SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (6 page)

Lyle looked like she might have asked for more, a small frown shadowing her light-blue eyes. Then she nodded philosophically. "I'm glad. Now show me all you've done to the house since I was here last."

Not surprisingly, Lyle approved of Pickett's color scheme, since she herself had selected the Chinese red for the living room and dark spruce green for Pickett's bedroom with the carefully preserved window and door moldings trimmed in antique white. The intense colors acted as a unifying influence on the mishmash of family castoffs and the few true heirlooms with which the rooms were furnished. The twelve-foot ceilings accommodated the exquisite, but immense, Federal-period
secretaire
that had been in storage for years because no family member had a house large enough for it, but the sectional sofa, upholstered in a print of huge red flowers, had literally been snatched from the junk man.

She looked at Pickett's large pineapple post bed piled with pillows, and laughed in disbelief. "Good grief! Half the bed is taken up with pillows, Pickett. There's hardly room for you, much less someone else." She glanced at Pickett's face and lifted her palms in a hands-off gesture. "Hey, I'm not criticizing. Who am I to talk about empty," she laughed again, "or in your case,
not-
empty beds? There's one thing about it, it means you'll really like the housewarming present I made you." She turned toward the door. "You wait here. I'll be right back." In a minute she returned and handed Pickett a large bag.

"You made me a needlepoint pillow!" Pickett exulted. "At last, I get one of my own." Lyle's pillows were works of art. She used both large and small stitches, sometimes working one stitch over another, creating shimmering colors reminiscent of pointillism. They were, in fact, paintings rendered in wool, acting as the background for some wry saying. Pickett withdrew the intricately worked pillow from the bag, wordlessly exclaiming at its beauty.

"Plus je vois
..." Pickett read haltingly as she traced the stylized cream-and-white letters worked into a motif of leaves. "This is a totally new design, isn't it?"

Lyle nodded, managing to look both shyly pleased and mischievous.

"O-o-okay." Pickett narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "What does it say? You know I don't read French as well as you."

Lyle's grin widened. "The more I know about men ...'" she paused for dramatic effect, '"the better I love my dogs!'"

Jax stared at the fast-moving clouds streaming toward the island and the ocean awash with foam from almost-continuous breakers, and considered his options.

Since breakfast, Lauren had been scurrying around the cottage, bracelets jangling, Ferragamos clacking, packing to return to Raleigh now that evacuation of the beach had been ordered.

Tyler crouched on the floor in front of the sofa. He alternated beeping and grinding noises as he maneuvered the dump-truck load of poker chips.

"Stop that noise, Tyler. I don't know how I'm supposed to pack, if I can't even think." Lauren marched into the living room and plunked a designer bag down beside the door. "And I told you to pick up those cars and put them in your toy sack. When I'm ready to get in the car, anything you don't have with you will be left for the hurricane to get." Lauren pushed the hair back from her face with shaking, beringed hands. "I'd have left yesterday if I'd had any sense. But no. Mr. Navy doesn't want to budge. 'Who knows what course the hurricane will take?' he says. He'd rather stay
here
with Tyler. Mr. Navy can play better with Tyler
here",
she muttered not quite under her breath.

Jax heard her. She meant for him to. Her hands were shaking. He could see a fine tremor running under the shiny, silvery fabric of her cropped pants. Was she that scared? Or was she hungover? She had been sloshed last night by the time she served dinner.

So, should he just let Tyler go with her? Call it? Tell Commander Kohn that his idea of "thirty-days' leave for Jax to spend time with Tyler" had been a fiasco? A goatfuck from day one?

Oh yeah, like that was an option.

Kohn was a good commander, and Jax's mentor, but he had this slow cowboy drawl that told you, you were so screwed. Jax could still feel his neck get hot when he remembered Kohn's dressing-down, no less scathing for being delivered in that lazy, "I don't give a damn" voice.

And Kohn had this bug up his ass about family responsibilities. He said he didn't know how Tyler's old DOD 1332.30 had gotten on his desk. Bullshit. He probably had the thing flagged to his attention.

"How long has it been since you've seen your son, Graham?"

"I saw him at his mother's funeral a month ago."

"And before that, when did you see him?"

"In April, six, no, seven months ago."

Kohn had looked out the window a long time and when he looked back at Jax, his eyes were bright and hard. He let fall the thick manila folder containing a plan covering every contingency imaginable concerning Tyler's care as long as he was a dependent—Tyler's old 1332.30. It hit the shiny desk with a soft plop. The gesture was somehow a clearer warning than slamming it down would have been.

"My friend, if you're smart, you'll take the leave you should've asked for as soon as that boy's mother died.

"You go to North Carolina and you make
sure
that child is all right.

"And you come back here with a new 1332.30 that is so perfect in every detail it could have been written by God.

"I can promise I
will
review it. If I'm not completely stunned by its glory, I'll hate to lose you, but you're outta here. Your service to your country is valuable, but Congress has spoken: your duty to your dependent child comes first."

Then Kohn had said something strange. He said, "Your son, does he look like you?"

Jax glanced now from the window to the sofa where Tyler had made a sort of garage by propping up the cushions. His hair grew from a double crown as Jax's did, and, allowing for Jax's permanent sun streaks, was the same color. His face still had too much baby softness to guess what his adult features would be, but the gray eyes with their straight brows were Jax's.

No doubt about it. This was his son.

His son that he was screwing up with.

Even with his ass chewed, it had all looked so simple at the base in Little Creek, Virginia. As soon as he learned of Danielle's death, he'd known the best thing to do was give custody of Tyler to Lauren. If Kohn thought he should take thirty-days' leave just to get some papers signed, so be it.

Lauren would still have to take Tyler full time eventually.

But it felt like quitting to let Tyler go to Lauren's house with the boy still acting as if his father didn't exist.

He hated to quit.

And it felt like losing.

He hated to lose.

Hell, it couldn't get any worse, and maybe without Lauren grating on him, he would handle Tyler's silence better.

He walked into the kitchen where Lauren had a trash can pulled up to the refrigerator and was pitching out leftover food. "Lauren, if you're packed, why don't you get on the road? I'll clean out the refrigerator and close up the cottage after you're gone."

"Oh Jax, would you?" To Jax's cynical amusement, the change in Lauren was miraculous. The tightly down-turned lips turned up, and it almost looked like there were tears in her eyes. "I-40 is going to look like a parking lot with everybody trying to evacuate. The sooner I get on the road, the sooner I'll get home." She closed the refrigerator. "But, Jax, I want you to know that you are welcome to come and stay at my house in Raleigh. Any time. I really mean it."

Now she was kicking into the Gracious Lady act. He'd be about as welcome as a case of head-lice. "No, thank you. I'll stay here."

"Well," Lauren had the grace to try not to look delighted, "if you change your mind, Tyler and I—"

"Tyler is staying with me."

When they were twelve, his best friend Corey said a name like "Jackson Graham the Third" sounded snooty, so he'd dubbed him "Jax" because that sounded like a Jedi knight. But when he wanted to, Jax could keep his face so impassive that the new guys in the platoon sometimes called him
Stonewall.

"What?" Lauren blinked her mascaraed lashes and swiveled her gaze around the room as if she wondered who had spoken. "No. No, you idiot!"

Good-bye Gracious, hello Nasty.

"I have to ... I mean ... What are you thinking? There's a hurricane! Tyler has to leave. I care about the welfare of this child even if you don't. I'm the closest thing to a mother he has.
You
can't take care of him. He has to go with me."

"I'm his father. He stays with me."

"Are you telling me you're
not
going to let me have custody?"

"No. Nothing has changed. Tyler will still need someone to care for him full time. But dammit, Lauren, this thirty-day leave is the longest continuous time I've ever had with Tyler, and the longest I'm likely to get. I'm not willing to cut it short for a storm that'll be gone in thirty-six hours."

"But where will you take him? You can't stay on the island."

"I'll find a hotel room in Wilmington."

"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard! There won't be a room to be had between here and Raleigh."

Lauren was way overreacting. Any hurricane had to be taken seriously, but a category one was not a Katrina. Only the beaches and lowlying areas needed to be evacuated, and an hour's drive in any direction would take them out of all danger. He suspected she welcomed an excuse to take Tyler and return home to Raleigh. "I'll find something. We'll be okay. When it's over, we'll come back here."

"This is insane! You can't do this."

"I can."

"But I have to leave! I can't stay here." Lauren's drawl thickened as her voice rose to a hysterical wail. "I have to be home! Don't you care anything about
my
feelings? I'll be worried to death about Tyler. I'm terrified of storms. I have to get home!"

It wasn't any ground they hadn't already covered. Jax saw no need to answer.

"If you don't care anything about me, don't you care about your baby? How can you keep him where a hurricane's going to strike within twenty-four hours? You're putting that child in harm's way!" Lauren snatched up a makeup case and stalked to the door with quick, sharp taps of her sandals and flung it wide. "You're not going to get away with this."