Authors: Mary Margret Daughtridge

SEALed with a Ring (25 page)

EYES STILL BRIMMING WITH LAUGHTER, LUCAS LOOKED from one young face to the other. God, it was good to spend time with young people. Last night he'd made a point to stay out of their way. As much as possible he'd wanted them to feel like they had the house to themselves.

This morning he had come into the kitchen to find David and the dog already there, and it was the most natural thing in the world to start talking. And now, to have JJ sitting at his table, sharing Caruthers's history with someone to whom it was a new story—he felt like they were a family in a way he hadn't in far too long— maybe since they'd lost Beth.

The idea for breakfast had come to him this morning when he'd been thinking about what Beth would have told him he had been doing wrong. Which would be pretty much everything. If he could lure JJ to sit down and eat with him, he decided, then he would see that the meal was done right—the way Beth would have approved.

It was working. David was smitten. Every time he looked at JJ, his gaze was hot and hungry and tender. Lucas might have doubts about what had brought them together, but he had none that David wanted his granddaughter—and would be good for her. JJ had that
look everywhere but at him
look girls get when they feel the same way but haven't made up their minds to capitulate. Yet.

Yes, JJ was acting girlish. His heart squeezed to see her young and tender and vulnerable. He had discour aged her from acting this way when she was younger, but he now admitted it was because he couldn't stand the pain of watching her get hurt.

Beth had accused him more than once of stealing JJ's girlhood. When she should have been hanging out with the other kids, talking for hours on the phone and gig gling about boys, she had been at the car place. It was true, he hadn't
made
her spend time there, but when she was there, he could feel proud of her—she had been an unusually responsible kid—and guide her and see her safe. He didn't have to live with fear she was doing the wild, uncontrolled things teenagers are famous for.

He had loved her, but it had been a selfish, controlling love. It took losing Beth for him to finally see how con stricted JJ's life was. Not a fit life for a young woman. He'd tried to tell her to date, to have fun, experiment some, fall in love, but all she'd heard was more of him trying to control her.

His threat was finally having the effect he had in tended. Whether she meant to or not, JJ was reaching beyond her tightly organized world. He wasn't going to make the mistake of telling her she ought to try make this marriage a real one though. He would have to study on ways to foster a courtship without appearing to.

"You're wondering what's so funny," he told the two puzzled young people. "Well, I might as well tell you. God knows, I'm not the hero of this story, but everyone else with the right to tell it is dead."

"When I was young, I did my best to follow in my father's footsteps. A lot of years went by before I realized he was a strong man, and by the time he died, he was a rich man, but he wasn't a good husband—and I wasn't one either."

David was watching JJ, not Lucas, as the old man began his story. JJ was looking down, drawing the tines of her fork through her eggs.

Lucas quirked an inquiring white eyebrow. "Surprised, JJ?"

JJ looked up, her green gaze cool. "Surprised to hear you admit it."

Well, wasn't that interesting? JJ apparently believed her grandfather had been a bad husband.

"Officially the Caruthers were farmers," Lucas returned to his tale, addressing David. "Truth was, my granddaddy ran moonshine, and my daddy, too. Moonshine's where our money came from."

Moonshine. David hadn't expected to learn his mansion-dwelling bride was the recipient of a fortune made illegally. He didn't look down on it. Hell, his great-grandfather had been a rumrunner. He'd used his fishing boat to bring in bootleg. When Prohibition ended, he'd gone back to fishing.

"Moonshine's the reason my daddy had money when old John Jessup ran into trouble during the Depression. He gave old John the money to keep the doors open in return for a partnership. But my daddy kept right on being a tobacco farmer and a moonshiner, and let the Jessups run the business. That was a couple of years before I was born."

JJ presumably knew all this. David wondered when Lucas would get to the point.

"I set my sights. My brothers could have the land, and Daddy was going to leave
me
the car business. I started there when I was just fourteen. Worked summers while I was in college. I'm making too long a tale of this."

He waved the past away with a gnarled hand. After a pause to gather his thoughts, he aimed a shrewd look at David. "You know what the Bible says a man does when he finds a pearl beyond price?" Lucas asked David.

"He goes out and sells all that he has to acquire it."

"I wish I could exculpate myself and tell you I didn't know what a pearl beyond price my Beth was. I knew. She was lovely, refined, a real lady."

He stroked a table knife between thumb and fore finger. "I didn't sell all I had. No, sir. Not me. I was a hotshot. Gonna modernize Caruthers, take it straight to the top. High, wide, and handsome, as we used to say—that was me. Business was my god, and I served it. The Caruthers weren't respectable. The Jessups were. The exact right wife was necessary to my vision of what I was. My ego was big enough to think I'd earned her.

"The other women—they meant no more than a good cigar, a moment of pleasure, a little recreation. I worked damn hard. I had earned a little play."

Lucas's sort of reasoning wasn't uncommon among SEALs, many of whom felt their life when they were operating had nothing to do with their marriage, but David hoped Lucas didn't think that explanation would excuse him in JJ's eyes. In fact, the self-centeredness of it probably confirmed the worst of what she thought of her grandfather.
And explains her extremely low expec
tations of me.

David checked JJ's reaction to Lucas's bald admis sions. JJ was again looking down, hiding her expression.

Lucas put down the knife he'd been toying with. "Everybody knew what Caruthers men were like. Hell, I had three half-brothers and two half-sisters, all by differ ent women. My daddy sent every one of them to college. One's a state supreme court judge now."

JJ's eyes got wide. "I have a half-great uncle on the supreme court? I didn't know that!"

Lucas grinned, obviously pleased he had managed to surprise her. "It's not a secret, but the connection was never flaunted." Almost immediately he looked contrite. "I should have told you. I should have known Beth wouldn't—not that I blame her. It wasn't her duty to make sure you understood your Caruthers kin. It was mine. I should have taken you to meet them. The judge was the one who convinced Daddy it was time to stop moonshine. But that's a story for another day.

"Anyway, there were women, but I knew what was due my wife, and it was that she should never cross paths with them. Beth was my wife, and the women were noth ing, nothing to me! Until Mary Ann McCready."

"Wasn't she married to Ben McCready? The lawyer," JJ asked. Lucas should have stuck to talk of moonshine and bastard kin. JJ's polite mask had returned.

"That's right. They moved here from Wendell, and he set up a practice. She was one good-looking woman. Red hair. A figure that would stop traffic, and she was looking to trade up.

"I didn't see her coming. She had me so wrapped up—it's the only time I ever considered leaving Beth. Wasn't long before Mary Ann was zipping around town in a brand new Corvette and suggesting if she had a country-club membership it would be easier for the two of us to meet. Then she got greedy. She called Beth."

JJ gasped softly, making it clear where all her sympa thy lay. "Was Grandmother crushed?"

Lucas took a sip of coffee, enjoying spinning out the story. "Beth didn't even break stride," he assured them with smiling pride. "She told me she had learned to live without me, but I had married her to get Caruthers, and, if I wanted to keep it, I could stay married to her. She told me she had made the life she wanted—without me—and she didn't care to change it. She told me to tell Mary Ann it was over. She would take care of the rest."

He shook his head, laughing. "Now, you got to get the whole picture: she did this with a smile on her face, in the middle of the celebration gala for the symphony, which she had worked for ten years to bring into being. All the time we're talking, people are coming up to congratulate her, and tell me what a fine woman she is, and I'm having to say, 'Yes, I know,' and how proud I am. Over and over, I have to tell the mayor and couple of judges and state senators that I know what a lucky man I am to have Beth Caruthers for a wife. Even Teague Calhoun was there. He was running for his first Senate seat.

"Beth knew me. Yes, she did. I told her I'd get rid of Mary Ann. 'Don't humiliate her,' Beth told me. 'Someone has said to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I say, it is better to destroy your enemies by making them need you. Mary Ann is ambitious and energetic. With some guidance, she could do well for herself and her husband.'"

Lucas turned to JJ. "Do you remember how Beth used to tap her lips, and then s-m-i-i-l-e, JJ? Well, she tapped her lips and said, 'I believe I will invite her to join the garden club. She'll make the contacts there that will boost her husband's career.'"

Lucas paused, like the good raconteur he was, to let the significance sink in with his listeners. "And then, like she was changing the subject, she said, 'Oh, and by the way. You'll be getting a bill for that silver pattern I've been wanting. I'm afraid it costs more than a new car. I ought to get something from this deal.'"

"Oh my goodness, that's diabolical!" JJ laughed. "She had the whole thing planned. She probably started strategizing the minute she heard Mrs. McCready was flashing a new car she couldn't afford."

"See why I laughed when you said she used the silver for the garden club? I always wondered how she made Mary Ann pay."

"How about you?" David asked him. "How did she make you pay? I don't think being out of pocket for some silver meant anything to you."

"You're right about that. But trust me, she got me, too. I don't know who she told, but next morning all over town, people were saying, 'Did you hear? Beth found out about Mary Ann, and Lucas had to buy her a whole set of silver from Tiffany's to calm her down.' And then the punch line: 'It cost a lot more than a car!'"

He laughed again. "I'm telling you, for years, every couple of months, some good ole boy 'ould slap me on the back and say: 'How's the car bid'nis Lucas? Had to invest in silver lately to keep it going?' That was my Beth. You didn't mess with her."

"Then what happened?" JJ asked.

"Beth lived up to her word. She never bad-mouthed Mary Ann. She whispered into the right ears, and Mary Ann and her husband got the invitations they needed. Over the years, they prospered. Beth was a lady to her fingertips. She had class. But JJ, you tell me, every time Mary Ann came to this house, Beth served her with the silver. Now
that
was diabolical!"

"Were you faithful to her after that?" David asked.

Lucas sighed. "I wasn't that smart. The emptier serv ing the god of success became, the harder I tried. I'll tell you one thing, though. From then on, I respected her. If she said she wanted something—anything—she got it."

"Did she ever ask you to be faithful?" JJ wanted to know.

"No. She had too much pride." His lips pressed to gether. His green eyes grew round and sad. "But she thought I was still tomcatting long after I'd realized she was worth everything."

"I never heard that story," JJ said, a bemused look on her face.

"It was before you were born. Still, I'm surprised no one ever told you. The whole town knew it." Lucas looked down a minute. "I should have told you. I should have made sure you understood I regretted not valuing your grandmother as she deserved."

JJ lifted a set of keys from the rack where all the house hold keys hung. "I don't feel right about this. Lucas shouldn't have asked you to spend your leave looking after him."

Yesterday, she had looked a little tired. Today, signs of strain around her emerald eyes and plump, shapely lips were even more evident. He wanted to kiss them away. He wanted to fold her against his chest and tell her to sleep while he kept watch.

Having listened to Lucas's story, and having done a good bit of reading between the lines based on what else he'd seen in this house, David understood JJ much better.

Beth, JJ's grandmother, should have used her rolling pin on Lucas instead of buying herself expensive pres ents. It was a different time back then, but she was obvi ously able and intelligent. She could have gotten along without him. Instead she'd made a god out of hanging onto her position and her status. Breakfast china, break fast forks, breakfast napkins—an infinite replication of utensils all for the same purpose.

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