SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (4 page)

Then she knelt in front of Tyler and looked directly into his face. "You know that you are the king, don't you?"

Tyler shook his head and pointed at Jax.

"Uh-uh. When it comes to
this
castle, you're the king," she told Tyler, with a conspiratorial jerk of her head toward Jax. "Can't you see how strong he is? On this castle," she gave a magic nose twitch, "he's the bulldozer."

Tyler ducked his head and giggled.

Pickett's face lit up with humor, and a flick of her gold-flecked eyes invited Jax to share it with her. Her glance lingered longer than it had to. A lot longer.

She inhaled sharply, then stood up, slapping sand from her knees. "I think you two will do fine without me, now. I'd better get back to work closing up the cottage."

With a polite "Nice to meet you" and a cheerful wave, she was gone, striding with light grace across the slipping sand.

That poised grace was the first thing he had noticed about her, when he'd seen her standing on the deck of the cottage next door.

With the sun in his eyes she'd been only a feminine shape. But he knew, even then, no matter how she moved, all parts of her would be in exquisite balance. She'd invested the simple act of standing with a regal air as if a flick of her finger would command him to come to her.

Jax added some arrow slits to the tower he was building. His eyes crinkled. Apparently, she was right. He washers to command. He and Tyler were building a sand castle, weren't they?

But she was aware of him, too. She might hold her head at that snooty angle and try to save all her warm smiles for Tyler, but sometimes she forgot. And then the heat between them ...
yowsa.

"Dig over here." Tyler indicated a section of the moat he wanted widened, and Jax obligingly moved beside him to begin scooping.

He could have her, he mused, pressing the sides of the moat. It would take some work ... he crunched the thought like an empty beer can. Okay, he admitted he had a weakness for women like that, challenging women who turned on his hunting instincts, but he was a man who learned from his mistakes.

Women like Pickett were high-maintenance. They expected a lot. Too much. Marriage to Danielle had taught him all he wanted to know about high-maintenance women.

Now he looked for women who could be satisfied with what was left over from his SEAL career. Easygoing, good-natured women who knew the score. Those relationships didn't last, either, but nobody got hurt. It was a price he paid.

The tide was coming in, filling the moat he and Tyler had dug, making Tyler crow with delight, but also sucking away some of the exterior fortifications. Deep blue shadows striped the beach as the sun sank into the sound behind the cottages.

Tyler's arms and legs were coated with sand. His hair stood up from his forehead where he had pushed it back with a sandy hand. His red striped shirt was wrinkled and his matching red shorts were wet up one leg and across the bottom. Those fancy designer clothes were fairly well wrecked. Jax grinned. At least he looked like a boy.

A retreating wave carved out a section of rampart Jax had just reinforced.

"That's it, Tyler. It's time to go in."

"No. I don't want to." The whispered protest from the suddenly hunched-over child was almost inaudible.

It wasn't often that anyone told Jax no. He encouraged his men to disagree, to freely share their opinions about the best way to accomplish an objective, but once he told them to move, they moved.

"Now. Move it."

Short dark lashes screening his gray eyes, Tyler hunched even further, exposing the vulnerable nape of his neck that looked too slender to hold his head. "I don't want to," he mumbled even more softly.

Jax's lean jaw tightened in an all-too-familiar, helpless frustration, then he shrugged. Tyler's refusal was progress, he supposed. Before they had worked together on the sand castle, Tyler rarely spoke to him at all.

He tossed the toy trucks into the pail, then tucking the unresisting child against his hip, headed up the beach stairs.

On the deck, Tyler neither cooperated nor fought as he was peeled out of his sandy clothes and rinsed under the deck shower. Jax ignored Lauren's screech at the sight of the naked kid being thrust through the door. He wondered how she gave Tyler a bath without looking at him naked. Jax thought the little white buns disappearing into the back bedroom were kind of cute.

"Tyler," he called out on impulse. When the beautifully shaped little head snapped toward him, he grinned mischievously and gave a broad wink. Whatever response he hoped for did not happen. Tyler went a little pale and ducked into his room.

Jax faced the beach and gripped the weathered deck rail hard enough to crumble splinters from it. It wasn't as if he usually did the right thing where Tyler was concerned, but
damn.
He didn't know why the sight of Tyler's face bothered him so much. He'd wanted the little guy to grin back and share a guy moment, but it hadn't happened. So what?

Until the light was almost gone, Jax watched their castle melt in the oncoming breakers.

Through the sliding-glass doors, Jax could see Tyler in dry shorts and shirt playing with his trucks on the floor. Didn't the kid ever do anything but play with those trucks?

Tyler didn't scoot over when Jax opened the slider, so Jax stepped over him rather than edging around. It looked like the concord they had reached as they'd built ramps and molded turrets was over.

He was acting once again like his father was invisible—or like he wished he was.

Baffled, Jax wondered again if Lauren was right. Had he really seen Tyler so rarely in his short life that he didn't know what the kid was like?

But damn it, he'd seen him as often as he could, and if Danielle hadn't been such a bitch about visitation, he'd have seen him more. If he missed a visit because his leave was cancelled—all too likely—or because he was away on training, Danielle wouldn't allow him to make it up. He had to wait for the next scheduled visit, when the same thing could happen.

But the thing was, for a little while on the beach, Tyler had seemed more like the kid he remembered.

"Jax." Lauren stood at the cooktop in the kitchen area patting chicken pieces with a paper towel. Her glazed eyes indicated she'd already made inroads on the cocktail hour. "I've decided to make fresh corn salsa to go with the chicken, and I'll need cilantro. Would you go to the supermarket on the causeway and get some?"

Jax might think his ex-mother-in-law was a vain, silly, shallow woman, but she was a good cook, a hobby she indulged mostly at the beach. He'd rather take a shower, but it was a small enough thing to do for her.

"Sure," he said, sliding into sandals and pulling on a T-shirt. He was reaching for his wallet and keys when his cell phone beeped. He glanced at the caller ID. His lawyer.

"Okay, Mancini," he said without preamble, "why are you calling so late?"

"I wanted to tell you I'm faxing the custody papers with the changes Lauren asked for. I gotta tell you, it looks to me like this woman is after money. Are you sure you want to give her permanent custody?"

Jax stepped through the sliders and pulled them closed behind him. The air on the deck seemed even warmer and more humid than before the sun had set. He hunkered down beside the hose, and turned on the water. Tucking the phone in the crook of his neck, he rinsed one arm, then the other. Had he been far enough from the spill of light from the great room, he would have stripped and stepped naked under the outdoor shower.

"We've been over this before. I paid Danielle alimony as well as child support. Why shouldn't I pay Lauren a living allowance? Anyway, I remain in control of Tyler's trust fund."

"So consider joint custody."

"Joint custody isn't feasible." What the hell. Jax whipped off his T-shirt and sluiced water over his chest, letting his shorts get wet. "I'm out of the country more than I'm in it. When I'm in the country, I work thirty-six-hour days. Fixing things so that my signature is required will just result in delays and foul-ups."

"Well, think it over one more time before you sign these papers. Tyler's too young to live with you now, but in a few years, he won't be. Once you give up custody of Tyler, it'll be hard to get back."

As Jax reached for the beach towel that hung over the deck rail, he looked through the glass doors at the child quietly crashing a toy blue Camaro off the sofa. He was already so different from the boisterous kid Jax remembered. In a few years, he wouldn't know him at all.

The pain that sliced through him took him totally by surprise. His own father hadn't known him. Ultimately had nothing to give him except money. Was that going to happen to him and Tyler? He pushed the thought away. He was nothing like his father. His father was a lawyer. He could have come home from his big-time money-making whenever he wanted to.

"Jax, I'm talking to you like a friend here. I'm faxing the paper, but you don't have to sign it. We can at least come up with a visitation agreement that's fairer to you."

"It's essentially the same as the agreement I had with Danielle."

"Yeah. Well, it stank then and it stinks now."

Jax glanced at Tyler through the sliders. Why did he sit like that, crouched over his trucks? And why was he, Jax, arguing? Everything Mancini said was what he had been thinking just a minute ago.

"You know what, Mancini, you're right. Let me think it over and call you back tomorrow. In the meantime, go home to your kids."

Jax closed the phone and stepped back through the sliders.

"Tyler, do you want to ride to the grocery? We'll pick up some ice cream for dessert."

There was no answer from the small figure. "Tyler, you heard me. Do you want to go?" A tiny headshake was the only answer.

Okay, they were back to that. No talk, no eye contact.

Jax let himself out the door.

As if she were the only woman in the place, he saw her almost as soon as he stepped into the brightly lit supermarket. For the space of a skipped heartbeat, he thought his wish to see if he could coax a response from her had come true.

Even with her back turned, he'd know that queenly carriage anywhere. She looked all smooth and demure with her gold curls clasped once again at her nape. Expensive slacks, the color of vanilla ice cream, and her red silk blouse no longer fluttered in a stiff breeze but flowed from breast to hip.

She was deep in conversation with the deli clerk. Over and over, she would point to an item in the glass case, listen to the clerk's reply, then shake her head and point to another item.

Jax's fantasy of asking her for a date vanished with an almost audible pop. She was apparently going to make the clerk describe every single one of the prepared dishes before she made up her mind.

Oh, this lady with the superior attitude was high maintenance all right. This was one choosy woman. No wonder she reminded him of Danielle.

Nah. He might still have a knee-jerk attraction to women like her, but he was older and wiser now. He didn't need the grief.

He turned toward the produce aisle.

Like prey that knows it has been spotted, Pickett felt the man's eyes on her. Jax. He was here. He was looking at her. Vital and elemental from his sweat-dried hair to his strong brown feet, he seemed incongruous in a place as tame as grocery store. His face was impassive, his light-gray eyes cold and remote. A small shiver chased over her scalp. This was a dangerous man. Not just one of the military, he was a true warrior, a hunter.

He nodded almost imperceptibly and walked away.

Well. When somebody turns his back, literally, the body language is pretty clear. She'd already reminded herself a thousand times that she was Not Interested, so she refused—she absolutely
refused
—to feel disappointment.

It took a minute for the deli clerk's impatient voice to shake her from her daze. "So have you decided, ma'am?
Ma'am?"