Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle Read online

  I’m a daydreaming idiot who needs to get her feet back on the ground.

  “Nothing.” Knowing she wasn’t telling the truth, Pickett pushed away the wistfulness that threatened to engulf her. She and Lyle had never talked about their love lives. Pickett because she didn’t have one; Lyle because she’d been trying to keep her sexual orientation a secret. The habit of confiding in one another during the crucial teenage years had never been formed. Still, Pickett had often wished for a sister who was also a friend, and Lyle had just offered her the perfect opening.

  “You hit a nerve when you called me a sucker,” she offered. “I am a soft touch. I was blaming Mother, but the truth is I probably would have gone to the Howells’ cottage even without Mother’s interference.” She opened the refrigerator. “How about some iced tea?”

  “‘The house wine of the South’?” chortled Lyle, quoting from Steel Magnolias. “Of course I’ll have some. People in New York don’t know how to make it.” She leaned against the worn counter while Pickett ran water over the ancient ice trays.

  “You have too big a heart, kid,” Lyle said softly, returning to the previous subject. She gave Pickett a one-armed squeeze. “You know what? I’ve always been afraid that big heart of yours would lead you to marry some loser just because he needed you.”

  In other words, Lyle thought no man would ever want Pickett for herself.

  She thought Pickett was too stupid to avoid being manipulated.

  Pickett kept her eyes on the ice cubes, making sure she put an equal number in each glass, until she had control of her hurt. She fell back on reflective listening. “You think I’m pretty pathetic, don’t you? Feeble? Foolishly sentimental?”

  “Feeble? Sentimental? No. But I do think you don’t always stand up for yourself. You take care of other people and pretend your own needs don’t exist. I think you don’t know your own strength or your own power. You will marry someday, and I hope you’ll find someone who makes you happy—not just someone who needs you. That’s what I meant.”

  “No need to worry about who I’ll marry.” Pickett reached for the tea pitcher, happy to have the conversation back on comfortable ground. “When it comes to marriage I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I do have a PhD in the subject. I know exactly what kind of husband I’m looking for. There are well-documented factors that predict long-term viability. Never fear I will plunge myself into an impossible situation for emotional reasons. I know a lot about the odds for and against a marriage working, and I intend to do everything I can to stack them in my favor.”

  “Aren’t you looking, first of all, for love? Some people defy the odds. Isn’t it love that makes the difference?”

  Pickett set down the heavy crockery pitcher and turned to face her sister. “A year or two doing family therapy on a military base will destroy any romantic notions you ever had about the power of love. Trust me, love won’t keep you together if the military is keeping you apart. Respect, affection, trust, shared values, humor, and a strong commitment are far more important than love. Anyway, I’m no hero. It would take more courage than I’ve got to go up against heavy odds.” Pickett waved a dismissive hand, and picked up the pitcher again. “Enough about me, I want to hear about you.”

  “No, it’s not enough about you. You’ve told me all about what you think. You haven’t said anything about how you feel.”

  Pickett paused in the act of pouring tea over ice. How very sensitive of Lyle! “Have you been taking counseling lessons?” she teased.

  “No, you idiot. Unlike you, I don’t give a damn about how most people feel, but I do care about you.”

  Pickett’s head jerked back in surprise. She only opened up to Emmie and a couple of her closest friends. Since she was a great listener, most people never noticed. Until this minute she hadn’t known Lyle was one of the people who did.

  Again the urge to unburden herself to Lyle rose up, and again she felt the wistful certainty that she didn’t quite dare. “I feel fine,” Pickett said, handing one moisture-beaded glass to her sister and taking the other one for herself. “Between seeing clients in my office here, working at the base, and working on the house, I’m busy and happy. And health wise,” she added, “I’ve never been better.”

  Lyle looked like she might have asked for more, a small frown shadowing her light-blue eyes. Then she nodded philosophically. “I’m glad. Now show me all you’ve done to the house since I was here last.”

  Not surprisingly, Lyle approved of Pickett’s color scheme, since she herself had selected the Chinese red for the living room and dark spruce green for Pickett’s bedroom with the carefully preserved window and door moldings trimmed in antique white. The intense colors acted as a unifying influence on the mishmash of family castoffs and the few true heirlooms with which the rooms were furnished. The twelve-foot ceilings accommodated the exquisite, but immense, Federal-period secretaire that had been in storage for years because no family member had a house large enough for it, but the sectional sofa, upholstered in a print of huge red flowers, had literally been snatched from the junk man.

  She looked at Pickett’s large pineapple post bed piled with pillows, and laughed in disbelief. “Good grief! Half the bed is taken up with pillows, Pickett. There’s hardly room for you, much less someone else.” She glanced at Pickett’s face and lifted her palms in a hands-off gesture. “Hey, I’m not criticizing. Who am I to talk about empty,” she laughed again, “or in your case, not-empty beds? There’s one thing about it, it means you’ll really like the housewarming present I made you.” She turned toward the door. “You wait here. I’ll be right back.” In a minute she returned and handed Pickett a large bag.

  “You made me a needlepoint pillow!” Pickett exulted. “At last, I get one of my own.” Lyle’s pillows were works of art. She used both large and small stitches, sometimes working one stitch over another, creating shimmering colors reminiscent of pointillism. They were, in fact, paintings rendered in wool, acting as the background for some wry saying. Pickett withdrew the intricately worked pillow from the bag, wordlessly exclaiming at its beauty.

  “Plus je vois …” Pickett read haltingly as she traced the stylized cream-and-white letters worked into a motif of leaves. “This is a totally new design, isn’t it?”

  Lyle nodded, managing to look both shyly pleased and mischievous.

  “O-o-okay.” Pickett narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “What does it say? You know I don’t read French as well as you.”

  Lyle’s grin widened. “‘The more I know about men …’” she paused for dramatic effect, “‘the better I love my dogs!’”

  FOUR

  Jax stared at the fast-moving clouds streaming toward the island and the ocean awash with foam from almost-continuous breakers, and considered his options.

  Since breakfast, Lauren had been scurrying around the cottage, bracelets jangling, Ferragamos clacking, packing to return to Raleigh now that evacuation of the beach had been ordered.

  Tyler crouched on the floor in front of the sofa. He alternated beeping and grinding noises as he maneuvered the dump-truck load of poker chips.

  “Stop that noise, Tyler. I don’t know how I’m supposed to pack, if I can’t even think.” Lauren marched into the living room and plunked a designer bag down beside the door. “And I told you to pick up those cars and put them in your toy sack. When I’m ready to get in the car, anything you don’t have with you will be left for the hurricane to get.” Lauren pushed the hair back from her face with shaking, be-ringed hands. “I’d have left yesterday if I’d had any sense. But no. Mr. Navy doesn’t want to budge. ‘Who knows what course the hurricane will take?’ he says. He’d rather stay here with Tyler. Mr. Navy can play better with Tyler here,” she muttered not quite under her breath.

  Jax heard her. She meant for him to. Her hands were shaking. He could see a fine tremor running under the shiny, silvery fabric of her cropped pants. Was she that scared? Or was she hungover? She had been sloshed last night by the tim
e she served dinner.

  So, should he just let Tyler go with her? Call it? Tell Commander Kohn that his idea of “thirty-days’ leave for Jax to spend time with Tyler” had been a fiasco? A goatfuck from day one?

  Oh yeah, like that was an option.

  Kohn was a good commander, and Jax’s mentor, but he had this slow cowboy drawl that told you, you were so screwed. Jax could still feel his neck get hot when he remembered Kohn’s dressing-down, no less scathing for being delivered in that lazy, “I don’t give a damn” voice.

  And Kohn had this bug up his ass about family responsibilities. He said he didn’t know how Tyler’s old DOD 1332.30 had gotten on his desk. Bullshit. He probably had the thing flagged to his attention.

  “How long has it been since you’ve seen your son, Graham?”

  “I saw him at his mother’s funeral a month ago.”

  “And before that, when did you see him?”

  “In April, six, no, seven months ago.”

  Kohn had looked out the window a long time and when he looked back at Jax, his eyes were bright and hard. He let fall the thick manila folder containing a plan covering every contingency imaginable concerning Tyler’s care as long as he was a dependent—Tyler’s old 1332.30. It hit the shiny desk with a soft plop. The gesture was somehow a clearer warning than slamming it down would have been.

  “My friend, if you’re smart, you’ll take the leave you should’ve asked for as soon as that boy’s mother died.

  “You go to North Carolina and you make sure that child is all right.

  “And you come back here with a new 1332.30 that is so perfect in every detail it could have been written by God.

  “I can promise I will review it. If I’m not completely stunned by its glory, I’ll hate to lose you, but you’re outta here. Your service to your country is valuable, but Congress has spoken: your duty to your dependent child comes first.”

  Then Kohn had said something strange. He said, “Your son, does he look like you?”

  Jax glanced now from the window to the sofa where Tyler had made a sort of garage by propping up the cushions. His hair grew from a double crown as Jax’s did, and, allowing for Jax’s permanent sun streaks, was the same color. His face still had too much baby softness to guess what his adult features would be, but the gray eyes with their straight brows were Jax’s.

  No doubt about it. This was his son.

  His son that he was screwing up with.

  Even with his ass chewed, it had all looked so simple at the base in Little Creek, Virginia. As soon as he learned of Danielle’s death, he’d known the best thing to do was give custody of Tyler to Lauren. If Kohn thought he should take thirty-days’ leave just to get some papers signed, so be it.

  Lauren would still have to take Tyler full time eventually.

  But it felt like quitting to let Tyler go to Lauren’s house with the boy still acting as if his father didn’t exist.

  He hated to quit.

  And it felt like losing.

  He hated to lose.

  Hell, it couldn’t get any worse, and maybe without Lauren grating on him, he would handle Tyler’s silence better.

  He walked into the kitchen where Lauren had a trash can pulled up to the refrigerator and was pitching out leftover food. “Lauren, if you’re packed, why don’t you get on the road? I’ll clean out the refrigerator and close up the cottage after you’re gone.”

  “Oh Jax, would you?” To Jax’s cynical amusement, the change in Lauren was miraculous. The tightly down-turned lips turned up, and it almost looked like there were tears in her eyes. “I-40 is going to look like a parking lot with everybody trying to evacuate. The sooner I get on the road, the sooner I’ll get home.” She closed the refrigerator. “But, Jax, I want you to know that you are welcome to come and stay at my house in Raleigh. Any time. I really mean it.”

  Now she was kicking into the Gracious Lady act. He’d be about as welcome as a case of head-lice. “No, thank you. I’ll stay here.”

  “Well,” Lauren had the grace to try not to look delighted, “if you change your mind, Tyler and I—”

  “Tyler is staying with me.”

  When they were twelve, his best friend Corey said a name like “Jackson Graham the Third” sounded snooty, so he’d dubbed him “Jax” because that sounded like a Jedi knight. But when he wanted to, Jax could keep his face so impassive that the new guys in the platoon sometimes called him Stonewall.

  “What?” Lauren blinked her mascaraed lashes and swiveled her gaze around the room as if she wondered who had spoken. “No. No, you idiot!”

  Good-bye Gracious, hello Nasty.

  “I have to … I mean … What are you thinking? There’s a hurricane! Tyler has to leave. I care about the welfare of this child even if you don’t. I’m the closest thing to a mother he has. You can’t take care of him. He has to go with me.”

  “I’m his father. He stays with me.”

  “Are you telling me you’re not going to let me have custody?”

  “No. Nothing has changed. Tyler will still need someone to care for him full time. But dammit, Lauren, this thirty-day leave is the longest continuous time I’ve ever had with Tyler, and the longest I’m likely to get. I’m not willing to cut it short for a storm that’ll be gone in thirty-six hours.”

  “But where will you take him? You can’t stay on the island.”

  “I’ll find a hotel room in Wilmington.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard! There won’t be a room to be had between here and Raleigh.”

  Lauren was way overreacting. Any hurricane had to be taken seriously, but a category one was not a Katrina. Only the beaches and low-lying areas needed to be evacuated, and an hour’s drive in any direction would take them out of all danger. He suspected she welcomed an excuse to take Tyler and return home to Raleigh. “I’ll find something. We’ll be okay. When it’s over, we’ll come back here.”

  “This is insane! You can’t do this.”

  “I can.”

  “But I have to leave! I can’t stay here.” Lauren’s drawl thickened as her voice rose to a hysterical wail. “I have to be home! Don’t you care anything about my feelings? I’ll be worried to death about Tyler. I’m terrified of storms. I have to get home!”

  It wasn’t any ground they hadn’t already covered. Jax saw no need to answer.

  “If you don’t care anything about me, don’t you care about your baby? How can you keep him where a hurricane’s going to strike within twenty-four hours? You’re putting that child in harm’s way!” Lauren snatched up a makeup case and stalked to the door with quick, sharp taps of her sandals and flung it wide. “You’re not going to get away with this.”

  Jax placed the last of Lauren’s Louis Vuitton luggage in the trunk of her silver Lexus and closed it. “I’ll call you when I know where Tyler and I will be staying.”

  Lauren didn’t answer. An improvement, Jax considered. It beat the hell out of the ranting that had gone on as he had carried her suitcases down.

  Now she put her handbag in the car and held out her arms to Tyler.

  “Come give Gan-gan a kiss.”

  Tyler went to her with slow steps, his head down.

  She lifted his face in her hands. “You want to go to Gan-gan’s house, don’t you?” Tyler’s eyes never met hers; his headshake was almost imperceptible.

  Lauren made her eyes go big with horror. “You don’t want to stay here and let the hurricane get you, do you?” Again, a tiny shake. “Then you make your daddy bring you to Gan-gan’s house. You’ll be safe there.”

  “Gan-gan left me.” Tyler gazed at the departing Lexus with a very old look on his smooth little face. This morning Lauren had dressed him in another of his coordinated outfits, a blue polo shirt with sailboat doodads embroidered on the collar and matching sailboats on the legs of the shorts. Under the blue shirt, Tyler’s shoulders lifted once, then fell.

  Jax didn’t know how to interpret Tyler’s expression; still,
seeing his son look like that caused something inside him to ache like an old wound.

  “Come on inside.” Jax held out his hand to Tyler. Tyler didn’t take it, but followed obediently. “Let’s finish packing up.”

  “Stay close to me, Tyler,” Jax snapped, even though Tyler wasn’t doing anything wrong. Clutching his red toy sack, he obediently stood beside his father in the parking lot of the hotel. Jax squeezed his eyes shut in a fruitless effort to blot out his shame at snapping without reason. What the hell was the matter with him?

  Jax had made quick work of closing up the cottage after Lauren left. He’d hoped with just the two of them, Tyler might be forced to deal with him and start talking more. It hadn’t worked that way. Instead, without her jittering presence to distract them from each other, Tyler’s silence went from uncommunicative to nerve-racking. Impossible to penetrate, impossible to ignore.

  Now that they were inland, the heat seemed twice what it had been on the beach; the supersaturated air and no hint of breeze made it impossible for sweat to evaporate. The cloud cover had thickened; the light was dull and shadowless. Elvira wasn’t due to come ashore until the early hours of the morning, but a hurricane, even a small one like Elvira, was big.

  Jax retrieved his duffle and Tyler’s designer suitcase. Who knew there was designer luggage for kids? Jax expelled a pained laugh at himself. In order to distract himself now he was glomming onto insignificant details like suitcases and the quality of the light, but it was way the hell better than snapping at Tyler.

  Despite Lauren’s predictions, a hotel room had been easy to come by, although the desk clerk warned him his reservation would be held only for an hour. Fortunately, the new Highway 17 bypass put him in the historic section of Wilmington in half the time it used to take. Jax checked his watch. They’d made it in time.

  Jax was proud of his choice of hotel. It was adjacent to the historic Southern Railway terminal, which had been rehabbed into a convention and expo center. Though it overlooked the Cape Fear river, folks back then had known how to build, and even more important, where to build. High water posed no threat to it.