SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (10 page)

Professional sympathy, that's what she needed to respond to him with. "Too bad," she said. See? It wasn't too hard to stay cool. "This will really cut your vacation short."

"Yeah, well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. Is your house safe or are you planning to leave too?"

Pickett gave a short laugh. "My house has withstood storms for nearly one hundred years, and going to my mother's house with three dogs and a duck is more hazardous than facing a hurricane. And I will not leave my animals," she finished simply. "Why do you ask?"

"Actually, what I was wondering is ..." Jax sounded oddly hesitant, not so cocky. "Look, the thing is," he started over, "I need to ask you for a favor."

A favor, not a date. Guessing the rest of what he wanted wasn't hard. "Does your mother-in-law not have anywhere to go? Would you like to bring her and Tyler here?"

Whoa! What made her say that? Her heart gave a little lurch, whether of gladness that Jax hadn't disappeared from her life, or dismay that kindness might force her to sit out a hurricane with three relative strangers and no electricity, she didn't exactly know.

"That's the thing. Lauren is going to go to her home in Raleigh, but I was wondering if Tyler and I could camp with you for a couple of days. If it's not a bad blow, we'll just open the cottage back up tomorrow or the next day."

A family was one thing, but a man by himself was another. Did she really want to invite a man she hardly knew into her home? They wouldn't be alone together of course with Tyler there, but you couldn't expect a child to be much of a chaperone.

Jax realized that Pickett had been silent just a beat too long. "Look, Pickett, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot. Forget—"

"No, wait." Pickett interrupted again. "Forgive me if this is blunt, but why do you want to stay here? Why don't you just go to Raleigh with your mother-in-law?"

Jax took a deep breath. "It's a reasonable question. Look, you know I've pretty much made a mess of my relationship with my son, right? But I'm trying to see what can be pulled out of this screw-up I've made. We don't exactly get along when we're here, but when we're at his grandmother's house in Raleigh, he just ignores me, like I'm not there. If we go back there now, I'm afraid we'll lose every gain we've made. And by the time we get back here, my leave will be half over."

Pickett stepped out onto the back porch. The sky, milky-looking earlier, was grayer, and the air was hotter and more humid, even since this morning. "What is it that you want to have happen with your son?"

"I don't know, Pickett." Jax sounded sad and tired. "I guess I need to find out if he really is better off with his grandmother, if I should just leave him with her. But I need to find out, too, whether he could be better off with me."

"Y'all come on here." Pickett's voice was so quiet, Jax almost wasn't sure he had heard her.

"You mean it?"

"Yes. Come on."

"I appreciate it."

Forty-five minutes later, Pickett had the flashlights and batteries organized, the spare battery pack for the cell phone charging, and the Coleman lantern located.

As soon as the phone rang again, Pickett knew who it was.

She considered answering "Yes, Mother," but that pushed her mother's buttons. Since she was going to upset her mother anyway, there was no need to make it worse.

As usual her mother started in as soon as Pickett said hello.

"Did you know the hurricane is going to come ashore tonight?"

What did her mother think? They didn't have TV? Patience and the respectful manners drilled into her kept her tone even, but nothing, since her mother couldn't see her, kept her from rolling her eyes.

"Yes, I knew that."

"You're going to come here, aren't you?"

"No, ma'am."

"They've ordered evacuations of the beaches!"

Pickett prayed for patience. "Mother, I don't live on the beach." Why should she have to say that? Her mother knew that. "I'm not in any danger."

"Well, I'd feel better if you were here. What if your power goes out?"

Pickett took a deep breath. The power was
sure
to go out. So what? Did she really think Pickett couldn't light a candle? She tried reason. "The hurricane is as likely to hit Goldsboro as here. There's no reason to think I would escape it if I was with you. Besides, there's no way I'm leaving the dogs, and you know you'd not be pleased to welcome them at your house."

Now that was an understatement. Pickett's mother did not share her love of creatures, and was particularly appalled that she had three large dogs and kept two of them in the house.

Oh no! Why had she mentioned the dogs? To her mother that would be just one more instance of Pickett's impracticality, her over-emotionalism. Proof that she couldn't take care of herself— anybody who would take in three strays had a few screws loose, as far as her mother was concerned.

"Mom," Pickett took control of the conversation, "please don't worry. I'll batten down the hatches and I'll be fine."

"It's just that I hate to think of you being there alone." To hear her mother's nervous dithering, you'd never think she was head of one of the highest grossing insurance agencies in the state.

Not for the first time, Pickett reflected that being a family therapist didn't make the dynamics of one's own family any easier to deal with. What was she supposed to say?

Look, Mom, you did your best. When Daddy died you had to save the business from bankruptcy And I got left to my big sisters to raise. At least I had them.

It wouldn't help.

They
had
done their best, but the nagging sense that Pickett was not quite up to the family standard had settled like a mildewed blanket on the very real love they shared.

Her mother felt guilty because she'd neglected Pickett, so now she tried to over-mother. Too bad knowing all that didn't make a bit of difference. Because it always felt like she never did anything in a way her mother could sincerely approve.

Pickett wondered what her mother would say if she knew Pickett would not be alone during the storm, but with a Navy SEAL she had just met yesterday. No, she knew what she would say and that's why she wasn't going to tell her. There was a lot to be said for living where one's family couldn't know what was happening on a daily basis.

She didn't need to listen to her mother's warnings and cries of doom.

"Look, Mom. I need to get off the phone. Someone's coming soon." Her mother would assume she meant a client, and would accept that business came first. Pickett winced at the knowledge that she was being deliberately misleading. "I'll call you as soon as the hurricane passes, okay? And make sure you take care of yourself."

The air was like a moist blanket, hot, thick, and eerily still. Between bursts of whirring cicadas, it was so quiet that she could actually hear waves hitting the beach over on the island in that odd booming cadence that heralds a storm.

A pot of lantana under one arm and a begonia under the other, Pickett struck out for the garage, crossing the drive just as Jax's Jeep Cherokee pulled up to the back door.

Her heart kicked against her breast bone. Oh Lord, what had she done? How had she forgotten the moment she'd looked around in the deli and seen Jax watching her?

Her gut had told her in that very minute that he was a dangerous man.

"Listen
to your gut," she always advised her clients.

She had to tell him he couldn't stay, and do it right now. Pickett started across the drive.

Jax was out of the Cherokee, reaching through the rear door into the backseat. Now. Before he got Tyler out of the car, she had to tell him he couldn't stay. Letting a stranger she had chanced upon into her house was too dangerous. The rough clay of the flower pots dug into her palms. She set them at her feet.
Now.

Childish wails, interspersed with hiccupping sobs, issued from the car. The wails escalated to screams. "No! The hurr'cane's going to get us! We have to run away! Let me go!"

Jax held the little flailing hands in one big hand, confining the squirming body in one muscular arm. The ease with which he held the child was apparent, as was the fact that he only used enough strength to confine, not overpower.

Ruddiness stained Jax's bronze cheeks. "I'm sorry about this meltdown. His grandmother is the nervous sort. She really managed to scare him."

Unless Pickett missed her guess, what his grandmother
was,
was the
idiotic
sort, who was not happy that Jax was going to Pickett's and had attempted to manipulate the situation by getting Tyler upset. That was low.

Pickett made her decision.

"Tyler," Pickett used the voice a client once said was steel encased in goose down. "Tyler, look at me." Drowned gray eyes peered at her from the reddened, tear-streaked face. "Now feel your daddy's arms. Your daddy's arms are warm, aren't they? And you can feel how strong they are." The little body relaxed slightly, allowing the strength to hold him. "Your daddy will keep you safe. Your grandmother was scared of the hurricane and so she had to run away. But your daddy is not scared, he is
strong
and he can keep you safe. Now let's get your things in the house, because we have a lot to do."

In the house she introduced Tyler to Lucy and Patterson, and assured him that she really did have a duck. Quackers was nowhere to be seen but would show up at dinner time.

"I think I'll let the two of you share my room and I'll use the day bed in my office," she forestalled Jax's protest with a wave. "I'm afraid you'd be pretty miserable on the day bed and Tyler will be more secure in a strange place if you're with him. Anyway, it's only for one night."