SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (11 page)

Jax shouldered the luggage and followed Pickett down the cool, dim hall, admiring the view of Pickett's backside.

Who would have thought those classically restrained slacks and man-tailored blouses concealed a lush, utterly feminine body? Full breasts tapered to tiny waist then flared again to rounded butt, softly hugged by green running shorts.

Her legs were all shapely curves flowing from trim ankles to substantial thighs. He knew women worried about heavy thighs but personally he found that evidence of womanly strength erotic.

He jerked his mind from the implications of strong, yet soft thighs, and made himself take in the furnishings of the room.

The antique four-poster was piled with the most pillows Jax had ever seen.

"Plus je vois les hommes, plus j'adore mes chiens."
He read the saying on the pale green needlepoint pillow in the center.

"The more I know about men, the more I love my dogs," he translated. He gave a snort of laughter, and turned to Pickett. "I wouldn't have figured you for a misanthrope."

"That's a housewarming present made by my sister Lyle who lives in New York. I think she meant it as a joke, although with Lyle you're never sure." She tilted her head. "You recognized the quote. Are you fluent in French?"

He nodded absently. "Why so many pillows?"

Was she blushing? What brought that on? Her eyes moved from the bed to him a couple of times. She shrugged. "I like pillows. But feel free to move any that you don't want." She put her hand on the doorknob. "I'll leave you to get settled. Be aware that this house was built long before central heat, so every room, including the bathroom, opens into the adjoining room as well as into the hall. For privacy, make sure you close both doors."

The latch clicked behind her.
She liked pillows.
Standard pillows, a long pillow that crossed the width of the bed, big pillows, and small fluffy pillows. Pillows of plush velvet and pillows covered with crocheted lace. Jax felt his body tighten, again. He could imagine her naked, her peach skin bare against that white lacy cover-thing, as she curled among all those pillows.

Whoa. That was so not going to happen. There was no reason to pursue women who might have regrets afterward. That just led to messy complications.

There were too many women who were delighted to throw themselves into bed with any SEAL. Lately, though, the look of sexual calculation he saw in women's eyes when they learned he was a SEAL had become a turnoff.

It was best to stick with the kind of women who wanted him to be gone by morning. And yet being with some woman he wouldn't remember in a week or a month no longer seemed worth doing. He'd found a few women whose company he enjoyed in addition to the sex. Women who could accept the very loose arrangements he was able to make, but even those never lasted long. How long had it been?

There was Joanie. The last time he called she mentioned she'd found someone who was around on a more regular basis. Six, seven months ago. Before Afghanistan.

Okay, so maybe he was horny. Maybe that's what was making Pickett look so good, in spite of the fact that she was exactly the kind of woman he stayed away from. It wasn't her full breasts that made his palm curl at the thought of testing their soft weight. It wasn't the way she seemed to be all soft curves, all feminine to his manliness. It wasn't the way her sparkling aqua eyes looked at him, guilelessly aware of the attraction, and yet, as if she saw
him,
not some SEAL stud package. He was just horny. Yeah. That was it.

Well, he liked sex as much as the next man, but he had never been the kind of man who allowed his hormones to control him.

And in spite of her patina of gracious hospitality, he could tell she was still wary of him. Any move on his part could spook her, make her tell him to go, and he didn't want that to happen. Not while she could work what looked like magic with Tyler. She had calmed the little guy with just a couple of sentences, while nothing he had said in the thirty-five-minute trip from Wilmington had had any effect on the screams issuing from the backseat.

It was ironic that while his SEAL buddies, strong and superbly competent men everyone, went with him into dangers unimaginable to most people, and trusted him with their lives, his small son only trusted him after a hundred-pound woman told him to.

But maybe that was normal. How the hell was he supposed to know? He'd never been around little kids much, didn't remember a lot of his own childhood before he had met Corey. He wished Corey were here. Corey knew more about almost everything than most people, but more than that, he had a way of cutting through to what really mattered.

Back in Little Creek, his decision had looked so easy. Simple. Go to North Carolina and get the custody papers notarized. The only reason he'd come to North Carolina was Commander Kohn's insistence that he visit Tyler. Lauren's suggestion that they meet at her Topsail beach cottage, instead of her house in Raleigh, had seemed a little odd, but he'd had no objection.

Jax hadn't been around Lauren much, never for any extended time. Had Danielle ever told him her mother drank too much? He didn't think so, but she certainly did now. Too much, too often.

Still, he knew plenty of rock-solid, dependable men, women too, who hit the officers' or enlisted clubs the minute they were off-duty. Heavy drinking was a way of life for some in the Navy. As long as they did their jobs he didn't begrudge them—or Lauren, who had just lost her daughter—whatever helped them make it through the night.

Jax had closed down a lot of bars himself, until he realized hard work and long hours were more effective than scotch in blotting out his pain in the months after Danielle left him.

From what Jax had seen, drinking didn't interfere with her care of Tyler. She bathed, and fed, and clothed Tyler adequately. More than adequately if he counted the number of new clothes and toys she'd bought him.

Sober or loaded though, now that he had gotten to know Lauren better, one thing was clear: he couldn't stand her. But did that matter? Jax wouldn't have to live with her. Tyler would, but he couldn't tell how Tyler felt about his grandmother. He couldn't tell how Tyler felt about anything.

Tyler was not the boisterous little extrovert Jax remembered. The child who drifted, silently absorbed in his cars, along the edges of a room was hardly recognizable. In a way Jax liked it better when Tyler went ballistic. At least he felt like he understood
that
child.

Jax didn't like mysteries. He preferred problems he could get his hands around. The uneasy feeling that something important was happening before his eyes and he was missing it crept through his chest again.

Jax realized he had been standing in the open closet door staring sightlessly at Pickett's clothes. There were not many. A few pairs of slacks, some blouses, that jacket he'd seen her in.

A couple of dresses wrapped in plastic were pushed to the back. There was room to spare for the hanging clothes he had brought. So different from the overflowing closets he remembered Danielle having.

The closet smelled like her. A subtle smell of lilies or something, and sunshine, and softness, and feminine essence. Just for a second he could imagine himself, naked, satisfied, replete with lovemaking, smelling that scent of her on his own skin. His lower body tightened. He glanced at the bed piled with seductive softness, but also with one small pillow at the very center that warned, "The more I know about men, the better I love my dogs."

Damn.

On a whim he picked up the pillow and sniffed it. It smelled like her too.

A night of smelling her without having her.

Damn.

They worked through the afternoon, clearing the yard of lawn chairs and other items that could become missiles once the wind picked up, ferrying hanging baskets of ferns and wandering Jew to the garage. Tyler tagged after them for a while, asking questions, and manfully carrying small items. Once his interest in that flagged, Pickett showed him how to play fetch with Lucy.

Lucy, who adored fetch, was willing to agree that enthusiasm was as important as a strong pitching arm. The Frisbee couldn't sail very well in the unpredictable gusts, but the fly ball proved to be a great success, as Tyler got the hang of making a toss that Lucy could grab out of the air.

"What's with your three-legged dog?" Jax indicated the large German shepherd mix with his head.

Pickett smiled. "He doesn't take his eyes off you, does he? Truth is, he lives here, but I'm not sure he's my dog yet. I haven't had him long, and he won't come in the house. Sometimes he'll let me touch him, but he never asks for affection."

Jax noticed the wistfulness in her voice. That bothered her—that she had affection the dog wouldn't let her give. "How long have you had him?" Jax bent to pick up a large pot of pale purple flowers.

"Oh, don't bother with those petunias. The urn is too heavy to blow around and they'll die back soon anyway. I was just going to kiss them good-bye."

Jax hoisted the plant higher. "Show me where to put it."

"I guess we'll have to put it in the garage. The shed is pretty full."

Hobo Joe paced them, always out of arms' reach, always keeping them in sight. "So what about the dog?"

"I found him at the other end of Folkstone Road. If I hadn't glanced right where he was lying, I would never have seen him. His black and tan blended perfectly with the tall brush he was in. Actually, what I saw was the blood, something red in that brush and it just didn't look right." Pickett opened the garage door. "So I stopped the car, and went over to see what it was."

"He'd been hit by a car?"

Pickett shook her head. "The vet says he'd been shot." She pushed her shoulders back as if pushing away a thought. "Anyway, he was unconscious and the leg—it was this obscene-looking thing with the bone showing and sort of hanging." She shuddered, then looked up at Jax, her eyes troubled. "I'm going to tell you the truth: I wished with all my heart that I was the kind of person who could just walk away. I did
not
want to touch him."

"But you did touch him."

Pickett made a
what was I going to do?
face. "I had to, to find out if he had a heartbeat. And then it wasn't so bad. I had a bunch of clothes I was carrying to Goodwill, so I made a tourniquet. But then I had a problem. I knew I couldn't pick him up. I had an old rain coat I could put him on and drag him. So that's what I did."

Jax measured the dog, measured Pickett. He probably weighed one hundred pounds, close to if not more than Pickett did. "You got him in the car by yourself?"

"You know that saying, 'coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous?' Well, just as I got him on the raincoat, Isabel, who runs a junk shop down on Highway 17, saw my car and stopped. We did it together." Pickett rolled her eyes. "Now I had a huge dog and a huge vet bill to go with him."

"You already had two rescued dogs and you brought home a third—just like that?"

"Makes me sound a little strange, doesn't it?"

"Not strange. Caring. Courageous."

Pickett shook her head. "Don't give me too much credit. I wouldn't have touched Hobo if I'd seen another way."