SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (2 page)

Jax could feel Do-Lord listening, though he said nothing. Jax went on, a little calmer. "Giving custody of Tyler to his grandmother is the only plan that makes any sense. I'm not palming him off. She wants him. I don't like her, but Lauren loves Tyler and he's already living with her."

Do-Lord's sympathetic smile said he understood the bad blood that existed between Jax and his ex-mother-in-law. But his raw-boned face immediately turned serious again. "Maybe you ought to be worried, though." Do-Lord's light-green eyes leveled a look at Jax. "Face it, man, it ain't natural for commanders to chew out lieutenants over filling out child care forms. He coulda and he shoulda passed that duty down the chain of command. Kohn could have you discharged if he's not happy with the provisions you make for Tyler. And I think he'd do it."

Jax grinned inwardly. Do-Lord's homespun manner fooled a lot of people. Like his sandy-red hair and slow speech, it made effective camouflage for his incisive intelligence. In fact, he was an omnivorous reader, and holder of several advanced degrees. The only person Jax had ever known who was as smart as Do-Lord had been his boyhood friend Corey. Jax had frequently found Do-Lord's ability to see patterns—where other people saw only chaos—useful. But he was taking Kohn's threats too seriously.

Jax shook his head. "You know how Kohn is when he gets the family responsibility bug up his ass. Tyler's already lost his mother. Why should he be ripped from the one person he really knows? Tyler's going to be taken care of. It's essentially the same custody agreement I had with Danielle. Now, it's just a matter of signing the papers."

Do-Lord tilted his head and looked at Jax through narrowed eyes. "You really think it will be that easy?" he inquired softly.

Do-Lord's question fell into one of those conversational lulls. For a moment the bar was so quiet Jax could hear the click of billiard balls in the corner.

"My lawyer's ex-Navy. He'll make sure everything is regulation," he said, but he knew that wasn't what his friend was asking.

Finally he said the thing he hadn't said to Kohn, or even to himself. "It's like this: I don't see that I'm losing anything I ever had."

Uncomfortable at revealing so much, Jax pressed a wet circle on the battered tabletop, then bisected it with another circle.

Do-Lord pointed to the wet circles. "You made a
vesica piscis."

Good friend that he was, Do-Lord was offering this odd little factoid culled from his voracious reading as a change of subject. It was a mark of the trust between them that Do-Lord would reveal what an information sponge his brain was. Conscious of his affection and grateful for the shift away from a conversation that had gotten too touchy-feely too fast, Jax canted an eyebrow. "You know the damnedest things. Okay, what the hell is a ... a whatever you said?"

"
Vesica piscis.
It's a sacred geometric symbol representing enlightenment through union with the Divine Feminine principle. See?" Do-Lord pointed to the lens shape formed where the two circles intersected. "It looks sort of like," Do-Lord's eyes twinkled with deadpan humor, "the
feminine portal"

"Feminine portal!" Jax hooted. "You know what, I'm worried about you. You've been talking funny ever since you read all those romance novels while we were in Afghanistan."

SEALs teased one another relentlessly to ease the inevitable friction among team members— alpha males, every one—whose natural tendency was to compete for dominance rather than to cooperate. Do-Lord refused to take the bait, though. "Nothing else I could do, once I'd been through all the paperback thrillers."

"I think you're trying to say it looks like pussy." Jax laughed again, then tilted his head one way and then the other to study the shape he'd made. "Well, damn! It sort of
does.
Okay, such a symbol is important to know about ... why?"

"You see it in Georgia O'Keefe's paintings, representations of the Virgin Mary—lots of places, even tabletops in beer joints. It's a clue to interpretation."

"You're the guy with the psych degree. How do you interpret my spontaneous work of art?"

"Me?" Do-Lord took a thoughtful swig of beer. "I think it means you need to get laid."

Both men chuckled and settled deeper into the scarred wooden armchairs. After a moment Jax broke the easy silence.

"I was just thinking about something the Commander said. Do you think a lot of men wonder if their children are really theirs?" Do-Lord had never been married and had no children, but there wasn't another man on earth Jax would have shared his musings with.

Do-Lord scratched his upper lip with a knuckle. "I don't know. I guess the question has got to enter your mind sometimes. Specially considering how much we're away." Do-Lord straightened abruptly in his chair. "Hey man, you don't wonder about Tyler, do you? His latest picture looks just like you. He even stands like you."

Jax grinned at his friend's earnest reassurances. "I don't wonder now. But I did." He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. "You know when they're born—they're so little it scares the hell out of you, and they're all red and mashed-looking? They don't look like you." He let out a soft, humorous snort. "They don't even exactly look human. And then, they put him in my hands ..." He opened his hands and spread his fingers to show how Tyler had fit there.

Jax had to clear his throat of a sticky feeling, and stare at the ceiling until a hot sensation in his eyes passed. "... and I felt so ... umhmm."

Jax covered the suspicious crack in his voice with another bout of throat clearing, and began again. "The point is, I knew I would gladly die for him. I didn't care whose son he was. From that moment on, he was mine."

Five days later: Topsail Island, North Carolina

Heat, built up through the day, blasted Pickett as soon as she opened the door to the unoccupied beach house. She was going to sweat through her silk blouse and shantung slacks, which would mean a dry-cleaning bill. She considered putting off preparing the elderly couple's cottage for the hurricane until morning.

No, her mother would be on the phone tonight wanting to know if it was done.

Pickett had to quell a surge of resentment. Her mother had a tendency to use Pickett's time as if it were her own. It was easy for her to tell Mrs. Howell, "Pickett lives at the beach now. She'll just be glad to shut off everything and close the storm shutters."

Well, Pickett
didn't
live on the beach! She fumed. She lived thirty minutes away in Snead's Ferry, where, over her mother's and sisters' protests, Pickett was restoring the family home-place. You'd think, having spent her childhood summers in the house Pickett now occupied, her mother would be able to tell the difference between a house on the beach and one on the sound!

Pickett let out a huff of exasperation. If it was pointless to argue with her mother face-to-face, it was
truly futile
to argue with her in her mind.

Besides, her mother was right, partly. The kindly couple who were her mother's next-door neighbors were getting frail. They still clung to the beach cottage they loved, but a frantic two-hour trip from Goldsboro to batten down the hatches would be hard on them.

So it was Pickett's own fault if her therapist attire got ruined. Nobody had forced her to come straight from her job at Camp Lejeune instead of stopping at home to change into shorts.

Leaving the door open, she crossed the expanse of the great room and opened the oceanside door. Instantly a strong cross breeze began to pull through the house, but even so, the cottage wouldn't cool off before she was done.

Battling the roller shade-style storm shutters took the longest time. Not designed for someone five-foot-three to operate, even on tiptoe, the catches were almost beyond her reach.

Like most island cottages, the Howells' was built on pilings. Theoretically it was only one story; but, in fact, if she fell out the window from which she leaned precariously, it was a two-story drop.

Her stomach quivered every time she looked down. Sometimes, like now, she hated that she was such a wimp. It only made doing what she had to do harder.

Kind of like getting married. Not that she had to, but she wanted to. Sometimes when playing with a client's child, her arms ached to hold a baby of her own. Her mom said she was too choosy; there ought to be one marriageable man among the hundreds she saw every day at Lejeune. But Pickett knew exactly the kind of man she needed to complete her dream of a stable, secure marriage, and it wasn't a military one. She'd seen way too much of how the stress of military life caused marriages to fail.

Sweat prickled at her hairline and made her silk shirt cling damply to her shoulders by the time Pickett stepped onto the deck of the cottage. It was hot out here, too, in the afternoon sunlight, too sultry feeling for October. But after the stifling heat inside the cottage, the wind that lifted her golden curls felt wonderful.

Pickett loosened another button on her barn-red shirt to allow the breeze to reach her breasts. She ran her eyes over the long flight of weathered steps that crossed over the dune and led down to the beach. If the hurricane lurking off the coast struck, they'd probably be torn away.

Already the surf had taken on that odd, booming sound that heralded a storm at sea. Tides were running above normal, nibbling at the base of the dunes in some places, pushing the threat of the ocean closer. But as long as the dune held, the cottage would be okay.

Unless the hurricane strengthened.

Up and down the shoreline, gold and blue in the afternoon sun, the broad expanse of sand was almost deserted. No gulls swooped. No sandpipers played tag with the ocean's advancing and retreating edge. Already the birds were seeking shelter in the deep marshes and protected coves of the sound. Pickett murmured a little prayer for the safety of all wild things.

It seemed the only creatures left on the beach were herself and a man and a little boy sitting in the soft sand in front of the cottage next door.

The man, muscular brown arms clasped around raised knees, sat looking out to sea. The little boy, dressed in coordinated red striped shirt and red shorts, half-squatted, half-knelt outside the reach of the man, playing joylessly with toy trucks. He kept his face averted, shoulders hunched.

This didn't look right. Subtle signals passed between people who were emotionally close, even if separated across a crowded room: the set of a shoulder, matching tilt of the head, unconscious synchronization of hand movements. If she had to guess, she'd say these two were keenly aware of—yet pretending to ignore—each other. Rather like two shy strangers. But from their matching seal-brown hair, Pickett presumed they were related.

Therapist instincts aroused, Pickett went down the steps to the first landing to see them better.

The man picked up a blue and yellow kite and said something over his shoulder to the child. The little boy's shoulders hunched tighter and he shook his head. The man said something else and got the same response.

So. The man was trying to interact and, judging from the restless movement of his powerful shoulders, was losing patience.

He probably thought the child, who looked four, maybe five, was being sulky, peevish. He probably didn't know the little boy's defensive crouch was typical for an insecure child who was afraid of doing the wrong thing, and so wouldn't do anything.

The sun was bright, the ocean dark blue and sparkling, with only a few more whitecaps than usual. A day to rejoice in, but the man and boy looked so lonely. It broke Pickett's heart.

They wanted to be together, yet neither one knew how.

It would be so simple—a piece of cake, really—to show them how to establish rapport. The thought lured her like the scent of chocolate.

Pickett squeezed her eyes closed so she wouldn't be tempted.
Uh-uh. No. No. No.
They weren't her clients, and it wasn't any of her business.

Taking herself metaphorically by the scruff of the neck, she turned back to the task of closing the shutters on the ocean side of the cottage. Thank goodness she could stand on the deck to reach them.

As the shutter clanked into place, Pickett felt herself light up. There was another way to look at it! From his superb physical condition, he could be a Marine from nearby Camp Lejeune. If he was, then her part-time job with family services there could make it her business.

Pickett squashed the thought. She was a soft touch and she knew it, but no matter how much she wanted to rescue them, she had no right to intervene unless asked.

She snapped the shutter into its slot, then, still drawn by the puzzle of the pair on the beach, moved to the rail to peer down at them.

As if he felt her eyes on him, the man's head swiveled smoothly like that of a lion surveying his territory. His own eyes were hidden by aviator sunglasses. Even so, a jolt sprinkled goose bumps up her arms. Pickett knew the instant he spotted her.

Embarrassed at being caught staring, she gave a little wave and almost turned away, but hesitated when the man's rather forbidding expression gave way to a smile of great charm.