Free SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... by Mary Margret Daughtridge Page A

have to say that? Her mother knew that. "I'm not in any danger."
    "Well, I'd feel better if you were here. What if your power goes out?"
    Pickett took a deep breath. The power was sure to go out. So what? Did she really think Pickett couldn't light a candle? She tried reason. "The hurricane is as likely to hit Goldsboro as here. There's no reason to think I would escape it if I was with you. Besides, there's no way I'm leaving the dogs, and you know you'd not be pleased to welcome them at your house."
    Now that was an understatement. Pickett's mother did not share her love of creatures, and was particularly appalled that she had three large dogs and kept two of them in the house.
    Oh no! Why had she mentioned the dogs? To her mother that would be just one more instance of Pickett's impracticality, her over-emotionalism. Proof that she couldn't take care of herself— anybody who would take in three strays had a few screws loose, as far as her mother was concerned.
    "Mom," Pickett took control of the conversation, "please don't worry. I'll batten down the hatches and I'll be fine."
    "It's just that I hate to think of you being there alone." To hear her mother's nervous dithering, you'd never think she was head of one of the highest grossing insurance agencies in the state.
    Not for the first time, Pickett reflected that being a family therapist didn't make the dynamics of one's own family any easier to deal with. What was she supposed to say?
    Look, Mom, you did your best. When Daddy died you had to save the business from bankruptcy And I got left to my big sisters to raise. At least I had them.
    It wouldn't help.
    They had done their best, but the nagging sense that Pickett was not quite up to the family standard had settled like a mildewed blanket on the very real love they shared.
    Her mother felt guilty because she'd neglected Pickett, so now she tried to over-mother. Too bad knowing all that didn't make a bit of difference. Because it always felt like she never did anything in a way her mother could sincerely approve.
    Pickett wondered what her mother would say if she knew Pickett would not be alone during the storm, but with a Navy SEAL she had just met yesterday. No, she knew what she would say and that's why she wasn't going to tell her. There was a lot to be said for living where one's family couldn't know what was happening on a daily basis.
    She didn't need to listen to her mother's warnings and cries of doom.
    "Look, Mom. I need to get off the phone. Someone's coming soon." Her mother would assume she meant a client, and would accept that business came first. Pickett winced at the knowledge that she was being deliberately misleading. "I'll call you as soon as the hurricane passes, okay? And make sure you take care of yourself."

    The air was like a moist blanket, hot, thick, and eerily still. Between bursts of whirring cicadas, it was so quiet that she could actually hear waves hitting the beach over on the island in that odd booming cadence that heralds a storm.
    A pot of lantana under one arm and a begonia under the other, Pickett struck out for the garage, crossing the drive just as Jax's Jeep Cherokee pulled up to the back door.
    Her heart kicked against her breast bone. Oh Lord, what had she done? How had she forgotten the moment she'd looked around in the deli and seen Jax watching her?
    Her gut had told her in that very minute that he was a dangerous man.
    "Listen to your gut," she always advised her clients.
    She had to tell him he couldn't stay, and do it right now. Pickett started across the drive.
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SEVEN

     
    Jax was out of the Cherokee, reaching through the rear door into the backseat. Now. Before he got Tyler out of the car, she had to tell him he couldn't stay. Letting a stranger she had chanced upon into her house was too dangerous. The rough clay of the flower pots dug into her palms. She set them at her feet. Now.
    Childish wails, interspersed with hiccupping sobs, issued from the car. The