SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (43 page)

"In that case, why are you calling me now?"

"Because Grace called me and
she
said he was a stud."

"Grace? Our uptight, perfectionist, exquisitely restrained sister? She said the word 'stud?'"

"Boggles the mind, doesn't it? What's going on, Pickett? Start talking."

It felt good to unburden. Pickett found herself going into detail about how far beyond her wildest dreams being desired by a man like Jax had been. About how gentle he was with her and Tyler despite his great strength. His intelligence, her respect for him. Only to Lyle would she have said what she thought about sex before Jax and what she thought about it now.

As she talked, Pickett came to see that Jax had given her his respect at every turn, treating her like his equal, a very different equal, true, but still someone on his level. Now she could put a name to the loss she felt. She had lost his respect. Nevertheless, she knew she had to be sensible. She loved him now, but how long would that love survive her resenting him because he would never be the man she wanted him to be? She had saved him and herself, not to mention Tyler, from a world of pain.

"It would never be the kind of stable, dependable life I've always wanted," she concluded.

Lyle made a rude sound. "Since when did stability mean that much to you? If you had wanted
stable
you could have stayed in Goldsboro and gone to work for Mental Health. Instead you go off to a house that is just barely habitable, and you work at two jobs, either of which could blow away tomorrow."

"Lyle, marriage is different. If coming to Snead's Ferry didn't work out, I could always do something else. You know how much I hate the attitude some people have that if the marriage doesn't work out they can always get a divorce. When I get married I intend it to be forever." Pickett pulled the clip from her hair and ran her fingers through it. "How can I enter into a marriage with a SEAL, knowing that the odds are overwhelmingly against it succeeding? They have a ninety-five percent divorce rate. Ninety-five percent! I'd have to be either a fool or a hero to take on something like that—and I'm neither."

Lyle let out a huge sigh. "Mother would swear she didn't put any pressure on her children to achieve, but we've all got issues around making the grade, and succeeding. In your own way you're as much a perfectionist as Grace is. You believe you know all the rules for making a marriage, and now nothing will do for you but a perfect one." Lyle was silent a minute while she gathered her thoughts. "Pickett, I think you're asking the wrong question. If you don't love him, that's one thing. But if you do love him, if you love that little boy and want to be his mother, then is it really about succeeding or failing?"

"What is the right question?"

"Is this marriage something you can put your heart into?"

After talking a while about the gallery in South-port that had shown some interest in Lyle's paintings, Pickett heard Tyler getting up from his nap and racing to the bathroom downstairs as he always did upon waking up, Lucy clattering behind him. Pickett said good-bye, and was hanging up when she caught sight of Jax coming around the house, a wet Hobo Joe beside him. From the looks of Jax's wet shorts, they had both been swimming. He rinsed the big dog then allowed him to play at biting the water as it came from the nozzle for a few minutes before turning the hose on himself.

The weather had finally begun to feel like autumn in the last few days, and although it was still warm in the middle of the day, by sunset it was getting chilly. Pickett felt sympathetic shivers chase over her, when Jax, having rinsed his hair, shook the water out of his eyes and stuck the hose down the front of his shorts.

Didn't he experience discomfort or did he feel it and ignore it? He felt pleasure—that was for sure. He was such an intensely physical man and approached sex with an exuberant carnality, making explicit the delight he drew from her body's every texture and taste and smell. And he always gave her his body for her pleasure with the same generosity.

Pickett' face grew warm at the thought of some of the things that he could get her to do.

The questions Lyle had raised rumbled through her mind like wheels on cobblestones.
Was
she looking for a marriage that fit all the right criteria so that she wouldn't have to put her heart into it? How much had she focused on the fact that it couldn't last because she was simply afraid of failure?

Pickett was watching him. Jax didn't need to look for her face at the kitchen window to be sure, but he did—just for the extra pleasure of finding her. Who would have thought the situational awareness that had been trained into him would pay off in this feeling of connection so intense he always knew where she was and sometimes, like now, what she was thinking?

He grinned. He knew that intent, almost studious look. She was thinking about sex. But something else too.

Well, if she was thinking about sex, maybe he hadn't messed up too bad. He had sure gone about asking her to marry him in the most half-assed kind of way. The swim in the sound had helped him get his head back together.

The tide had been out and he'd had to wade through the warm, shallow water almost a hundred yards to find water deep enough to swim in. He moved the hose deeper down his shorts. He'd stumbled into quicksand in a couple of places and the slurry of fine sand and water guaranteed grit would make it into every fold and crevice.

It had bothered him some—okay, a lot—to find out Pickett thought he was such a bad relationship risk that she would never have looked at him if she'd thought he was serious about her. But hey, Corey was the only person who had ever wanted him just because he was himself. It didn't matter. He wanted her for Tyler.

And for himself.

He liked the way she touched him. He liked sleeping on sheets that smelled like her. He even liked that she was always thinking of things for him to fix, and she didn't hesitate to keep him in line.

When she was all tidy in her prim little professional outfits, he liked planning how he would mess her up as soon as she got home.

He could live with the fact that she gave her love everywhere, impartially. After all, he was benefiting too. But he didn't like the thought of her going on to some other man. Uh-uh. That was not going to happen.

She would want children. More kids would be good. Maybe a little girl. He could picture her round and ripe with his child. The thought was amazingly erotic. And thanks to his dad, he had money. She wouldn't have to live on a lieutenant's salary.

His proposal had been too sudden. Pickett liked to think things over. So he'd give her a little time. Then a romantic dinner, some wine, a little mood music, show her a ring. He could make this work.

Waiting for the fireworks to begin, Pickett stood on the fantail of the pier watching the last lavender glow of daylight turn to bright indigo behind the cottages on the shore.

She'd braced herself for an evening of terse sentences and stiff silences while they fulfilled their promise to Tyler, but Jax was acting remarkably cheerful for a man whose proposal had been turned down. He didn't act like his heart was broken.

Which meant she'd done the right thing to refuse him, didn't it? Whether she was in his life or out of it didn't really make much difference to him. He looked at ease as he listened politely to the elderly man who had buttonholed him. He stood still without looking stiff. No shifting his weight on his sandaled feet, no random shoving hands in his jeans pockets. He was just absolutely present.

She, on the other hand, was growing edgier with every passing minute. Like a cut lip she couldn't keep her tongue away from, her mind raced over reasons why she couldn't marry him.

With restless fingers she pulled the scarf out that she had tucked into her light denim jacket, and folded it into a bandeau to keep her hair from blowing into her eyes.

She wished she could refold her thoughts and tie them up differently, but there was no way to do that. There was only an echoing hollowness she'd have to learn to live with. The bottom line was always the same. She couldn't marry Jax while wanting him to change.