SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... (7 page)

Jax placed the last of Lauren's Louis Vuitton luggage in the trunk of her silver Lexus and closed it. "I'll call you when I know where Tyler and I will be staying."

Lauren didn't answer. An improvement, Jax considered. It beat the hell out of the ranting that had gone on as he had carried her suitcases down.

Now she put her handbag in the car and held out her arms to Tyler.

"Come give Gan-gan a kiss."

Tyler went to her with slow steps, his head down.

She lifted his face in her hands. "You want to go to Gan-gan's house, don't you?" Tyler's eyes never met hers; his headshake was almost imperceptible.

Lauren made her eyes go big with horror. "You don't want to stay here and let the hurricane get you, do you?" Again, a tiny shake. "Then you make your daddy bring you to Gan-gan's house. You'll be safe there."

"Gan-gan left me." Tyler gazed at the departing Lexus with a very old look on his smooth little face. This morning Lauren had dressed him in another of his coordinated outfits, a blue polo shirt with sailboat doodads embroidered on the collar and matching sailboats on the legs of the shorts. Under the blue shirt, Tyler's shoulders lifted once, then fell.

Jax didn't know how to interpret Tyler's expression; still, seeing his son look like
that
caused something inside him to ache like an old wound.

"Come on inside." Jax held out his hand to Tyler. Tyler didn't take it, but followed obediently. "Let's finish packing up."

"Stay close to me, Tyler," Jax snapped, even though Tyler wasn't doing anything wrong. Clutching his red toy sack, he obediently stood beside his father in the parking lot of the hotel. Jax squeezed his eyes shut in a fruitless effort to blot out his shame at snapping without reason. What the hell was the matter with him?

Jax had made quick work of closing up the cottage after Lauren left. He'd hoped with just the two of them, Tyler might be forced to deal with him and start talking more. It hadn't worked that way. Instead, without her jittering presence to distract them from each other, Tyler's silence went from uncommunicative to nerve-racking. Impossible to penetrate, impossible to ignore.

Now that they were inland, the heat seemed twice what it had been on the beach; the supersaturated air and no hint of breeze made it impossible for sweat to evaporate. The cloud cover had thickened; the light was dull and shadowless. Elvira wasn't due to come ashore until the early hours of the morning, but a hurricane, even a small one like Elvira, was big.

Jax retrieved his duffle and Tyler's designer suitcase. Who knew there was designer luggage for kids? Jax expelled a pained laugh at himself. In order to distract himself
now
he was glomming onto insignificant details like suitcases and the quality of the light, but it was way the hell better than snapping at Tyler.

Despite Lauren's predictions, a hotel room had been easy to come by, although the desk clerk warned him his reservation would be held only for an hour. Fortunately, the new Highway 17 bypass put him in the historic section of Wilmington in half the time it used to take. Jax checked his watch. They'd made it in time.

Jax was proud of his choice of hotel. It was adjacent to the historic Southern Railway terminal, which had been rehabbed into a convention and expo center. Though it overlooked the Cape Fear river, folks back then had known how to build, and even more important, where to build. High water posed no threat to it.

Jax slung his duffle over his shoulder and tucked Tyler's suitcase under one arm. "Take my hand, Tyler."

Tyler hadn't let go of his sack of toys since his grandmother had left. He'd gone into the cottage, quietly collected all his cars, and tucked them into the red drawstring sack. The sack was hard and lumpy and so heavy the strings dug into the soft skin of his wrists, but he hadn't put it down, not once.

Now he tried to tuck it under one arm to give his father his hand, but it was too big and too heavy for one little arm. Tyler jerked his hand back to prevent the bag from slipping to the ground.

"Give me the sack," Jax said, "and take my hand."

Tyler shook his head emphatically, and pulled the sack closer to his chest.

"You can't carry it and walk. Come
on,
Tyler."

The hotel parking lot was crowded, and Tyler's head wasn't visible above the fenders of the cars. A driver could be right on Tyler before he saw him. Jax believed in picking his battles, but now was the moment to enforce obedience. One flick and Jax would have the bag out of Tyler's arms and grab his hand.

As if divining Jax's intention, Tyler wheeled away and hunched his shoulders in a vain attempt to shield his sack.

Tyler's attempt to protect his toys was so desperate and so brave, respect and pride lumped together in Jax's throat.

"Okay, son," Jax soothed, "okay." He clasped Tyler by the shoulder, biting back a curse when he felt the tiny flinch. "Stay right with me, though."

In the paneled lobby, Tyler halted and looked around. He hefted his sack further up his chest. "What is this place?"

Jax nudged him toward the desk. "A hotel."

"Why did we come here?"

What kind of question was that? "To spend the night."

The lobby was crowded. People thronged at the desk two and three deep. An older man backed up without looking and stumbled over Tyler. He glanced down to see what he was tripping over and cursed, "Look out, kid!"

Tyler yelped as he was knocked against his father. Jax stepped forward to protect Tyler with his legs, at the same time grabbing the man to keep him from falling.

The man jerked himself away. "You need to keep that kid out from under foot!" he snapped, red-faced, straightening his shirt.

Jax dropped the duffle and suitcase and picked up Tyler and his lumpy sack, which the kid had held onto throughout the altercation. "You okay, buddy?"

Tyler was white around his lips but with a little shuddering breath, he nodded. "Why do we have to spend the night here?" He wiggled and pushed at Jax's shoulders.

"Be still, Tyler." They had finally reached the front of the line. Jax shifted Tyler onto his hip to extract his wallet from his back pocket. To the desk clerk he said, "Reservation for Lt. Jackson Graham."

The clerk regarded him with the stony face of a woman who has already dealt with too many irate people to care about one more. "We stopped honoring reservations an hour ago."

"I made the reservation less than an hour ago."

The clerk rolled her eyes. "Whatever. It's first come, first served now," she said, "and you're too late. We're full."

Jax re-settled the squirming Tyler, and gave the clerk his most steely-eyed glare. "You mean you gave my reservation away? I drove past other hotels to get here."

"That's right ..." the woman looked into his face and added, "sir."

"What's right?"

"You could have stopped somewhere else. It happens all the time. In the meantime I would have turned people away."

"So instead, you let me drive all the way over here, missing out on other rooms I could have had." Jax reined in his ire. "I don't care, for myself, but I have a child with me."

The clerk's brown face softened with contrition. "Really, sir, I am sorry. The high-rise hotels, the big chains, will be filling up, but the smaller, independent motels might still have rooms. We're full mainly because of hurricane parties."

She had to be kidding. "Hurricane parties?"

"Hurr'cane?" Tyler stiffened, suddenly paying attention to the exchange.

"Yeah, it's not supposed to get too bad. A lot of people are treating it like New Year's Eve. They come here so they can party and then sleep through it." Raucous laughter from the lounge area adjacent to the lobby lent credence to her explanation. The party apparently was already in full swing. "The smaller places don't have bars, room service and stuff."

They also didn't have interior corridors, game rooms, and continental breakfast. At a small motel, once the storm hit, he and Tyler would be trapped in one very small room until it blew itself out. He had some milk and cheese in the cooler, but he hadn't brought things like cereal, thinking he'd return to the cottage in a day or two.

"Here's to Elvira," a voice shouted from the lounge.

"Yeah, bring that hurricane on."

Tyler's head jerked. "The hurr'cane's coming here?"

"If I was you," the desk clerk added, "I'd head inland. Two hours in any direction will get you all the rooms you want."

Tyler wiggled and patted his father's shoulder for attention. "The hurr'cane's coming
here?"

"Hush, Tyler. If I want to stay in Wilmington, what would you recommend?"

"The Bide-A-Wee on Independence Boulevard. The rooms are clean, no hookers, and there won't be drug deals going down in the parking lot—the way I guarantee there are in the hotels over on the interstate. Hang on. I'll call them and see if they have anything."

Tyler bounced on Jax's hip. "I don't wanna stay here," Tyler whined.

"You get your wish, Tyler. We're not staying."

Tyler bounced again. "Gan-gan said we gotta leave."

"Yes, sir." The clerk hung up the phone. "They have a room and they will save it for you. But I suggest you don't lose any time getting there." She pointed to Tyler. "Does he have to go to the bathroom?"