SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (33 page)

" Queen Pickett
thing?"

"Yeah, that thing you do with your head. Then give them that look that says T am going to think over what you just said,'" he lowered his voice in solemn portent, " 'and then I am going to grade it.'"

Pickett gurgled with surprised laughter. "Am I that intimidating?"

"You are, and you demand respect for your expertise. It's time you used a little intimidation on your sisters."

Pickett dragged a can of lighter fluid and a bag of charcoal from the shoulder-high shelf. "Do you think this charcoal has absorbed too much moisture to light?"

"Pickett, are you thinking over what I said?" "Yes, it's just ... they do love me, you know." "Only you can put a stop to it. But I'll have your back. You won't be alone." He smiled and winked with charming menace. "One SEAL constitutes a majority."

Pickett pulled the plastic wrap from Grade's contribution of beautiful paper plates printed with autumn leaves and matching napkins, and chuckled inwardly. That was Gracie. If she had to eat off paper plates, they would be paper plates with style.

There wasn't enough room to spread everything out on the ancient Formica countertop, so she unplugged the coffee maker and moved it to a lower cabinet.

"Don't put away the coffee maker," Gracie directed from the sink where she was washing lettuce. "We'll need it for later."

"Then I'll just have to get it out later, because right now I need the counter space."

To make room in the cabinet for the coffee maker, Pickett nested two pots and put their lids on a lower shelf. In this kitchen you never moved just one thing.

Gracie shut off the water and turned, holding her dripping hands well away from her oatmeal-colored silk slacks and matching silk sweater combination. A tiny pleat formed above her light-blue eyes as she considered the problem. She sighed.

"This house is impossible to entertain in. If you had a dining room table we could make it work, but no, you had to make the dining room into an office."

Pickett needed a dining room table so that she could entertain graciously about as much as a pig needed roller skates. She was pulling her head out of the cabinet to say so when Jax bumped against her. When she grabbed for the cabinet door to steady herself, he bumped her again, almost knocking her over.
What was with him?
Jax was never clumsy. Underscoring the thought he placed two hands on her waist and smoothly lifted her to her feet.
"Now,"
the word hardly more than a moist puff against her ear. "Sorry," he said aloud.

Now? Huh?
Pickett replayed all that had just happened. Oh. He thought it was time to demand respect. Her heart executed a triple axel. He had taken his hands away, but she could still feel him there. Okay, she could do this.

"Gracie, this is my house. Don't criticize it. I don't criticize your house." Not bad. Her voice was a little softer than she would have liked for maximum effect, but still.

"Oh, I wasn't criticizing. You're just too sensitive."

Damn. That's what always happened. No matter what she said, they found a way to make her wrong.

Jax's hand covered her shoulder. Pickett wondered if he could feel how hard her heart was beating. Maybe he could because he added a little squeeze.

"It sounded like criticism to me," he told Gracie.

Grade's eyes, wide with surprise, flew between Jax's and Pickett's. Would she back off, or fire another round? The moment lengthened. The phone rang once then abruptly stopped when it was picked up in the other room. Everyone was watching them now.

Pickett's heart beat in great body-shaking thuds, but she could feel the warmth of Jax's body along her back. It was strength she literally could draw on. She felt her neck lengthen and her head come up. Oh, that must be the gesture Jax called her "queen thing." In that moment she determined that if they had to stare at each other the rest of the night, Gracie would be the first one to blink.

Flustered spots of color appeared in Gracie's cheeks as it dawned on her that she had, indeed, been rude. "Well, I'm sorry," she stammered. "I didn't mean ... what I meant was ..." Gracie saw there was no way to save her remark, so she went back on the offensive. "But if you're going to take
that
as criticism, I really don't know what it's okay to say, anymore."

Longing to let it go, to make everything pleasant, tempted Pickett more than a down comforter on a cold night. Gracie had apologized—sort of. Their mother would say making a guest uncomfortable was just as bad as being a rude guest. Pickett felt Jax shift infinitesimally closer. No. The tiny nips at her autonomy would never stop if she let Gracie make her embarrassment at her own misbehavior Pickett's fault.

"I'm sure, after a while," Pickett's measured tone underlined the words, "you'll figure it out."

She held Grade's gaze one beat longer until she felt her sister's acknowledgment that the rules had changed for good.

Pickett's kind heart made her offer a salve for Gracie's ego. "You have such infallible taste, Grace, that any compliment you give me is treasured."

"Now that's the truth!" Sarah Bea rushed to pick up the conversational ball. "She's such a perfectionist, if Gracie says something is okay, you know anybody else would call it fabulous."

Sarah Bea counted the hamburgers she had patted out. "How many will you and Tyler eat, Jax?"

"Hey, Jax." Sarah Bea's husband, Bobby, stuck his head around the kitchen door. "The phone's for you. You might want to take it in another room." His grin came down just this side of malicious. "It's a woman. I couldn't catch everything she said 'cause she sounds like she's been drinking. But she wants to speak to 'the sonovabitch who's stolen my grandson.'"

The leathery leaves of the huge old live oak that reigned over the back of the property were bronzed by the setting sun by the time the caravan containing Pickett's family pulled out of the drive.

Jax stood, brown arm draped with casual possessiveness across Pickett's shoulders, his hand almost touching her breast. Tyler was on her other side, leaning against her leg, one arm encircling her thigh. Patterson and Lucy sat at their feet, while Hobo Joe stood off to one side where he could keep the whole party in view.

Pickett tried not to think about the effect of the happily domestic picture they presented to the departing cars, but the misty smile on her mother's face as she turned around to wave said it all. Pure Norman Rockwell.

Well, when no marriage was forthcoming, her mother and sisters would just have to deal with it, whether they approved or not. Pickett's choices, and even her mistakes, were her own. Today she had drawn some new boundary lines and from now on, she would enforce them.

"Wave good-bye, Tyler," Pickett coaxed, as the last car pulled onto the blacktop.

Tyler rubbed his face against her leg in a negative motion. "Don't want to," he whined.

"I think somebody hasn't quite given up naps, and had a long afternoon." Pickett touched the sweaty dark hair. "I also think somebody needs a bath."

"Uh-uhn. 'M hungry."

In one fluid motion Jax swept the youngster up onto his shoulders. In just a couple of days Jax had learned how to read Tyler's moods and how to encourage cooperation rather than demand obedience. "Come on, big guy. Let's hit the showers. I need to get cleaned up, too. Maybe Pickett," he threw a hopeful look Pickett's way, "will fix us something to eat if we're nice and clean."

Pickett followed them across the porch, where she held open the screen door for them. "Okay. What would you like?"

"Hot dogs and ice cream," said Tyler, riding his father's shoulder. Jax called out
duck
and he jerked his head down.

"That's what you had for lunch."

"Yep. That's what I like."

"There are plenty of hot dogs left over, but we've got to make a deal. You have to eat some vegetables before you get ice cream." Pickett spoke to their backs as they moved into the deeper shadows of the back hall.

Jax paused at the door to the bathroom. "Whaddyasay, bud?"

"Maybe I won't eat 'em," Tyler's tone was judicious, "but maybe I'll taste 'em."

In fact, Tyler hardly ate more than a taste of anything, and head in hand, eyes drooping, he just stirred the tablespoon of chocolate ice cream Pickett put into his bowl round and round. And when, after exchanging a glance with Pickett, Jax said, "Come on, Ty, let's go read
Monster Trucks,"
the little boy merely lifted his arms to be carried.

Tyler would be asleep in minutes, which didn't give Pickett much time. She made quick work of cleaning the kitchen, then dashed to the bedroom to study the contents of her closet. The jeans she'd had on all day wouldn't do.

Her cheeks burned and her stomach flipped every time she thought about what she was thinking of.

Her turquoise camisole was a little dated but it would go with the wraparound skirt of cream chiffon. In a wardrobe comprised only of the most basic and businesslike apparel, it was the most
flowing
thing she owned. She'd bought it, unable to resist its ultra-feminine appeal, but the filmy material lifted with the slightest breeze, exposing her thighs and as a result she'd never worn it. Flowing was called for tonight, though, and thighs ... well, she stifled a nervous giggle, thighs were no longer a problem.

She left the jeans she'd worn all day in a pile on the bathroom floor. She grabbed a two-minute shower, and hardly taking time to towel off, scrambled into clean clothes.

Now to set the scene.
Heart racing, Pickett nervously patted her hot cheeks to stimulate thought— Jax could come downstairs any moment.

She couldn't face the questions he would ask if he saw her cheeks glowing red as a stoplight. However, it was only logical to sit in the porch glider in the dark. Her bare feet made no sound on the smooth, painted boards of the porch, as she practically leaped for the glider.

She tugged the silky stuff of her skirt over her knees and tried to persuade her heart to beat more regularly She hoped she wasn't going to lose her nerve. She was very afraid she probably would.

In seconds she heard him calling to her.

"I'm out here." She tried to make her voice light, casual. "It's amazingly warm for October, and the mosquitoes aren't bad."

And then he was there. In the doorway, silhouetted against the light. He stood, barefoot as usual, feet apart, hands relaxed. She couldn't say later what made it happen right at that moment. Broad shoulders, yes, narrow hips, sculpted arms and legs, the proud carriage of his head, all limned with gold—but she'd recognized his extraordinary masculine beauty before.

It was just that he looked so exactly, absolutely right.

As inevitable as a waterfall. As indisputable as a mathematical proof. She was in love with him.

Her heart turned over in her chest.

Some part of her noted the wrenching, twisting sensation with almost clinical detachment. She'd thought it was a metaphor. She'd had no idea such things actually happened.

She felt like a tree that has been sawed through, yet still stands, just waiting for the nudge, the errant breeze that will topple it.

Pickett forgot all her plans. For now all she could do was act normal while trying to assimilate the shock.