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Authors: Mary Margret Daughtridge

BOOK: SEALed with a Ring

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Chapter 26

"YOU MARRIED?"

"Not yet. Hope to be soon."

"That's too bad. I hoped to fix you up with my granddaughter."

"She told me about your husband list. Your grand daughter is who I hope to marry."

The wily look in Lucas's eyes was supplanted by surprise. "You want to marry my granddaughter?" David could see the wheels turning in the old man's head. "Don't you be put off by that prenup she'll insist on. Tell you what, I'll give you a hundred thou sand now, a hundred thousand after the birth of my first great-grandbaby."

Now he understood where JJ got some of her cold blooded ideas about marriage. "As a matter of curiosity, is two hundred grand all you think it will take to buy me or all you think she's worth?"

"What?"

"What the hell is the matter with you?" David let his voice go dangerous and low. "Offering a bribe to a man you don't know, like JJ is some kind of excess baggage you need to unload."

"No! That's not it."

"It's not? Then how about treating her with some respect."

"Respect? What are you talking about? I love JJ!"

"Then why aren't you willing to let her live life her own way? Why did you threaten to sell Caruthers if she didn't get married?"

A stubborn look dug the wrinkles around Lucas's mouth deeper. "Had to."

"Come on. If I'm going to talk her into marrying me on my terms, I need more to work with than that."

"Year by year, I was watching her disappear into the business—like she was slowly being eaten by it. It wasn't what I wanted for her."

"You never intended her to inherit the business?"

"What the hell is the matter with everybody I try to explain this to? You've got it all wrong. I raised her to know it would come to her—wanted it to stay in the family. But if I'd known what was going to happen, I would have sold it ten years ago. You know what they say about twenty-twenty hindsight? I thought I had years before she would have to take it over. She'd be settled by then, maybe have a nice husband who could help her with it. I never meant for her to have to manage everything before she was out of her twenties. Not what I meant."

The old man suddenly looked frail. The sparse hair on his chest gleamed silver in the lamplight. The skin on his arms, mottled with large brown sunspots, hung in crepey swags. He had the height and bone structure to weigh a good thirty pounds more than he did.

"She's had too much responsibility," Lucas went on. "First her grandmother had cancer. We kept her at home—it's what she wanted. JJ would say, 'Granddaddy, I know you want to stay home with Grammy today. Why don't you?' So I did."

He raised his eyes—the same shade of green as JJ's—as if he was imploring David's understanding. "Every hour with her was precious. I was a fool. I didn't understand what she meant to me until it was almost too late."

His eyes took on a thousand-yard stare—a look David had seen many times on the faces of men who had been through a trial that had forever changed them and could never be put into words. Then Lucas visibly returned to the present. He straightened his shoulders.

"After my wife died, I went to pieces—I admit it. Then I had my heart attack. By the time I recovered and got my head back on straight enough to see that JJ didn't have a life, the economy tanked and the car business took a direct hit. She was working harder than ever and too caught up in keeping Caruthers going to hear me when I told her she needed more out of life, deserved more."

He aimlessly picked up his water glass and moved it to a different spot on the nightstand. "You want to know the worst part? It's my fault.
I'm the one who taught her tha
t Caruthers was the be-all, end-all of existence—who told her anything that didn't affect the Caruthers bottom line wasn't important. I thought it was great that she wanted to spend all her time there, even when she was a teenager. Beth, her grandmother, tried to tell me I was wrong."

David didn't want to, but he felt a little sympathy for the old man. Even when they know they're wrong, people always have a reason that convinces them that
in
this case
what they're doing is the right thing.

He picked up the cuff and stethoscope from where he'd laid them on top of the credenza. "Let's go ahead and check your vitals now."

Chapter 27

"YOU HAVEN'T EATEN MUCH. CAN I GET YOU SOMETHING else?"

David surveyed JJ's plate. "You haven't eaten much either. Are you too tired to eat?"

For a moment her gaze was blank, her eyes dull, as if she didn't know what he was talking about. David recog nized the exhaustion of unremitting stress, but she didn't admit it. She pushed away from the table. "I'm not as hungry as I thought I was." She picked up a plate of half eaten lasagna. "I guess I need to put this food away."

Outside, the wind tossed fistfuls of rain against the windows that half encircled the table in what JJ called the breakfast nook. On the table were the remains of the lasagna, salad, and breadsticks she had ordered deliv ered after she ordered the hospital equipment from the rental agency.

David had wondered how she was going to pro cure the equipment after closing hours. Simple. She had called the owner at home, told him who she was, told him what was needed, and said, "Pay your driver as much overtime as it takes, and don't worry about whether insurance will cover it."

In fact, the owner himself was driving the delivery truck that pulled into the drive minutes after they arrived.

To the restaurant she had said, "I understand it's out side your delivery radius. There will be a very nice tip for the driver, and if you'd like to add a tip for yourself, that will be fine."

Money was her weapon, her power, and her insula tion. Anything she asked for, she got, speedily. The hospital staff had offered coffee, water, a private room in which to wait. They had assured her they were doing everything for her grandfather. But at least ten people— nurses, orderlies, techs, security—people who should have been doing their jobs—had stopped her to ask if she was JJ Caruthers and to tell her how they watched her commercials. Others had grown silent when she ap proached. Watched her.

She was unfailingly courteous, smiling, and warm as she responded to their intrusion.

Only one person, a brown-skinned woman in peach scrubs, David couldn't make out what her badge said, had squeezed JJ's fingers, offering comfort.

After observing her in the hospital, he could almost see why she preferred to buy a husband so she wouldn't have to care, wouldn't have to wonder what he really wanted.

David gathered the utensils and their glasses and fol lowed her to the sink.

"Thanks," she told him. "I'll take it from here."

He ignored her. While she rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, he retrieved the aluminum containers the food had come in and covered them with foil. He located the foil and tucked the pans in the refrigerator as if he had worked in this kitchen a hundred times before.

He found a sponge and leaned over her shoulder to wet it under the stream of water from the faucet. His chest grazed her back; his arm brushed hers. His forearm was brown, sprinkled with black springy hair and corded with muscle. The wrist was easily twice as thick as hers. A prominent vein looped over it. She wanted to touch it.

His long, powerful fingers with strong oval nails squeezed the sponge.

He drew back and began wiping the counter, as if nothing had happened except the casual intimacy of two people sharing the sink—something that happened every day. But something had happened. In her life, that sort of casual intimacy
didn't
happen every day.

She shut off the water. "I haven't thanked you," she said.

He paused in his wiping to smile inquiringly at her. The smile was a little crooked, his upper lip pulled un evenly. "For what?"

"Going with me to the hospital. Helping me bring Granddaddy home. I'm glad you were there. I know it's best for him, but I don't think I would have done it. I'm still angry, but I'm grateful that you are so gentle with him. I was falling apart a little."

He rinsed the sponge and set it on the sink rim. He dried his fingers on a dish towel and rested one hand on JJ's shoulder. "JJ, you're allowed to be upset."

"No, I'm not."

"You are. By me." He ran his hand under her hair, gently stroking and massaging the tight muscles in her neck.

"Don't do that if you don't want me to start bawling."

He pulled her into his arms. "I don't want you to cry, but I do want to make it better for you. Something about you makes me want to make it all better." The gentle circles he was rubbing on her back stopped. "Do you ever get déjà vu?"

"Why? Did you just have one?"

"Yeah. It felt like we'd been here before and I'd said that to you."

Want me to kiss it better? That's what he had said
. He'd probably used the line too frequently to remember
who
and
when
. "Memory is a funny thing." JJ wiggled out of his arms. She had been
this
close to letting go.

The more she was around him today, the less she saw of that live-for-the-moment, devil-may-care, all-fun and-games man she'd first met. She had seen at the time how easy it was for him to hook up with a woman he didn't know, and she'd been willing to bet he was prob ably a good SEAL.

In his own way, he was gentle and considerate. He might be careless but never cruel. She didn't doubt that, without a qualm, he'd tell any lie he needed to, but where he gave his loyalty, he would be dependable no matter what the cost. Those were the qualities she needed. A man like that would be able to see the advantages of the deal she had to offer.

This
David seemed so different that it was easy to convince herself he was somebody else. When the time came, it wouldn't be so easy for her to let him go. And she was not immune to either David physically. She had needed the reminder that when it came to women, it was still easy come, easy go for him.

She changed the subject. "Do you think Lucas is all right? Did I do the right thing, bringing him home?"

"I'll check him in a few minutes, but on the whole I think he's better off. His temp has come down and his pulse is more regular. His pulse ox is 98."

"But he was so exhausted by the trip home."

"He was exhausted anyway. In the hospital, he was fighting sleep. He'll rest here." David reached across the table to squeeze her arm. "Stop worrying, JJ."

"Did you mean what you said in the car," JJ asked, "about marriage still being negotiable?" She felt oddly shy. Proposing a straight business deal to a man she hardly knew was one thing. Talking about marriage while they cleaned up a kitchen together was something else. The very homeliness encased them in a kind of intimacy.

"There are things you need to know about me."

"Like what?" JJ closed the dishwasher and turned around to find David wiping the table with a damp sponge. The table had been cleared and the food put away with such quiet efficiency that she'd hardly no ticed what he was doing. At the Topsail beach house, his calm assumption that he could go through her kitchen without permission had seemed invasive. Now she saw he was just one of those competent people—the kind who intuitively knew where things were and who saw what needed to be done and did it.

David realized JJ was ready to listen now. He explained to her about his mother's death and about his determina tion that his siblings finish their schooling, in spite of the financial condition in which the family had been left.

"Stop. Are you saying that on top of being badly injured, your mother just died? Oh, I'm so sorry. You must feel like something or someone is out to get you."

He hadn't expected such instant comprehension from her. He waved her sympathy away. He couldn't let her throw him off track. Whether or not it was rational, whenever he tried to sort out the pieces of his life, he could never shake the feeling that some terrible mix-up had substituted his mother's life for his. He'd seen in JJ's proposal a way to discharge the duty he had to his mother. If he could do that, he would finally, maybe, feel free to feel
alive
again.

"Anyway, I have to ask myself what happens to him if something happens to me?"

"Go on."

"Riley has Asperger's syndrome."

"I know about Asperger's. I'm on the advisory board of an autism group. People with Asperger's have nor mal intelligence, don't they, but they have some autistic characteristics like trouble relating to people. Is that what he's like?"

"He takes things literally, and he doesn't pick up on social cues. He seriously lacks street smarts. My mother got him into a special school and pretty much drained the estate to keep him there."

"So you want money for his tuition? I don't get it. Why didn't you take my first offer?"

"I told you. I don't want to touch your money. I want you to set up a trust for him—enough to care for him and keep him in school through college."

"That would be a condition?" She thought about it a minute. "All right. I can do that."

"So that there won't be any reason for jealousy, you will also arrange scholarships for Eleanor and Harris. I want to know that, no matter what happens to me, they'll have what they need to get through med school." He paused to give JJ some time to think it over. She nodded slowly. "That's not all. I want you to be Riley's guardian if I'm killed or incapacitated."

"But why? Surely your other brother and sister—"

"Harris will get caught up in some fascinating re search and forget Riley exists. Any time Riley hits a rough spot, Eleanor will let her studies slide while she looks after him. One of the reasons I have to provide for Riley is because if I don't, Eleanor will drop out of med school and do it herself."

"But isn't there another member of the family who would be a better choice?"

"I've seen what you are. You're willing to marry a man you don't know in order to take care of your em ployees. Riley isn't easy to warm up to. But even though you felt angry and betrayed by your grandfather, when he needed you, you were there. You'll do what you have to, and if you give your word, you'll keep it. I trust you."

Of all the outcomes JJ had anticipated when she decided to propose to David, the one she'd never thought of was that she would have to take responsibility for three more people. A lot of the work could be turned over to lawyers. They would figure out how to set up the trust and the schol arships, but she understood that David wanted her personal oversight. He wanted her involved. Another duty. Another strain on a load that was already close to unbearable. This was not the simple contract she'd been aiming for.

"This is getting complicated," she told him. "Let me get my laptop so we can make some notes about what we are agreeing to."

"Okay," David agreed. "And there's one more thing."

JJ paused in the act of opening a shiny, apple-red laptop. "One more thing?"

God, she was beautiful. A tendril of dark hair had es caped its clasp. It framed the perfect curve of her cheek. The dark wings of her brows were lifted in inquiry.

That feeling slammed him in the chest again, stealing his breath and making him feel weightless at the same time. Brilliantly overflowing peace.
Joy. Spreading ove
r the always-present arousal that throbbed through him, its power certain and available, even when it idled.

She had given him everything he'd come hoping to achieve. He'd known, regardless of how he felt, he was not going to allow this opportunity to create security for his brothers and sister escape him—not when all she wanted was his name on a marriage certificate. He ought to leave well enough alone.

He was sweating, his heart pounding. Everything in him said if the kids were taken care of, that was enough. He didn't want to blow what he'd already secured.

He shouldered past the guilt that told him to shut up. Because it
wasn't
enough.

"One more thing. I want you."

The bottom dropped out of her stomach. "Me? What do you mean?"

"None of this half-married, 'married in name only' bull. For as long as we're married, we're married."

She couldn't think of what to say. Images filled her mind. The sight of his strong, tanned fingers on her breast. His laughter. The casual strength he picked her up with. The feel of his hips clasped in her legs.

"Is it this?" He fingered the scar.

"What?" She jerked her mind back. "No. If you want to know the truth, it makes you more attractive."

"The hell you say. I don't remember some things, but I remember how I looked before. This isn't better."

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