Sealed with a promise, page 23
“The SEAL.” Fairchild’s lip actually curled. “How did you get up here? The cameras only showed a woman on the stairs.”
The corner of Caleb’s mouth quirked with lazy mischief. “And yet, here I am.”
Why was he goading Fairchild? Emmie felt her knees get weak again. She was a terrible liar, but she’d already noted that Caleb was a skillful one. If Fairchild questioned her, she didn’t know what she would say.
“Dr. Caddington.” Fairchild turned flinty eyes her way. “I considered your grandmother a friend, so I can believe you didn’t mean to trespass. But if this man comes into this house again, by any means, he will be arrested.”
“No, wait!” Vicky, who had been watching the interchange between the adults, protested. “It was all-”
“Quiet, Vicky,” Fairchild snapped. “I’m not pleased with you either. I will have to explain to your mother your part in this. You should not have admitted this man to your room, and you know it. You should have informed security there were unauthorized people on the second floor.” He opened the door to the hall. “Escort Dr. Caddington and this man to the door,” he told the security guard who waited there. “Do not admit him to this house again, and if you see him anywhere near it, inform the police.”
“No, wait!” Vicky barred the door with her body. “Please. It isn’t fair. I’ll tell-”
Caleb touched her lightly on the arm. “Move out of the way, Little Bit.” At her mulish expression, he grinned. “You’ve got guts, but don’t get into more trouble, okay? It was nice to meet you.”
Chapter 23
“That went well, don’t you think?” Emmie, tongue in cheek, broke the silence just as they turned the corner for the final leg of the trip back to Emmie’s little house. “That was the first time someone ever saw me to the door in order to make sure I left.”
“There’s a saying in special operations. Every operation goes to shit thirty seconds after it hits the ground. I’m sorry you got caught in the splash.”
Emmie waved his apology away with one fine-boned hand. “If I’m never invited to their house again, I’ll be relieved. I told you before, the association was with my grandmother. But it just doesn’t seem right for you to be declared persona non grata when, really, they should be hailing you as a hero. And we only went so you could see Uncle Teague, and you didn’t even get a chance to talk to him.”
Do- Lord looked down at the woman walking beside him. The wind, no longer blocked by houses because they were on a street perpendicular to the river, was stronger. The breeze floated silvery pale strands of her hair, emphasizing the fey qualities of her face.
It also played with that teasing, flirty opening down the front of her red dress. He was fairly well convinced it wasn’t going to open and reveal her legs, and yet he couldn’t stop watching it-just in case it did.
She really was incensed on his behalf. From the first he’d seen her loyalty and her willingness to go to bat for a friend.
It felt strange to have loyalty given to him-espe-cially when he knew he hadn’t earned it-strange, but kind of warm, too.
“Forget it.”
“I don’t want to forget it. It isn’t fair.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, life isn’t fair.”
“It’s true life isn’t, but people can be. To say life isn’t fair when it’s people who make decisions not to treat people evenhandedly is a cop out. Mr. Fairchild made it clear that he was treating me like I was somebody, and you, like you were… I don’t know-” Emmie shrugged impatiently. “A criminal or something.”
The sky had clouded over, bringing on an early dusk, and no longer sheltered by houses, they could feel the full force of the breeze from the river.
Emmie crossed her arms over her chest and shivered. “It’s getting chilly. It’s warm when the sun is out, but as soon as it starts to go down, you’re reminded this is December.”
Do- Lord pulled off his sport coat and draped it over her shoulders. Curling his fingers into the lapels, he tugged her closer. Her wide blue eyes regarded him with curiosity and more than a hint of feminine anticipation.
The kiss they’d shared earlier had hummed between them ever since, tingling across nerve endings, sharpening his every sense until the importance of anything, anything but her, disappeared.
“Forget it, I said. It’s not important.” It certainly wasn’t important right now. For today, he had done all he could in his quest for justice for his mother. His desire for Emmie was unrelated to his pursuit of Calhoun, and from now on, he didn’t want Emmie involved.
Compartmentalizing was something every SEAL learned to do. Right now, it took no effort to stuff thoughts of Calhoun away. Desire flowed, hot and thick, deep in his center, and his heart beat in slow thuds. The only endeavor he wanted to focus on at this moment was kissing her.
“I want to kiss you.” He outlined her lips with his forefinger. “But the rest of what I want to do could get us arrested, if we do it in public.” When his finger brushed the corner of her mouth she… shimmered. It was the only word he knew for the tiny tremors of desire he felt flow through her. She was so responsive, as if she was already tuned to his frequency. “Be advised: once I start kissing you, I’m not going to stop.”
His words, a promise and a warning, echoed in Emmie’s head as they continued down the street. Christmas lights, twinkling red and green on porches, white lights outlining bare branches, punctuated the dusk of December nightfall, and the breeze wafted smells of supper cooking. By the time they arrived at Emmie’s house she was shivering constantly, but whether from cold or anticipation or trepidation, she couldn’t have said.
She wouldn’t have said she had ever taken sex lightly. No one raised by her grandmother could embrace an if it feels good, do it philosophy. It hadn’t been like this though. Not this heart- pounding, palm-sweating, breathless knowledge that she was diving over a cliff, and she was going to find out she really could fly, or she was going to crash horribly-and there was every possibility she would do both.
A blast of self-honesty showed her she’d chosen men in the past with whom she didn’t expect sexual attraction to be part of the equation. She and they had been far more buddies than lovers. She had looked at how little she had asked of those relationships and determined to ask for more. In the past few minutes she had begun to understand how little the relationships had required of her.
She had set out very deliberately to attract Caleb, and she had succeeded more emphatically than she had dreamed of, or prepared for. When she had asked him for commitment, he had agreed so readily she’d been suspicious.
However, she had seen at the Calhoun house that he could make lightning decisions, give his word instantly, and then abide by it-even when there was cost to himself. He could have ingratiated himself with Calhoun by telling on Vicky, and some people would say he should have. She’d had a lifetime of watching people who swore allegiance to moral positions, but whose scruples dissolved the instant they had something to lose or gain.
Integrity. That’s what she saw in him. He might not be a person who played by the rules, but promises he made, he would keep.
He had pocketed her keys after locking the door behind them when they set off, and now he drew them out as they went up the two shallow steps to her porch. In seconds he had the door open and was drawing her through it, into the deeper dusk inside, and into his warm embrace. At the sudden heat Emmie shivered even more violently.
“I haven’t been taking very good care of you,” he murmured in his burnt umber voice, as his hands chaffed her arms in long smooth strokes. “I let you get cold. I should have insisted on driving or made you wear a coat.”
“I haven’t been taking very good care of you,” Do-Lord whispered, pulling her slight form closer. That she could use a caretaker he didn’t doubt. She seemed so direct and guileless, a real lamb among the wolves. It was hard to imagine how she made her way in the world.
He had surprised himself a little, when he’d suggested marriage earlier. It wasn’t the kind of relationship it was ever smart to tease about. Do-Lord was a man capable of learning from other’s mistakes. He’d seen for himself that marriage didn’t work for most SEALs. He knew men who were paying alimony to as many as three ex-wives. He’d always assumed if he ever got married, and he figured he would, it would be after his twenty years was up. It hadn’t been a hard decision to stick to. Some men were prone to fall in love. Some weren’t. And yet, when she rejected the idea of marriage, he’d felt as much disappointment as relief.
His whole plan for breaching Calhoun’s defenses depended on having other people see them as a pair. Today though, he’d had a small taste of what being a couple with Emmie would feel like, and the funny thing was, he could imagine himself married to her. Where she gave her loyalty, she would give it without stint. He could have her always with him. Always on his side. He could imagine coming home to a house that smelled like her. Logging on at the end of the day and finding an email from her.
He thought he understood now what the attraction to falling in love was.
He slid his hands under the jacket he’d placed around her shoulders and let it fall unheeded to the floor. He found the crook of her shoulder with his lips. “How’s your shoulder?”
“A little stiff. I start physical therapy next week. Until then, I follow the rule of: ‘Keep your hands where you can see them.’”
“Okay.” He moved from the slight coolness of her cheek to the crook of her shoulder on the other side. “So no putting your hands above your head or behind your back. I can work with that. Anything else I need to know?”
“Wait.” Emmie squirmed away. “Why are you asking? What’s going on?”
“What do you think I mean?” Do-Lord laughed in disbelief, letting her pull away, but not outside arm’s reach. “You know where this is going. We’ve both been ready for hours.”
Emmie blushed, her clear white skin suffused with rosy color. “Well, yes, but… You know when you asked me earlier if there was anything else? I knew there was, but I couldn’t think of it. But I just remembered. We can’t. Really. Not yet.”
“Why the hell not?” He sounded testy. Hell, he was testy. No meant no. A girl didn’t have to have a reason, but he couldn’t believe he had read her so wrong. And this was the second time she’d called a halt, when he’d thought all the signals were go.
Emmie gave him her wide-eyed look. “Pickett says women shouldn’t have sex on the first date.” She thought. Visibly. “I can’t remember if she said men could have sex on the first date”-her brow cleared-“but I think the rule would be the same for men, don’t you?”
All the blood must have left his brain to fill his groin. Pickett, first date-he couldn’t even think of where to start. “Pickett?”
Emmie nodded sagely. “Pickett is smart about people. She’s usually right about these things.”
His mind was clearing. “But this isn’t our first date. We’ve seen each other several times.”
“You mean at all the parties before the wedding? That didn’t count. We were together there whether we wanted to be or not. It’s not like you asked me.”
“Could I talk you into making an exception to Pickett’s rule? Just this once?”
Emmie looked at him a long time, an expression he couldn’t read in her eyes. “Yes, you probably could.”
Shit. Why couldn’t she be flirty and silly like most girls? Why couldn’t she act teasing and sexy and make it clear she was going for a good time?
Because she wasn’t like other women, that’s why. Over and over he’d watched her react to events in a way that was completely her own. He noticed a warm feeling in his chest and an upward pull on his lips as if he wanted to smile, though only a damn fool would be smiling at a moment like this. He should be acting on the advantage she just told him he had-any SEAL worth his salt would. A SEAL motto was: “Never fight fair.”
He carefully pushed a strand of pale hair behind her ear. For many years he hadn’t desired the trust of anyone except another SEAL.
The room was warm and dusky. The last rays of the setting sun coming through the plantation shutters painted gold stripes on the wall, while shadows in the rest of the room deepened.
His hand, which had never left her waist, seemingly without any direction from him, reflexively stroked and kneaded the curve of her hip. The soft wool of the dress slid over the satin lining, and underneath that he could feel the warm supple flesh he craved.
If he won now, she would regret it later. He didn’t think he could stand that. Slowly, slowly, he withdrew his hand and let it fall to his side.
Emmie rinsed her hands far longer than necessary before she finally met her own eyes in the bathroom mirror. Her face looked as strange as she felt, which wasn’t reassuring. Her eyelids were lower than usual, the pupils large and unfocused. Her lipstick was gone, and her lips looked softer. Color that had nothing to do with makeup glowed under the skin of her cheeks. This business of being captain of her fate wasn’t easy. And her timing was atrocious. What on earth had made her decide to become less passive, more self-determined, just when she found a man she could safely turn everything over to? She could let him set the pace, and he’d make it good.
All day long she’d looked at how passive she’d been, and it had made her a little queasy-because she wasn’t that way! Not in any area of her life except the most personal. Now that she had seen it, she couldn’t go back, though she had no idea where the road forward would take her.
Emmie had doubted her place in the world since the day her missionary parents had sent her “home” to Wilmington, North Carolina, a place she’d never been. No promises to be good or to put the mission work first, either to them or to God, had changed the outcome. On the twenty-eight hour flight halfway across the world, her tears had dried. With her extraordinary capacity for logical thought, evident even then, she’d accepted that their work was essential. She was an extra in their lives.
Consumed with bitter homesickness, Emmie’s first year was made hideous by her fear for her parents’ lives and her resentment of their dedication, mixed as it was with guilt because she couldn’t accept God’s will. These feelings were complicated by burgeoning hormones and fascinations she was at a loss to explain. She doubled her prayers and study of the Bible, since her grandmother told her repeatedly all the answers she needed were there. When nothing seemed to change, she added fasting, since that was the method recommended by the Bible.
She grew thin… and then thinner. At first she liked the feeling of lightness, of emptiness. She liked the weakness and lethargy. She could drift through her days caring little about anything.
One day she fainted. There had been a couple of near misses, but she’d always averted them. On this day though, she was walking home from school one hot afternoon in May. Thunderclouds were massing behind the steeple of the Presbyterian church, making it glare white against the purple-black of the sky as if she should read a portent. Her heart began to pound in slow thuds, and sweat dampened her forehead. She pulled off her sweater, and when that didn’t help, she unbuttoned her blouse to expose the long-sleeved T-shirt she’d taken to wearing to mask her shape and her thinness.
