Sealed with a promise by Mary Margret Daughtridge Page B

voluntary. I’m not pressuring anybody. It’s a serious commitment that has nothing to do with the Navy.”
      “That’s not what Lon meant.” Caleb halted in the act of pulling on his sport coat. “I hate needles. Won’t face one unless I absolutely have to. So yeah, you’d better stick me here and now, before I think about it.” Caleb unbuttoned the cuff of the sleeve he’d just buttoned and rolled up his sleeve.
      Davy snapped on vinyl gloves. “I’ll do the blood draw now. Then you can fill out the paperwork. You know you have to pay for the test yourself?”
      “Yeah, yeah.” Caleb took a seat and stretched his arm out on a table.
      Davy snapped a tourniquet around Caleb’s bicep. Ropy veins stood out under the deep golden tan of his arms. Davy palpated a vein in his forearm. “You’re not going to faint on me are you?”
      Caleb looked at the ceiling. “No. But I’m not going to watch, okay?”
      “Because if you’re going to faint, it would be easier just to put you on the floor now.”
      “Shut up, and get it the hell over with.”
      “Do what he says.” Lon watched the proceedings with cool interest, arms crossed over his chest. “I had to threaten to write him up to get him to take his last set of vaccinations.”
      “What are you doing?” Emmie asked, hoping to distract Caleb.
      The men explained about Carmine, a SEAL recently diagnosed with leukemia.
      “He’s getting chemo, which should buy him time,” Davy added, “but his only chance for a cure is a bone marrow transplant. All of his family have been tested, but no one in his family is a match.”
      “So you don’t know whether you will match or not?”
      “That’s right. It’s an odds thing. The more who volunteer to donate, the better the chances a match will be found. If not for Carmine, at least for someone. You doing okay?” he asked Caleb who had turned several shades paler under his tan.
      “Do you have to be a SEAL to volunteer to be a marrow donor?”
      “The samples will be sent to the National Donor Registry. Any healthy person between eighteen and fifty-five can donate.”
      “All right. I’ll donate too.”
      Davy smoothly withdrew the vial from Caleb’s vein and folded Caleb’s forearm up. “Don’t you need to think it over? This is a commitment. It’s not as serious as donating a kidney, in fact, for a healthy adult there’s little risk-but not no risk.”
      “No time like the present.” One-handed, Emmie attempted to pull her blazer away from her shoulder and grunted in pain.
      “Hey, I’ll help you-” Davy said.
      “Sit still!” Caleb ordered Emmie. He threw down the cotton ball he’d been holding to the tiny puncture. “ I’ll help you with your jacket.”
      In two steps he was by her side. He freed the jacket from her shoulder. “There. Now turn sideways and let your arm dangle behind you.” Rather than pushing the jacket down, he gently tugged on the cuff to free her arm.
      Emmie knew her pale skin was revealing her blush to all. “It’s actually harder to get off than it is to get on.” She held out her arm. “You’ll have to roll up the blouse sleeve too,” she added apologetically.
      The sensation of his warm fingers at her wrist, undoing the button, folding back the cuff, mesmerized her. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the sight of her bare forearm emerging under his long-fingered hands. With every roll of the cuff, his thumbs stroked the tender skin of her inner arm.
      “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked. His thumb lazily played across the crook of her elbow. “You don’t have to.”
      “Um, sure,” Emmie had to wrench her mind away from his hands to remember what he was talking about- and devil that he was, he knew it! But his changeable hazel eyes, a gentle brown color right this minute, looked sincere. “I never realized that it was something just anybody could do. Needles