Sealed with a promise by Mary Margret Daughtridge Page A

Lon.”
      Uncertain if he was the one now being teased, Davy looked from one to the other, then at Emmie, who had stopped taking pictures to listen. “Do you know what these things are made of?”
      Emmie. She’d probably eaten marzipan. She could blow the whole thing sky high. Do-Lord held his breath.
      With the compassion of someone who must tell a child there is no Easter bunny, she nodded to Davy.
      “Lon guessed right. I believe they are made of pigeon shit. Refined, of course. But Caleb was partly right- they have been painted with a food-grade dye. So don’t worry. They’re still edible.”
      “Come on, come on, everybody in position.” He pretended to ignore the byplay. “We’ll pick up on three.” He didn’t see the intrigued look that widened Emmie’s eyes.
      Lon studied the photo of the cake taken before they’d dismantled it. “If we move the pumpkin three degrees to the left, I think we can cover the dent.”
      “That’s going to widen the angle to the peaches.”
      “Right. But if we rotate the entire cake, the shift in triangulation will move the discrepancy into occlusion.”
      Davy carefully placed the marzipan pumpkin where Lon indicated using forceps from his medical kit.
      “That’s it. Now we rotate the cake. Three degrees. Everybody get in position and mark.”
      The three men stationed themselves around the cake. Coatless, the extraordinary depth of their chests was apparent. All three had a smoothness about the way they moved, totally at one with their bodies and each other, which gave their every action a balletic choreographed feeling-although Emmie was willing to bet they’d never done anything like this before.
      Their coordination really was supra-human, transcendent of human limitation, and when separated they must feel-she couldn’t really imagine how it would feel-truncated, even oddly crippled to be back in mundane reality.
       This was the source of their arrogance. They really had experienced something beyond the capability of most people, and she suspected it bonded them more than a taste for danger and a love of living on the edge.
      They were jocks. She didn’t doubt it. All three were well-built, extraordinarily good-looking men, and the irrepressible Davy was certainly full of himself. Jocks though, who had taken their physical gifts from competition to purpose. Lon’s attitude contained mountainous dependability. His very presence offered shelter and sustenance. Wherever he was you knew everything was going to be taken care of. In cocky, uncomplicated Davy she sensed a sweetness that was the true source of his charm. Larger than life though they were, what you saw was what you got.
      Caleb. Caleb was different. He matched them, and yet, he didn’t. He was several inches taller than the others. Every bit as well-muscled, his build was more rangy than compact. He erected a persona that would fool many into believing he was the least complicated of them all.
      Had she not spent time in the company of men who were like Caleb, she probably wouldn’t have seen that his wily charm was only one layer of his personality, not the whole. Emmie loved discovery. She loved to push to the very edge of what was known, then take that edge further. Now she knew there was more to learn about him. She could not turn back.
      “Gentlemen, I think our work is done. Bump up!” The men knocked their fists together in mutual congratulation.
      Davy returned the forceps and other tools he’d pressed into service to his medical kit that looked like a large tackle box. “Hey, Do-Lord,” he said, “I’ve got everybody’s blood samples to send to the donor registry but yours. Forty-three. Pretty good work for three days, but you’ve been here all week.”
      Lon grinned. “If you’re going to get a sample from him, you’d better do it right now, while I’m here to hold him down.”
      Davy frowned. “This is strictly