Authors: Mary Margret Daughtridge

SEALed with a Ring (2 page)

By the time the toddler's mother had thanked him and borne Leila away, little starfish fingers squeezing a bye bye "wave," the woman in the brown dress had been swallowed up by the crowd. Never mind. Her signals had been unmistakable. He'd find her again in a minute, or she'd find him.

Speaking of signals though, on the dance floor, even as Do-Lord smiled in response to something Emmie had said, he was hand-signaling to someone behind Emmie's back, asking if he wanted help.

Who did Do-Lord think needed help? Davy followed Do-Lord's line of sight. On the other side of the dance floor, Senior Chief Lon Swales had a slender woman in a pale pink gown draped all over him. For a sec ond, Davy couldn't believe his eyes. Physical displays while in uniform were frowned upon—one reason Davy never wore a uniform socially if he could help it. But Lon? If Lon had a sex life, he kept it discreet to the point of invisibility.

The woman's head turned, and Davy caught sight of a classically perfect profile, marred by turned-down lips and a slack, unfocused look. Holy shit, the woman wrapped around Lon was Jax's ex-mother-in-law, Lauren Babcock, and she was drunk.

An uncoordinated fling of her thin arm almost over balanced her. She was saved from falling only by Lon's arm around her. At first glance, her head on his shoulder might have looked intimate, but, in fact, she was close to passing out. It was only a little after eight. Too early to be that drunk. It looked like the scuttlebutt that Lauren had become an alcoholic since her daughter's death was true.

Lon's seemingly out-of-character behavior suddenly made sense. He was holding her up while he hustled her toward one set of the wide doors that stood open to the corridor.

That was the senior chief he admired. Making sur
e problems were taken care of before most people knew there was a problem. "I see what's happening. I'll as sist," he signed to Lon.

Unhurried yet moving swiftly toward the corridor, Davy eased between laughing, chattering guests.

Waiting in the wide, cool hallway with its footstep deadening turquoise carpet, Davy scanned the ballroom through the open doors for the hot babe in the brown dress. The crowd parted again in time for Davy to see her throw her arms around a balding, gray-haired man whose well-cut tuxedo only partly disguised his portliness.

Davy's diaphragm clenched in protest. The man was old enough to be her father—no competition at all—but still. Women didn't always go for looks in a man. A tux like that said money, and Davy would bet the woman's dress, for all its brevity, had cost as much as he made in a pay period.

She launched into a very serious-looking conversation, her shoulders square, feet in those fuck-me heels planted.

Davy relaxed.

For a SEAL, reading body language wasn't just a handy social shortcut to understanding; it was a survival skill. Every line in her killer bod said even if the man was old enough to be her father, she considered herself his equal; possibly his boss.

Whatever she was telling the man, being turned on was the farthest thing from her mind. And despite a dress that glimmered and slid sensuously with every movement, as if her nude body were clothed only in dark water, she clearly didn't plan to use seduction to get what she wanted.

Davy almost felt sorry for Gramps. No man—not even a guy that old—could think about anything but sex around her. Hours of sweaty sex, her hair drifting over him like cool, heavy silk, his hips caught in the clasp of those long, strong legs.

Lon had worked his way to the edge of the crowd. If the girl in the brown dress was gone by the time Davy got back, there would be others. But
damn, Davy wished he'
d had a chance to ask her to hang around until he returned.

His hospital corpsman identity took over as Lon steered his charge into the wide hall.

Davy was pretty sure Lauren was drunk, but other conditions could mimic alcohol intoxication—diabetic coma or stroke at the top of the list. Most he could rule out. Pulse and respiration were normal. He leaned for ward to check her breath for the classic Juicy Fruit gum odor associated with diabetes but detected only the sour smell of wine.

Her eyes were open and she was still able to walk, but she was long past the point of being able to remember anything in the morning.

"We need to get her out of here. Look in her purse," Lon directed. "See if you can find out where she's staying."

Davy rifled the tiny silver bag. He withdrew a key card and held it up between two fingers. "She's at the Fairfield, same as us, but no room number. You'll have to ask at the desk."

"That'll call attention to her. The fewer people who know about this, the better."

"What do you care? She's trying to get Jax's kid. She doesn't deserve any TLC."

"I don't care about her. But I'm not going to let gos sip about her ruin Pickett's wedding. I'll put her in my room, and I'll bunk in with you."

"Sorry. Other plans." Davy met the senior chief's eyes without a shred of guilt. It wasn't really a lie. Davy might not have anything lined up yet, but he didn't plan to sleep alone, and he sure didn't plan to sleep with Lon.

"
Already?" Lon's bushy two-toned eyebrows dre
w together in disbelief. "We just finished dinner. You didn't have anything lined up fifteen minutes ago. How did you talk a girl into going back to the hotel with you that fast?"

A certain brown dress flickered in Davy's mind's eye. The grin he flashed was unrepentant. "Um, talking didn't have anything to do with it."

Lon grunted and shook his head, half-affectionate, half-disgusted. "Doc, you are pretty as a cupcake, but you are a
dog
." He shrugged. "Okay, there are two beds in my room. She can have one, and I'll take the other." He shifted the woman in his arms so he could fish his keys from his pocket. "Go get my car and bring it to the side entrance. You can drive it back here, if you want to, after you drop us off at the hotel."

Chapter 2

WHEN DAVY RETURNED TO THE COUNTRY CLUB, INSTEAD of parking out front, he drove Lon's car around to a service entrance. Lon had sworn him to secrecy; if no one saw Davy return, they'd likely never realize he'd been gone.

He pocketed Lon's keys, aware of a pleasant zing of anticipation and of an unusual urge to hurry. He wanted to find the tall woman in the brown dress before she found someone else. He hadn't been gone long—less than twenty minutes. Still, he quickened his pace until he was jogging toward the half-glassed service door.

Mostly he believed women were like buses. Miss one, and another would be along in a few minutes.
So what if
she's gone? There'll be others
. Even so, this particular woman was one he was running to catch.

JJ's lawyer took a sip of champagne, a not-unsympathetic look in his shrewd eyes. "I'm sorry, JJ. Your grandfather is the sole owner of the business. He can sell it, and you can't stop him. He can do anything he wants with it."

JJ's heart battered her chest wall as if desperate to escape its cage of ribs. Her cheeks tingled as the blood drained from them, and her head swam. She had to get out of here before she fainted or screamed.

After her grandfather had slapped her with his ultima tum, she had had no desire to go to a wedding, but she had reasoned that catching her lawyer at the reception would be her best chance to talk to him before Monday. But consulting her lawyer at a country club crowded with well-dressed guests celebrating a wedding?
Bad
idea.

She had been clutching at straws, looking for reas surance, looking for any sliver of hope. She should have known he would only confirm her fear that everything she cared about really could be imperiled by the ego of one man.

"Th-thank you." JJ stifled a bubble of hysteria at the irony of thanking someone for news as bad as this. But the impeccable manners instilled by her grandmother demanded she maintain her poise, stay in control, and, even if her world was crumbling, think of others first. "Excuse me, please, I—um—uh—"

The noise from the orchestra and the babble of well bred voices combined in a confusing roar that drowned out coherent speech. She backed away, knowing only that she had to get out.

The country club entrance was miles away, down a long hallway. She would never make it out that way before she broke down. JJ flung herself through a door marked
Staff Only
.

The narrow service corridor where she found herself was lit only by the red glow of the exit sign over the half glass exterior door. Before her mind could even register that the dark shape silhouetted against the door was a man, she slammed into him, a small startled scream escaping her. Running into him was like hitting a concrete wall.

"Hey, slow down!" The man she'd crashed into laughed as he gently set her back on her feet. It didn't take a lot of brain power to guess he was one of the SEALs—the ballroom was awash in them. The groom was a SEAL and apparently had invited his entire team to his wedding.

In her heels, she was almost the same height as him. JJ ducked her head to hide her face. "Sorry. I need to… um…" She tried to edge around him.

"Wait a minute." He snagged her arm and turned her so that he could see her face. "It's y
ou. You're upset
. Need me to take care of anybody for you?"

The cheerful bloodthirsty-ness of his offer almost failed to register, said as it was in a voice as smooth and dark as Dove chocolate. The incongruity surprised a laugh from her. Well… that, and the fact that he had no idea how much she'd like to take him up on it.

"No," she shook her head, cringing at how tear clogged she sounded.

"Okay," he agreed easily. He stepped into her path before she could try to go around him again. "How about I take care of
you? Want
me to kiss it better?" he teased. Again there was the cheerfully competent, dimple-decorated smile—as if he never doubted he was just as good at kissing as he was at
taking care.

JJ knew the correct answer: a cool
no thank you
.

She didn't kiss men she didn't know—not that she'd had a lot of offers—not from men her age, anyway. Men with the confidence to come on to the working head of one of the oldest and most successful car dealerships in the state were usually a lot older. They went for smoother, less direct moves—like sending her a drink.

Tears welled in her eyes again. Really, she had to get out of here before she made a spectacle of herself and bawled. "A kiss isn't going to make it better."

"Depends on where I kiss," his voice turned deeper, mellower, "don't you think?" Without appearing to move, he was suddenly nearer. She could feel his heat and smell the masculine musk of his body. It wrapped around her the same way the chocolate of his voice did.

"Like," he murmured, "suppose I kiss you here?" He brushed the backs of his fingers over her breast, unerr ingly grazing the nipple through the slinky silk jersey of her dress. Only the barest touch. She'd almost think it was accidental—except for the teasing glint of a smile as he gauged her reaction and waited to see if she would stop him.

Shocked, appalled, yet mesmerized by his audacity, she couldn't speak, couldn't move. Her face, then her whole chest, got hot, and her heart lurched into a slower, deeper rhythm.

He repeated the outrageous familiarity with the other breast. The dimple in his cheek deepened. He allowed his hand to slide down the front of her body, past her waist, across her belly, until it rested at the juncture of her thighs. "Sometimes a kiss here is the most effective cure of all. Would you like for me to kiss you here?"

Would
she like it? JJ struggled to review her options in spite of the hot maelstrom of emotion that threatened to suck her under. JJ's other choice was to drive home to Wilmington where not even a dog waited to comfort her and keep her company.

At last, JJ found her voice. "Yes," she whispered. "Yes, I would."

Chapter 3

JJ SAT UP STEALTHILY, CAREFUL NOT TO SHAKE THE BED. When the man's even breathing told her he still slept, she eased her weight to her feet. She had no idea where her clothes were.

They hadn't drawn the hotel room's heavy drapes. Light from the hotel's parking lot sifted through the loose weave of the privacy curtains. She could make out dark shapes of chair and dresser.

The compressor on the room's HVAC rattled to life, making JJ jump. The man—Davy, she thought his friends had called him—sighed and turned on his side. She didn't know his last name. She hadn't told him
her
name at all.

He had pushed the sheet down around his hips. In the pinkish glow from the parking-lot lights, his skin gleamed faintly. The defined swells and dips of the mus cles of his arms and chest looked carved. His features in profile on the pillow were so impossibly perfect she still found it hard to believe he was real.

She wished she believed none of it was real, but twinges and tiny aches and a deep, satisfied awareness of her body told her differently. Even now, although she knew she had to get away, if she thought about what they had done, deep shudders of pleasure ran through her.

In small, shuffling steps, tentatively feeling her way across the scratchy carpet with her toes, JJ crept around the dark room looking for her clothes. They had arrived in his hotel room in such a heated frenzy she didn't remember taking them off. She shuddered again in mingled pleasure and horror.

Her bare instep connected with one of her stiletto heels. A lightning bolt of pain unbalanced her. She stag gered against the bed.

"What are you doing?"

She'd wakened him.
Damn.
She didn't want to deal with him. JJ blinked back anxious tears. Careful to keep her voice low, she picked up the shoe. "I need to be going."

"Why?" He yawned. "Sorry I went to sleep on you, but I'm good for a couple more times now." He extended a beautifully modeled arm. "Come here." The last was said with such sexy confidence her knees went weak and a throb began between her legs.

"No, I have to leave."

"It's oh-three-hundred. It's too late to go anywhere. You don't want to do it again? We don't have to. Come back to bed."

Without answering, JJ got down on her hands and knees at the foot of the bed. She swallowed her despera tion to get out as she patted the carpet for her other shoe. She fought the memory of kneeling there between his legs, her arms balanced on the hot, living steel of his hair-roughened thighs, the musky male scent of him, the hunger to feel him with her tongue, the way he'd praised and encouraged her every move. "Oh, yeah, that's good… Right t
here… Do that again." Stroking her as she stroke
d him, holding her to him with his soft voice.

When she'd slammed into him in the service entrance, his voice was the first thing that had drawn her to him. Oddly enough. You'd think it would be his amazing looks, but JJ had experience with people judging her by her beauty. While she could and did use people's assumptions to her advantage, she understood how much of herself she hid behind her looks. No, his extreme handsomeness did not account for her out-of-character behavior.

His voice wasn't soft as in
not loud
. It was soft as in
pillow-soft. A voice to snuggle into and hug for comfort
. A voice to ease weariness. A voice to convince anyone that voluptuous indulgence was safe. Desirable. When she knew better.

JJ rose, naked, holding a shoe in each hand. "I have to leave. Right now."

"Why? Is someone expecting you?" He pushed up on his elbows. "Hey, you're not married, are you?"

"No." The irony wrung a pained laugh that was close to a sob from her. Not being married was her problem, according to her grandfather. He was going to sell the business—the business she'd shaped her entire life to be owner and head of someday—if she didn't marry within a year. Her grandfather even had four prospective grooms all picked out for her. All were solvent, healthy scions of well-to-do families or professional men on their way up. All had stated their willingness to marry. She had only to choose which one.

"Then why won't you stay?" Davy crammed a pillow under his head and crossed his ankles, clearly settling in for a chat. "The sex was spectacular. We had this bed smokin'." Even in the shadowy room, his smile gleamed with such cheerfully practiced seduction it was impos sible not to smile in return. In fact, he had a way of laughing at his whole I'm-a-god persona—as if he was perfectly willing to use his stunning good looks and yet refused to take them seriously—that added a devastating charm to his sexiness.

The charm dragged at JJ like undertow, pulling her toward the bed. It was why she had to leave—now.

She located her dress and bra on the floor near the room's door but gave up on finding her thong. She ducked toward the bathroom.

"Hey!" Too fast for her to see how he did it, he leaped from the bed and blocked her path to the bathroom. Naked, devoid of any veneer of civilization, he hulked before her. No drape of material softened the dangerous power and strength in every muscle of his body.

Now, too late, she realized how helpless she was. Every horror story she'd ever heard about what happens to girls who go off with men they don't know flashed through her mind.

She should have been terrified, but the combustible mix of anger at her grandfather, disgust at herself, and sexual thrall abruptly reignited. Suddenly her frustration had a target, and she was furious.

"Get the hell out of my way!" She took a better grip on the shoe in her right hand and raised it, stiletto heel pointed outward.

A trace of surprise crossed his too-handsome fea tures, but then his dimple flashed as he looked her up and down. "Honey," he assured her, "you're a whole lot more dangerous wearing those shoes than brandishing them."

She raised the flimsy weapon higher. "I'm not jok ing. Don't make me regret sex with you more than I already do."

"Okay." Before her eyes, he did something with the broad set of his shoulders, and suddenly he looked just as strong but no longer threatening. Like she could put her head on his chest and his strength would shelter her. "Calm down," he urged. "I'm not going to stop you. I'm not going to hurt you. Just tell me why you're leaving."

God.
She blinked away the hot pressure of tears she couldn't let fall. That was all she needed—for him to go all sweet and concerned. "Let me by." She squeezed past him into the bathroom and locked the door.

In the sudden brightness of the utilitarian, white-tiled room, she blinked and squinted, while with shaking fingers she fastened her bra and pulled the brown satin jersey over her head. Finally she steeled herself to face the mirror. Her cheeks were pink, and her green eyes seemed unnaturally bright. But her coffee-brown hair was a mess, and her lipstick was gone. Not wanting to go back where he was for her purse, she searched his shaving kit for a comb.

She found a short black one and dragged it through the tangles, relishing the painful tugs at her scalp. She felt raw, aghast, shattered. In the past several hours, she had allowed her emotional nature to rule her.

Angry, rebellious, and bitterly betrayed by her grand father's willingness to destroy the foundation of her life, she had been a smoldering fire just waiting for the gaso line of a sexy and charming SEAL to explode into an excess of sensuality and chance-taking.

The scary thing was that it had worked. For a few hours, she had been transported out of herself. She had felt wild and free and magnificently alive. She hadn't thought once about the business or the seventy-five people who depended on her to keep it running smoothly and making a profit. She hadn't called to mind her relent less schedule or how fragile her grandfather had looked, his once broad shoulders rounded, his once iron-gray hair almost white.

She'd had a one-night stand with a man whose last name she didn't know and proved she was as capable of emotional extravagance as her parents. And that was the scariest thing of all.

Other books

An Autumn Dream by Melissa Giorgio

St Piran's: Italian Surgeon, Forbidden Bride by Margaret McDonagh

Un grito al cielo by Anne Rice

An Oxford Tragedy by J. C. Masterman

No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year by Virginia Ironside

The Izu Dancer and Other Stories: The Counterfeiter, Obasute, The Full Moon by Inoue, Yasushi, Kawabata, Yasunari

Finding the Magic by Cait Miller

The Bank Job by Alex Gray

The Lie by Michael Weaver

The Road to Hell - eARC by David Weber, Joelle Presby