by Anne Calhoun
“I’ll wake you up in forty-five minutes.”
She laughed. “I can’t afford to sleep for forty-five minutes. Thirty, max.”
“Deal,” he said quickly.
“We aren’t negotiating,” she said.
He just smiled. “You’ll feel more alert.”
“This is temporary, Sean,” she pointed out gently. “Classes are over mid-December. I’ll sleep then.” Until it all started up again mid-January, and that was just her last semester of prereqs. Then the actual coursework began, practicums and clinicals. She should get a CNA license, for the experience, but the pay was abysmal compared to what she made at No Limits, the perfect topic for an Ethics paper.
“But I want you to sleep now,” he said just as gently. “You look so tired, Abby.”
“I am tired. I can afford to run a sleep deficit right now. I can’t afford to get used to—”
“It’s just for now, Abby,” Sean said. “Nothing to get used to. Just a little extra sleep today.”
Why not? her sleep-deprived, stressed brain asked. Why not enjoy everything Sean Winthrop offers for the duration of his leave? Why not have sex and get extra sleep with someone else in the room who will wake you up if you sleep through the alarm?
“Thirty minutes,” she warned. “You have to wake me up in thirty minutes.”
“I will.”
He didn’t lie down beside her, or tuck her in, or sit by her side and stroke her hair, or do anything else lover-ly or boyfriend-ly. He set an alarm on his watch and stayed on the floor while she curled up on her side and closed her eyes. Dappled sunlight splayed against her closed eyelids, magnifying sounds. The television downstairs, volume rising and falling with the transition between commercials and content. Her own breathing, too shallow to please her yoga teacher. The sensation in her mind of doors closing as sleep crept up on her. Sean’s breathing, steady, slow, deep…
Sean’s hand on her forearm. A gentle squeeze. “Abby.” Sean’s voice. “Abby, honey, wake up.”
She blinked and surreptitiously checked for drool. None. She’d slept too deeply to drool. Like something out of a dream, Sean knelt on one knee by her bed, his elbow braced on his thigh, his summer sky eyes unguarded. In that defenseless moment she smiled at him, then memory returned. The clock showed exactly thirty minutes after she’d lain down on her bed. She sat up, cross-legged, and stared blankly out the window.
That felt too much like trust. A promise made and kept, no matter how small, laid the foundation for trust. Honey felt too much like lovers. She cleared her throat. “I need more coffee,” she said. “You?”
The guarded expression darkened his eyes. “Sure. Feel better?”
She couldn’t bring herself to lie. “Yes.”
“Good.”
She refilled their coffee cups, then set to the Microbiology reading. When she was in the middle of outlining the mechanisms of pathogenicity Sean asked, “When do you have to be at work?”
“Seven,” she replied without looking up. “I needed to get caught up on homework so I swapped the late shift with Lisette.”
He stowed his books in his bag as his laptop powered down. “Six for me,” he said. “Gotta go.”
“You really came here to study,” she said.
“I did,” he said without looking up from his position on his knees, wrapping the laptop cord around his broad palm before stowing it in one of the backpack’s many pockets. Sean was terribly organized. “It’s one of my best memories from leave last year.”
Ouch. She had, perhaps, forgotten to consider that Sean was a person, a rather complex one, and in that complexity lay his unmatched ability to hurt her. “It’s not what we agreed to,” she said, the words no less ruthless for their soft tone.
“I know,” he said, and bent to kiss her swiftly before his electric blue gaze held hers. “I owe you. For this, and several other things I’ve done that we didn’t agree to. Take what you want from me later.”
And then he was gone, leaving only his unique scent and heat in her room, and a vague restlessness in her heart.
Chapter Five
Sean was pleasantly surprised to be home for Election Day. Usually he voted with an absentee ballot, but today he walked into his elementary school at midmorning, after the early morning voters and cameras, and before the lunchtime rush. He checked in with the elections’ official, stepped inside the curtained polling booth, and exercised one of the freedoms he’d just spent a year defending. The booth beside him housed a young mother, alternating between cooing at a baby in a carrier on her chest and admonishing a younger child who was ducking into Sean’s booth while his mother was distracted.
“Lucas, come back here,” she stage-whispered.
Face solemnly composed, Sean looked down at Lucas, dressed in shorts and a train T-shirt, and made a shooing motion at him. The little boy peered up at him, wide-eyed, then crawled back under the curtain to his mother. Ballot cast, Sean exited the booth and accepted his I Voted Today sticker.
“How’s the turnout?” he asked the volunteer as he slapped the sticker onto his shirt just below his collarbone.
She shook her head. “In an off-cycle year we’re lucky to get 10 percent voter turnout. It may be a little higher because of the bond issue for the school district, so 15 percent?”
The young mother turned up with her kicking infant strapped facing forward on her chest and her young son vocally negotiating for two stickers, his mother’s and one of his own. Sean watched the byplay and mentally contrasted the election process in Afghanistan, with heavily armed guards at polling stations, an all-male voter registry, and the suspicion of rigged elections.
Next stop: Langley Security. The door to the outer office was closed and locked, so Sean pressed the buzzer. “It’s me,” he said when he heard a click. The locked door buzzed, and he opened it.
“What’s up?” John asked.
“I came by to give you this,” Sean said as he handed him an 8x11 manila envelope, taped shut, no markings on the outside. “I read up on the pharmaceutical industry last week. These are my notes. Some of the younger guys you’ve got working for you might not know much about the background. If you think this will help them, go ahead and distribute. If not, just shred them.”
John opened the envelope and upended it. The binder-clipped packet slid into his hand. “Notes? These are your notes? There’s”—he flipped to the last page in the packet—“216 pages of single-spaced notes here.”
“There’s some analysis in there, too. Nothing fancy. Not what I could do with a couple of weeks and a few phone calls,” he said. “And access to SEC filings. That would help. I can e-mail you the document if you want it.”
“Huh,” John said as he skimmed the first few pages. Then he looked up at Sean, his gaze assessing. “I’ll take a look at it. Thanks.”
“No problem.” It was the kind of work he’d do anyway. He was a serviceable platoon commander, but his real strength lay in his ability to assimilate and analyze enormous quantities of information. Make connections between seemingly unrelated incidents and individuals. Look for patterns where previously none existed, then deviations from those patterns. A geek, really. A geek who could run a six-minute mile, a geek with an expert marksman status, a geek who’d taken twenty-two men to war and brought them all home again, but really just a geek.
He’d geeked out big-time in Abby’s bedroom, showing up with a backpack full of books and his laptop. But while being her secret lover satisfied a year of pent-up physical need, there was no way night after night of incredibly hot sex would establish the long-term emotional connection he wanted. Time was running out.
“How’s Ty seem to you?” John asked.
“Better,” Sean said. “More relaxed and more focused at the same time.”
“Good,” John said. “Has he talked to Lauren yet?”
“Based on the way she ignores him when she comes out for lunch, I’m going with no,” Sean said. “She walks around him like he�
�s part of the park bench.”
“Or maybe he talked to her, and she told him to fuck off.”
“I don’t think so,” he said, not that sleeping with a woman made him an expert on her. “She doesn’t seem like the type to hold a grudge, but after what Ty said to her a couple of weeks ago, he better tell her the truth and hope she’s feeling merciful.” He shook his head. “He was in really bad shape. I should have noticed.”
“We all should have. It turned out okay, in the end. What about you?” John asked. “Adjusting okay after deploying? Your family’s here. Got a local girl?”
Sean shrugged. “I’m fine,” he said, avoiding the girlfriend question.
John tucked the binder-clipped stack of paper back in the manila envelope, then slid it into the briefcase by his desk. “I’ll look at this tonight.”
“Later,” Sean said.
Next stop was Abby’s house. He rang the doorbell again and waited while Abby’s father shuffled into view from the living room. An oxygen tube was strapped under his nostrils and the tank rolled beside him. He squinted down the hall then waved his hand for Sean to come in.
“Mr. Simmons, I’m Sean Winthrop, a friend of Abby’s,” he said as he closed the front door behind him.
The old man’s eyebrow went up, but the sardonic effect was spoiled by a rasping, hacking cough. “Friend? You’re that Marine she was head over heels for last year. I saw pictures, not that you bothered to come over and meet your girl’s father. Then you go off to Afghanistan, and she’s over the moon about it. Ribbons made a big mess. She’s not here.”
Sean wondered if Mr. Simmons needed more oxygen, because the last few sentences seemed to have come from another dimension altogether. “Yes, sir. I’m here to mow the lawn.”
The noise Mr. Simmons made could have been the last gasp of a dying man, a grunt of disbelief, or just the tail end of a cough. “You’re too good to mow my lawn.”
The ridiculousness of arguing for the job of mowing a lawn wasn’t lost on Sean, but he rose to the challenge. “No, sir, I’m not,” he said seriously. “I mowed lawns every summer from the time I was nine until I left for school. I can give you references.” Fifteen-year-old references. God help him if Mr. Simmons asked for them.
“The mower blades haven’t been sharpened, and it probably needs oil. Abby can start it and push it, but she doesn’t know jack about taking care of the machine.”
Had her father taught her, back when he was healthy? His father showed him how to mow the lawn and take care of the mower, just as he’d taught all of Sean’s sisters, and hadn’t mowed the lawn in nearly twenty years. “I’ll take a look at it first, sir.”
“She’s not going to be happy about this. Wants to learn how to do things herself.”
“Yes, sir,” Sean agreed. “I’ll show her how to sharpen the blades and add oil another time.”
“Don’t bother. She said when it quits she’s buying a reel mower. Better for the environment. Quieter, too.”
The yard had to be damned near an acre. She needed a riding mower, not a human-powered reel mower from nineteen-ought-fuck, but Sean kept that opinion to himself. “Is the mower in the shed or the garage?”
“Shed.” Mr. Simmons dug out a key ring and handed it over. “Set the deck at three inches. Abby’s been scalping it to stretch times between jobs. Hard on the grass.”
Sean unlocked the shed and pushed the mower into the sunshine. The blades were dull enough to be dangerous, so he sharpened them, then added oil and gas and yanked on the starter cord. The engine roared to life. Then, just because, he mowed the front and backyards into perfect double spirals, edged the sidewalk and front path, uprooted all the crabgrass encroaching from the neighbor’s yard, and trimmed the hedges. By the time he was finished his T-shirt and shorts were soaked with sweat, but the yard looked good. Really good.
“Not bad,” Abby’s father said grudgingly. “Needs fertilizing.”
“It’s a little early yet,” Sean said.
Mr. Simmons grunted again. “Abby’ll appreciate it.”
Sean wasn’t so sure about that. He handed over the key ring, got in the Mustang, and headed over to his parents’ house. As long as he was giving girls a break, he might as well cut their lawn for Naeve.
* * *
The knock on his door came at two thirty a.m. He stumbled down the hall and unlocked the door to let Abby in. “I’m giving you a key,” he said and reached for her hand to pull her down the hallway, into bed. “Come on.”
“I’m not coming in,” she said, but the yawn ruined the sharp tone.
“Why not?”
“I saw the lawn. I’m not going to reward you breaking the rules with sex.”
“I didn’t think you’d see it until tomorrow. You said you had lab, then work.”
“I forgot my laptop cord at home,” she said. In the darkness her eyes looked more shadowed than usual, her skin so pale as to be almost translucent. “You’re breaking the rules, Sean. The rules were what I want, when I want it. Nothing else, nothing more. I can do these things myself.”
“I know you can,” he said gently. Just as gently he took her hand and tugged her through the living room, down the hallway.
“I’ll pay you for the work. You edged and trimmed. That must have taken hours.”
She was nearly asleep on her feet. In the bedroom he went to work on the buttons of her blouse. “I don’t want your money, Abby.”
“I’m too tired to be a good fuck tonight,” she said through another yawn.
“I don’t want sex, either,” he said, and unzipped her flirty little skirt.
Her skirt landed in the pooled semicircle of her blouse. “You have to want something. Why can’t I figure out what you want?”
He unfastened her bra and pushed it down her arms. “Right now all I want is for you to get out of those heels,” he said, hunkered down to slip each stocking down and off, then straightened to tug one of his USMC T-shirts over her head. Half asleep on her feet, she didn’t protest at all, just got into bed.
“My feet hurt,” she said sleepily.
“I know. Go to sleep.”
“What do you want, Sean?”
The words came from the far side of awake, echoing her question in the parking lot two weeks ago, and she wasn’t going to let this go. Good. Keep her thinking, keep her interested, keep her attention. “Go on a picnic with me,” he said.
“Hmmmm?”
“Make that great wild rice salad with the walnuts and the cayenne pepper and go on a picnic with me. That’s what I want. Time with you.”
“That’s not sex. This was supposed to be about sex. Now you’re mowing my lawn and studying with me. You’re breaking the rules, Sean. Rules do apply to you. Just because you show up again and you’re all sexy-hot-Marine doesn’t mean you don’t have to follow my rules.”
Half-asleep Abby did say the most interesting things. He hid his smile in her hair. “Have sex with me while we’re on the picnic,” he said.
“Okay.”
He wasn’t sure that constituted informed consent, but hell, it was just a picnic, not a chandelier-swinging sex act.
* * *
Paying careful attention to her schedule, Sean sent Abby on her way by six on Friday morning with a key and an extra twenty minutes of sleep by not waking her up for a departure quickie. When he showed up at Langley Security for the daily debriefing, John and Ty were waiting for him. A full seabag sat on the floor by the door. Sean looked at John, then at Ty. “You’re leaving?” he said. “Did you talk to Lauren?”
“Yeah, Mom, I talked to her.”
“And you’re leaving anyway? She didn’t…She wouldn’t…What happened?”
“Aren’t you the romantic? Easy there. It’s all good,” Ty said. He was relaxed in a way Sean hadn’t seen in the three weeks he’d been on leave, shoulders low, breathing easy, the tense-to-the-point-of-breaking demeanor gone. “I owe Gulf Independent another month. The chopper leaves in a couple of hours.
After that I’m done for good.”
Sean looked from John to Ty. “You’re buying in?”
“Yeah. Chief Operating Officer specializing in personnel.” He finished his coffee and looked Sean straight in the eye. “My first recommendation was to get you off surveillance and on board as a partner.”
“That was before he read your notes,” John added.
Sean blinked. “You want me? For what?”
“Research and strategy,” John said. He picked up the file containing Sean’s background research. “Ty can get us the right people. You can get us data. Information. Intelligence. The pieces of the puzzle operatives need in order to do their jobs. You’ve got the connections and analysis training.”
“What’s the offer?” he asked automatically. Get data. Get information. Do a gut check.
“Equal partnership. Three-way split,” John said, gesturing from himself to Ty to Sean. “You bring something to the table we don’t have, and we need.”
It was an unbelievable offer. Totally unexpected. The money would blow military pay out of the water. “Based out of Galveston?”
“For the time being I’m keeping the headquarters here, but it’s a global industry. You could work from wherever you think you’d be most effective, or wherever the job demanded. New York. D.C. London.”
He could be home, for good. He could resign his commission, remove the constraint rushing his timetable with Abby. But he’d never been in this for the money, and his gut, the intuitive instinct he’d honed razor sharp over the last year, balked at the thought of a job left undone. He’d asked to deploy, volunteered to take another lieutenant’s assignment so he could stay stateside with his wife and new baby. The bonds of loyalty to the Corps were ironclad before he spent a year fighting alongside the men whose faces now personalized strategy. The debt of loyalty only grew.
But what about Abby? This isn’t going well, and you know it…
Sean shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at them. “I need to think about it.”
