Authors: Mary Margret Daughtridge

SEALed with a Ring (13 page)

"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, and 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 naked 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."

Her green eyes narrowed, and the corners of her lips tightened. "Trust me, I'm not."

JJ toddled toward her bedroom with as much barefoot dignity as she could achieve while holding fistfuls of terry robe together at the waist and top of her thighs. She hadn't been able to find the sash. Comfortable naked, she'd rarely used the robe since she'd moved to the cot tage. Drat the man for destroying her carefully orches trated scenario.

She'd had a dress all picked out. One that said she was fully aware of her power and able to be in charge. She had intended to take him to one of the gourmet res taurants on the sound side of the island for a nice dinner over which they could come to terms.

Now she had to regroup. She took a deep breath and focused on what she wanted, not what wasn't working. She had achieved part of her goal. He was here. He hadn't said no.

As if delighted with the change in plan, she put a smile in her voice and called over her shoulder as she gained the dressing alcove, "I put some soft drinks in the refrigerator, or you can pour yourself something at the bar. I'll be out in a minute."

In the bathroom, she abandoned her plan to blow-dry her hair straight and then iron it into silky smoothness. Her thick hair would take too long to dry completely. Instead, she dried the ends enough to prevent them from clinging wet and cold to the back of her neck and shoulders, then combed her hair back and clipped it at the nape.

She did take the time to slick on some lip gloss and a little mascara. In the vanity mirror, she checked the black wide-leg jeans and baby-doll top she'd grabbed on the way into the bathroom. It wasn't what she had intended to wear for this meeting, but he didn't need to know that. The jeans showed off her most excellent butt, one payoff of her ballroom-dancing hobby.

When she came out of the bathroom, she grabbed the initiative. "Can I take your early arrival to mean you're eager to accept my offer?" she asked over her shoulder as she slipped on lollipop-red Manolos.

"Not exactly."

JJ whirled at the sound of his voice right behind her.

He leaned against the opening of the dressing alcove, a can of Coke in one hand. He gave her a slow, frankly approving appraisal.

He was trying to rattle her to gain an advantage. She told her heart to slow down and her body to ignore his proximity. As if she'd expected him to turn down her first offer, she gave him a knowing smile. "And yet, you are here," she told him. "Sounds like we need to talk. I think I'll have some wine."

She led the way into the great room. A glass of white wine already stood on the placemat at one end of the dining table. Piled with papers, the other end of the table had slowly turned into JJ's home office.

He grinned. "I already poured your wine."

"How did you know I'd want it?"

"Open bottle in the fridge. Wine glasses in the dishwasher. You told me you had bought soft drinks, which made me think you didn't always keep them on hand."

"Oh. Thanks. Can I get you something else?"

He lifted the Coke can. "This is fine." He pulled the prenuptial agreement from a back pocket and tossed it on the table before seating himself. "You can tear this up. I'm not signing it."

The trick to staying in control of a negotiation was to remain flexible. JJ ignored the icy weight in her stomach and smiled ruefully. "Too bad. Out of curiosity—how large would the offer need to be to be attractive?"

He laced his fingers around the Coke can as if he needed to anchor them. "Here's the deal. I don't want your money, and I don't need it," he stated in a flat, throaty growl. "I won't take a cent from you. Not now, not ever. No perks, no expensive presents."

He was turning her down. The tsunami loomed closer. JJ fought dry-mouthed panic to say smoothly, "But you want something or you wouldn't be here."

Her phone, where she had left it on the granite coun tertop, made a loud buzzing noise. She had set her phone to vibrate since she didn't want any distractions. It was probably Blount again. She swallowed her frustration.

"You want to get that?"

"Let me see what it is, then I'll turn it off."

But the text message read GF 911.

She had bought Ham a cell and taught him to text, but he had neither the patience nor the comfort with technol ogy to learn anything fancy. They had settled on a few simple codes. GF 911 meant an emergency concerning her grandfather.

"I'm sorry. I have to take this," she told Davy as she punched in Ham's number. "What is it?" she asked when he answered on the first ring.

"Lucas and me, we're at the hospital. He had some shortness of breath."

"Is he okay?"

"I think he is. The doctor's in with him now."

Davy was listening to her half of the conversation with frank interest. If only she could have finished ne gotiations with him before this call. If they broke off now, the deal was going to go cold. But neither her grandfather nor Ham dealt well with modern medicine. Ham shut down and became robotic. Lucas combated helplessness by giving orders. "Is Esperanza with you?" she asked Ham.

"She's got the flu. Lucas sent her home."

"So he was home alone and called you? He should have called 911. No, forget I said that. At least he had the sense to call you. He didn't attempt to drive himself." She would deal with the guilt that he hadn't called
her
, later.

She came to what had always been a foregone conclu sion. "I'll be there as soon as I can, but I'm on Topsail. It will be thirty minutes—at the very least."

"Trouble?" Davy asked when she ended the call.

"My grandfather. He's in the ER with shortness of breath. I guess you and I will to have to talk later. Maybe I can—"

"How 'bout if I ride with you? Thirty minutes, you said. That should be plenty of time."

"You know what emergency rooms are like. I have no idea how long I will be."

"No problem."

"But what if you miss your ride? Don't you have to be back at the base by a certain time? I guess Ham could drive you back here, or I could ask—"

"Don't worry about it. It's not a problem. I can get myself where I need to be."

Fear for her grandfather, relief that this window of opportunity with David wasn't lost, hope that her life could get back on track again produced a roller coaster of emotions. "Okay.
Okay!
If worse comes to worst, there's always a plane. I'll call my assistant and have her check flights to—Norfolk? Is that the best airport?"

He closed his fingers over hers and gently forced her to close her phone. "I said I'll take care of it. I can look after myself. Do you always make yourself responsible for everyone?"

The warmth of his fingers spread up her arms. The man exuded reassurance. "I guess I do." She thought about it a second and chuckled tiredly. "Actually, most of the time, I
am
responsible."

"No. It's my duty to get myself back to base. Mine alone. Now, do you have a raincoat or something? There's weather coming in."

The cloud ceiling had lowered, and an early dusk turned the pines beside the road black. At Hampstead, where 210 left U.S.17, the stoplights bounced and swayed in the gusts. The closer they got to Wilmington, the heavier the five o'clock traffic became.

Even though the cockpit of JJ's red Lexus was roomier than many sports cars, with David in the pas senger seat, it suddenly felt small. He wasn't taller than average, but somehow there seemed to be an awful lot of him. Even separated by the gearshift, their shoulders almost touched. She was aware of his masculine scent and the warmth his body heat added to the small confines.

She hadn't brought up the subject of marriage again. She usually faced things head on. She was the kind of person who liked to hear the bad news first. Though it might be cowardly, if there wasn't a chance they could come to terms, she didn't want to know—not right now.

Instead, David had asked her questions about her grandfather's heart condition, and she'd wound up tell ing him her grandfather's entire medical history. He was a good listener. JJ tapped the breaks when an SUV pulled out in front of them. The speed limit through here was 45, but she wasn't doing even that. A fine mist covered the windshield. She switched on the wipers and headlights. She sighed.

"Are you okay?" he asked in his dark, smooth, com forting voice. He sounded like he really cared.

"To tell you the truth, I don't know what I am. For the past year, I've lived with my eyes on the future and one goal: find a man I could marry so I could save Caruthers. I didn't hope… I didn't despair… I didn't anything. I just kept moving. In the last forty-eight hours, it's all falling apart, and I can't seem to put it together again. I can't even find all the pieces."

JJ waited for David to say something. The car filled with the hiss of tires on wet pavement. The swish-slap of the wipers.

"
I'm so angry at him
." There. She'd finally said it.

"Your grandfather?"

"I don't want to care that Lucas is sick, but I do. We had an argument earlier today. I'm afraid it caused a heart attack or something, and now he's in the hospital and it's my fault. And here I am, rushing to the hospi tal—rushing as much as I can in five o'clock traffic— which I wouldn't be in, not like this, if I hadn't moved to the beach to get away from him."

"Why did you dump the idiot?"

"The idi—? Oh, Blount." She sniggered. "Lost my mind?"

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