SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (37 page)

"So what do you think?"

Pickett didn't have one iota of objectivity to bring to this discussion, but Jax would keep on until he got an answer. She carved two more slices before she answered. "I think it will be very hard to provide Tyler with any sort of stability."

"So you think he should go to Lauren's?" He seemed determined to pin her down.

"I didn't say that." Pickett pushed a curl out of her eyes with the back of her hand, then leveled a look at Jax. "I can't say what you should do."

Jax took a step closer, crowding her toward the counter. "Are you being a therapist, now? Is this some of that nondirective bullshit?"

Pickett met his eyes with a don't-mess-with-me glare. "I can't separate who I am from what I do any better than you can." She took a calming breath, made her shoulders relax. "But no, I can't say what you should do, because I honestly don't know."

Jax took a turn about the room, looking out the window, hefting a knife, testing its balance. He pointed with the knife to Pickett's cutting board.

"Tyler's not going to eat the red pepper, you know. He's not eating red food today. I had to take the tomato off his burger at lunch."

Pickett shrugged. "More for me."

"See, that's what I like about you. Lauren ...
harangues
Tyler for things like that, and a week ago I would have tried to make him eat it. You never fuss."

Jax looked at the floor then turned worried eyes back to Pickett. "And I'll tell you what else: Lauren seems to ignore Tyler, almost forgets about him, until he does something she doesn't like. But it's like you're paying attention to him all the time. I'll bet you know where he is and what he's doing right this minute."

Pickett glanced out the window. "He's still under the magnolia. I think he pretends the roots are highways for his cars."

"That's what I mean. It's like your mind has put a tracking device on him. No matter where you are or what else you're thinking about, you are also aware of him."

Pickett tipped her head in a considering look. "You notice that?"

"I notice everything about you."

Shoot. Just when she had him figured, the relationship, or lack of one, firmly settled in her mind, he said something like that. How was she supposed to keep herself from wanting him to stay with her forever?

The kitchen suddenly felt ten degrees hotter, driven up undoubtedly by the look in his eyes. She hadn't seen him move and yet now they were touching thigh to thigh and his hard, warm palm was cradling her jaw.

"I want you." His voice was little more than a growl. "I want you so much. Right now."

He feels lust. Do not read anything else into it
But even as she issued firm instructions to herself, she felt herself growing moist, her body preparing to receive him.

Pickett reached a hand to smooth Jax's hair— okay, to give herself the pleasure of touching its silky thickness. She could feel his erection pressing against her belly.

She chuckled ruefully. "I think you've got me caught between a rock and a—" she brushed back and forth across the hard bulge—"hard place."

Jax clamped her bottom in strong fingers to hold her tighter against him and repeated the motion. His pale eyes in his brown face glittered with equal parts amusement and sexual intent. "Okay, what's the rock?"

"Think small boy. Hungry, tired, fussy. Coming in here any minute."

The deep breath Jax took pushed his chest tighter against her breasts, making Pickett nearly groan. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, and stretched a brown arm to pull forward the other chopping board. "Okay. But don't think I'm going to forget where we were. Do you want me to start cutting up the chicken?"

In a few minutes Pickett visually measured the pile of broccoli, onion, pepper, and snow peas and pronounced it sufficient. She brought the conversation back to how Jax could arrange for Tyler to live with him.

"How do you plan to make a home for Tyler in Little Creek?" Pickett studied the arrested expression on Jax's face. "What?"

"Make a home. I hadn't thought of it as making a home."

"What would you call it?"

"I don't know. Living where I live maybe."

"So where do you live?"

"I have an apartment. I don't exactly think of it as home, it's just the place I go."

"Hmm." Pickett set the pan on the heat.

"Up to now, all my thinking has been around finding someone to care for him when I'm gone. When I'm at the base, it's no biggie, he can go to day care, but SEALs have to be ready to go 'wheels up' in four hours."

"Wheels up?" She took oil from the cabinet and added it to the pan. "Like in a plane?"

"Or a helo—helicopter. SEALs constantly train, and our operations, well, they're not exactly scheduled a year in advance."

"How long are you gone?"

"A few days. A few weeks. Every two years there's a six-month deployment."

Pickett swirled the oil around the pan. "Hmm."

Jax leaned against the counter, arms crossed over his massive chest, one brown bare foot crossed over the other. "You know what? You scare the shit out of me when you go 'Hmm.' I wish you'd just say what you're thinking."

"I was imagining what it would be like for Tyler. You wake him up in the middle of the night and tell him you're leaving but you can't tell him where you're going or how long you'll be gone. Who's going to reassure him that everything's going to be okay?"

"I will. I always have a cell phone. I'll call him and talk to him."

"So you don't see yourself just going off and leaving him?"

"No, that's what I want to stop doing."

"Hmm." Pickett raked the onions and peppers into the pan. "Wait. I didn't mean
'hmm.'
I was processing."

"What were you processing?"

"That this is such a big change for you ..." She turned to face him. "Why does it scare you when I say 'hmm,'" she twinkled a little grin, "hmm?"

He gave her a sexy, sharkish grin in reply, but not before she caught sight of a look she couldn't define. Vulnerability? Loneliness? The timer for the noodles dinged before she could pursue it. "Dinner's ready. Call Tyler in."

Jax studied the woman sitting across from him. The setting sun filled the kitchen with a pinkish glow. A bar of gold light touched the gold of Pickett's hair with fire, emphasizing even further her vivid peach and blue and gold coloring. As always, she responded with animated interest to Tyler's prattling, and he responded to her by talking a blue streak.

Well he knew how that was. Jax found himself telling her things, and thinking over things she said more and more. Sometimes he thought it was like she had an extra set of senses that brought her information about the world, that made her notice things he'd completely overlooked. He had no idea where her mind was going next most of the time.

"Think of it as Chinese spaghetti," she told Tyler when he asked what was on his plate.
Chinese spaghetti.
He would have told the kid it was food. Jax forked up another bite. Fresh ginger and a little tang of lemon.

She listened, really listened, to everything he or Tyler said, and then she thought about it. He should have known she'd come back on his remark about being scared when she said "hmm." He should have kept his mouth shut. But that was what happened around her. Things came out of his mouth that he didn't know he was going to say— hell, that he didn't know he
thought

So why had he said it? It wasn't that he was intimidated by her intelligence. He liked smart women. Sex was a lot sexier when his mind was as engaged as his body.

No, that wasn't it. It was—the truth when it hit made his stomach do a back flip—he
cared
what she thought. Really cared. Pickett was the most nonjudgmental person he'd ever met. She never imposed her values on others, but she still had extremely high standards, and damn if he hadn't started caring about whether he was living up to those standards. Dammit, he knew the first time he saw her, Pickett was high maintenance. Turns out he was wrong about what made her high maintenance, but his gut hadn't lied.

It wasn't that she pouted or cried, or wanted him to show interest in things he wasn't interested in. She didn't demand that he account for his time, or show up with just the right present. He'd figured she was the kind who would fall in love and then have an endless list of demands that he change into someone different from who he was.

That's why he'd made sure she knew what she was getting with him.

But now, he wasn't even sure she was in love with him. She cared about him, sure, but she seemed to give her generous heart to everyone she met.

Nope. Turns out this lady was high maintenance because she'd somehow gotten inside his skin. Things that made a difference to her were beginning to make a difference to him. It was like he was carrying her around with him all the time, and that was changing him, making him think and do and say things he didn't mean to do.

It was going to take a couple of weeks to make all the arrangements for Tyler. He might even have to ask for extended leave. During that time he really needed someone Tyler trusted—someone like Pickett—to leave Tyler with while he got his plans shaped up.

But once he had things set up, he had to get Tyler and himself out of there, pronto. Things were getting out of hand.

Tyler was telling Pickett about his swimming lesson. His cheeks glowed with health now underneath his tan, and the little ribs were not so visible, the bones of his little shoulders not so pointy. His account of his prowess owed a lot to imagination but he was learning. He trusted the water now and his favorite part of every lesson was when Jax would swim breaststroke, the workhorse stroke for SEALs, with Tyler on his back.

Pickett was right about one thing. Everything about where and how he lived would have to change when Tyler came to live with him.

For starters, he'd need full-time live-in child care. And his two-bedroom apartment wouldn't be large enough. He had to find a new place to live, a nanny/housekeeper, a school for Tyler, and who knew what else.

He began to mentally assemble his team, sorting through whose skills made the best fit with the task to be accomplished.

Chief Petty Officer Lonnie Swales had a genius with logistics that would come in useful. Caleb "Do-Lord" Dulaude had a way of knowing where apartments were available. Jax didn't doubt he could ask Do-Lord and Lon to help him with a personal problem. SEALs were closer than brothers. If he needed their help, they would help him.

They would come from the ends of the earth if they needed to, but fortunately, they were right here, on a training exercise that Jax had been scheduled to participate in.

"Pickett," he spoke across the table, "some of my platoon are at the Marine base on a training exercise. Do you mind if I ask them to come over?"

"Not at all. How long have they been in the area? You could have invited them anytime."

"Unfortunately when you're training, you have weekends off but that's about it."

"You mean you're training twenty-four/seven?" "You have time to sleep, but that's about it." "Well tomorrow's Friday so ask them. If you want to we can grill hamburgers or something. I believe I would like to meet some more specimens of the genus: Navy SEALs." The light of intellectual challenge suddenly brought a sunny sparkle to the ocean of her eyes. "I could find out if you are the way you are, because you're the
same,"
she raised a gold eyebrow, "or because you're
different."

Jax ignored her deliberate provocation, then slyly raised the ante. "Don't you mean phylum, not genus?"

Pickett rolled her eyes, then huffed out a breath. "
Why
did you have to say that? Now I'm not going to be able to go to sleep until I look it up."