Sealed with a promise (8 page)

  Emmie laughed then clutched her shoulder when her chuckles jostled the abused joint. “This really is a silly discussion, isn’t it?”

  The surprisingly robust sound of her laughter did something strange to Do-Lord’s insides, as did the gasp of pain that cut it off. With her laughter the severe, dowdy image disappeared. He’d had his hands on her shapely curves, and now he saw them rather than the boxy jacket intended to hide them. The ways of sexual chemistry were strange, but now the reaction of Old Stupid didn’t seem quite so stupid. Who cared what she wore? There was no doubt she was a real woman-and when she was where he wanted her, she wouldn’t be wearing clothes at all.

  And no doubt, she was fighting considerable pain. “You ought to be home resting that shoulder with an ice pack on it.” He released his own seat belt then felt for hers on the other side of the console. His fingers encountered her heat, brushed the soft top of her thigh.

  Quite deliberately, he let his hand linger a second longer than it had to before his thumb found and released the catch. With certainty, he knew he would eventually run his hands across every inch of her.

  No sooner did he think that, than just for a moment he could see his hand traveling over the white skin of her belly. Not in a wish-fulfillment type fantasy-it was a transposition in time. Every sense he possessed told him it was real. As quickly as it flashed before him, the image was gone.

  Some people had flashbacks. Sometimes
he
had flashes of how things were-or how they might be. Flashes forward. It was more than a canny ability to extrapolate from minimal facts. It was knowledge he shouldn’t have known, but he did. Do-Lord wished he could talk to someone about what had just happened.

  Jax knew about his talent. Shoot, Jax knew because he had talent of his own-he knew what people could do. Jax didn’t plan a mission without asking Do-Lord to “take a look at the map.” Sometimes he saw more than the map showed. The synergistic interactions of their skills had cemented their unlikely friendship, and yet they had never discussed it. Jax didn’t deny it, he just had zero curiosity. Other guys in the platoon got a little weird if he tried to talk about it.

  Ah! Suddenly he knew what the flash was trying to show him. The plan was taking shape in his mind. He’d agreed to assist Emmie only knowing:
you do a favor, you’re owed a favor.
And she had access to the man he was looking for. Now he saw the plan more subtly and longer-term. He saw himself and Emmie giving off body signals that they were a couple.

  He didn’t have to settle for just an introduction to Calhoun. Once upon a time, he’d been defeated by the layers and layers of people who insulated men like Calhoun. As part of a couple with Emmie, he could bypass all the sentries and be taken straight into the heart of Calhoun’s intimate territory.

  Once he was an insider, he would find the areas of Calhoun’s vulnerability, what it would hurt him most to lose. Then he would strike. It would take time, maybe a long time.

  Not a problem. He had time. He was seventeen when his mother died. He’d already waited fifteen years.

  He glanced at the Tara look-alike. He was going in, and she was his passport. That he knew he would enjoy going in with her was icing on the cake. Long-term payoff plus intermediate rewards. That was the kind of plan you had to like.

  Do- Lord opened the truck door and turned back to Emmie. “Wait here. That sling makes you plenty memorable, and a big, heavy box will really make us stand out. I want to do a sneak and peek. I’ll find a side entrance where we’re less likely to be seen coming and going.”

  In a moment he stood underneath a high coved ceiling from which depended a massive chandelier in the country club lobby. This was Calhoun’s natural habitat. Slender Doric columns marked the openings to wide lushly carpeted hallways. Groupings of wingback chairs and satin-covered benches with curly legs dotted the area.

  A temple of money and power, Emmie had called this, and he had to grin at the accuracy of her observation. There was a hushed reverence hanging over the heavy formality, and as evocative as incense, some subtle aroma of wealth filled the air. Emmie might be an inhabitant of this world, but she looked beneath the surface. She understood its rules but didn’t accept them at face value. And she was proactive. In addition to sexual attraction, the more he knew her, the better he liked her. Really, he couldn’t have chosen better.

  No one was around. Discreet signs directed visitors to card rooms, lounges, and dining rooms. This time of day it was apparent that all activity was in the opposite wing. A poufy white bow decorated a pedestal sign: Sessoms-Graham Reception-Crepe Myrtle Room.

  The door to the Crepe Myrtle room was locked. He took a thin piece of plastic from his wallet and sprung it.

  “All right,” Do-Lord said as soon as he returned to the truck. “Let’s get this show on the road-no, don’t move.” He forestalled her reach for the door handle. “I’ll come around and lift you down.”

  “I don’t like this.” Emmie, her chin at a stubborn angle, glared at him, when he’d opened the door on her side. “I don’t like feeling helpless.”

  Do- Lord resisted the urge to laugh. She looked so cute, with those wide uptilted eyes like blue lasers aimed at him by a ferocious kitten. If he laughed though, she’d probably spit and claw. He tilted his head to one side and accentuated his drawl. “If you’re shoeless, you don’t have shoes. If you’re heartless, you’re without a heart. I’ve never understood how
receiving
help makes people feel help
less.
”

  “Then I don’t suppose you’ve ever felt helpless.” “You’re wrong. I’ve felt it.” The ice-cold burn of it lingered even now. “I needed help and didn’t have it. I was truly helpless.” He clamped down on the memory. He had almost revealed too much. He smoothly shifted the focus back to her, choosing his most understanding smile. “You, on the other hand, are feeling vulnerable. There’s a difference. Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of the Precious Cargo.” “Precious Cargo?”

  “What SEALs call the people they’re tasked to rescue.” She blinked in surprise. “I guess you are rescuing me.” She didn’t look happy about it.

  “Yes, ma’am, I am. And the more you just let me do it, the easier it will be. Put your arm around my neck.” He slid one arm under her back, one under her knees. “Is your shoulder okay with my hand here?” He wiggled the fingers of the hand on her rib cage to show her which hand he meant. His thumb brushed the soft underside of her full breast. His lower body tightened. It just kept getting better and better. With her chest covered by the sling and further concealed by the boxy suit jacket, he hadn’t guessed, but Miss Emelina Caddington was stacked. Much as he wanted to, he couldn’t bring his hand up to cup the generous weight he sensed. Not now.

  Emmie cursed the fact that she hadn’t put on a bra no matter how much it would have hurt to hook the clasp. She’d worn a bust “minimizer” since she was fourteen, ever since she realized boys, who didn’t want to be seen talking to her because she wasn’t cool or popular or pretty, snickered about her behind her back.

  As soon as he set her down Emmie sidestepped to put space between them. Between the time he’d agreed to help her and now, something had changed. The distance he’d held her at literally and figuratively had disappeared. She had a hard time believing he was trying to seduce her, even if that’s what his not-so-innocent touches and warm looks pointed to. She must be reading too much into it. In the past she’d made the mistake of believing a man was more interested in her than, in fact, he was.

  She’d known Blount, a colleague at the university, for months before they began getting together regularly, months longer before they’d had sex, and still she had read his intentions all wrong. And she’d certainly had reason to believe Blount, with whom she shared research interests, would find her more desirable than a Navy SEAL.

  Emmie shook her head and her hair, which had worked its way under the sling again, and tugged her scalp viciously-reminding her that thinking about Blount only brought pain. She freed her hair with a sigh.

  Caleb was probably right. She was just feeling vulnerable because she couldn’t deal with him from a position of authority. So what if she didn’t like feeling rescued? She needed his help, and he was generous enough to give it to her. Her grandmother would tell her it was her duty to accept it graciously without reading anything into it. She had to get the cake taken care of, and the sooner the better. This situation was affecting her judgment.

  It was time to remember her purpose for asking him to help her. This was for Pickett.

  Emmie didn’t know what she would have done if Pickett hadn’t come into her life. When she tried to imagine it, she’d get a mental picture of herself becoming flatter and flatter until she became completely one-dimensional and then turned into a design on the wallpaper.

  She had been caught in a positive feedback loop. The child of missionaries, she had been sent “home” when she was twelve to a place where everyone was a stranger. At an age when kids crave acceptance like oxygen and want more than anything to fit in, she had been an oddity. She didn’t wear the right clothes, understand the slang, or follow their code of behavior. She had been homeschooled by her mother far beyond her classmates. Inevitably, she gravitated to the one area where she shone, her schoolwork. The more she succeeded intellectually, the further she moved from kids her age. Still living at home with her grandmother, Emmie entered college at fifteen and graduated two and a half years later.

  At eighteen she went to another university to begin her Ph.D., and that’s where she got lucky. Her grandmother insisted she live on campus in a dorm, and since Emmie was eighteen, she was assigned a freshman roommate-Pickett.

  Pickett had a kind heart and a gift for listening. With gentle and inexorable patience, she drew Emmie out. Emmie’s inability to carry on teenage chatter was no barrier-in fact, Emmie thought she had offered Pickett a challenge to sharpen her fledgling therapist skills on.

  Pickett grasped that Emmie was uniquely suited to a scholar’s life but insisted Emmie had to develop herself in other areas. Emmie had a nice soprano voice-Pickett alternately cajoled and nagged her until she joined a choral group. Emmie could sketch-she needed elec-tives in art. What Pickett didn’t say, but Emmie now knew, was that both disciplines had a long tradition of respecting the dedicated amateur, and both were tolerant of nonconformists.

  Pickett took Emmie to Shakespeare festivals and bluegrass festivals. Emmie developed a passion for Shakespeare, an interest in antique musical instruments, and a slight proficiency on the Autoharp. And when Emmie’s grandmother passed away halfway through that first year-from then on, Pickett took Emmie home with her.

  Whenever Emmie remembered those years of exploration, she feared Pickett had been a better friend to her than she had been to Pickett, even though Pickett disagreed that the relationship was one-sided. There was one way Emmie had changed Pickett’s life for the better. She had recognized something was wrong with Pickett physically. She was only sorry that it had taken so long for her to put all the clues together. She might not have if she hadn’t read an article on gliadin proteins that mentioned celiac disease. Researcher that she was, she immediately looked it up-and recognized Pickett.

  Only she understood how much of Pickett’s self-concept had been eroded by not having the energy, the stamina, and the vigor expected of a person her age. Her high-achieving family had believed Pickett had a character flaw that kept her from doing her best, and so had Pickett. Watching Pickett blossom and begin to assert herself once she had energy to burn had been the single most satisfying experience of Emmie’s life.

  Celiac couldn’t be cured, but a person could become symptom-free by avoiding
all
wheat and wheat products and all the botanical cousins of wheat, like rye and barley. Completely. Always. For the rest of her life. Until a person tried to eliminate it, he or she had no idea how ubiquitous wheat was, and how often it was a hidden ingredient. Whenever she was with her, Emmie didn’t eat anything that Pickett couldn’t eat, so she understood how often Pickett couldn’t participate in that most basic human bonding ritual: the sharing of food. And probably, only she understood how much sharing the cake with her brand new husband would mean to Pickett.

  So whatever strange vibe Emmie was getting from Caleb-she didn’t have to worry about it. She didn’t have to worry that he kept helping her more than she wanted to be helped. This was for Pickett, and all
she
had to do was stay focused on her goals.

  “Grace was here all morning with the decorator,” she told Caleb as he hefted the large box weighing over sixty pounds onto his shoulder, “putting on the finishing touches. The catering staff won’t begin setting up until later. A quick in and out to switch the cakes, and we’re done.”

  They entered through the side portico-covered entrance he had discovered, and a short walk down the thickly carpeted hall took them to the reception room.

  “The room is this way.” He urged her forward with a fleeting touch on the small of her back. It was the kind of touch men gave women they were
with,
but she had her head on straight now. She refused to read anything into it.

  Balancing the box on one shoulder, he opened the door. Emmie got her first look at the reception room.

  Grace’s taste was exquisite. Even though she’d hired a decorator, she’d done a lot of the work herself. To Emmie’s surprise, Grace had eschewed the traditional bridal white and instead filled huge urns with lush arrangements of autumn flowers, seedpods, and even shocks of corn and fluffy white cotton bolls. The result was lush and elegant, and yet as warm as Pickett herself.

  Emmie’s heart warmed toward Grace as she surveyed the evidence that Grace appreciated her sister as she was.