by Zoe Blake
Without thinking, Sage took his hand. He squeezed it gently as they walked on towards the Vietnam Memorial.
Conner stopped at a flag pole displaying the American flag. At its base was a copper plate displaying the insignia of each branch of the military. “What do you see?” he asked.
Sage looked closely. The copper base was tarnished and stained except for one section. It shone as bright as a new penny. She looked closer and saw the distinctive globe and eagle emblem of the Marine Corps. Sage looked up at Conner.
“Each morning, we send someone out to polish it,” he explained. “Respect.”
“What about the rest of it?”
“Screw them. Let them send out their own grunts to polish their insignias.”
Sage laughed. The somewhat good natured animosity between the military branches was well known amongst those who lived in DC.
For her turn, she took him to one of her favorite places, the Corcoran Gallery of Art. One of the best things about DC was all the free Smithsonian museums, so, it seemed silly to pay for a membership to such a small gallery like the Corcoran, but she loved it. It reminded her of the museums in Europe. Its galleries were small with jewel toned walls with the perfect mixture of art and sculpture.
“Do you like art?”
“I’m not going to lie. When I head to a new city, I’m not beating down the door of the local museum, but I certainly appreciate art. I like the cultures it represents more than the individual pieces. I like how it speaks for a society’s beauty and knowledge. You know, when we go into an area torn apart by war, that is one of the first things they want protected. Their art. You have to respect that.”
“Wow. I never really thought about what you do like that. The media always portrays it so differently.”
“A lot of what I do is just getting normal people back to a sense of normalcy. Sometimes it is as simple and as complicated as that. It’s not all bombs, guts and glory,” he said with a smile. “Now, show me some of this art of which you speak,” he bantered, lightening the mood.
Sage took him all around the gallery. Especially showing him her favorite sculpture, the Veiled Nun.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” Sage asked, staring in wonder.
“She certainly is,” agreed Conner, although he wasn’t looking at the sculpture.
“How about we grab a pint at the Dubliner and then I promise I will take you home?”
“Okay,” agreed Sage. She was fond of the popular Irish pub, and although she had been reluctant to spend time in Conner’s powerful presence, she was now even more reluctant to let the day end, deep down knowing this would have to be it for them.
She had spent the entire day with him. They had laughed, talked, and seen the sights. She even had her very first hot dog from a street vendor, something she thought she would never venture to do. He was warm, funny, charming, and intelligent. The best date she had ever been on.
It was awful!
It was bad enough when he was just this exceptionally hot guy in a uniform, but now that she’d gotten to know him, it was worse! What the hell! This was exactly what she was trying to avoid. Sage didn’t want to get to know this side of him. It would make the intolerably—albeit reluctantly sexy—arrogant Neanderthal side of him more bearable. Plus, it would just make it harder when the inevitable other shoe dropped. They hadn’t talked about it specifically, but he had mentioned he was just on leave. Hell, he didn’t even have a home. He was crashing at a buddy’s house!
When they got to Dubliner’s, the place was packed.
“Perhaps we should just call it a night,” offered Sage.
Just then she heard a shout, “Major! Over here.”
Conner placed a hand at her lower back and guided her through the crowd to a long table along the back right. As soon as they neared the table, everyone seated suddenly jumped up at attention. Sage was astounded.
Conner solemnly nodded his head in greeting. Two men immediately relinquished their seats for them.
Sage sent a questioning glance to Conner. He leaned in close and whispered in her ear, “Respect.” She smiled.
As soon as Conner was settled with a pint and she with a glass of wine, the war stories started.
A fun loving Second Lieutenant nicknamed Hippie, because he liked to wear his hair an “unruly” inch long as opposed to the close cropped “high and tight” favored by everyone else including Conner, regaled her with stories about Conner.
“I think she’s heard enough about my deployments, Hippie,” groaned Conner.
“Ah, Major. I can’t leave off without telling her about Operation Strike the Sword!” complained Hippie.
“Operation Strike the Sword? Seriously? That’s a real thing?” asked Sage.
“Of course!”
“You boys read too many comic books when you were little,” griped Sage, which earned her a good natured laugh about the table.
“So any way, we’re in the middle of the biggest offensive since Fallujah in the Helmand River Valley. Dawn breaks and boom! We start taking on small arms fire from outta nowhere. I turn to Spike and I’m like what the fuck! Oh! Excuse the language, ma’am. I’m like what the fudge! We try to communicate to base but nothing’s working right when outta nowhere comes Major Conner and Dirty Sandy. Oh, that’s the name of his SuperCobra, ma’am. That’s an attack helicopter. He starts laying down all kinds of strafing hellfire along the tree line. Saved our asses. Oh, sorry, ma’am. I meant saved our butts,” related Hippie while barely taking a breath in all his excitement.
Sage started to laugh. “Well fuck me! That’s one hell of a story, Hippie!”
There was a moment of silence at the table before everyone erupted in a cheer at her jest. Sage really enjoyed the easy camaraderie and friendship of the group. It was a true brotherhood.
Time passed too quickly, and before long, Conner was taking her home as promised. Once again, he insisted on walking Sage to her door. Pushing a silken lock of hair behind her ear, he caressed the line of her jaw. “You know how much I want to ask you to invite me in?”
Sage didn’t trust herself to speak. She was afraid she would invite him in if she did.
“I’m not an idiot, Sage. I know I’m on leave and I know getting involved with a Marine is no fucking picnic with the deployments and all the other crap. Trust me, feeling an attraction to someone like you is the last thing I wanted either.”
Sage’s back went up. “What do you mean? Someone like me?”
He leaned in. Placing his forearms high above her head, caging her in. Making her feel frightened by his leashed power and yet safe all at once. “What I mean is someone I can’t seem to stop thinking about. Someone I can’t seem to want to let go of. Someone who deserves more than she thinks I can give.”
“Oh,” she answered lamely, not sure what to say.
Conner gave her a chaste kiss on the forehead. “I won’t ask for your phone number because I already stole it off your phone when you were sleeping. I also programmed mine in.”
He stopped her angry retort by covering her lips with his finger. “I don’t know where this is going. Maybe nowhere, but unlike you I’m not going to run away from what we got just because it might blow up in our faces. A Marine never retreats,” he said with an arrogant smile. “Life’s too short, Spitfire.”
Chapter 4
Sage closed the door and leaned against it with a sigh.
Shaking her head, she stepped into the living room, tossing her purse on to the sofa as she kicked off her shoes.
This whole thing was crazy! Absolute lunacy! She must be out of her mind. All of this was so unlike her. She never slept with a man on the first date… technically she had slept with Conner before their first date. She didn’t like arrogant, overbearing men who acted all primal and protective and… made you feel all safe and warm and feminine… did she?
Her fingertip grazed her lower lip as the memory of his touch came unbidden to mind. The feel of his rough kiss as his powerful b
ody pressed against her own. The confident way he touched her. Tasted her. And dammit… the way he wouldn’t take no for an answer when her body was clearly saying yes. Damn him!
The soft sound of rustling startled Sage out of her musings.
“Sage, is that you,” came a hesitant voice from the bedroom.
“Melly?”
Sage crossed to the bedroom. “Why are you sitting in the dark?” she asked as she reached for the light switch.
“No! Leave it off,” whined Melissa.
“Melissa, what’s going on?” demanded Sage sternly. She didn’t mean for her voice to sound harsh, but her friend was alarming her. It wasn’t the fact Melissa was in her place, she had a spare key. It was the sound of her strained almost pained voice.
“I lied to you, Sage,” whispered Melissa.
The awful desolation in her voice sent a chill up Sage’s spine.
“It’s okay, sweetie. I understand,” responded Sage immediately, afraid to move further into the room not wishing to alarm Melissa.
“I didn’t have to work last night. I saw… him.”
Sage didn’t have to ask who Melissa meant. Ricardo. The man had a strange pull on her friend. Sage only saw a loser without a job who made off-color jokes and didn’t treat her friend well. Melissa thought he was some hero returned home broken from the war. As if it were her patriotic duty to put up with his violent mood swings and awful treatment. A baby bird with a broken wing. More like a vulture in Sage’s mind. She thought after the apartment incident that Melissa had truly put him behind her. Apparently not.
“Well you missed out on overcooked filet and stale champagne,” teased Sage in a tight voice, trying to lighten the mood.
Now was not the time to tell her about Conner.
“We had such a nice night. He kept apologizing for our fight and saying how he didn’t mean to hurt me, and how he would cut off his arm before he would ever hit me again, and how much I meant to him, and how he couldn’t live if I truly left him and… and…”
The rest was broken off in a sob. Sage hurried into the room. Grasping through the darkness, she found her friend curled up in a corner of the bedroom, clutching a pillow. Sage kneeled before her.
“Please let me turn on a light, Melly.”
“No. Then you’ll see,” she cried.
“I already know, sweetie. I promise it’s going to be okay,” soothed Sage.
“Okay,” came the weak response.
Sage reached to flick on the small lamp by her bedside then turned to observe her friend. To be brutally honest, it was not as bad as she had feared. Melissa had a swollen and split lip and a nasty bruise around her wrist, but otherwise seemed unharmed. The injuries were bad. Any injury at the hand of an angry man was bad, but it could have been much, much worse. Emergency room worse.
Choking back her vicious response, knowing that was not what her friend needed from her now, Sage just stroked Melissa’s hair.
“Do you think I’m stupid for trying to take him back?”
“No. I think you are a sweet person with a big heart. You want to believe he is a good man who is just suffering from his time in Iraq, and while that is true for many soldiers… sweetie… it’s not true for all of them,” coaxed Sage gently.
At Melissa’s nod, she continued, “Maybe it’s time to just start thinking of him like a regular guy who’s a jerk who hits women and not a broken soldier?”
“He didn’t actually hit me this time,” admitted Melissa. “Well, not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“Last week, he really did get drunk and hit me. It was the first time and he was really sorry. Truly, he feels just terrible about it. I don’t even know if you could claim he hits women when that really was the first time.”
Sage grit her teeth. Even now her friend was making excuses for the asshole. Schooling her voice to not show her irritation she said, “Sweetie, what do you mean he didn’t hit you this time. You have a split lip.”
“After having a really romantic evening together, I woke up this morning to find him going through my things. When I asked him what he was doing, he started to rant and rave at me, demanding to know where the teddy bear was.”
“What the fuck? He hit you over a goddamn teddy bear?” Sage was incredulous.
“I know right? I told him I had no idea what he was talking about. He got angrier and grabbed me by the wrist and just kept shouting at me about some teddy bear. I tried to pull away at the same time he let go. My hand knocked into my lip. So you see I actually gave myself the fat lip,” explained Melissa softly with a wince.
“We are going to have to agree to disagree on that one,” chided Sage. “You don’t think he means that small bear that was in the bedroom?”
Melissa shook her head. “That little thing? It doesn’t even have any sentimental value. It just appeared one day on the bureau among my things.”
Sage rose and crossed to her closet. On the floor was the small purple backpack she had with her that day; she was pretty sure the bear was still in it. Grabbing the bag, she returned to sit on the floor by Melissa. Rummaging through, she found the small tan bear. Flipping it over in her hands, she noticed a Velcro strip along its back seam. Casting a glance at her friend, Sage tore open the patch.
Inside the bear was a small DVR camera.
“It’s a fucking nanny cam!”
Melissa snatched the bear from her hands. “That bastard! Are you fucking kidding me?” she screeched.
Melissa stood up and started to pace. Sage listened as a steady stream of curses, some actually quite creative and colorful, spilled from her friend’s lips. She had a feeling Melissa was now over Ricardo.
“Do you have any idea what’s on this thing?” asked Melissa as she shook the bear in Sage’s direction.
Sage just shook her head no.
Melissa faltered. “Well, let’s just say Ricardo was into some pretty kinky shit.”
Sage waved her hands into the air. “Stop! Don’t tell me anymore.”
Rising, she grabbed the bear from Melissa and headed into the kitchen. Her friend followed. Searching through her drawers, Sage found a heavy meat mallet. Pulling the camera and SD card out of the bear, she laid them both onto a wooden carving board. Turning to Melissa, she held out the mallet.
Melissa’s lip’s thinned as her brow lowered. Grasping the cold metal handle in her hands, she swung down heavily… and missed.
“Dammit!” she screamed.
“Hit it again!” yelled Sage.
At this point, all hell broke loose. Melissa started swinging with abandon, smashing the camera into tiny little plastic pieces as Sage cheered her on. Only when the camera had been reduced to a strewn mess of plastic shards, did she relent.
“Feel better?”
“Much.”
Opening a cabinet, Sage pulled out a bottle of red and two glasses. “So do you think he just liked to get his kink on when you weren’t around?”
“If only it were that stupidly simple,” smirked Melissa. “He kept ranting about getting paid. I think he planned on blackmailing me.”
“Bastard,” said Sage, holding out a filled wine glass for her to take.
Raising her glass in a toast, Melissa observed, “As the lovely Jennifer Aniston once said, ‘There are no regrets in life, just lessons,’” before taking a big swig. “Ow!”
“What?” asked an alarmed Sage.
“The damn wine stung my split lip.”
Sage softly laughed. “You’re a mess. Let’s get you cleaned up.
Sometime later, Melissa was curled up on the sofa under a blanket wearing one of Sage’s oversized hoodies and a pair of yoga pants. Her third glass of wine clutched in her hand. Sage took a sip from her own glass before broaching what she knew would be a contentious subject.
Taking a deep breath, she said, “I think you should file a police report.”
Melissa said nothing, just shook her head no.
“Melly, listen to re
ason. At the very least, you should get a restraining order against him.”
“No.”
“Your father would understand!”
“No.”
“Melly, please!”
“I can’t, Sage. I just can’t do that to my dad. I can’t see the look in his eyes when I tell him why I might be dragging him into the news. I just can’t.”
“Do you honestly think he cares more about his political reputation than your safety?”
Melissa gave her friend a weary look. “Yes.” After a long pause. “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”
It wasn’t right. Sage didn’t like the idea that someone like Ricardo could get away with hitting her friend and abusing her trust. What if Melissa wasn’t the only woman he had tried this crap on? She understood her friend’s reluctance to involve the police. Melissa wasn’t an ordinary citizen. Her father’s position in the government complicated things. But still.
Sage thought of Conner. How he had stood up to Ricardo in the parking lot the other day. A man like Conner would make the bastard pay. She knew that instinctively. Men like him lived by a certain code; it was a matter of honor. He may be arrogant and overly-confident where she was concerned. Even a bit primal in how he handled her. Sage blushed to think of his probably not idle threat to put her over-his-knee if she defied him, but there was a line she was certain he would never cross.
She gave herself a mental shake. One day with the man and already she was spoiling for him to fight her battles for her. Perhaps she should start searching Amazon for frilly aprons and crinoline skirts now?
“How about a movie?” she offered to distract both herself and Melissa from their own thoughts.
“Sounds good. Just no romance.”
“Horror?”
“Perfect.”
The gentle buzz of the fuzzy white screen on the television had long ago lulled both women to sleep when the quiet was broken by the sound of heavy footfalls just outside Sage’s apartment door.
Sage wrinkled her brow, fighting the drowsy effect of sleep and wine. There was a loud pounding sound invading her dreams.
