SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (5 page)

Good old Hobo Joe, the three-legged German shepherd mix who lived on her porch when he felt like it, greeted Pickett when she pulled into her drive. He walked her to the kitchen door, but as always declined to come in. Behind the door, Patterson, a part-Lab, and Lucy, whose ancestry was indecipherable, snuffled and whined.

"Okay, guys, let me in." You'd think the dogs would learn to stand back so she could get the door open, but they never seemed to. Instead, she had to push her way in, careful not to let doggy toes get pinched under the moving door. "Boy, the two of you make sure I don't come home to a silent house. And guess what, your aunt Lyle is coming to see you this weekend. Only think how exciting
that
will be."

Neither dog expressed any interest in the promised treat. Instead, Patterson used his superior height to try to sniff the deli bag; Pickett lifted it higher and tried not to step on Lucy, who was avidly snuffling at Pickett's serviceable low-heeled pumps.

"Where'd you go? Who'd you see? What did you bring me to eat?" Pickett spoke for Lucy. While not big on conversation, dogs took in an amazing amount of information through smell. Maybe Lucy was extra curious because she smelled Jax on her. Goodness knows the man had some potent pheromones. Setting the food on the counter, well away from the edge, Pickett kicked off her shoes.

The dogs, having sniffed and wagged to their satisfaction, ran to the back door and whined to be let out.

"Okay! Okay! Go on out and do your jobs, but come right back, because it's suppertime." Pickett blessed the invisible fence that meant she no longer had to supervise potty time. She only wanted to get out of these clothes and eat some supper.

She especially enjoyed the days she worked with her favorite project at Camp Lejeune—a group organized to overcome the social isolation of certain at-risk young mothers. But adding that group to the rest of her client load at the base made for a long day, and today she had made it even longer by stopping at the Howells' cottage.

And spending an hour or more with Jax and the little boy, Tyler.

Jax.
Darn that man! He wouldn't get out of her mind. Pickett crossed the wide hall, stripping out of slacks and blouse even before she arrived at her bedroom. Pickett slipped the silk blouse onto a padded hanger. Had he followed her into the grocery? Surely not. The encounter must have been random, and yet for a minute in the store she had felt his gaze. And knew it was him even before she'd turned her head.

Sharp yips came from the back door. Pickett quickly pulled on an old pair of exercise shorts and a T-shirt, both sizes too large, and hurried to let the dogs back in.

Dogs fed, she pulled the plastic container from the deli bag. She eyed the soggy artichoke salad with disfavor.
This
is what came of letting discipline slip in planning meals. She'd been so rattled by Jax's sudden appearance that she wasn't sure she'd asked about all the ingredients. She hesitated, sniffing the container carefully as she considered the possible consequences of eating food she couldn't be sure was safe.

Oh well, a salad was unlikely to have hidden wheat in it. Wearily, she dug a fork from the drawer and began to eat straight from the container, standing at the counter.

Jax.
Her heart gave a funny little kick every time she thought of him. It was like he was determined to shoulder his way into her thoughts, no matter how she tried to push him out. Was this sense of magnetic pull, of attention being riveted on a person, what people meant when they talked about falling in love?

Pickett didn't believe in love.

Not the true-love stuff of romance novels. As a counselor she dealt with too many failed marriages and broken relationships to think that love was a strong enough glue to keep people together.

If this were a romance novel, he really would have been following her in the grocery. He would have come up to her and said, "Did you think I would let you get away?" Then he would gently, oh so gently, take her face in his slightly rough hands, and gaze deep into her eyes. And he would say, "I have to do this," as his perfect lips came down on hers.

How absurd!
Pickett softly mocked herself. This was real life, of course, so what he
had
done was look at her as if he didn't like what he saw— at all—and walk away.

Lack of closure, her therapist-self diagnosed, that was the problem.

Pickett rinsed out the plastic container, debated briefly if it was worth saving, then tossed it in the recycling bin.

Talking it over with her best friend would help, but Emmie was out of the country. An assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Emmie was in Ecuador for the semester with a group of students studying the rainforest. One of the attractions of Snead's Ferry had been its proximity to Emmie and the possibility of seeing her every week. She would be back at Thanksgiving, and Pickett was counting the days.

The baby-blue phone, a relic of the seventies hanging above the kitchen sink, rang.

"Where have you been, little sister?" Lyle's voice had lost a lot of its southern essence from living in New York. Pickett was always startled to hear the sister she was closest to sound like a stranger. "I've been calling and calling."

With a guilty clutch, Pickett glanced into the darkened dining room she'd made into her home office and saw the red message light blinking on her answering machine. She'd been so bemused she hadn't checked her messages.

Before Pickett could stumble out an excuse, Lyle went on, "Never mind. I'm in a rental car. I'm turning into your drive now. Be there in a sec."

Pickett flipped on the backyard spotlights and opened the door to let out the dogs, who were already wiggling with excitement. She looked down at her faded shorts with their frayed cuffs. No time to change but it didn't matter; Lyle didn't criticize her the way her sisters Grace and Sarah Bea did.

Lyle—all city-chic in a black business suit, her shoulder-length dark hair swinging—stepped onto the back porch, flanked by Patterson and Lucy. The dogs' tails wagged wildly. No one would guess Lyle was a pied piper for dogs. Closest in age to Pickett, the three years that separated them had seemed unbridgeable when Lyle had been a teenager attempting to find herself as an artist while coming to grips with her sexual identity. Even so, their shared love of creatures had always been a bond.

"I'm so happy to see you! Even though you've stolen my dogs again." Bumping the dogs out of the way with her knees, Pickett took Lyle into her arms. Pickett was the youngest and shortest of her siblings while Lyle was the tallest. The inequity in their heights meant Pickett's face was pressed into Lyle's shoulder. She had to step back to look into Lyle's face. "What
are
you doing here, Lyle? I wasn't expecting you until the weekend."

"The meeting with the client got moved up because of the hurricane. We flew into Wilmington this morning and we leave again tonight."

"You mean you're not going to stay? I'm so disappointed!"

"My boss has visions of being stranded in Wilmington the way people were in New Orleans. I keep trying to tell him a Category One hurricane is not the same thing at all. He's got a point though. They probably will start canceling flights if the weather service upgrades the watch to a warning. You almost missed me. I was going to leave you a note."

"I wanted us to have the whole weekend together," Pickett wailed. "I was late getting home because I had to close up the Howells' cottage for them."
And because I spent an extra hour interfering in the life of a stranger. Talking to a man who, now that he knows who I am, prefers to remain a stranger.

Pickett opened the screen door to let Lyle and the dogs in.

Lyle quirked a dubious eyebrow. "They
asked
you to help?"

For a second Pickett stared at Lyle, thinking she'd somehow read her mind. She felt her cheeks get hot, and her heart thumped in embarrassment. Then who her sister meant clicked in. "The Howells? No. Mother told them I would."

Lyle's lips curled.
"Sucker."

Lyle loved to play the hard-ass. She didn't know what an idiot Pickett had been this afternoon; nevertheless, the sisterly jab stung. "Easy for you to say! You moved all the way to New York City to get outside Mom's reach. At least I had the nerve to try to live
my
life on
my
terms while still in the same
state
with her."

Lyle planted a fist on her hip. "Nerve, hell. You thought if you didn't rebel
too much,
she wouldn't
disapprove
too much."

"Hey, you're the rebel, not me," Pickett defended herself. "I'll grant you I'm a wimp, and I'm not following the family script of marrying locally and becoming a young society matron, but I honestly
wanted
the career I've chosen. I wanted the challenge of establishing my own practice. I love the work I do with children and families, and I'm good at it."

"Well, I'm good at graphic design," Lyle snapped, honey-dark brows drawing together.

"Yes, but you don't love it," Pickett snapped right back. "You should be painting full time and you know it. Landscape is your gift. But Mother would
adore
having a fine artist in the family—so of course you can't do
that!"

In the silence that ensued, Pickett felt her blood leave her face. Her sister looked as shocked as she felt. Pickett never had—never
would
—use her insightfulness as a weapon, but she'd just come close enough to feel deeply ashamed. Lyle's reasons for her choice of career and place to live were complex, as well Pickett knew. She shouldn't have lashed out just because her sister had stepped on her toes.

Pickett shook her head and threw up her hands. "Listen to us. We haven't been together ten minutes and already we're squabbling like—"

"Like sisters," finished Lyle. "But not like
you.
You never tell either of our oh-so-conventional sisters to get off your back, even though sometimes you should. What's got you so riled up?"

I'm a daydreaming idiot who needs to get her feet back on the ground.

"Nothing." Knowing she wasn't telling the truth, Pickett pushed away the wistfulness that threatened to engulf her. She and Lyle had never talked about their love lives. Pickett because she didn't have one; Lyle because she'd been trying to keep her sexual orientation a secret. The habit of confiding in one another during the crucial teenage years had never been formed. Still, Pickett had often wished for a sister who was also a friend, and Lyle had just offered her the perfect opening.

"You hit a nerve when you called me a sucker," she offered. "I am a soft touch. I was blaming Mother, but the truth is I probably would have gone to the Howells' cottage even without Mother's interference." She opened the refrigerator. "How about some iced tea?"

"The house wine of the South'?" chortled Lyle, quoting from
Steel Magnolias.
"Of course I'll have some. People in New York don't know how to make it." She leaned against the worn counter while Pickett ran water over the ancient ice trays.

"You have too big a heart, kid," Lyle said softly, returning to the previous subject. She gave Pickett a one-armed squeeze. "You know what? I've always been afraid that big heart of yours would lead you to marry some loser just because he needed you."

In other words, Lyle thought no man would ever want Pickett for herself.

She thought Pickett was too stupid to avoid being manipulated.

Pickett kept her eyes on the ice cubes, making sure she put an equal number in each glass, until she had control of her hurt. She fell back on reflective listening. "You think I'm pretty pathetic, don't you? Feeble? Foolishly sentimental?"

"Feeble? Sentimental? No. But I do think you don't always stand up for yourself. You take care of other people and pretend your own needs don't exist. I think you don't know your own strength or your own power. You will marry someday, and I hope you'll find someone who makes you happy—not just someone who needs you. That's what I meant."

"No need to worry about who I'll marry." Pickett reached for the tea pitcher, happy to have the conversation back on comfortable ground. "When it comes to marriage I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I do have a PhD in the subject. I know exactly what kind of husband I'm looking for. There are well-documented factors that predict long-term viability. Never fear I will plunge myself into an impossible situation for emotional reasons. I know a lot about the odds for and against a marriage working, and I intend to do everything I can to stack them in my favor."

"Aren't you looking, first of all, for love? Some people defy the odds. Isn't it love that makes the difference?"

Pickett set down the heavy crockery pitcher and turned to face her sister. "A year or two doing family therapy on a military base will destroy any romantic notions you ever had about the power of love. Trust me, love won't keep you together if the military is keeping you apart. Respect, affection, trust, shared values, humor, and a strong commitment are far more important than love. Anyway, I'm no hero. It would take more courage than I've got to go up against heavy odds." Pickett waved a dismissive hand, and picked up the pitcher again. "Enough about me, I want to hear about you."

"No, it's not enough about you. You've told me all about what you think. You haven't said anything about how you
feel."

Pickett paused in the act of pouring tea over ice. How very sensitive of Lyle! "Have you been taking counseling lessons?" she teased.

"No, you idiot. Unlike you, I don't give a damn about how most people feel, but I do care about you."

Pickett's head jerked back in surprise. She only opened up to Emmie and a couple of her closest friends. Since she was a great listener, most people never noticed. Until this minute she hadn't known Lyle was one of the people who
did.

Again the urge to unburden herself to Lyle rose up, and again she felt the wistful certainty that she didn't quite dare. "I feel fine," Pickett said, handing one moisture-beaded glass to her sister and taking the other one for herself. "Between seeing clients in my office here, working at the base, and working on the house, I'm busy and happy. And health wise," she added, "I've never been better."