SEALed With a Kiss: Even a Hero Needs Help Sometimes... Read Online Free PDF

and blouse even before she arrived at her bedroom. Pickett slipped the silk blouse onto a padded hanger. Had he followed her into the grocery? Surely not. The encounter must have been random, and yet for a minute in the store she had felt his gaze. And knew it was him even before she'd turned her head.
    Sharp yips came from the back door. Pickett quickly pulled on an old pair of exercise shorts and a T-shirt, both sizes too large, and hurried to let the dogs back in.
    Dogs fed, she pulled the plastic container from the deli bag. She eyed the soggy artichoke salad with disfavor. This is what came of letting discipline slip in planning meals. She'd been so rattled by Jax's sudden appearance that she wasn't sure she'd asked about all the ingredients. She hesitated, sniffing the container carefully as she considered the possible consequences of eating food she couldn't be sure was safe.
    Oh well, a salad was unlikely to have hidden wheat in it. Wearily, she dug a fork from the drawer and began to eat straight from the container, standing at the counter.
    Jax. Her heart gave a funny little kick every time she thought of him. It was like he was determined to shoulder his way into her thoughts, no matter how she tried to push him out. Was this sense of magnetic pull, of attention being riveted on a person, what people meant when they talked about falling in love?
    Pickett didn't believe in love.
    Not the true-love stuff of romance novels. As a counselor she dealt with too many failed marriages and broken relationships to think that love was a strong enough glue to keep people together.
    If this were a romance novel, he really would have been following her in the grocery. He would have come up to her and said, "Did you think I would let you get away?" Then he would gently, oh so gently, take her face in his slightly rough hands, and gaze deep into her eyes. And he would say, "I have to do this," as his perfect lips came down on hers.
    How absurd! Pickett softly mocked herself. This was real life, of course, so what he had done was look at her as if he didn't like what he saw— at all—and walk away.
    Lack of closure, her therapist-self diagnosed, that was the problem.
    Pickett rinsed out the plastic container, debated briefly if it was worth saving, then tossed it in the recycling bin.
    Talking it over with her best friend would help, but Emmie was out of the country. An assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, Emmie was in Ecuador for the semester with a group of students studying the rainforest. One of the attractions of Snead's Ferry had been its proximity to Emmie and the possibility of seeing her every week. She would be back at Thanksgiving, and Pickett was counting the days.
    The baby-blue phone, a relic of the seventies hanging above the kitchen sink, rang.
    "Where have you been, little sister?" Lyle's voice had lost a lot of its southern essence from living in New York. Pickett was always startled to hear the sister she was closest to sound like a stranger. "I've been calling and calling."
    With a guilty clutch, Pickett glanced into the darkened dining room she'd made into her home office and saw the red message light blinking on her answering machine. She'd been so bemused she hadn't checked her messages.
    Before Pickett could stumble out an excuse, Lyle went on, "Never mind. I'm in a rental car. I'm turning into your drive now. Be there in a sec."
    Pickett flipped on the backyard spotlights and opened the door to let out the dogs, who were already wiggling with excitement. She looked down at her faded shorts with their frayed cuffs. No time to change but it didn't matter; Lyle didn't criticize her the way her sisters Grace and Sarah Bea did.
    Lyle—all city-chic in a black business suit, her shoulder-length dark hair swinging—stepped onto the back porch, flanked by Patterson and Lucy. The dogs' tails wagged wildly. No one would guess Lyle was a pied piper for dogs. Closest in age to Pickett,