Sealed with a promise Read Online Free PDF Page B

so she’d left it off. She’d added the blazer over her white blouse, hoping to disguise the deficiency.
      Her outfit wouldn’t have incited envy, but it would have passed muster as dressy casual on the campus of UNC-Wilmington where she was a junior faculty member. It was wrong for the breakfast.
      Emmie didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t tell Grace, of all people, the truth: she was looking for Caleb. Grace would want to know why, and she wasn’t a good liar. To lie well one had to understand a society’s unwritten expectations.
      Grace waived her hesitation aside. “Forget I asked. Do you have a ride back to Mother’s house?”
      “Yes.” She would if she could find Caleb, at any rate. Emmie had an otherworldly innocence, plain and fresh as warm milk, that made men twice her age, balding deacons and loan officers with grown children, hit on her. The good thing about it was that people rarely questioned her intentions.
      “Fine, just remember it’s going to take a long time to dress.” Fortunately, before she could add more admonishments, someone interrupted to ask Grace for an opinion about some wedding detail. Emmie made her escape with a little wave.
      She could have screamed with impatience when Pickett’s sixtyish cousin Annalynn planted herself in her path, determined to pump Emmie for news.
      “Pickett’s finally getting married! Can you believe it? And to a real hottie!” Annalynn gushed. Annalynn gushed about everything, but she needn’t sound as if a miracle had transpired. In Emmie’s opinion, Pickett was far too frequently relegated to “poor thing” status. Her relatives still saw Pickett as the baby of the family, the chubby, frequently-ill teenager with unruly hair and her nose stuck in a book.
      Emmie nodded but refused to reply.
      As college freshmen Emmie and Pickett were nerds together and soon best friends. Pickett’s health and figure had improved once she learned to control her diet. She discovered a haircut that made the most of her exuberant gold curls and overcame her nerdishness with her warmth and compassion. It was no surprise to Emmie an attractive man could fall in love with Pickett.
      She was surprised at Pickett’s choice in a groom: a SEAL. Take everything bad about the military, multiply it by ten, and you had a SEAL. Pickett had always sworn up and down she’d never marry a military man-it was something they’d always been in perfect agreement about-and yet, Pickett had changed her mind. It deeply, deeply scared Emmie. Nothing could ever change the fact that she loved Pickett with all her heart, but she wasn’t sure how they would maintain their friendship. Once Pickett was absorbed into the military-industrial complex, she would become part of a culture antithetical to Emmie’s most basic beliefs.
      Pickett would tell her she was worrying about events that hadn’t happened yet, and that she would never allow anything to threaten their friendship. None of this was anything Emmie was going to discuss with Annalynn.
      Patience wasn’t Emmie’s strong suit. Once she had a goal in mind, she tended to fix on it to the exclusion of all else. She didn’t have time to trade party chatter with Pickett’s cousins, aunts, uncles, and assorted others whose degree of kinship was distant enough to confound the most determined genealogist, but who, nevertheless, qualified as family. It seemed like every one of them had stopped her. Emmie was utterly sick of explaining why her arm was in a cobalt blue canvas sling. Once the wedding breakfast broke up, the high-ceilinged rooms of the late Victorian house would empty quickly. If Caleb left before she talked to him, all her plans were ruined. There was a very small window before she had to get rigged out in the bridesmaid getup Grace had chosen.
      The sling was rubbing the collar of the beige blazer against her neck again. Her wardrobe goal was efficiency and comfort, but she’d