by Smith, Glenn
“That’s right,” she confirmed, standing with him. “Here we go again.”
“I’ve told you at least a dozen times, Carolyn, there’s nothing going on between Marissa and me,” he reminded her as calmly as he could manage. Then, looking her square in the eye, he asked, “Why do I have to tell you again?”
“Because you haven’t convinced me it’s the truth,” she answered, glaring back at him.
“It is the truth, Carolyn,” he proclaimed. Now of course, for the first time ever, that often repeated proclamation was a lie. “There is absolutely nothing going on between us.”
Lying usually left a bitter taste in his mouth, but in this case he didn’t have a choice. If he told her about what had happened earlier she’d probably accuse him of having been in a sexual relationship with Marissa for months. Convinced of that, she’d not only file for divorce, which he would probably welcome at this point, but she’d likely try to hurt his career as well.
“Maybe there is and maybe there isn’t,” she said after a moment, “but she’s attractive enough to tempt you.”
There was certainly no denying that fact, and Carolyn would never believe him if he tried. She knew him far too well. In her eyes a denial would be akin to confessing all, even though there really was nothing to confess. Well, almost nothing. Damn her anyway. She could be almost psychic sometimes. No, even worse than a psychic. A wife, with several years of experience.
“So she’s attractive,” he admitted as he turned away and leaned on the railing again. And why not? She was attractive. Hell, she was downright gorgeous. That was an obvious, objective fact. “So what? So are several billion other women in the known galaxy, including you.”
“Don’t even try to sweet-talk me, Dylan,” she warned. “We’ve been together too long for that to work.”
“Well, you are.” She was. That was the truth.
“Tell me something,” she said, brushing off the compliment like so much worthless dust. “Was Marissa one of the ‘guys’ you had breakfast with this morning?”
“Yeah, she was there. Her and about twenty-some other people from the platoon, out on the back patio. So what? She’s just another Marine, Carolyn, just like I am. She just happens to be assigned to my squad.”
“Exactly. She serves the Corps directly under you, which is exactly where she’d love to serve you personally. I’ll bet getting naked with you in the showers is the highlight of every mission for her. Probably for you, too.”
“We don’t get naked together!” Dylan shouted, glaring at her. He was quickly losing what little patience he had left.
“Oh no?” Carolyn asked, unperturbed. “You told me yourself there’s only one locker room in the whole barracks.”
“Oh, for God sake, Carolyn! Are you listening to yourself? Do you have any idea how childish you sound?”
“What’s wrong, Dylan? Can’t answer my question without lying?”
“The showers are in separate stalls with their own private changing cubicles,” he pointed out. It wasn’t anything she didn’t already know. “Just like the ones you’d find at a public gym or a health club. We couldn’t see each other even if we wanted to, and you damn well know it!” He looked away again, then added as an afterthought, “Besides, Corporal Ortiz has her own shower in her own room in the barracks. Another fact you were already aware of.”
“Yeah, I know that. But did she use her own shower in her own room this morning?” she asked, her tone growing even more challenging.
Dylan just shook his head in disgust, completely exasperated. Why did he even bother? “I don’t know because I didn’t look for her,” he lied without a second thought.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, drawing her own conclusion. “She used the locker room showers with everyone else.”
She faced out toward the garden again, but didn’t lean on the railing with him. “I still can’t believe the Corps lets men and women who work so closely together take showers together, even if they are in separate stalls. Especially when some of them are married to other people. It’s just too easy for a couple of them to step into the same one and...how should I say it?...spend some quality time together.”
“Carolyn, would you please just...” Dylan stopped short, trying to keep his temper under control. Whatever it was that was really bothering her, it was bothering her a lot. She was really going all out this time. Good thing he’d never told her about how the Rangers’ field expedient procedures ignored gender completely.
“You know what? Forget it,” he said as calmly as he could. He looked up at her. “Just let it go, all right?”
“Fine,” she said, looking back at him.
“Thank you.”
“But it looks like the two of you are going to be spending some more time together again real soon.”
Her expression made it clear that she had something more to say. He waited, but she said nothing. She was going to wait him out and make him ask. More childishness. “What makes you say that?” he asked immediately. He was in no mood for any more of her stupid mind games—mind games that easily rivaled any of those he’d experienced in Basic Training, Advanced Marine Infantry Training, or Ranger training.
“Your lieutenant just called,” she answered, “personally.”
A personal call from the lieutenant? That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all. Such a call so soon after an FTX could only mean one thing. Something serious had gone down, real world as he would say, and SpecOps was being called on to respond.
“What did he say?”
“You’ve got what he called a ‘real-world’ mission tomorrow.”
Dylan sighed as his eyes fell to a point in space somewhere between himself and the garden. “Tomorrow,” he mumbled. “Great.”
“I thought you’d like that,” she went on. “Who knows? Maybe now you’ll have a chance to sleep with her, too...assuming you haven’t already. I know that’s what you want.”
Yes it was what he wanted, perhaps even more than she suspected. Perhaps even more than he suspected. But despite her suspicions she couldn’t possibly know that for sure. So why was she being such a bitch this morning?
He looked up at her again and said, “I thought you just agreed to let it go.”
“Truth hurts, doesn’t it?”
“Carolyn!” he shouted, pounding his fists on the railing and glaring angrily at her. All right. For the first time, her suspicions were correct. So what? He’d still had enough. “Just shut the hell up, okay! This whole argument is so damn stupid!”
Her lips quivered and her eyes burned with rage as she glared right back at him, looking as if she were about to scream. But she held her tongue. After all their years of marriage, she obviously knew just how far she could push him—she’d had plenty of practice, after all—and she’d just reached the limit.
After a moment her features softened, if only a little, and she calmly asked, “Want some coffee?”
He blinked, looked at her oddly. Was that empathy that had found its way into her voice all of the sudden? Surprising, and very much unexpected. Yelling at her and telling her to shut up usually set her off on an rant or sent her stomping away in a fit of anger, throwing whatever breakable objects might be within reach at that moment as hard and as far as she could. But not this time. Why the difference? Could it be that she, too, was finally getting tired of all the arguing? No, of course not. She’d started it in the first place.
What had she just asked? Did he want some coffee? He nodded. She turned her back and went inside.
Dylan stepped back from the railing and stretched out on one of their two chaise lounges, rested his elbows on the arms, and covered his face with his hands.
No wonder she was in such a foul mood. Despite her ill temper and her tendency to act like he was little more than a bothersome inconvenience when he was home, she really hated it when he went away for extended periods of time. And now, after having just come home from two weeks in the field, he had to leave ag
ain tomorrow morning.
But why did she constantly have to act this way?
What was he going to do about Marissa?
“Just great,” he repeated.
He sat in silence and waited for his coffee.
Chapter 24
Karen rolled onto her back and stretched her left arm across the width of the queen-sized bed, but all she found between the warm cotton sheets was emptiness. Peering through narrow crescents of dry, sleep-filled eyes, she focused on the pillow beside her. The beige pillowcase appeared a dull, washed-out gray under the dim blue-green glow of the headboard clock display, the dimple in its center lost in shadow. It reminded her of a small hill not far from the barren, rocky wasteland of Luna’s Sea of Tranquility—Apollo 11’s landing site—so bright where the sun’s rays shone across its angled surfaces and so dark where they didn’t reach. She’d spent hours hopping playfully about like a little school girl at recess on that hill when she and Liz celebrated their thirteenth wedding anniversary at the Mare Tranquillitatis Resort and Historical Park just last summer.
She rolled onto her side and pulled the pillow to her, abandoning her own, and laid her head in that place where her loving wife’s head had been. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, finding comfort in the subtle yet sensuous bouquet of Liz’s sweet perfume, even as a solitary tear flowed from the corner of her eye and lost itself in the pillowcase.
Liz had been so busy over the last few weeks since the ten days or so she’d spent working at home, often working sixteen to eighteen hour days in order to catch up on things. They rarely had dinner together anymore, and practically never went out.
But last night had been different. They’d enjoyed a wonderful evening of dining and dancing together at the Officers’ Club’s semi-annual Friday night ball, and an even more wonderful and exhausting night in bed. Karen smiled with the memory of the passion they’d shared, but her smile quickly waned and more tears ran from her eyes as she reminded herself that their wonderful and exhausting night of passion was also the last night they were going to have together for at least a month.
Liz had left her alone before, of course. Many times over the years, in fact—sometimes for several months at a time. Such was the life of a soldier’s spouse. But the longer she and Liz were together, the deeper their love for one another grew, so those long separations, though inevitable and unavoidable, never got any easier.
She sighed, and still more tears swelled the damp spot on the pillowcase. This newest long period of loneliness was only just beginning, and she already missed her so much. If only Liz had awakened her to see her off. Just to say good-bye.
Karen halted in mid regret. Granted, Liz had had to catch an early flight, but it wasn’t like her to leave without saying good-bye. It wasn’t like her at all. She hadn’t done that since... Come to think of it, in all the years they’d been together she’d never done that. Not once. As a matter of fact, loving and considerate wife that she was, she’d always gone out of her way to make sure she didn’t do that. So maybe...
Karen looked up and checked the time. The display showed 0553 hours. Relief poured into her very soul like a sudden breath of fresh air into starving lungs and she dropped her head back to the pillow and wiped the tears from her eyes. It was still early. Liz hadn’t left yet.
She heard a sound—a sound like that of a gentle spring rain. A seemingly distant, barely perceivable whisper, existing almost solely on a subconscious level. A sound so faint that it wasn’t until the sound suddenly stopped, trailing off with one last, quiet spatter, that Karen realized she’d been hearing anything at all.
The shower had been running.
She tossed the cozy blankets aside, sat up, and dropped her feet to the soft, thick carpet. The room felt comfortably warm and the sweet honeysuckle fragrance of her favorite potpourri filled the air. “Lights,” she said, her usually melodic voice sounding scratchy with its first use of the morning. The lights came up to a third of their capacity, exactly as she’d programmed them to do with each morning’s first activation, but she still had to drop her unfocused, waking stare for a few seconds until she got used to the relative brightness.
The red bikini panties she’d worn last night lay on the floor next to her feet, right where Liz had dropped them. The sexy, sheer black lace panties Liz had worn were there, too, and the matching bra lay just a few feet away from the bed. The short trail of clothing ended just inside the bedroom door with their stockings and the expensive new designer dresses they’d bought last week specifically for last night’s ball.
She grinned once more. It had indeed been one hell of a passionate night. Liz had looked so beautiful.
She stood up and reached for the ceiling, yawning and arching her back, her joints cracking and popping as she stretched every muscle she possibly could. She ran her fingers through her long, dark brown hair and gave her scalp a quick two-handed scratch, then dropped her arms to her sides and strode to the bathroom.
A warm cloud of honeysuckle-scented steam enveloped her as she opened the door to find Liz standing naked on her side of the long rose-beige marble counter in front of the large mirror brushing her shoulder-length hair, which shone like strands of platinum under the bright white light bar that spanned the mirror’s width across its top. So beautiful.
Leaving the door open to let the steam escape, Karen walked up behind her, wrapped her arms around her, and kissed the side of her neck, just below her ear. “Good morning, beautiful,” she said.
Liz laid her head back on Karen’s shoulder and kissed her tenderly. “Don’t get me started again,” she warned.
“Why not?” Karen asked, grinning mischievously.
“Because I won’t want to stop, and I have to get ready to go.” Her disappointment and her desire both were clearly evident in her tone.
“That’s okay. I have to go, too.” Karen kissed her again, then stepped away and sat down on the toilet. “Want some breakfast when you’re done?” she asked, gazing wantonly at her wife’s beautiful body.
“No thanks,” Liz answered as she resumed brushing her hair. “I’m not that hungry yet. I’ll grab something later at the terminal or on the flight.”
“How can you not be hungry?” Karen asked. “I’m starving.”
“You should be starving. You hardly ate anything last night.”
Karen grinned mischievously. “I was saving my appetite.”
Liz smiled as well as she set her brush aside and started arranging her hair into one of the freer, loosely clasped styles that Karen had always preferred over the tight vertical roll in back that she usually wore when in uniform. “Well, next time think about what you’re saving it for,” she suggested. “Some things simply don’t fill you up.”
Karen finished, pulled a tissue from the wall dispenser and patted herself dry, then got up. As the toilet auto-flushed, she stepped over to her sink and washed and dried her hands. Then she turned her back to the mirror and, moving a little closer to Liz, leaned back against the edge of the counter. “I wish you didn’t have to go,” she said as she crossed her arms beneath her breasts.
“So do I,” Liz agreed, holding her hair in place just so with one hand to consider the style’s acceptability in the mirror, “but I don’t really have a choice.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Rejecting that style, Liz let her hair fall free and dropped her hands to her sides. “We talked about this at dinner last night, Karen,” she reminded her, staring at her reflection and considering what style to try next.
“I know, I know. The trip was your idea in the first place and it wouldn’t look very good if you backed out of it now.”
“Exactly.” Liz gazed into Karen’s beautiful but sad hazel eyes. “Hey,” she said, reaching up and gently wiping a tear away from her cheek with her thumb. “I have to do this, Karen, but that doesn’t mean I want to do it.”
“Then why not make yourself too busy to leave and send someone else?”
“We did send someone else,” Liz answered as she looked back into the mirror and started working with her hair again. “Ensign Pillinger. Remember? I told you about him at dinner.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Then you should also remember that I told you he didn’t do so well.” She pulled her hair back from the sides and held it in place behind her head.
“That looks nice,” Karen commented. “You should wear it that way.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. It’s cute. Makes you look like a teenager again.”
Liz snickered. “Yeah, right.”
She rooted through the small glass bowl on the counter, selected two little white-gold oval barrettes from among the various pins and bands, and pinned her hair in place. Then she turned her head back and forth to the left and the right a couple of times to double-check the results in the mirror. “That’ll work,” she decided.
She looked at Karen again. “Sweetheart, I don’t want to be away from you for the next month any more than you want me to be,” she reassured her. “God knows I’m going to miss you so much. But like I explained last night, there’s a very important mission in the works and the admiral and I feel it’s vital that we get the right person for the job.”
“That Marine Corps sergeant you told me about?”
“That’s right, yeah,” Liz answered with a nod.
“And you’re taking a commercial flight?”
“With a military escort at the other end, yes. That’s why I’m wearing civilian clothes, to draw as little attention to myself as possible.” Liz began to see the wheels turning in her wife’s mind. “Why do you ask?” she inquired, suspecting she already knew the answer.
Karen’s gaze fell to Liz’s ample breasts while she considered whether or not to ask the question that had popped into her head. They were so perfect, as firm and round as they had been the first time she saw them when they were teenagers, with nipples the color of pink carnations.
“Karen? Hello?”
“I was just thinking,” she finally said, snapping out of it. She looked up again, her eyes pleading even before she spoke. “Any chance I could come with you?”
