Sealed with a promise (7 page)

  Jax slung his son across his shoulder in a fireman carry. “I’m going to take him back to the hotel so we can swim for a while. Maybe I can drain off a few gallons of excitement and get him to nap.”

  Tyler twisted around on his father’s shoulders to regard Do-Lord and Emmie with a look eerily like his father’s. “Don’t forget,” cautioned Tyler. “You gotta be extra special careful when you hug Emmie.”

  Do- Lord grinned and noogied the kid’s hair. Tyler was going to need some fine-tuning before he had his father’s ESP. Do-Lord didn’t think any hugs would be needed. Doing a favor would accomplish his goal. “No problem, big guy. See you later.”

  The muscular pickup, parked on the grassy edge of the tree-lined drive, had to be the biggest truck Emmie had ever seen. Do-Lord unlocked the door on the passenger side and held it open.

  “This is a new truck, isn’t it?” Emmie stalled for time. “What kind is it?” She had no interest in trucks whatsoever, but she needed a minute to gather her courage to face the pain of climbing in.

  “A Silverado 250,” His narrowed eyes traveled over her in cool, deliberate assessment. Though there was nothing sexual about the way he sized her up, her breath stalled in her throat. She had never felt so
looked at
in her life. His lips pursed, as if he was fighting a smug smile. “You need help getting in.”

  She stiffened. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

  He ignored the question. “Do I need to be careful of anything besides your shoulder?”

  “Everything else works fine. Really, I can do it.”

  Again, he ignored her. “Brace your good hand on my shoulder for balance-” When she didn’t comply, he took her hand and set it on his shoulder. “When I pick you up lean toward me slightly. Don’t want to bump your head.” Not waiting for her agreement, he placed two hard, warm hands on her waist and lifted.

  The sheer novelty of the experience streaked in a shocked tingle down her legs and up her spine. She wasn’t the kind of dainty little thing men picked up, and even if she was, she didn’t hang around the kind of jocks who showed off their muscles by picking women up.

  Emmie hardly had time to absorb the feeling of his shoulder under her hand before her butt was in contact with the passenger seat, her legs dangling sideways.

  She shifted in the seat attempting to swing her feet into the car. Her cheeks turned white. She bit her lip, but she didn’t groan.

  “Stop. Don’t twist,” he commanded, anticipating her. “I’ll straighten you up. If the Cargo is already injured, it usually works better if the Cargo lets me do everything.”

  One arm around her back steadied her, while the other went under her knees to lift her legs. Dragging on panty hose had been out of the question this morning. His hand brushed the naked back of her legs just above the knee. For one breathless second, she thought it lingered. Then, so smoothly she thought the tiny hiatus hadn’t happened, she was facing forward.

  She hastily tugged at the hem of her skirt. Turning had twisted it, baring her thighs. If she’d ever been one to swear, she would have sworn now. Covering her legs, one-handed and with no leverage, was impossible.

  “Raise up a little.” His voice, suddenly deeper, grittier, was so close she felt the moist puffs of his breath. “I’ll straighten your skirt.”

  Efficiently, but with no trace of hurry, he ran his hand under her buttocks to free the bunched material. When that was done, he firmly and totally
un
necessarily, smoothed the wrinkles from the cotton twill.

  “Are you done?” Emmie tried to snap but wasn’t sure she succeeded.

  “Almost.” He extended the seatbelt, and she realized he intended to buckle her in.

  “Enough!” She caught the hand in which he held the metal tab. “I’ll do it, thank you.”

  He didn’t release the tab. He just looked at her. Patient. Implacable.

  His head was level with hers, so close she could see the gold and brown flecks in his irises. His eyes weren’t cold and hard now.

  She had never been on the receiving end of a will so focused it was palpable.

  She gasped and drew his scent deep into her lungs. Wool, starch, spice, and some ineluctable, masculine essence. She could still feel the impression his hands and arms had made on her body-the smooth, casual strength with which he took control.

  With the same strobe-like intensity as when she had realized one couldn’t judge his personality by his good-humored smile, Emmie suddenly understood this man wouldn’t give up. He never gave up. The knowledge shuddered through her like a gong that had been struck. Without a word spoken she knew she had been warned: let go of the belt or he
would
do more.

  One pointed eyebrow quirked. “Are you going to let me do it now?”

  What was he talking about? Stunned by insights, overcome with sensory surfeit, Emmie found the question baffling. As if she could find the answer there, her attention fixated on his mobile mouth. His lips reminded her of Brad Pitt’s, she thought, too bemused to notice the irrelevance. The upper curved in a perfect bow, while the lower poked out as if he knew a secret that poised his lips at the beginning of a smile-or the beginning of a kiss. “Do it?”

  “Buckle the seat belt.” This time the grin was outright, genuine, and so steeped in amused arrogance Emmie wanted to writhe in mortification for letting him make her think about kissing, even momentarily.

  Heat flooded her face and spread down her chest in a fire that threatened to consume her entire body. Her torso tightened in a weird reflex that included her nipples.

  He was so proud of his little display of masculine dominance she wanted to hit him, and
that
made her writhe because she didn’t believe in violence.
And
she wanted to run her finger tips over the short velvety-looking hair on his nape-and that made her writhe even more.

  Emmie wasn’t na?ve about sexual attraction. No one who worked on a college campus could be. If the massive distraction of sex could be eliminated, the test scores of her students would rise one whole letter grade. But she wasn’t the kind of girl who’d ever needed to be warned against bad boys. She wasn’t the kind who lost her head- but more to the point, she wasn’t the kind bad boys gave a second glance. Or, for that matter, a first one.

  And bad boy he was. It didn’t show through anything as clich?d as a leather jacket or a sullen attitude. He’d been all polite, deferent charm to Pickett’s mother and sisters and aunts. He dressed with military polish, and his hair was cut shorter than Jax’s. And yet she was sure he never played by the rules-not unless he fixed them first.

  If she could, she’d get out of the truck right now. She’d had all she ever wanted of masculine disdain for her plainness. If he knew what she was thinking, he’d probably laugh.

  Thank God, once the seat belt clicked into place, he withdrew without further comment.

  Do- Lord shut her door. His fingers left a film of moisture on the chrome handle. Sweaty palms. Shit. When was the last time his hands had sweated from being close to a girl?

  He’d been pleased-he’d admit it-when he’d realized Emmie couldn’t climb into his truck without his help. It freed him to take charge, and SEALs liked to be in charge.

  For the last two days he’d fought the urge to put himself between her and movement that would cause her pain. No more. She wasn’t going to hurt herself- not on his watch.

  But when he’d gone to straighten her up on the seat, his hand had encountered the moist, silky smoothness of her thighs and their soft weight. Turning her had twisted her skirt, exposing her legs to the top of her thigh, allowing him a whiff of her warm, secret woman essence.

  It blindsided him. In the way of odors, it bypassed his cerebral cortex and zoomed into his most primitive instincts to survive and to mate. With craving close to pain, he had wanted to bury his head in her lap, press his nose against the source, and draw it deep into his lungs.

  If he thought she was the least bit willing, he would lay her down right her beside the sandy driveway. He would have her on the golden leaves beneath the pecan trees in the thin November sunshine.

  His unit had been stateside not quite three months, and he knew himself to be still more than half-wild, his senses tuned to register every nuance of his environment. In the aftermath of combat most guys were sexually charged. He was no exception. But God. He hadn’t expected this.

  Apparently he needed a lot more R and R than he’d had.

  He’d willed himself to keep his movements slow and nonthreatening while he’d pulled down her skirt. He wasn’t going to go caveman on her. He’d never forced a woman and never would.

  Still, invading her space by reaching across her body to buckle her seat belt had been an act of pure male dominance-primitive, atavistic, aboriginal as hell, and damn satisfying. It made getting sweaty hand prints on his new truck almost worth it.

  Focus. Knee-buckling lust had thrown him for a minute, but there was a bright side. He drew a deep breath and consciously made his shoulders relax. At last, he’d figured out what irritated him about her, and why he couldn’t stop watching her. Had they not had their battle of wills over the seat belt, had he not been looking straight into those kitten-wide, blue eyes, he wouldn’t have seen them fix on his lips or noticed the flare of her delicate nostrils. His little, spinsterish professor had been turned on too. Now that he could see it, he couldn’t believe it had taken him this long to connect the dots.

  He rounded the front of the truck, shrugging out of his sport coat. Since social time was over, he no longer needed it to make the correct impression. Now that he knew what was going on, he had another impression in mind…

  Subliminally, he’d probably been picking up the same arousal cues, autonomic nervous system telltales that she couldn’t control, for days. And yet, she didn’t put out a single indicator that she was available or interested in him-consciously or unconsciously.

  She didn’t pat her hair, or tilt her head, or cock her hip. She didn’t swing her hips, or thrust out her breasts, or lick her lips, or glance over her shoulder. With body language that locked down, he’d bet she hadn’t had much sex in her life. In fact, combined with her godawful clothes, she’d might as well be wearing a sign that said, “I’m not getting any.”

  Well, he could do something about that. He wasn’t so ego-swollen that he thought every woman should find him irresistible. He had better luck than average though. He understood that he had the most potent charm of all: he liked women for their own sakes. Short ones, tall ones, hefty ones, skinny ones. SEALs were an all male force, but it took a lot of support to keep a team operating, and some of those people were women. Many he counted as friends. If he got her to loosen up and enjoy herself as a woman, he’d be doing her a favor. She probably didn’t know what good sex was.

  In spite of his irritation, he’d already found himself liking her quirky take on life. She was completely comfortable in this world of wealth and privilege. She called a powerful U.S. senator “Uncle Teague.” Some sort of sexual chemistry was going on between them. He was too much of a SEAL not to use any advantage that came his way.

  He draped the coat on a hanger he kept in the backseat for that purpose and methodically folded back his shirt cuffs to reveal his forearms. Hey, he’d read
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
There was stuff in there he wasn’t going to do-like waxing his nuts for instance- but some of the advice, like rolling up sleeves, made sense.

  A woman’s pheromones were airborne, but a man’s were on the skin and best transferred by touch. He could show a little skin and make it easy for her. He loosened his tie and undid the button at his throat. For good measure, he loosened another one.

  He smiled. “Where to?”

  The country club gleamed in the golden autumn light, a Tara-dream of white columns, sitting atop a small rise and flanked by glossy-leaved, deep green magnolias.

  They had retrieved the cake from the UPS office, and it sat on the backseat of the king cab. All they had to do was carry it in and set it up.

  Do- Lord pulled the truck into a parking space and killed the motor, his movements smooth and flowing. He studied the building with narrowed eyes, first tilting his head one way, then the other.

  Emmie chuckled. “Yeah. I always have the same reaction. Is it impressive, or is it just plain pretentious?”

  “Where I grew up, some rich people lived in a house like that. I don’t think you can call it ‘plain’ anything. Why don’t you vote for impressive?”

  “I’ll grant you it’s well-done, but the reference is to a plantation lifestyle that never existed in North Carolina. Most plantation houses in Eastern North Carolina looked more like Pickett’s house in Snead’s Ferry.”

  “I’ve seen it. She called it a farmhouse.”

  “Precisely. This is the glamorized Hollywood version
of
the myth
of
a golden age
of
the Southern Aristocracy.”

  “You don’t think there
is
a Southern Aristocracy?”

  “I think,” Emmie quoted the sentimental Stephen Foster song, “‘de massa’s been in de cold, cold ground,’ a long time. And any sort of privilege based on lineage went with him. The right family name and enough money will buy you a membership here, but money by itself will work as well. This isn’t a temple of ancestor worship.”

  “And that’s what makes it pretentious?”

  “Right. If anything, it’s a temple where money and power are worshipped.”

  Do- Lord turned eyes that gleamed with amusement toward her. In the bright sunlight spilling through the windshield his irises were bright green. “You think a country club would be less pretentious if it looked like a bank?” he enquired in a dry drawl.