SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (20 page)

"Stop!"
Pickett pushed her hand flat against his chest, blinked as if surprised by her own actions, and quickly withdrew it. The space between his pecs felt branded where she had touched him. Wait a minute. Something was different. He was definitely inside her space and she wasn't backing away—in fact, she had touched him.

"Pickett, what's going on here?" he asked, softening his voice.

"I don't know." She sneaked a peek at his face. "Okay, I do know, but I don't want to tell you."

She looked so brave and so doubtful, a peach blush tingeing her high cheekbones. Jax smiled. "Tell me."

"I don't want you to say you didn't mean it, when you said you liked my thighs."

Whoa. Nothing in this conversation was going the way he'd thought it would. Thighs. Unbidden, the image came of Pickett pulling the gown higher, smoothing lotion on her thigh, the image in the mirror.

That's what he needed to apologize for, but he hadn't intended to say it, exactly. More talk in a general way about invasion of privacy.

No, wait a minute, between the surge of lust to his groin and the embarrassment on his face, all the blood must have left his brain. Were those tears in her eyes? Desperately, he scrambled to find the thread of the conversation.

"Do you want me to say I do like your thighs, or I don't like your thighs?"

"You already said you
do
like my thighs," she said in the voice of one goaded past endurance, "and I
don't
want you to take it back, okay?"

Had he said that? He had. Last night. And apparently, it was very important to her. Head held as proudly as always, but utterly vulnerable to his opinion, she blotted the corner of her eyes with the tip of one finger.

Something melted in the center of his chest. He didn't dare ask why it was so important, but if it mattered to her, it mattered to him.

"I did say that. I do like your thighs," God knows that was the truth, "and I am not going to apologize for it."

Dark stormy-ocean eyes searched his face. He let her look deep into his own eyes so she could judge his sincerity. "Okay?"

She thought it over. He liked it that he could tell by her face when she was thinking intently, even when her next remark proved he didn't know what she was thinking.

"Are you sure there was enough light for you to get a good look?"

He felt heat flood his face again. "I got a good look."

"I'm embarrassing you. I didn't mean to cross-examine you." Picket reached for a sponge to dab at a drop of coffee.

"Pickett, can we start this conversation over again?"

Pickett tossed the sponge in the sink. She chuckled. "Okay."

"The reason I wanted to apologize," he preempted her protest with a raised hand, "which I am not going to do, was that I wanted to ask you something." Pickett waited for him to go on. "I wanted to ask you to go to dinner with me. I thought I'd find a sitter for Tyler, and we could go out, just the two of us."

The queen look was back. Pickett inclined her head regally, while keeping her eyes fixed on his. "I would like that."

The queen look did it. His heart thudded like a teenager's. "Pickett."

"Hmm?"

"There's something else I wanted to ask you. I really want to kiss you." That was so lame. Now he
sounded
like a teenager. Fortunately for his teenage alter ego, she lifted her face. She looked at his mouth. That was a yes.

Slowly, giving her all the time in the world to pull back, he lowered his lips to hers.

Jax kissed one corner of her mouth, then the other corner, felt the moist exhalation against his lips as she let her mouth soften and open slightly. He slid his tongue just to the silky inside of her lower lip. She tasted of toothpaste and coffee and newness. When he felt her tongue shyly stroke his, he knew he must either have more, or pull back right now. He broke the kiss.

"That's it?"

"I need a shower. I'm sweaty."

Pickett leaned forward until her straight little nose was inches from his chest and sniffed delicately. "You're sweaty, all right," she agreed, then she looked up at him through her lashes and smiled a purely sensual smile. "I like it."

For a second Jax contemplated taking her right there, sweaty clothes and all, on the kitchen counter. He didn't know what, but something had turned Her Highness from cool to hot.

Part of what stopped him was the knowledge that Tyler could come in at any second. The other part was that she deserved more finesse than a caveman routine. "I'm going to hit the shower," he said, with real regret. "Tyler will be up soon."

"I'll go with you." His face must have registered the picture those words made in his mind, because she added hastily, "I mean, I need to get clothes from the bedroom closet. That's where I'll go. To the bedroom. With you." She squeezed her eyes shut, rubbed her forehead, and began to laugh. "Everything I say just makes it worse, doesn't it?"

A few hours later Jax, with Tyler in the backseat, approached the gleaming white bridge that curved across the inlet to access Topsail Island, only to see the road blocked by the distinctive gray-and-black cruiser of the Highway Patrol. The young patrolman waved him to a stop.

"The beaches are closed, sir. No one except property owners are allowed on the island."

This whole trip was beginning to feel like war games for SEALs designed by the Army. Nothing had gone according to plan yet. He turned the Cherokee around, wondering where he would head now.

Tyler stopped kicking,
at last,
when he realized the car was turning around.

"We're not going to the beach?"

"No. The beach is closed."

"Good. I didn't want to go to Gan-gan's beach house." No news there. Tyler had fussed and whined from the moment Jax had buckled him into his car seat.

It had been an unwelcome change from the child who had woken up sunny and full of chatter about everything. Tyler's face had lit with joy when Jax told him he could dress himself in anything he wanted to. The results were a far cry from the matching outfits his grandmother insisted on dressing him in.

Pickett had taken one look at the orange bear-printed shirt with blue plaid shorts and exclaimed, "You dressed yourself! What a big boy you are!"

Thinking about how thrilled Tyler had been to pick his own clothes, Jax realized how rarely Tyler was offered choices about anything.

"Do you want to go to your grandmother's house in Raleigh?" An hour and a half down I-40 and Tyler could be happy and Jax could get his life back on track.

"No! I hate Gan-gan's house."

Was that fussiness talking or was Tyler telling the truth? "Why do you hate Gan-gan's house?"

Words apparently failed Tyler. In the rear view mirror, Jax could see him looking confused and rubbing his ear.

"Is she mean to you?"

Tyler shook his head uncertainly. "No, not
wean
... ezackly."

Jax fought the urge to say "just spit it out." He would have to pull the answers out of Tyler one sentence at a time. Pickett, if she were here, would point out that four-year-olds would not say "
I
don't know"
even when they were out of their depth, and they tended to interpret words literally. What would Pickett ask? "Your grandmother's not mean, exactly. Is she sort of mean?"

"
Ye-es"
Tyler answered in the affirmative but in a high, uncertain voice. "Well,
see?"
he hesitated, searching for words. "She doesn't like little boys very much," he finished, as if that explained everything.

"She doesn't like little boys—did she say that?"

"Yes," Tyler sounded more definite, "that's what she says. She says boys get dirty," he went on, warming to his theme, "and make messes, and I give her a headache. I give her a headache lots," he added matter-of-factly. "So I have to be quiet, so it won't hurt her head in the morning."

With the part of his brain that was always assessing performance, Jax noted that although Tyler strung most of his sentences together with
and,
typical of a four-year-old, occasionally he used other conjunctions, and even dependent clauses like the five-year-old he would be in a couple of months. A tender burst of pride warmed his chest.

"At night she drinks her drink, and she talks and cries and talks, and I have to be quiet and listen. She says she always wanted a little girl and she never wanted a little boy. Sometimes she lets me go to my room, but sometimes she makes me be quiet and listen, and that's what I hate."

Jax had experienced Lauren's harangues in which she made it clear that she found him beneath contempt. They disgusted him, but he'd had no idea that Lauren's hostility extended to Tyler.

"You hate the things she says to you?"

"No. I don't
really
listen. I just p'etend." Jax thought he detected a note of wily self-satisfaction in his son's voice. "But she won't let me play with my toys while she talks.
That's
what I hate."

Jax pulled into a service station and punched the automatic dial on the cell phone. Maybe Pickett could help him sort out what he had just learned from his son. A recording said the phone was temporarily out of order. He was thinking about driving to Wilmington where they could find a hotel when Tyler spoke up again.

"I want to go to Pickett's house. I think she likes little boys."

Jax started to explain why they shouldn't take advantage of Pickett's hospitality, then stopped himself. What the hell. He wanted to go to Pickett's house too.

Pickett's hands were protected by work gloves, and she was dressed in worn jeans and an oversized shirt while picking up fallen branches from the yard. She looked lost in thought when the big, green SUV pulled into the drive. She heard the tires on the gravel, and waved one work-gloved hand. She dropped her load onto the pile she'd already made, and crossed quickly to the drive when Jax brought the car to a stop.

Jax slid open the window. "Hey."

"Hey." Pickett smiled. She looked glad to see them. Jax felt something in his diaphragm relax.

"The beach is closed," he told her. "Nobody but property owners can go on the island."

"I heard on the radio. I didn't think the storm was that severe."