Emmie accepted the punch and sipped it, looking around. “Uh-oh. There’s Uncle Teague.” She grimaced. “I guess I have to speak to him-unless,” she added hopefully, “you think I really am too tipsy and probably shouldn’t, lest I make a fool of myself?”
“’Fraid not, kitten.” Do-Lord tapped her softly on her small, straight nose. He’d been tracking Calhoun the last couple of hours, as politician that he was, he worked the room. He would have gotten Emmie near him sooner or later, but to have Calhoun approach him was perfect. Still, he wasn’t faking his commiseration. He liked this playful, uninhibited Emmie, and now that he knew it wasn’t entirely chemically induced, he would have liked a little more time with her. Knowing it would be seen, he tightened his arm around Emmie briefly. “Too bad, but I think he’s seen you, and he’s heading this way.”
“Emmie, little Emmie!” Calhoun outstretched a tanned hand. His prematurely white, wavy hair and tanned, unlined face gave him a look of solid, mid-life vigor. His wide, sparkling white smile made it clear that nothing could have delighted him more than seeing Emmie, and he instantly fulfilled Emmie’s prediction. “You look just like your mother. How are you darlin’?”
Emmie rolled her eyes at Do-Lord as she accepted a kiss on the cheek from Calhoun. “Hello, Uncle Teague. Uncle Teague, may I present Chief Petty Officer Caleb Dulaude? Caleb, this is Senator Teague Calhoun and his wife, Charlotte.”
They shook hands all around. Calhoun’s hand was dry and firm, the clasp quick.
“Where are you from, son?”
Do- Lord didn’t like anyone to call him son. It was usually a power play, disguised as concern. It was a way of saying, “I’m the big guy. You’re the little guy.” Anybody who doubted it should try responding, “Well,
Dad
…”
“Alabama,” Do-Lord said aloud. He offered only the slightest inclination of his head.
Calhoun’s smile widened. “My father was from Alabama. He moved to North Carolina, but I still have relatives there. Where in Alabama are you from?”
“Near Rose Hill. There’s a portrait of-I guess it would be your father-in the town library.” It was a calculated risk, mentioning the portrait. He didn’t want Calhoun to suspect him yet, but he couldn’t resist the opportunity to drop a clue. After all, although he and Calhoun resembled each other very little, the portrait had been his first clue that his mother’s stories were not entirely products of her imagination.
“Well, well, well. It’s a small world, isn’t it? You probably know my cousins.”
Not likely.
Even in a place as small as Rose Hill, people from Calhoun’s class moved in orbits that rarely converged with those of trailer trash. He’d known some of them by sight, though. Heard about their doings. Anything a Calhoun did was news in the whole county. Suddenly, Do-Lord’s breathing jammed. Those cousins were
his
cousins.
“Caleb and I were saying this afternoon that no matter where you go, you meet people you have connections to,” Emmie put in. “In fact, he has a direct connection to
you.
”
Oh, shit. Do-Lord jerked back from his daze of memories that were suddenly re-sorting themselves. For one confused second he couldn’t remember what he’d told her about Calhoun. Not that, surely. Had she somehow read his mind?
She turned to Do-Lord. “What did you say? You were ‘tasked to protect him?’”
Relief made the blood pound in his temples. He slammed the inner door on feelings that kept submerging him. He had to stop lagging behind the conversation and get ahead of it.
“You know, some SEALs saved my life in Afghanistan,” Calhoun boomed. “Say, was that
your
unit? I asked to meet them when I met with Admiral Stoner-wanted to have my picture taken with the sharpshooter.”
“Active SEALs’ pictures can’t appear in the media.”
“Why not?” Emmie asked.
“’Cause none of his buddies would want to be seen standing next to him.” Emmie gave him a blank look. “A lot of SEAL work is covert. The last thing we want is our fifteen minutes of fame. The picture would be everywhere on the Internet in a matter of hours, and terrorist groups would be using it for target practice. Terrorist organizations don’t like us much.”
“That’s what the Admiral told me,” the senator affirmed. Charming and charismatic, full of bonhomie, he still didn’t let the conversation veer away from him for more than a couple of seconds. The awareness steadied Do-Lord. He was back in the game. “And I guess you can’t say whether that was your unit.”
“No, sir.”
“Well, let me shake your hand again anyway-as a way of saying
thank you
to all our Special Operations.”
Charlotte Calhoun held out her hand. “I’d like to add my thanks, too,” she said in a soft voice. Turning to Emmie, she asked, “Have you two known each other long?”
“Uhm, no…”
Do- Lord gave Emmie an intimate smile. “Just long enough.”
“I’ve got an idea”-the senator beamed-“Emmie, why don’t you bring Chief Dulaude along to our Christmas open house? What’s the date, Charlotte, the fourteenth? I’ll make sure you get invitations. We used to leave the door open and tell our friends to come on in-just like it says. Now, they’ve got to have invitations and be checked off a master list. Hell of a world we’re living in.”
“Uh, I don’t know-”
“We’d love to.” With a wide smile Caleb forestalled her attempt to think of an excuse. Hot day-umn! He’d known Emmie could provide access to Calhoun, but he never expected it to be this easy.
“Can I refresh your drink, sir?” he asked, pointing to the nearly empty glass in the older man’s hand.
“I’d appreciate it.” Calhoun handed over the glass, a pale green paper cocktail napkin wrapped around its base. “Bourbon please. Something else for you Charlotte, Emmie?”
Charlotte shook her head, and Emmie admitted she was cut off. Do-Lord left them discussing the need for Emmie’s sling and the evils of mixing meds and alcohol.
As soon as he was out of their sight, he carefully inserted the highball glass into the zip plastic bag he had tucked in his pocket for this purpose. Calhoun had even had a napkin on the bottom of the glass, so Do-Lord hadn’t touched the glass and risked contamination of the sample.
Do- Lord knew who Calhoun was. He didn’t think he needed DNA proof, but it paid to make sure of one’s facts. Only Calhoun’s DNA would be on the glass, which would make the results indisputable.
As Emmie said, sometimes things went right.
“Can we have a drumroll please?” Jax called out as he placed his fingers around Pickett’s on the cake knife. The band’s drummer obliged, and when the cake slice touched down on the dessert plate Pickett held in her other hand, he finished with a cymbal ba-dum-dum-CHING! Grace looked on proudly.
Ignoring the advice yelled by some of their audience, Jax tipped a forkful of cake into Pickett’s laughing mouth, while she used her fingers to slip a frosting-laden bite between his lips. Pickett reached for a napkin, but Jax pulled her fingers to his mouth. The movement of his mouth against her fingers wasn’t blatant, but it was unquestionably sexy. Pickett’s cheeks flamed bright coral. The saxophone moaned. The drummer added a slide-whistle. Not to be outdone, the guitarist threw in some hot licks, which the drummer had to punctuate with more cymbal action.
The room erupted in laughter, applause, and a few
whoo-hoo
s
!
Emmie and Do-Lord shared a secret smile.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the band leader announced. “I give you Lt. Commander and Mrs. Jackson Graham.” The band swung into “The Way You Look Tonight.”
It was done. Emmie sank into a chair at one of the tables near the dance floor, so she could watch Pickett and Jax take their first dance as a married couple. Tears stung her eyes, but she didn’t want to cry. She wasn’t sad. She was happy for Pickett.
She and Pickett had seen this day coming for a long time. Planned for it, even. And promised each other that they would never let happen what they had seen happen with some of their other friends. She and Pickett wouldn’t lose their connection.
On the dance floor, Jax stopped pretending to hold a dance pose and put both arms around Pickett, letting his cheek rest on Pickett’s gold curls. He skimmed his palm down Pickett’s arm, and tears heated Emmie’s eyes again. Pickett had found someone who loved her, valued her, respected her. The gesture said everything about how he treasured her. It was right that Pickett had found someone to love her this way. Pickett had earned her moment. The scene blurred with tears Emmie refused to let spill.
She wasn’t emotional. Really. It was just that the wedding was over, and Emmie felt a little flat. Nothing rose to take its place. Emmie could feel herself fading back into the woodwork now that there was no longer anything she was supposed to do. She accepted her place on the edge of people’s lives. She knew how often others forgot she existed. She dressed so no one would notice her in an attempt to make it understandable for people to forget her. Occasionally, she feared she might forget her own self.
She wasn’t losing Pickett, but even if she thought she was, she loved her too much to mar her wedding with tears or trying to hold her back.
Her head felt more floaty than ever. Emmie touched the shorter ends of her hair. It was hard to keep her fingers away. Everything was strange. She was happy for Pickett, and they would talk, of course, but the course of Pickett’s life was altered now. So was hers. For many years she and Pickett had been not only best friends but each other’s emotional support. Emmie had even taken the job at UNC-Wilmington, at least in part, because Pickett lived in the area.
The thought of returning to her soulless apartment and going through the Christmas holiday before classes resumed in January had little charm. She and Pickett had always braved the crowds together for last minute gifts, helped decorate one another’s trees, and seen the New Year in together, either because they were at the same party or decided to forego that year’s offering.
Emmie had other friends, of course, but most were more colleagues than companions. With the excitement of Pickett’s wedding waning, she had time to consider the future, and Emmie’s future looked a little bleak.
She had focused on Pickett’s needs exclusively for several days. Perhaps it was the sudden cessation of her supporting role that made her see that her life wasn’t about her. If someone made a movie of Emmie’s life, she wouldn’t be the central character.
She lived her life in muted colors, staying in the background. She had thought it was the way she liked it.
But she looked around the beautiful room, and yearning stirred in her. She wanted the sense of color for herself, wanted the surges of sound, the glitter, the rich intensity of feeling a thousand emotions.
And she wanted it more than she needed to stay in the background.
“Would you like to dance?” Do-Lord’s question called attention to the fact that other couples were joining Jax and Pickett on the dance floor.
Yes, she wanted to dance. She wanted to feel the rhythm through her bones. She wanted to twirl and soar. She wanted the awareness of herself that quivered across her skin whenever his changeable eyes swept over her. “I don’t dance very well,” she felt obliged to say.
He nodded, and his eyes left her to glance around the room. He’d taken her apology as refusal. She could let the moment go by. It might already be too late, and the disappointment dragging in the wake of
that
thought stung her into action.
“But I’d like to dance anyway,” she said.
Chapter 14
“Okay if I clear this table?”
Caleb gestured his assent and looked at his watch. The first wedding he’d ever been to was winding down. Apparently, what he heard about people hooking up at weddings was true. Davy had, predictably, left awhile ago with his arm around a girl, and-
big
surprise-
Lon
had gone back to his hotel room with Jax’s ex-mother-in-law! Both of them were going to get lucky, which he wasn’t, even if Emmie was willing. It was too soon.
Emmie was no live-for-the-moment party girl. Letting her do something she might regret would be the biggest mistake he could make. Inserting himself as a sleeper, an agent who becomes part of a society, able to wait years to strike if necessary, made this his most covert operation ever. He wanted to be in solid and long-term with these people, and that meant he must build slowly. He could wait. He had no doubt he’d have his chance at Emmie, sooner or later, and he intended to enjoy it when he did.
In the meantime, the more they expected to see him around, the better. To that end he approached Grace. With an enlisted man’s sensitivity to lines of command he had observed that, without ceding one ounce of her power, Pickett’s mother delegated most of her authority to Grace. People more often looked to Grace for direction than to Pickett’s mother. Leaning closer to be heard over the band, which was playing to a thinning crowd of dancers, he said, “As soon as she comes back from the ladies’ room, I’m going to take Emmie home. Is there anything I can do for you, before we leave?”
“All these presents”-Grace indicated a table piled with boxes, all wrapped in white paper and tied with white bows-“have go to my mother’s house. Since you’re going there, do you have room for some?”
“I’m in my truck. I have room for them all.” He would make sure a couple got “left” in his truck, so he’d have to go back to the house in the morning.
“Would you? That’s great. Thank you. And thank you for looking after Emmie. She’s a member of the family, you know. And she’s been such a trooper.” Do-Lord could almost see Grace going down her mental list and checking items off. “Oh, and would you make sure she gets her next dose of medication? Emmie’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, but she lives in another world, you know?”