Authors: Mary Margret Daughtridge

SEALed with a Ring (9 page)

She adjusted the shawl to cover more of her arms, although her chill wasn't physical. She had accepted, even welcomed, Blount's essential self-interest since it made him simpler to deal with, and she had thought their differences would make boundaries and expectations easier to define.

In the last several minutes, though, she had seen that he didn't respect anyone. If there was one thing her grandmother's lessons on deportment had taught her, it was to take note of how people treated others.
Remember
, she had advised
, anytime they think they can
,
they will treat
you
the same way.

The tiny flicker of hope that, in time, she might have something resembling a real marriage with Blount dimmed out. The challenge would be to live with him the year her grandfather stipulated.

It had only been a glimmer of hope. It was amazing that something so small could have held back the sick, black dread that rose up now to fill her chest.

"Blount, I need to visit the ladies' room, and I'm feeling a little chilled. I think I'll sit in the lobby for a few minutes."

"Why don't you go on up to the room? I want to talk to Senator Calhoun about a bill he's sponsoring—just show my interest, you know." He glanced around the wedding crowd, which was beginning to thin. "Actually, there are a couple more people I need to speak to, but I'll be up after a while."

"Up where? Oh. The room." For a moment she had for gotten they were sharing a room with the clear expectation that they would share more before the evening was out. She seemed to be looking at him from a great distance.

Insensitive as (she now realized) he was, he noticed something had happened. "I'll hurry," he reassured her with an intimate smile, patting a pocket. "There's some thing special I want to ask you."

He meant the proposal they both knew was coming. He must have the ring in his pocket.

The hard place inside her grew a little harder. Sh
e
didn't have to like him to marry him. Still, she wasn'
t ready to be alone with him. Until she'd thought things through she didn't want to accept his ring and all that went with it. "I'll come back," she told him. "Or I'll wait for you in the lobby."

JJ Caruthers. JJ Caruthers.
As Davy made his way through the thinning crowd back to Garth, he repeated the name. He liked it. Strong, up-front, challenging. It fit her.

Learning her name had been easy, which was good because, just as Davy had predicted, the idiot had al ready let go of her again. He was talking to an older man with thick silver hair. She was nowhere to be seen.

"She went toward the lobby," Garth reported. "Then she turned and went the other way. Look, there she is. Looks like she's going down to the beach." He slapped Davy on the back. "Go get her, tiger."

Chapter 12

AT THE FOOT OF THE CONCRETE STEPS LEADING DOWN to the beach, JJ balanced on one foot and then the other as she pulled off her high-heeled sandals. Sandals they might be, but she'd break her neck or at least an ankle if she tried to walk on the beach in them. She'd come down to the beach to be alone, to think. Disappointment made her eyes feel dry and tight, and made her cheeks stiff. JJ didn't want to talk to anyone, not until she had her game face back on.

It was darker near the ocean—or as dark as it ever got with Wilmington just over the bridge. The glow of a thousand streetlights and parking lots smudged the vel vet blackness of the sky and faded the stars. She hadn't understood how much until over the last eleven months she had seen how different the night sky appeared on Topsail.

There were people who didn't know what stars looked like. She had tried talking to Blount one night about how in the modern world, a tiny handful of people could travel to the stars, but millions of people could no longer see them. The price of progress.

In the faint wash of light from the hotel patio, a color less sand crab scuttled sideways in alarm.

JJ wished she could walk down the beach and just keep walking. But if she was capable of walking away from her responsibilities, she wouldn't have this problem.

She reached the firm, wet sand just beyond the tide line and turned right. Over and over, she had listed all the reasons to marry or not to marry Blount, and decided she should. No matter how disappointed she was now that she had seen his true colors, here was the bottom line: nothing had changed.

She'd always known they had an association of mu tual benefit more than a grand love affair. What differ ence did it make now that she understood Blount was marrying her solely for her money? Her looks were a plus since he was proud to be seen with her, but money alone would do.

Despite the cold, slimy feeling of dread that made her pull the shawl tighter around her shoulders, she reminded herself that she had come to terms with harsh reality before. She would come to terms with this. She angled her wrist to see the face of her watch in the light that spilled from a nearby cottage. For those who wanted to dance and party, the reception would go on for a couple of hours, but the older guests were beginning to leave. She wanted to say good-bye to Mary Cole.

She turned back, angling across the soft sand on the shorter, more direct route to the hotel patio, although the walking was more difficult. Closer to the sea-oat-topped dunes, she heard the thin, high notes whistled by the wind blowing through the tall sea grass.

This sound always made JJ stop, take a deep breath of the salty air, and suddenly, consciously, appreciate where she was. The sound wasn't loud. Even a few feet away from the dunes, it was drowned out by the ever present ocean roar. And it wasn't constant. The wind had to come from exactly the right direction to vibrate the blades of the five-foot stalks.

The experience of being on the beach could be simu lated in pictures and recordings, even using canned scents. But none of those things could equal this reality. This was no dream, no memory, no ersatz association. There was a trueness to the beach, to the ocean, that brought her back to herself. Here she was able to think clearly.

The pieces came together, and her decision formed itself. She was going forward. She had no choice but to go forward, but she wasn't going to bed with Blount— not tonight.

Absorbed by the song of the dunes, she didn't notice the approach of the man until he was almost upon her.

"JJ."

He was a dark silhouette against the lights of the hotel patio. It didn't matter that she couldn't see his face. With knee-weakening certainty, she knew that voice, that smooth, smooth, Dove-bar-chocolate voice. He was here.

Thank God.

JJ fought her way clear of the crazy feeling of deliverance. What was the matter with her? If ever there was a man who was not the answer to a maid en's prayer, it was Mr. Davy Anonymous Sex. Mr. Opportunistic. Mr. I'm Too Sexy for My Shirt. She couldn't claim the moral high ground. He hadn't been by himself in that hotel room, but while it had been an aberration for her, she had no doubt it was business as usual for him.

She
wasn't glad to see him. How could she hav
e imagined even for an instant that she was? Still if she had to meet up with him, at least it was out here, privately.

She had kept an eye out for him ever since Mary Cole had said he might be among the SEALs at the wedding. When she hadn't seen him, she'd felt re lieved, lucky. A greasy feeling of shame slid around in her stomach. She'd rather pretend she didn't recognize him, and that shamed her as much as acting so irre sponsibly with him had. Had she now added hypocrisy to her other shortcomings?

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, heart pounding, heat flooding her face, sweat prickling in her hairline.

"JJ," Davy called to the woman standing so still near the dunes.

Her dress belled out like a dark sail. Her crossed arms held the shawl against her body. The long ends of the shawl rose up and flapped like the wings of a trapped creature fighting to get free. Her head was tilted as if she was listening to something.

She whirled at the sound of her name. "What are you doing here?"

"I know this is the oldest line in the world—" The irony killed him. The most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, and he was stuck with the lamest come-on ever. "But I swear it's the truth. I can't get past the feeling I know you from somewhere. Have we met?"

Chapter 13

SHE STILLED. THERE WAS A TINY PAUSE WHILE SHE batted down the fluttering end of her shawl. "You don't remember… meeting me?"

"No. But I'm not lying. I feel like I know you."

"I believe you." She laughed a little and shook her head. Then she smiled at him.
Kindly
. "Actually, people tell me that all the time. I do some of the commercials for Caruthers' Cars. That's probably why I seem familiar."

He tried to picture her against a background of cars. He couldn't. He hated the feelings of confusion, of not being able to call to mind things he should know. He felt like—like he was trying to play poker but cards were missing… like he
wasn't playing with a full deck. A few
bricks shy of a load. Elevator doesn't go all the way to
the top.
Shit. Those things said about people with im paired brain function—that was actually how he
felt.

"JJ Caruthers, Caruthers Cars? You're the owner?"

"My grandfather owns it. I'm its… public face."

He heard the tiny pause. She'd meant to say one thing and changed it to something else. His gut told him she wasn't telling him the truth, not all of it anyway. But who cared? She was talking to him, and that's what he wanted. He ought to let the feeling of familiarity go, but he couldn't. "That might be it. But I don't think so. I'm not from around here. Are you saying you don't recognize me?"

She looked a little embarrassed. "I meet so many people." She spread her hands in a helpless gesture, and the ends of her shawl threatened to get away from her.

"Maybe you don't recognize me because of this." He angled his face so that the light spilling from the hotel patio fell on it and touched his cheek.

She recoiled. Took a step backward while her hand came up to stifle a gasp.

"Is it that bad?"

"No," she admitted slowly, "it's just… seeing you in the light, I realize now I do know you. You're Davy… Davy
Something
, aren't you?"

"You mean we really have met? Wow. That's a relief. You recognize me, too?"

"The scar doesn't change you that much. I was just startled to see you, that's all. I'm sorry it happened though. It must have… hurt."

He chuckled at the understatement. "You might say that."

"Apparently I just did." She rolled her eyes in embar rassment. "It was a stupid thing to say. Obviously, I have no idea how it felt. Okay, let's rewind. If you weren't sure you'd even met me, how did you know my name?"

"I asked around." He had hoped hearing her name would bring everything together. But it hadn't helped. Her name hadn't rung any bell at all. Every second he was around her, the sense of recognition grew and yet not one single fact or even a nebulous association came to mind. Weeks of frustrating encounters had taught him that the harder he tried, the less he would be able to recall.

"Look, I know it's unbelievable that I could have forgotten how I met a girl as beautiful as you… if I

haven't completely screwed up, do you mind telling me where?"

JJ hoped being recognized everywhere hadn't given her an inflated sense of her importance. She knew that night hadn't meant anything to him—hooking up with avail able women was something he did. JJ had been prepared to deal with their previous encounter, making it clear she wasn't offering anything like that again. What she hadn't considered was that she was so insignificant as to be completely forgettable.

Even as she dealt with the blow to her ego, she breathed a sigh of relief. This was better than the best she could have hoped for. If he didn't remember, she didn't need to persuade him not to talk. For a second, she considered lying, denying knowing him at all.

She might have, if he hadn't showed her the scar. If there hadn't been a touching vulnerability in the way he suggested it was why she didn't recognize him.

She understood that his vulnerability wasn't around loss of self-confidence or vanity. As scars went, it wasn't that disfiguring, something he probably knew, but it profoundly altered his identity.

Most people's identifying characteristics had to be built up like a mosaic. Age plus height plus weight plus hair color, eye color, tattoos, and identifying marks, all the way to "last seen wearing."

Not him. Likely all his life pointing him out in a crowd had been as simple as saying "the gorgeous one." For the rest of his life, he would be "the one with the scar."

JJ had heard people speak of having a soft spot in their hearts. When he had turned his ruined cheek to her, it literally felt as if a place in her chest underneath her breastbone went soft. She just couldn't let him think the scar made him unrecognizable.

"We met here in North Carolina," she answered. "I'm not surprised you don't remember. I'm sure you met a lot of people at that wedding, too." And have probably don
e
the same thing with too many other women too many
times for one night to stand out,
she added silently.

"Whose wedding?" His brows drew together in lost looking puzzlement.

"You were there as a friend of the groom, I guess." For a second, JJ drew a complete blank on the groom's name—even though she'd just met him. She was rattled by this encounter. Now that she knew she needn't fear he'd gossip, she only wanted to get away. She still had to deal with Blount. The name popped into her mind. "Jax… Jackson Graham."

Slowly his brow cleared. "Was that just a year ago? Seems longer." His gaze roamed over her in frank appreciation. "Hard to believe I could have forgotten you, though."

Davy hesitated, unsure what to say next. She wasn't giving him even a hint of a come-aboard signal.

She shrugged with a hint of self-deprecating humor. "What can I say?" She began to edge around him. "Well, nice running into you again."

"Stop," he caught her wrist. "Wait. How I screwed up and let you get away before, I don't know, but here we are. And now we get another chance. Do you know how rare those are? I want to get to know you. The guys in my unit call me Doc—sometimes Davy—but my full name is David Graziano. Is JJ what everyone calls you? What does it stand for?"

"Jane Jessup—and that's why I only answer to JJ. Nice to meet you. Now, I really need to—" She tugged on her wrist. "Let go," she ordered.

He should let her go. Any decent man would. But something like hot desperation flared in his chest. Most mistakes you only knew about after you made them, but somehow Davy knew that letting her go now would be the biggest mistake he'd ever made.

He couldn't summon the smooth moves, the ease things-along, meaningless patter he'd used in the past to keep girls talking. He couldn't hold a girl against her will either. But if he couldn't think of how to talk, why not just do what he wanted to? It was audacious, but SEALs lived outside the box, and something about an audacious approach with this girl just felt right.

"Listen carefully." He made his voice slow, serious, and smooth. He wanted her to pay complete attention and understand he offered no threat. SEALs were drilled in split-second evaluation of the amount of resistance they were meeting and selection of the precise amount of force needed to overcome it. A confrontation could often be controlled simply by stating clearly what
would
happen, and what the other person needed to do to com ply. "I'm going to drop your wrist. What you
need to do
,
JJ Caruthers
, is stand still while I kiss you."

He released her wrist, and she let her arm drop to her side. She didn't walk away.
Yes.
Time hung suspended while her eyes roamed his face, looked into his eyes, fixed on his mouth.

She blinked slowly and found his eyes again. "You can't kiss me."

He smiled at that. "Yes I can. There's a lot I can't do right now, but
that
I most certainly can."

"I mean, I can't kiss you. I came with someone else."

He stilled for half a blink, all urge to smile vanished. "Does he matter?"

"I'm going to marry him."

"You're engaged?" He brought her left hand up where he could see it. "No ring."

"It isn't official."

"Then you're not engaged. Not yet. And unless you tell me you don't want me to, I am going to kiss you."

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