Authors: Mary Margret Daughtridge

SEALed with a Ring (4 page)

He had learned to temper his natural tendencies with a certain amount of ruthlessness, but at heart he be lieved, had to believe, he was one of the good guys. Last night he hadn't met even the minimum requirement. He hadn't returned the woman in as good condition as he found her. Whatever her problem was, he was sure he had made it worse.

His failure settled one question for him, though. God's gift to women he was not. If he could screw up an encounter with the most spectacular girl he'd ever met, fuck it. He was needed in Afghanistan.

Chapter 5

AT A LITTLE BEFORE SIX, IN THE UPSTAIRS BEDROOM WHERE she had slept since she was a child, JJ impatiently threw back the duvet. Lying in bed while going over what had happened last night would do no good. She shivered as the predawn chill coming in the open window washed over her naked skin.

JJ preferred to sleep in the nude. She was a restless sleeper. Anything she wore to bed seemed to get twisted around her during the night, winding tighter and tighter until a constricted, trussed-up, tied-down feeling woke her. In college she'd had four blessed years of freedom.

Sleeping in the buff had been out of the question, though, once she returned home. Her grandmother's, and later her grandfather's, illness meant she never knew when she would be needed and someone would come into her bedroom to waken her.

This was the first time she had slept naked since col lege. Technically, since she hadn't
slept
, she still hadn't done so—but that was going to change.

Chafing her arms, she scurried to the window, shut it, and closed the wide plantation blinds before switching on a bedside light.

With quick efficient movements, she made the cherry pencil-post bed and tidied the room. Near the head of the bed, her foot encountered Smiley's orthopedic dog bed. For a long moment, she studied it with a funny what's wrong-with-this-picture feeling.

Then she remembered.

Yesterday had started with a call from her vet, with whom she had left her golden retriever of fourteen years, telling her Smiley had died. Smiley's death wasn't un expected. She planned to ask the vet later that morning if it was time to put the dog to sleep. Still, her knees had gone rubbery, and the phone had become so slippery with sweat from her palms that she'd almost dropped it when she heard the news.

She had pulled herself together. With a few swift phone calls, she had postponed meetings with her sales manager and the president of the SPCA, moved a lunch meeting with the Azalea Festival Chair to breakfast, and shuffled everything in between. Not burying Smiley herself—whether her day was already packed or not— had never been a consideration.

After Ham, the Vietnam vet who did odd jobs for her grandfather, had dug the grave, she had laid Smiley to rest in his favorite cool, shady spot in the garden: at the foot of a fall-blooming, white
camellia sasanqua
. Burying him was wrenching, but oddly comforting, too. Smiley had been a good dog. He deserved to be laid to rest, not disposed of, like something used up.

While her grandfather, who had come outside in the unseasonably warm autumn sunshine to pay his re spects, looked on, they had lined the grave with Smiley's Carolina blue UNC blanket and laid him in it. In old age, his silky coat had turned more blond than golden.

A light breeze ruffled the beautiful wavy fur, giving

the heart-clenching illusion that he had started breathing again. JJ knelt forward and rested her hand on his chest. Underneath the fur he was cold and the ribs were too stiff. She carefully pulled the edges of the blanket over him and smoothed it until he was hidden from her sight.

After that—after burying her dog—the thought of driv ing for an hour or so to another town to attend the wedding of a couple she hardly knew was almost unbearable.

Just this once, she would have disobeyed her grand mother's dictum that an invitation, once accepted, became an unbreakable obligation. But Mary Cole Sessoms, the mother of the bride, was a good friend and JJ's mentor.

She owed Mary Cole. Without Mary Cole to advise her, JJ thought she would have buckled under the load when she assumed leadership of Caruthers Automotive at the age of twenty-two. If the older woman wanted her at her daughter's wedding, then by God, JJ would be there. And, no matter how she felt, she would put a smile on her face and act delighted.

At last, she and Ham had redistributed the pine-straw mulch over the newly packed earth. She shook the dry, shoe-leather hand Ham offered in condolence. Her grand father squeezed her shoulder in sympathy. Each in his own way loved her; she knew that. Their small gestures of comfort was as demonstrative as either of them got.

You'd think burying the only creature who had un failingly rejoiced when he saw her—and had never been afraid to show it—was bad enough. But then her grand father had said, "Jane Jessup, would you come into my office after you wash your hands?"

And her day got a great deal worse.

Chapter 6

JJ HAD TAKEN TIME NOT ONLY TO WASH HER HANDS BUT also to shower and change into the Donna Karan satin jersey dress she intended to wear to the wedding. JJ considered looking beautiful, fashionable, and perfectly turned out to be part of her job description. She'd been satisfied with her appearance until the three-way mirror revealed a panty line that marred the liquid fall of the material across her butt.

Aware she was keeping her grandfather waiting, she rifled hurriedly through the tiny drawer containing thongs. At the back of the drawer her fingers closed over a silken pouch, a gag gift from Bronwyn, her college roommate.

They had made bawdy jokes about thongs embroi dered with a famous carmaker's logo in an eye-catching spot. Neither had guessed that in less than a year JJ would be the de facto head of the oldest car dealership in the state. That was almost six years ago. The frivo lous little nothings had been crammed in the back of the lingerie drawer and forgotten.

The Ford Mustang one was an ecru color that would do. She stripped off the offending bikinis and pulled it on.

In twenty minutes, her strappy gladiator sandals with three-inch heels were carrying her down the curving staircase into the two-story entry with its Waterford chandelier and long, multipaned windows. The entry formed the center of the house. From there, she turned down the wide hall of her grandfather's wing.

Her grandfather spent most of his time these days in his "office," which still contained the massive walnut desk. Since little business was done there anymore, the office also now boasted recliners, a deep sofa, and a wide-screen TV. JJ thought it was really her grandfa ther's man-cave.

The walls were lined with photographs of Caruthers in all its incarnations. Over the mantel hung the framed art ist's rendering of the modern white structure, built when JJ was seventeen. It lifted her spirits every time she saw it. She hadn't needed her grandfather to tell her it would all be hers someday. In letting her help design it, her grandfa ther had made it hers. It belonged to her and she to it.

Her grandfather's big, oxblood-leather desk chair was swiveled to face the long windows behind the desk. At her tap on the open door, he turned to face her. His still-shrewd green eyes peered over the tops of silver framed reading glasses.

"You look nice," he said. He always acknowledged when he thought JJ had done well in any way, but he didn't heap praise. He made sure she understood that se rious responsibility came with the wealth and privilege she enjoyed, remarking that he had indulged his son, JJ's father, too much.

"Thanks, Lucas." After college, when JJ had come into the business full time, it became obvious that the affectionate "Granddaddy" she had always called him made it difficult for others to understand the authority she had. However, the more formal "Grandfather" fell oddly on Southern ears.

Instead of taking a seat, she leaned one hip against the desk, hoping to make the point that although she had come at his request and was prepared to listen, she hadn't come to chat. "What's up?" She smiled a let's move-this-along smile.

Lucas pushed back in his chair and allowed his el bows to rest on the wide chair arms. Despite his man-at ease posture, JJ recognized an alpha male proclaiming his territory. A tiny tingle ran up her spine.

The tingle was her only warning that the foundation of her life was about to crumble.

Chapter 7

JJ STOOD IN HER BEDROOM AND CONSCIOUSLY LET GO OF yesterday's memories. Smiley would never sleep in his dog bed again. She would never see that SEAL again. She would never believe her grandfather was on her side again. All that had happened yesterday was over. The only thing she could do was move on. JJ breathed deeply to ease the tightness in her chest and picked up Smiley's bed.

Downstairs, she deposited the bed and four others she had gathered from around the house in the laundry room. Smiley, wherever he was, was out of pain now. She hoped someone was with him, someone to throw a ball so he could play his beloved fetch. She refused to dwell on how achingly silent the house was without him.

Beds large enough to accommodate a golden were not cheap. She would have Esperanza wash the covers tomorrow and donate the beds to a rescue organization for goldens in Smiley's name.

Yes. That would be the first item on the list.
With that thought, JJ immediately felt better. In fact, she needed to make two lists, one for herself and one for Esperanza, the housekeeper who came in a couple of times a week. At the thought of two lists, JJ felt more firmly in con trol, more able to focus on the future rather than the past. Less cut in two by the hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She loved lists. Her employees teased her, saying she had so many that she had to make lists of her lists to keep up with them. They weren't completely wrong.

She set two list pads on the table in the breakfast nook. She could have retrieved her PDA, but nothing was as satisfying as watching a pencil-and-paper list grow.

From a glass-front cabinet, JJ drew her favorite of her grandmother's hand-painted porcelain mugs: the one with a delicate spray of lily of the valley. JJ couldn't use one of the mugs without thinking of her. Her grand mother had been an ardent gardener and student of the art of flower arranging who had refused to drink from crockery, saying coffee only tasted right in porcelain. JJ had found the floral theme mugs, each one a work of art, in Belgium.

From the breakfast nook where she took her coffee, JJ could see the dark evergreen of the fall-blooming
ca
mellia sasanqua
under which Smiley was buried.

Yesterday's warm, sunny weather was gone. Today, fat white blossoms brought down by the morning's heavy drizzle littered the pine needles and obscured the proof that the ground had been disturbed. Already the evidence of Smiley's life and death was vanishing.

JJ took a swallow of coffee and picked up her pencil.

When she had twenty-nine items on her list and eleven on Esperanza's, JJ put down her pencil and glanced at her watch. Seven-fifty. A little early to call anyone on Sunday morning, but Vanessa Clemmons was head of the real estate agency and understood that business came first.

"Good morning, JJ!" Vanessa seized the initiative be fore JJ could speak. Salesman to the bone, she sounded like nothing could have thrilled her more than to recog nize JJ's caller ID. "How are you?"

"I'm fine, thank you. Hope you're well. How is Harold?" Harold was Vanessa's husband. Vanessa asked about JJ's grandfather and how business was at the "car place"—colloquial for car dealership. They agreed the long Indian summer Wilmington had enjoyed had come to an end and Christmas was right around the corner. They traded a few more of the social niceties without which business in the South could not be conducted be fore JJ said, "Vanessa, I apologize for calling you on a Sunday morning. I won't take but a minute. I'd like you to find me an apartment."

A pause. "For yourself?"

"For myself."

"Hmm." The line was silent while Vanessa absorbed that. "Well. Frankly, I think it's high time. Any requirements?"

"I'd like something immediately… and I'd like not to be the object of speculation. That's why I called
you
."

JJ had been the subject of gossip, most of it friendly, some of it not so much, all her life. People could hardly be blamed for finding everything a Caruthers or a Jessup did newsworthy. There were richer people in Wilmington and more distinguished families, but few were so visible to so many people as the owners of a hundred-year-old car dealership whose TV commercials ran every day.

Vanessa was right. JJ should have moved out years ago, right after college, but since she hadn't, sud denly getting a place of her own would attract a lot of attention.

The
real
story, that the future of Caruthers was threatened, was bad enough to make the banks that held their loans nervous. Automobile makers were going bankrupt, and dealerships were being forced out of busi ness. The economy would eventually turn around, but it would take fancy footwork to keep Caruthers afloat until it did. But the real story would be nothing compared to the wild stories about a rift between her and Lucas that
could
circulate.

"When you say 'immediately…'" Vanessa probed delicately.

"I mean today wouldn't be too soon."

"Are you set on an apartment?" Vanessa inquired. "Let me tell you why I'm asking. Lauren Babcock—you know her, don't you? She wants me to list her beach cottage."

Lauren Babcock! JJ had seen her just last night, she remembered guiltily, and had been so wrapped up in her own problems that she hadn't crossed the room to speak to her—although she should have. Lauren had lost her grown daughter back in the summer. JJ had sent flow ers and a handwritten condolence card. Still, she should have taken the opportunity last night to speak to Lauren and express her compassion personally.

There was always a huge outpouring of sympathy when a death occurred, but after the reality settled in, the bereaved were often treated as if their grief was an unmentionable disease, as contagious as it was embar rassing. JJ understood why. People never knew what to say and somehow seemed to feel avoidance was better than any possible verbal faux pas. They were wrong.

When her parents died, JJ had endured the other little girls staring at her with round, shocked eyes, pointing and whispering behind their hands. Clumps of little boys had scattered at her approach, taking to their heels as if fearful of getting caught. One little boy, who had once made excuses to sit by her, had turned and walked away when he saw her coming.

Only Bronwyn, her college roommate, had ever wanted to know how JJ felt to lose her parents at the age of nine.

Yes, JJ knew Lauren, and she didn't bother to think to herself, "Small world." The world of eastern North Carolina society
was
small. To her list JJ added: 30
.
Send "thinking of you" note to Lauren Babcock.

"The thing is," Vanessa's voice continued, "this is a ter rible time to list beach property. I hate to see it sit unsold or to sell for much less than it should. She doesn't need to liq uidate. I think she's just reacting to the death of her daugh ter. Right this minute, the cottage has too many memories, but one day, those memories might be precious."

"The cottage is on Topsail Island, isn't it?" JJ liked the thought of helping Lauren out by saving her from a bad decision but Topsail was thirty miles north of Wilmington, and when traffic was heavy, the better part of an hour away. "I don't think I want to commute that far."

"Hear me out. The cottage comes completely fur nished, turnkey ready. You won't even need to buy towels. It was redecorated a couple of years ago, so it's fresh and—you know Lauren—top of the line. I don't know any place else you'll find to rent furnished, and that's what you're used to."

"I don't think I'm ready to buy."

"That's good, because I don't think she's ready to sell—even if she says she is. I'll work a deal that leaves you free to move and her free to sell. Let me call her and tell her it's you. Oh, wait. I know how you love dogs. She's not going to allow pets."

"Smiley's gone."

"I'm sorry. You're not going to get another one?"

"It wouldn't be fair to the dog. I just don't have time for one."

"In that case, I think I can sell her that with you there, she really can safely put the cottage out of her mind— and I think that's what she really wants."

JJ couldn't help but smile to hear Vanessa's salesman wheels turning. "What are you going to sell me on?"

"Privacy," Vanessa answered without hesitation. "The cottages on either side are closed for the winter."

JJ and Vanessa discussed rents and a few safeguards before hanging up. Vanessa promised to call as soon as she had talked to Lauren.

The feeling of constriction in JJ's chest eased for the first time since her grandfather had called her into his office yesterday. Well, for the second time, if you counted the few hours she'd spent with the Navy SEAL, Davy No-last-name—but she wasn't going there.

"What time did you get in last night?" Lucas asked when he came into the kitchen a little after eight. He was dressed in the same slacks and gray and slate-blue, diamond-patterned golf sweater as yesterday.

Before she rose to pour him some coffee, JJ made a note on the separate list she was making for Esperanza to lay out fresh clothes for him.

Her grandfather was no male chauvinist. He believed women could do anything men could. He had never ex pressed the smallest doubt that JJ could inherit and com mand Caruthers. He would have rejected any notion that women existed to serve him. And yet, if he had thought about it, which he didn't, he would have believed he would be invading her territory had he poured his own coffee when she was there to do it.

The simple truth was some woman had always been there to put whatever he needed into his hand. His wife had bought his clothes and laid out what he was to wear every day, made his appointments, handed him his med icine and vitamins to take, bought the gifts he gave, and written his thank-you notes for the gifts he received.

When her grandmother had known she was dying, she had carefully instructed JJ on all she would need to do for Lucas. Lucas had become so lost, so befuddled, and then so sick that JJ had done it.

"Around four-thirty." She set the coffee—his mug was a blue delphinium—in front of him.

"What were you doing out so late? I don't like the idea of you being alone on the road at that hour. Anything could happen. You should have gotten a room."

"I had a lot to do this morning, but the drive home also gave me time to think about our discussion yester day." Lucas looked at her expectantly, his green eyes sharp under his bushy white brows. "I'm not agreeing to your demands," she told him. "Howev—"

"Whether you agree or not," Lucas interrupted, "one year from today, if you're not married, I'll start selling off the business. If you are married and remain so for a year, I'll put the business in your name."

"
However
, I'm not opposed to marrying."
Although
Lucas's timing couldn't be worse.
"I know you don't be lieve me. You think I don't act like a woman who wants a husband, but until the car business recovers more, I don't see how I can do more. If finding time for a boy friend is this hard, imagine how hard finding time to keep a husband happy will be."

Lucas's bushy white brows lowered in a scowl. "You're giving your life to that business! Do you think the day will come when it will give you your life back?"

JJ let that go by. Lucas had raised her to think of Caruthers first, but now that she did it, he wanted more. JJ's fingernails cut into her palms as her hands unconsciously curled into fists. Her jaw clenched, and she fought to keep her voice level. "Anyway, looking at it objectively, I haven't been successful at finding a husband. I realized I shouldn't refuse, sight unseen, the men you picked out."

Lucas humphed, the grooves around his mouth going deeper. "Nothing like a wedding to make a woman think of marriage. Is that what changed your mind?"

JJ crossed her arms. "Hardly."

He gave her a sharp look. "Did something happen last night?"

Only wild, no-holds-barred sex with a stranger. Only the discovery that she was more dangerously like her parents than she had ever believed and that she must guard more scrupulously against emotion based decisions if she hoped to live up to her respon sibilities. JJ willed her expression not to change. "Like what?"

"I don't know. I didn't expect you to give in this easily."

JJ allowed herself a tight, cold smile. "Rest assured, Lucas, I haven't g
iven in. However, if I'm going to begi
n dating seriously, I need a place of my own. I don't need a grandfather keeping track of what time I come in—or with whom." And the real reason: if she saw Lucas every day, her anger
would
boil over and she would do something rash.

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