of the week. And I'll still have a business to run."

  He swung out of bed. "Whatever you're thinking, you're wrong."

  "You don't have to get up."

  He gave a glimpse of world-class glutes on the way out the door. "I'll shower in the other bathroom."

  David wandered the car lot looking at Jags, BMWs, Lex uses—lots of Lexuses—and waving salesmen away. He hadn't imagined Caruthers was this big. The glass-and chrome showroom with its two-story front of curved glass was sophisticated, functional, classical, and modern all at once. It looked like JJ. Pride in her almost edged out the irritation that had made him decide to come see Caruthers himself, since she hadn't offered to show it to him.

  This was her, the center point of her life, and it ap parently had never occurred to her that he would be interested, want to see it, want to meet the people who worked for her.

  He had had thirty-seven hours of her. That was not enough. He had to leave early Friday morning to make the appointment with his surgeon. That gave him four days and… he gave up trying to count how many hours.

  Among the glittering, late-model, high-end foreign cars ranked row on row under the flapping blue triangu lar flags, the ancient Chevy pickup couldn't have looked more out of place. It was faded to an unlikely shade of pink and dabbed in so many places with gray primer that it looked piebald. No one could mistake its driver for a customer, but heedless of "No Parking" signs, he had stopped directly in front of the door.

  The pickup's driver—white male, fifty, medium height and build, one-forty, gray hair in ponytail—exited the truck and walked around to the pass
enger door.

  He bent over, and when he rose, he had a large yellow dog in his arms. He carefully set the dog down on the pavement where it swayed on wobbly legs. Black su tures bristled along the dog's spine where a wide swath of fur had been shaved.

  A salesman, his name badge flashing in the sun, came running up. "You can't park here," he told the dog's owner. "And dogs can't come on the lot without a leash."

  The dog took a painful step and then another, almost losing his balance.

  "I brung 'im to JJ," the man explained. "This here's where she works, ain't it? Snake can stand, but he cain't walk more'n a few steps yet."

  David surged forward, his hand out. "Maybe I can help. I'm JJ's husband." David saw the salesman's eyes go wide. "You brought this dog for JJ, you say?"

  "His name's Snake. I want JJ to have him."

  "Well, I'm sure she'll be honored. Let's take him to her. He looks like we'd better get him inside before he falls down."

  "Might have to carry 'im."

  "No problem." David offered Snake his hand to smell, then squatted beside him. "Hey, old Snake. Looks like you've had some surgery. Will you let me pick you up?"

  Snake offered no objection. When David carefully lifted the dog, one arm under his chest, one arm support ing his rump, the listless animal grunted softly. The line of sutures looked clean, but he was clearly in a lot of pain.

  "What's the matter with him?"

  "Had to have an operation for things, kinda like deep dimples, on his spine—I forget what the vet called it— that got infected. Made 'im real sick. Vet said if he didn't take 'em out, they'd just keep on getting infected."

  "Fistulas?"

  "No. I don't think that was the word. Said dogs with Rhodesian ridgeback blood get them. I always thought Snake was more Lab, myself."

  A young woman rushed over as soon as they were through the door.

  "You can't bring… that in here."

  Arms full of dog, David smiled at her. "Where's JJ?"

  "She's in a sales meeting."

  "I hate to disturb her, but as you can see, Snake here isn't in any condition to wait."

  "Who are you?"

  "JJ's husband." Oh, yeah. Every time he said it, it sounded better. "Which way to the meeting?"

  "Um, I'll call her."

  Somebody apparently beat her to it. A door opened, and JJ emerged from a room where a group sat around a large table.

  "David? Grady? Is that Snake? What is going on?"

  "What am I thinking?" JJ grabbed her head. "Turn the car around. We can't take a dog to the cottage."

  "No?"

  Exactly how she had come to have a dog, JJ didn't know, except that she had taken events as they came—and here she was. The dog-rescue organization's leader had al most tripped on her tongue trying to apologize for not tak ing a dog at the request of one of their largest supporters.

  "The thing is," she'd told JJ over the phone, "I'm over capacity now. One of our people is out of town on a family emergency. Everyone is having to carry her load in addition to their own."

  And so now a new dog bed, bowls, lead and collar, dry and canned dog food were all piled in the backseat. In her purse were the pain meds David had demanded from the vet, as well as an in-depth explanation of Snake's condition. She had everything she needed for a dog except a place for him to live.

  "My rental agreement with Lauren specifies no pets."

  "Does she ever have to know?"

  "I'll know. She only rented me the cottage because she knows me. I can't betray her trust. Okay. Let me call her."

  After a few rings, the voice mail picked up. "Lauren, I was wondering if you would be willing to change our rental agreement," JJ told the recorder, "to allow me to have a dog. I'll be happy to pay you a deposit against damages. Or if you'd rather, I'll just agree right now to replace all the carpet when I leave, whether it's dam aged or not." She added a callback number and hung up. "Well, that's the best I can do."

  David took his eyes from the road to shoot her a speculative glance. "How much do you estimate carpet would run?"

  "It's not a big place. Based on what I spent on carpet for Granddaddy's suite, it probably wouldn't be more than ten thousand dollars."

  "Not more than ten thousand." David's tone was colorless.

  "What? You think that's too little? Too much?"

  He just shook his head, a disbelieving twist to his lips. After a pause, he went back to the subject. "How about your grandfather's house? If your grandfather doesn't want Snake inside the house, we can keep him out in the garage. It's heated."

  JJ rolled her eyes. She had already seen her grand father more in the last couple of weeks than in the year before. She had hoped she wouldn't need to be around him for another year. She didn't trust him and the last thing she wanted was to be beholden to him. But she called him. When her grandfather answered, she ex plained the problem.

  She didn't even finish before he interrupted. "Y'all can look after him here. No problem. This big old house has plenty of room for a dog. Come on. I'll tell Esperanza to make up your bed and put fresh towels out."

  JJ thanked her grandfather and pressed the end but ton. "'Step into my parlor,' said the spider to the fly. He's been trying to lure me back for a year. He practi cally chortled with glee." She turned to glare at the dog, who was stretched on his side in the cargo area. "See what you just made me do, you Snake you? What kind of a name is Snake, anyway?" she grumbled.

  Hearing his name, Snake opened his yellow-brown eyes. He flicked one ear forward. He rolled his eyes a little anxiously from JJ to David as if to say, I didn't mean to do it.

  "So we're going to your grandfather's house?"

  "Looks like it." Before she could tell him to, David unerringly made a right on College Boulevard.

  "How did you know which way to turn? Have you driven to Lucas's house from this direction?"

  He gave her his innocent look. "It's all a matter of knowing where the North Star is."

  They were almost to Lucas's house when JJ thought of something that had been bothering her. "Why were you at Caruthers today?"

  "I wanted to see you."

  "To see me—about what?"

  "I just wanted to see you and to see where you worked."

  "Why?"

  "What kind of question is that? Because I wanted to."

  "So why did you come in with Grady and Snake?"

  "You hadn't invited me to come by. I couldn't go barging in and say, 'Here I am,' and expect you to drop everything, could I?" He gave her a look of wide-eyed innocence. "That would be rude!"

  "Do you ever play fair?"

  "I play to win. If I'd strolled in and said, 'I've come to take you to lunch,' you would have said you were in a meeting or something. The same kind of reason you gave when you disappeared out the cottage door this morning."

  "So you grabbed the dog out of his hands and marched in. You took shameless advantage of that situ ation, didn't you?"

  "I figured as long as I kept hold of the dog, you would have to deal with me. You couldn't be 'too busy.'"

  David put down food and water next to where Snake lay on his new dog bed in a corner of Lucas's kitchen. Snake turned his nose toward the food, and, with a sigh, turned it away. He was in too much pain to eat. David knew how that felt. "Where did you put the mor phine for this poor animal whose name isn't Snake?" he asked JJ.

  "In the refrigerator. On the door, second shelf down. I put the syringes in there, too. They're in a plastic bag in the crisper drawer."

  Between the mustard and the steak sauce, David lo cated the square-shouldered, brown glass container of morphine mixed in a flavored liquid. They'd had to go to a special compounding pharmacy to get it.

  David carefully read the directions on the morphine bottle. Give 1.0 ml by mouth every two to four hours as needed for pain. Numbers slid around on him. Did it say point one milliliter or one milliliter? He looked at the little lines on the syringe. Cc's were the same as milliliters, r
ight? Shouldn't that be cm? He knew this! Why wouldn't it come to him?

  There was no rush. He took a deep breath and cen tered himself. All he had to do was think it though. A milliliter was one thousandth of a liter, and that would be point zero, zero, zero, zero one, so that would—No, it would be point zero, zero, zero one, which would mean he should fill the syringe to the first long line.