SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (13 page)

So he knew it didn't mean anything if she touched him. But when he felt that soft palm against his arm, it was like a circuit opened between them and he knew she understood the aching sweetness that had almost blasted him away, and even shared it. She had
given
it to him. Then for him to touch her, to kiss her, and somehow complete the circuit was the most natural thing in the world. So he kissed her.

Oh, well, it was done. She hadn't been so offended that she had thrown him and Tyler out. Her eyes had widened. A pulse was visible in her neck, but she only said, "It's starting to rain. You'd better carry him into the house."

He was on his guard and wouldn't let it happen again. He needed to let it go. Worrying about what had happened instead of what was happening could get a man killed.

Jax wiped his hands, and gave the generator a long look. Okay, he'd oiled this sucker, cleaned the spark plugs, and checked the carburetor. He added more gas, set the choke, and hauled on the starter rope.

It started right up.

"Hey," said Jax from the doorway. He had pulled on the shorts he had worn earlier and his chest and feet were bare. "Couldn't sleep?"

Pickett sat curled up on the flower-splashed sofa in a pool of yellow light, the light bringing out the golden highlights of her hair and peachy tones of her skin. Small, round reading glasses perched on her nose, and a man's T-shirt, so large that it threatened to slip off one shoulder, made her look absurdly young.

The old yellow dog, Patterson, slept stretched out on the floor beneath her. Placed in readiness on the low pine chest that served as a coffee table were flashlight, candle, and matches.

"I woke up about thirty minutes ago and couldn't go back to sleep. The noise of the wind makes me uneasy." Pickett shrugged as if she felt silly to make such an admission, causing the shirt to slip, further exposing the delicate hollows where collarbone and shoulder met. She centered the wandering neckline with a flustered twitch. "I thought coming in here to read would be better than lying in the dark listening to the wind. At least we haven't lost power yet."

"Are you scared?" He sat down on the opposite end of the sofa and turned to face her.

"No." He raised a dubious eyebrow. "I'm really not. Not rationally. I'm a little worried about Hobo Joe, because he wouldn't come inside. But I don't think we're in any real danger." She looked at the dark windows. "There's just something about the way the wind sounds. Do you hear it? It's not only that it's blowing hard. It's that long, slithery sound—it gives me a feeling of dread. I don't know why."

"It might be the low barometric pressure. Some people's emotions are affected by changes in atmospheric pressure."

"Might be." Pickett agreed so readily he was sure she was humoring him. "So what are you doing up?"

"I woke up too. I saw your light and wondered—" the lights flickered "—if we could talk a minute."

Just then the lights went off and stayed off.

"Since it looks like I'm not going to read anymore, we might as well talk." Pickett fumbled on the chest for the flashlight. It proved to be just out of her reach, forcing her to put one foot down. That foot landed on Patterson, who grumbled sleepily. "Excuse me, Patterson." The woman was so polite she apologized to a dog. "Actually, Jax," he could hear a wry smile in her voice, "I'm glad of the company."

Being able to visualize where things were, even in total darkness, was a fundamental SEAL skill. Jax struck a match just as she found the flashlight and flicked it on. She lifted the hurricane chimney so that he could light the candle, then replaced it as he shook out the match then broke it. "Thanks."

"Your hands are shaking. The feeling of, what did you call it, dread—is it very bad?"

"It's, um," Pickett took a ragged breath, "manageable. Distraction helps. Talk to me. Tell me something."

"I didn't know you wear glasses ..." That wasn't what he meant to say. But finding the way to start talking was harder than he'd thought it would be when he woke and saw the light under the living room door. She looked little and vulnerable, and so damned cute in a T-shirt that came to her knees and her hair coming down from its topknot.

"Only for reading, and only when I'm tired." She touched the frames and gave a little laugh. "I forgot I had them on." She took off the glasses and put them on the end table.

"This feeling of dread. Does it have anything to do with me?" He felt her stir at the other end of the couch. "Because if it does," he hurried on, "I need you to know you're absolutely safe with me. I won't hurt you."

"Thanks," Pickett's voice was a little husky, "I knew that, but thanks for saying it."

"How did you know it? You don't know me. When I think of you letting another man in your house the way you did me, it scares me shi—to death."

"I have pretty reliable intuition, but in your case I had data as well."
Data.
Little round glasses and she talked like a textbook. It should have been a turnoff, but somehow it wasn't working that way. "You didn't use your strength to overwhelm or subdue Tyler. Even if you didn't hit him or anything, it would have been so easy for you to hold him tight enough to make his struggles hurt. That's when I decided."

Jax thought back to the scene in the drive. Pickett holding a flower pot in each arm, looking so wary, then suddenly taking over.

"Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that. How did you know exactly what to say? I'd been telling him for thirty-five minutes that the hurricane wasn't really dangerous as long as we got off the beach."

"Did you explain all about storm surge and tornadoes and everything?" she inquired, eyes wide with fake innocence.

Jax chuckled, and let his head drop to the back of the couch. "No, I wasn't that idiotic. I do know he's a little kid. But I'm serious, how did you get him turned off in two seconds flat?"

"It's a technique. The problem is that the person, in this case the child, is totally referencing an internal state. You might say they're not in touch with reality. So you demand they focus externally, offer a reinterpretation of what's happening, with sensory corroboration, and then redirect to some action."

"Sensory corroboration. That's when you said 'feel his arms,' right?"

"Right." Pickett flashed a smile at his ready comprehension. "In this case it was easy because four-year-olds tend to see cause and effect as something being stronger than something else. For instance, they would say that an airplane can fly because it's stronger than air. So reinterpretation was a piece of cake. You are stronger than his grandmother, a fact he could check out for himself, ergo, you could keep him safe without needing to run away."

"And you could work out all this in a split second?"

A shrug sent the T-shirt sliding off the other shoulder. "Practice helps."

"I think you must be really good at what you do. Because you said the right thing for me too."

Her eyes widened slightly and her head tilted. It was like she opened a space as wide as hangar doors. He didn't have to steer his thoughts. He could go right through.

"When Danielle and I got married, I knew right away that it was a mistake, and I think she did too. She thought our marriage would be glamorous and exciting. Hobnobbing with admirals and hanging out at the pool at the officer's club. The reality is that I'm gone way more than I'm here, and most of what I do I can't talk about." He shifted forward to rest his forearms on his knees. "But just when I realized our marriage was all wrong, she got pregnant. We decided to stay together till after the baby was born.

"I didn't think about what I would do with a baby. I know it's stupid but the baby wasn't real to me. It just seemed like something Danielle was doing, and it didn't have much to do with me. I was focusing on being a SEAL and that's all I was focused on.

"Anyway, by sheer luck I was there when he was born. He was so little. He didn't even fill up my two hands." Jax spread his hands, remembering weighing the tiny creature in them. "I never expected to feel like that. That love. I just wanted to protect him and keep him safe. I knew I would die for him.

"My platoon left on assignment three weeks after he was born, and while we were gone, Danielle took Tyler and moved back to Raleigh to her mother's house.

"I didn't fight for custody Hell, she was more able to take care of him than I was. Any fool could see that."

Pickett hadn't said anything at all, mostly wasn't even looking at him. But her capacity to listen was like a force, a rising tide that floated him free from where he'd run aground and drew him into navigable water.

"I haven't seen enough of him, I know. Even though I've tried to visit when I could, I'll bet we haven't spent a total of four months together since he was born.

"But today when he was so scared and he couldn't believe I would keep him safe ..." Jax rubbed at his eyes and then his nose.

"That really hurt, hmm?"

Hurt. Jax swallowed. Nodded. "The whole op was going to shi—excuse me. And you stood there looking like I was Godzilla."

"For the record, the image I had in mind was more Attila the Hun than Godzilla."

Jax slanted her a glance. "That's supposed to make me feel better?"

"A military man—of a sort—rather than a monster? I think so." Her tone was judicious, but the tiny dimple that appeared at the corner of her mouth said she was twitting him. And enjoying it.

"Okay, you were looking at me like I was
Attila
and then, suddenly, you weren't.

"You believed I wouldn't hurt you and I would keep him safe." He swiveled to face her fully. She was regarding him with a tender little smile. "You believed in me."

She nodded. She had the shining-est eyes.

The force of the storm had steadily increased as they talked. The windows and storm windows were closed; nevertheless, the curtains moved from time to time. The wind was a steady roar, interspersed with even stronger gusts that shook the house. Suddenly the old house creaked and shuddered as if it had been slapped by a giant hand.

Pickett let her breath out slowly.

Jax covered her slender foot with one brown hand. "How's the dread?"

"Not as bad. Thanks."

She was lying—he'd seen her holding her breath. But she was determined to be brave. "I told you something, now you tell me something." Her foot was so soft, the skin, even on the sole, smooth and moist. He massaged it, stroked it as if taming some woodland creature.

Pickett didn't know whether to pull her foot away or to put the other one where he could reach it. Well, she
did know
what she wanted. She wanted to touch him and let her fantasies come to life. She just didn't know which action she
should
'take.

Pickett wasn't so naive that she didn't know what was happening. The intimacy of the hour, the intimacy of the soft pool of light cast by the candle on the coffee table, the rest of the room lost in shadow—all were eroding her boundaries. Even the knowledge that, until the storm passed, firefighters, police, etc., would not move from their stations contributed to the intimacy. Until the storm passed she and Jax were as alone together as anyone in the modern world could be.

Intimacy could be a seduction in itself.

He'd kissed her this afternoon. Afterward, they'd both pretended it was nothing—not a liberty, which it wasn't, and not an intimacy, which it was.

The house had grown warmer in the few minutes since the air-conditioning had gone off with the power. She could smell his sweat, a whiff of motor oil he'd gotten on his shorts.

Pickett wasn't naive. She knew where all this intimacy would lead.

His hand, warm, companionable, utterly male, stroked her foot, while he let his head loll against the cushions of the sofa back. In the candlelight the color of his eyes was lost. She could only see their glitter under lazy, half-lowered lids.

All she had to do was put the other foot where he could reach it. Stretch her leg just a little to stroke his thigh with her toes. Everything was in place to live out her fantasy, including the fact that she really liked the man. Except, well, now that it was coming true, she couldn't be sure she'd enjoy it when she got it, because—

Jax jiggled her foot, indicating he'd waited long enough for her answer, "Say something."

"I don't like sex," Pickett said.

The hand covering her toes stilled. Jax did a slow sideways take.

Pickett felt her face heat up, and her eyes widened in horror as she realized she'd spoken her thoughts aloud. "Oh God!" she clapped her hands over her mouth as if she could stuff the words back in. "I don't know why I said that! Blame it on—on—hurricane insanity." Hurricane insanity—now
that
sounded insane. "Just—just forget I said it, would you?"

Jax hooted, loud, masculine, confident, throwing back his head so the candlelight revealed the strong column of his neck. "No way!" He turned to her, eyes still gleaming with mirth. "Is it true?"

"Yes." She was frozen. Too shocked, too mortified to lie. How could she have let slip what she had never told anyone—not even her therapist?

"So, you can't get off, or what?"