Sealed with a promise (25 page)

  He sat down in the chair and brushed his hand over the sole of one foot. Resting on his opposite knee, the tanned foot had a rough-hewn elegance, a marriage between innate grace and slim lines, strength and hard use. The sight of his bare foot, so human, so strong, and so vulnerable compressed her heart. He glanced up and saw her looking, and crinkles appeared around his eyes. He pulled on a brown sock, so soft-looking it must be cashmere.

  Then the crinkles disappeared. “Emmie, would you retrieve the rope from the bathroom? Vicky and I,” he explained in a voice scrubbed of all emotion, “need to have a very serious talk.”

  Feeling a little cowardly, Emmie scuttled toward the bath. She wouldn’t want to face him in his current state. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he intended to make Vicky aware of how foolhardy her actions had been. Just because she didn’t want to be in the line of fire didn’t mean she didn’t want to know what was going to happen, though. She was intensely curious. She didn’t close the door completely.

  “Explain,” she overheard him say. Just one word of command in that dead, level, calm voice.

  “Mommy said I had to stay in my room and rest,” Vicky began, then faltered. A long moment of silence ensued.

  “Why did she say that?”

  “Cause I had the flu, and she thinks I’m not over it. But I am, and I got so bored stuck up here while the reception was going on.”

  “So you decided to go out the window?”

  “Sure. I’ve done it lots of times. It’s easy. I don’t have to belay the entire distance.”

  “You have the equipment. Someone has taught you climbing. Did they also teach you never to climb without a buddy?”

  “Ye- es.”

  “Now, you know why.”

  “Nothing ever went wrong before. Really. Please, please, please, don’t tell my mother.”

  “Something can always go wrong.” He said it so sadly and so finally, his forehead corrugated with worry lines. “Vicky, when you give your word, do you keep it?”

  “You mean, like keep promises?”

  “You have to promise me, until you are twenty-one and have your climbing instructor certification, you will never climb alone. You shouldn’t climb alone even then, but you will be an adult. It will be your decision to make.”

  “Okay, I promise.”

  “Will you keep your promise?”

  “Cross my heart-” the girl began breathlessly.

  “No. None of that. This isn’t about being an obedient little kid. I think you’ve demonstrated you’re not obedient. I’m talking about what you
will
do. Can you decide what you will do and then stick to it? Never forget, and never change your mind?”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay, then I promise not to tell.” He bent over to reach his other shoe. “Get out of that harness, and stow it somewhere. Someone will be here any minute. The security cameras probably picked up Emmie’s every move.”

  Galvanized, Emmie released the breath she’d been holding and leapt to the window to haul in the rope. She was stuffing it under the vanity when his prediction came true.

  The door opened. The gray-haired man in the gray pinstripe suit-the better dressed one who had shepherded guests into the Presence-burst in. He took in the scene. Vicky perched on the bed, Caleb in the wing chair pulling on a sock.

  “I’ll handle this,” he snapped to someone outside the door. “Vicky, are you all right? Did he touch you?” Without waiting for a reply, he demanded of Caleb, “Who the hell are you, and what are you doing up here? The security guard saw a woman run up the stairs. Where is she?”

  “Hey, there’s no problem here. Vicky and I were just talking,” said Caleb, “while Dr. Caddington used the bathroom.”

  “Surely you could tell by the rope that this section of the house was closed to visitors.”

  Caleb shrugged. “Sometimes the need for a bathroom is urgent. We figured we’d find one up here quicker than asking where the downstairs powder room is.” On cue, the toilet flushed. Obviously, Emmie had overheard the conversation. “Ah-” He smiled knowingly, man- to-man. “A two-flusher.” Water ran for a moment, the door opened, and Emmie appeared.

  “Oh, hello, Mr. Fairchild. Vicky, thanks for letting me use your bathroom.”

  “Dr. Caddington, I’m surprised you would use your acquaintance with the senator to abuse his hospitality,” Fairchild said with caustic disapproval. “I’m even more surprised that you would bring a stranger into the private section of the house. One who was making himself at home-to say the least-when I got here.”

  “Mr. Fairchild, I assure you-”

  “Don’t apologize,” Caleb interrupted. “Fairchild has found out his security isn’t very good and is understandably upset.”

  “Mr. Fairchild,” Emmie said, trying to put the situation on a social footing. Fairchild was much more than a factotum in the senator’s household. According to gossip, he had masterminded Calhoun’s career and was a control freak who let no detail escape him. Although he was close to seventy, it was said he didn’t intend to retire until Calhoun had made it all the way to the White House. “This is Chief Petty Officer Caleb-”

  “The SEAL.” Fairchild’s lip actually curled. “How did you get up here? The cameras only showed a woman on the stairs.”

  The corner of Caleb’s mouth quirked with lazy mischief. “And yet, here I am.”

  Why was he goading Fairchild? Emmie felt her knees get weak again. She was a terrible liar, but she’d already noted that Caleb was a skillful one. If Fairchild questioned her, she didn’t know what she would say.

  “Dr. Caddington.” Fairchild turned flinty eyes her way. “I considered your grandmother a friend, so I can believe you didn’t mean to trespass. But if this man comes into this house again, by any means, he will be arrested.”

  “No, wait!” Vicky, who had been watching the interchange between the adults, protested. “It was all-”

  “Quiet, Vicky,” Fairchild snapped. “I’m not pleased with you either. I will have to explain to your mother your part in this. You should not have admitted this man to your room, and you know it. You should have informed security there were unauthorized people on the second floor.” He opened the door to the hall. “Escort Dr. Caddington and this man to the door,” he told the security guard who waited there. “Do not admit him to this house again, and if you see him anywhere near it, inform the police.”

  “No, wait!” Vicky barred the door with her body. “Please. It isn’t fair. I’ll tell-”

  Caleb touched her lightly on the arm. “Move out of the way, Little Bit.” At her mulish expression, he grinned. “You’ve got guts, but don’t get into more trouble, okay? It was nice to meet you.”

  “That went well, don’t you think?” Emmie, tongue in cheek, broke the silence just as they turned the corner for the final leg of the trip back to Emmie’s little house. “That was the first time someone ever saw me to the door
in order to make sure I left.
”

  “There’s a saying in special operations. Every operation goes to shit thirty seconds after it hits the ground. I’m sorry you got caught in the splash.”

  Emmie waved his apology away with one fine-boned hand. “If I’m never invited to their house again, I’ll be relieved. I told you before, the association was with my grandmother. But it just doesn’t seem right for you to be declared
persona non grata
when, really, they should be hailing you as a hero. And we only went so you could see Uncle Teague, and you didn’t even get a chance to talk to him.”

  Do- Lord looked down at the woman walking beside him. The wind, no longer blocked by houses because they were on a street perpendicular to the river, was stronger. The breeze floated silvery pale strands of her hair, emphasizing the fey qualities of her face.

  It also played with that teasing, flirty opening down the front of her red dress. He was fairly well convinced it wasn’t going to open and reveal her legs, and yet he couldn’t stop watching it-just in case it did.

  She really was incensed on his behalf. From the first he’d seen her loyalty and her willingness to go to bat for a friend.

  It felt strange to have loyalty given to him-espe-cially when he knew he hadn’t earned it-strange, but kind of warm, too.

  “Forget it.”

  “I don’t want to forget it. It isn’t fair.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, life isn’t fair.”

  “It’s true
life
isn’t, but people can be. To say life isn’t fair when it’s
people
who make decisions not to treat people evenhandedly is a cop out. Mr. Fairchild made it clear that he was treating me like I was somebody, and you, like you were… I don’t know-” Emmie shrugged impatiently. “A criminal or something.”

  The sky had clouded over, bringing on an early dusk, and no longer sheltered by houses, they could feel the full force of the breeze from the river.

  Emmie crossed her arms over her chest and shivered. “It’s getting chilly. It’s warm when the sun is out, but as soon as it starts to go down, you’re reminded this is December.”

  Do- Lord pulled off his sport coat and draped it over her shoulders. Curling his fingers into the lapels, he tugged her closer. Her wide blue eyes regarded him with curiosity and more than a hint of feminine anticipation.

  The kiss they’d shared earlier had hummed between them ever since, tingling across nerve endings, sharpening his every sense until the importance of anything,
anything but her,
disappeared.

  “Forget it, I said. It’s not important.” It certainly wasn’t important right now. For today, he had done all he could in his quest for justice for his mother. His desire for Emmie was unrelated to his pursuit of Calhoun, and from now on, he didn’t want Emmie involved.

  Compartmentalizing was something every SEAL learned to do. Right now, it took no effort to stuff thoughts of Calhoun away. Desire flowed, hot and thick, deep in his center, and his heart beat in slow thuds. The only endeavor he wanted to focus on at this moment was kissing her.

  “I want to kiss you.” He outlined her lips with his forefinger. “But the rest of what I want to do could get us arrested, if we do it in public.” When his finger brushed the corner of her mouth she…
shimmered.
It was the only word he knew for the tiny tremors of desire he felt flow through her. She was so responsive, as if she was already tuned to his frequency. “Be advised: once I start kissing you, I’m not going to stop.”

  His words, a promise and a warning, echoed in Emmie’s head as they continued down the street. Christmas lights, twinkling red and green on porches, white lights outlining bare branches, punctuated the dusk of December nightfall, and the breeze wafted smells of supper cooking. By the time they arrived at Emmie’s house she was shivering constantly, but whether from cold or anticipation or trepidation, she couldn’t have said.

  She wouldn’t have said she had ever taken sex lightly. No one raised by her grandmother could embrace an
if it feels good, do it
philosophy. It hadn’t been like this though. Not this heart- pounding, palm-sweating, breathless knowledge that she was diving over a cliff, and she was going to find out she really could fly, or she was going to crash horribly-and there was every possibility she would do both.

  A blast of self-honesty showed her she’d chosen men in the past with whom she didn’t expect sexual attraction to be part of the equation. She and they had been far more buddies than lovers. She had looked at how little she had asked of those relationships and determined to ask for more. In the past few minutes she had begun to understand how little the relationships had required of
her.

  She had set out very deliberately to attract Caleb, and she had succeeded more emphatically than she had dreamed of, or prepared for. When she had asked him for commitment, he had agreed so readily she’d been suspicious.

  However, she had seen at the Calhoun house that he could make lightning decisions, give his word instantly, and then abide by it-even when there was cost to himself. He could have ingratiated himself with Calhoun by telling on Vicky, and some people would say he should have. She’d had a lifetime of watching people who swore allegiance to moral positions, but whose scruples dissolved the instant they had something to lose or gain.

  Integrity. That’s what she saw in him. He might not be a person who played by the rules, but promises he made, he would keep.

  He had pocketed her keys after locking the door behind them when they set off, and now he drew them out as they went up the two shallow steps to her porch. In seconds he had the door open and was drawing her through it, into the deeper dusk inside, and into his warm embrace. At the sudden heat Emmie shivered even more violently.

  “I haven’t been taking very good care of you,” he murmured in his burnt umber voice, as his hands chaffed her arms in long smooth strokes. “I let you get cold. I should have insisted on driving or made you wear a coat.”

  “I haven’t been taking very good care of you,” Do-Lord whispered, pulling her slight form closer. That she could use a caretaker he didn’t doubt. She seemed so direct and guileless, a real lamb among the wolves. It was hard to imagine how she made her way in the world.

  He had surprised himself a little, when he’d suggested marriage earlier. It wasn’t the kind of relationship it was ever smart to tease about. Do-Lord was a man capable of learning from other’s mistakes. He’d seen for himself that marriage didn’t work for most SEALs. He knew men who were paying alimony to as many as three ex-wives. He’d always assumed if he ever got married, and he figured he would, it would be after his twenty years was up. It hadn’t been a hard decision to stick to. Some men were prone to fall in love. Some weren’t. And yet, when she rejected the idea of marriage, he’d felt as much disappointment as relief.

  His whole plan for breaching Calhoun’s defenses depended on having other people see them as a pair. Today though, he’d had a small taste of what being a couple with Emmie would feel like, and the funny thing was, he could imagine himself married to her. Where she gave her loyalty, she would give it without stint. He could have her always with him. Always on his side. He could imagine coming home to a house that smelled like her. Logging on at the end of the day and finding an email from her.