Authors: Jenna Payne
He asked her what she did when she wasn’t sunning herself on exotic beaches, and she told him about what it was like to teach chemistry and physics to spoiled teenagers in an expensive private school, and about her summer job editing college science curricula for a local university. That flowed into a discussion of her sister’s doctoral research at Stanford and her college professor parents in Madison. By the time they parked at the restaurant, he knew about every significant player in her life except one, and she wasn’t quite ready to go there yet.
Instead, she turned the topic back on him. “How about you, Robert? Where’s the rest of the Whitman family?”
He took a deep breath, and she found herself holding hers. “There is no Whitman family; at least not that I’m related to. Technically, it’s illegal for me to tell you this: Robert Whitman is an alias assigned to me. If you pull the registration out of my glovebox, you’ll see that my true name is Kirk Blackwell.”
His confession hung in the air for a while, and Linda felt like there were so many questions to ask that she couldn’t possibly find the right one. He finally broke the silence. “I’m telling you this now because I don’t want to do what the people I work for would want me to do—move out of my apartment and never see you again. You would go on thinking that I was some jerk named Robert who took you to dinner one night and then disappeared.”
“Why would they want that? Is it so bad that you were on vacation under an assumed name?”
“That’s information they wouldn’t want a foreign government to know, because no one really vacations under an alias.” His eyes searched hers out as she connected the dots.
“You were working when we met… Did you know that you were being followed?”
“Yes, and I knew that you might be questioned after I talked to you, though I never suspected anything like the treatment you endured. That surprised everybody.”
Linda felt a sudden weight on her chest, “Everybody? Who the hell is everybody?”
“I really, really can’t tell you that—at least not yet.” He took her hand while anger and desire and need wrestled inside her. Half of her wanted to slap him and tell him to take her home, and the other half wanted to crawl on top of him and tell him to shut up because it didn’t matter.
“I can tell you this,” he continued. “Of all the hard and calloused things I’ve had to do in my career, walking away from you on that beach was one of the hardest. Twenty seconds into our conversation, I wanted the mission to go away so I could stay with you, get to know you better.”
She squeezed his hand. “The food here had better be the best I’ve ever had, and the most expensive.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I picked this place with my penance in mind…and because they have a massage table in the back, since you are in such great need of a rub-down.”
“Don’t push your luck, mister.”
The restaurant was at the edge of the Potomac, just south of Mount Vernon. It had the feel of a colonial dining room, but with cushioned dining chairs, a vanilla and mauve color scheme, and an expensive menu. Linda and Kirk were seated at a small table in a windowed corner overlooking the water. Between her spinach salad and the main course, he told her about growing up in Nebraska with a brother two years behind him and a baby sister who came along after that. He was very close to his sister, even though he left home to join the Navy when she was only six.
“You were in the Navy? What did you do?”
“I’m still in the Navy. I’m a special warfare officer, but I’m working with a mixed team outside of DoD.”
“Special warfare, is that like the SEALs?
“That’s exactly what it is.”
“And you’ve been doing that since high school?”
“With a detour through the Naval Academy, where I majored in chemistry, by the way; so we do have at least one thing in common.”
“Oh, so you’re just a fellow science nerd who occasionally kills people—or gets them accosted on the beach.” He smiled at that, but it seemed he was always on the edge of a smile, like he found most of life humorous in some way, like there was nothing to worry about. She wanted to live in that world, keep that smile nearby.
“And you’re a fellow science nerd who bares her breasts on the first date. I can’t wait to see how you top that on the second—”
“That was not the first date!” She gave his shin a kick and then let the top of her foot rest against his ankle. “THIS is the first date, and there will be no sightseeing involved. You can put all that creepy beach-peeping out of mind.”
“Creepy? I was a total gentleman on that beach. I barely even noticed your perfect, suntanned breasts. Haven’t even thought about them more than once or twice or maybe five times a day since then.”
She gave him another kick, more of a tap on the ankle, really. “You better hope you can keep that in your memory, bud, because a lady like me is unlikely to grant you a refresher.”
“Not even after an expensive dessert? I think your friend Maureen would recommend the chocolate lava cake. It comes with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.”
The lava cake was delicious, and the drive home was quiet, but in a contented way. They talked of baton-wielding policewomen, of European tourists who felt completely comfortable showing all of their sags and bulges, and of the perks of flying business class. He gave a funny description of a nervous sailor who had exactly one date with his sister when she came to visit him the summer after she graduated from high school, and she told him of a bungling chemistry student who turned on the gas for his Bunsen burner only to discover that he’d hooked it to the water supply.
He handed her his cell phone and she called her own number, then added both apartment numbers and saved the contacts in each phone. There would definitely be a second date. As they pulled into the lot, she imagined the goodnight kiss they would share at her apartment door and how she’d think about it until the next time she saw him. That was a good reason to fight off the urge to invite him in—she wouldn’t get to experience the memory of that first kiss and the longing for more. A girl needed a little longing for more, a little something to look forward to, a little of the delicious tension between two people just discovering each other and wondering where this thing would go.
He opened her car door and offered his hand, and she accepted it and stepped out, keeping a hold on his hand as he closed the door and clicked the lock button on the key fob. Then he turned toward her with those smiling eyes.
“My little sister would never forgive me if I didn’t tell you how fantastic you look in that dress.”
“Thank you. Your sister is an excellent dating coach.” She stepped up and kissed his cheek, meaning to leave it at that for now, but her face lingered near his, and he kissed her lips. It was a sweet kiss, soft and fun and way too good to stop there. She relaxed her lips more, pulled at his waist and tilted her head; and he responded in a way that betrayed his hunger. They made out under the streetlights like a couple of teenagers, tongues entwined, lungs sharing the same air, bodies melting into each other. Finally, they mustered enough composure to start toward her apartment, his arm around her shoulders and hers around his waist.
The walk was too short for her taste; the goodbye too imminent. They arrived at her door and were immediately in each other’s arms.
“I just want you to know that it’s okay if you want to give me a goodnight kiss,” she said.
“Hm, I’m glad you said that. It’s so hard to tell sometimes, and it’s kind of awkward when you go for the lips and end up with nothing but cheek.”
She moved her head the slightest distance toward him and he closed the rest of the way for a tender kiss, and then another, and then one that turned into a heated exploration that seemed to ebb but then flowed harder until it broke in the warm air of their excited breathing. She wrapped her arms further around him; laid her head on his shoulder, and felt his hard torso press against hers.
“I’d like to see you again sometime,” he said, “if that’s alright with you.”
“I’ll think about it.”
*****
Kirk watched the door close behind Linda, then ambled back to his apartment. The ambling part took some effort because what he wanted to do was jump, pump his fist, skip, run, dance—anything but amble. He wanted to unleash a war cry, or at least a victory whoop, but he stayed quiet, enjoyed the silhouette of trees against the pale moonlight, and thought of a poem by Yeats about heaven’s cloths inwrought with golden and silver light.
Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.
Love was a dream he tried to pretend didn’t matter. He had dated plenty of women, but due to his job, he usually did not commit. That wasn’t going to happen this time. He would retire if he had to, but that probably wouldn’t happen. His current position didn’t require travel as often or for as long as his past deployments and his CIA boss really wanted him to join the team as a contractor. His future was secure, and he wanted Linda in it. He always told people that he rejected the idea of fate or of a single soulmate for every person, but there was something about her that fit just right. His mind was whispering:
She’s the one, she’s the one
.
As she had promised, Linda called Maureen as soon as she had completed her victory dance. She walked around the apartment with one hand over her heart and one to her ear as she related the evening’s events, minus the alias disclosure, to her friend. Maureen marveled that Linda had mustered the self-control to not rush her new hunk into bed—after all, he’d already seen her practically naked, so the window shopping phase was over.
After the phone call, Linda went to the bedroom to change, but ended up smiling and turning in front of the mirrored closet door, overjoyed with just how damn good she looked. She needed a hundred more dresses like this one, and these wedge sandals would be forever her favorites. She closed her eyes, thought of the kiss outside his car, then of the one outside her door. God! It had turned her inside out, and she was pretty sure the feeling was mutual.
She hummed
Walking on Sunshine
in the shower and danced under the warm water as strawberry scented suds flowed down to her feet and swirled in the drain. Nothing could wash away her smile or the memory of that evening which she was going to sit on her couch and enjoy in front of a blank TV screen in her comfy robe with one more glass of wine.
She stepped out of the bathroom, and the smile and happy memories disappeared in a single whiff of cologne.
Joe
. Her ex-husband was either in her apartment or had been while she was in the shower. She walked slowly to the living room, and there he was, on the center of her couch in his police uniform, looking smug as ever.
“I saw you had a little date tonight, Lin. Does he know we’re getting back together?” Joe stood up and began walking toward her, “because he’s only going to get himself hurt if he comes back for more. And he looked like he wanted to come back for more.”
He’s not coming back for more; he’s coming back for everything.
“Get the fuck out of here, Joe. We are NOT getting back together.” She was tempted to back away, but she didn’t want to give him an inch. “And you are out of your jurisdiction, as a cop and as a man.”
She sometimes forgot how big he was. Not hard, like Kirk, just slightly mountainous and used to getting his way. Now he was close enough to grab her, if he wanted. “You will always be my jurisdiction, Linda; and your wannabe boyfriend is only going to get hurt if you don’t get rid of him now.”
He had the stink of a long day in a patrol car on him, and his dark hair was rumpled and greasy, his close-set eyes glassy and bloodshot. She thought she detected the scent of bourbon in his red-meat and onion breath. He looked like he was retaining water, and she briefly entertained the idea of pointing that out and asking if he was PMSing. She also wanted to tell him exactly why Kirk would destroy him, but better to let him find out the hard way; see him strut into that battle and be carried out of it.
“You’re the one who left me, Joe—left me for another woman, remember? And then she came to her senses. Too bad! Go out and find another skank who hasn’t wised up.” She pointed to the door behind him. “Now get the fuck out!”
He snagged her pointing hand by the wrist, took her throat in his other hand, and pivoted to pin her against the wall, his puffy hand pressing up into her jaw. She was forced up onto her toes and had no leverage. He released her wrist and reached for the knotted cotton belt of her robe. She felt the friction of cloth on cloth as he pulled at the knot, a smug little smile on his face. She pushed at his chest, but he probably didn’t even feel it through the ballistic vest under his shirt. She felt cool air over her navel as the robe began to fall open and his smile grew wider. He didn’t notice her fingers keying the radio transmitter on his chest.
“Let go of my throat, Charlie Nine-Four-Nine! You’re hurting me! Stop!”
She watched his expression turn first to confusion at hearing her use his call sign, and then to panic as he realized what she had done. He hopped back and slapped her hand away from the microphone, but the damage was done. A female voice crackled over the radio. “Calling Dispatch, say again…Charlie Nine-Four-Nine, ten-twenty?”
Yeah, Joe. Where the fuck are you?