19 Headed for Trouble (17 page)

“So what’s been going on in your lives?” I asked, as we all sat down in my office.

Navy SEAL Chief Ken Karmody was dressed for work, which today meant desert-print cammie BDUs. He was going to spend the afternoon crawling around in the San Borrego desert, trying out some new gear.

“You want to tell her?” Savannah asked him.

“Tell me what?” I looked from one to the other.

Savannah was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, sneakers on her feet. It didn’t surprise me—she’d been dressing far more casually since she’d met and married Ken. Her blond hair was cut short and it wisped around her face. She looked far more like a college student than a high-powered attorney.

“Van had a little bit of a meltdown the other day,” Ken admitted.

I looked to her for confirmation, and she nodded, wincing slightly, embarrassment on her pretty face. “It was more like a big meltdown.”

“No, it wasn’t,” her husband scoffed. “Believe me, from someone who’s had big meltdowns a time or two—yours was very small.”

“A time or two,” I repeated. “More like ten.”

He laughed because he knew what I was thinking. No doubt he, too, was remembering the night he drove his
car onto his ex-girlfriend’s lawn, music blaring from his stereo speakers, drunk out of his mind, hoping she’d take him back. Fortunately for him, she hadn’t, leaving him solidly single when Savannah came along.

“They all happened years ago,” Savannah pointed out.

But there had been a more recent incident—back when Ken was living in San Diego, and Savannah was still living in New York. They’d met in the middle, in Dallas or Denver, as often as they could, but spent far too many weeks apart.

It was hard for both of them—newly married, living on different coasts. Especially since Ken frequently went overseas with SEAL Team Sixteen. Days off for either of them were few and far between.

“Remember that time,” Ken told Savannah, “that you came to San Diego to surprise me, only I went to New York to surprise you?”

Savannah laughed. “Like I’m ever going to forget?” Shaking her head, she turned to me. “I walked into our house in San Diego at about three
A.M
. The place was quiet, it was obvious Ken was asleep, so I didn’t turn on the lights. It was a surprise—my being there. I was supposed to be in New York at some legal thing, a conference that was canceled. So I went into the bedroom, got undressed, climbed into bed and—” She cracked up.

“I had given my keys to Sam and his wife, Alyssa,” Ken said, far less amused. “They were painting their house, and the fumes were intense, so … I figured since Van and I weren’t going to be there, they could sleep at our place. Meanwhile, I was in New York, wondering where my wife was at three o’clock in the morning.”

“Having a ménage à trois with your best friend and his wife.” Savannah laughed. “The look on Sam’s face when he turned on the light … And Alyssa …!” She
howled. “She got a little mad at Sam because she thought he was enjoying himself too much.”

“Yeah, I bet he was.” Ken was pretending to be disgruntled, but he clearly thought it was funny, too.

“It was so embarrassing.” Savannah covered her face with her hands. “And can you imagine being Sam, and waking up with some strange woman pawing at you?”

“You don’t paw,” Kenny said.

“Yeah, well …” Mischief danced in her eyes. “I now know Sam Starrett a little too well.”

“Imagine if you’d climbed into Alyssa’s side of the bed,” Ken said. He grinned, and did a pretty horrendous Groucho Marx imitation. “I’ve actually spent quite a lot of time imagining that.”

Savannah kicked his boot with her sneaker. “That’s awful. I probably would’ve thought you were cheating on me. I mean, when I grabbed Sam, I knew right away that he wasn’t you. But if I’d climbed into bed and found a woman there … I would’ve had a heart attack. I would’ve died of shock. Instantly.” She looked at me. “Ken would never be unfaithful. There are few things I’m certain of in life, but that’s one of them.”

Ken took her hand, bringing it to his lips. “Thanks, babe,” he said, his eyes soft.

She smiled at him, and for a moment, I wasn’t even there in the room.

But I cleared my throat and brought them back on track. “We were talking about Ken’s meltdown.”

“Okay,” he said. “So Van’s having her comedy of errors in San Diego. Meanwhile, I’m in her less-crowded apartment in Manhattan, with an armload of flowers.” He shook his head. “I knew immediately what had happened. I saw some memo about the conference being canceled. I saw her notes about her flight to San Diego. And I just lost it. I just … sat down on the floor and, well, I cried.”

This was clearly the first time Savannah had heard this. Her eyes were wide. “Oh, Kenny.”

“I missed you so much,” he admitted. “It was killing me, not seeing you.”

“That was the same weekend you started talking about moving to New York,” she realized. She turned to me. “I couldn’t believe he was serious. Leave the SEALs? I went home and started packing. I couldn’t let him do that. I couldn’t.”

“She actually talked the partners in her firm into opening a San Diego branch,” Ken told me. “The woman has balls.”

“But now I’ve gone and quit,” Savannah said. She turned a little pale. “Oh, my God, I’ve actually quit.”

“She’s running for office,” Ken announced. “For Congress.”

“We haven’t decided that yet,” she warned him.

He was unperturbed. “Yeah, we have. You want to run, you’re running. You’re sick of sitting around, watching civil rights erode. What am I fighting for, you know? It drives her nuts, so she’s running.”

“I have some clients who are Arab Americans,” Savannah explained. “These are good people, but they happen to have the same name as someone on the terrorist watch list. Turns out my phones have been tapped. My office was searched.”

“She actually stood on a table in a restaurant,” Ken said admiringly, “and gave her first campaign speech.”

“I had my meltdown at the Café Bistro,” she admitted to me.

“You got a standing O,” her husband said.

“I kind of did,” she told me, as if she still couldn’t quite believe it.

“She’s running. And she’s going to win.” Ken stood up. “We’ve got to go, babe. I don’t want to be late.”

“Thanks for stopping by,” I told them, standing too, and giving them both a hug and kiss.

Savannah gave me an extra squeeze. “Thank you so much for writing Kenny into my life,” she whispered.

I just smiled and waved goodbye. I was having too much fun picturing Ken Karmody as first husband of U.S. President Savannah von Hopf.

Now
there
was a story that would be fun to write …

C
HAPTER
O
NE

It was surreal, being home.

Of course, this apartment wasn’t really home. It was kind of half-home, but half-not, which added to the weirdness.

When Arlene Schroeder’s reserve unit had gotten called up, she’d given some of her furniture to her brother, Will, but had put most of it into storage, into a self-service garage-sized room.

For twelve dollars a month—special military rate, set up by a friend of a friend—the antique desk and bed-frame her grandmother bequeathed her, her dresser and formal dining room set, all of her books and clothes, and her precious box with Maggie’s baby shoes would be safe and dry and waiting for her, upon her return from Iraq.

Over the long months—two separate tours—that
she’d been gone, she’d frequently wished she’d been able to put her now-thirteen-year-old daughter into similar storage. Instead, Mags had moved in with Will.

Instead, she’d kept growing and had gotten even taller than Arlene, beginning the permanent transformation from sweet-faced child to this remarkably self-reliant, beautiful young woman who now stood in the kitchen of Will’s shabby Newton apartment, cutting vegetables for some kind of exotic, Indian-spiced dish that she was cooking for dinner.

Arlene’s baby girl was cooking dinner.

She wasn’t just cooking dinner, she was cooking dinner while wearing a bra.

As Arlene watched, Maggie added the vegetables to what looked like some kind of dangerously delicious stewing chicken, and put the cover securely on the pot. “In an hour, when the dinger dings,” her daughter commanded, “turn on this burner over here. When the water boils, add the rice, lower the heat and—”

“I know—” How to cook rice. Arlene bit back the words that were coming out of her mouth much too sharply. It wasn’t Maggie’s fault that she felt like an outsider here, like a stranger in a strange land.

“It’s basmati,” Maggie told her as if that meant something special. “It only needs to simmer for fifteen, sixteen minutes, okay?”

She was so excited that Arlene was home, so excited to be showing off her cooking skills—skills she’d needed to develop because her mother had been sent to serve for much longer than they’d all expected, way over on the other side of the world. She was showing off the skills she’d learned from Will’s latest girlfriend, who no doubt had also taken Maggie bra shopping.

Will’s latest girlfriend with the ridiculous name—Dolphina—who was petite and perfect, like some Bollywood movie star with her long, shimmering, straight
dark hair, her perfect, freckle-free skin, and her big, brown Bambi eyes.

Every other word out of Maggie’s mouth was
Dolphina
. Dolphina said this and Dolphina said that and, God, Arlene was beyond grateful that Maggie was happy and healthy and that she clearly felt loved and supported, particularly while her mother was stuck in a place where death by mortar fire was common and unpredictable, but
enough
already.

“Go to your rehearsal,” Arlene quietly told her daughter now. “I got the rice—I’ll make us a salad, too.”

Maggie hugged her, giving her a noogie atop her head—the way Arlene used to do to her. “Little Mommy,” she teased.

“Go,” Arlene ordered in her best military sergeant, afraid Mags would see the sudden rush of tears to her eyes. She didn’t want her daughter to be taller than she was. She wanted her monkey-girl back, but that Maggie was gone forever—the anxious little girl she’d left behind when she boarded that first troop transport all those endless months ago. Arlene had done her duty and gone to Iraq—and she’d lost those last precious few moments of Maggie’s too short childhood. She’d sacrificed those last few chances spent with her daughter curled up, gangly arms and legs and all, on her lap. A lap which now felt achingly empty.

“I’ll call if I’m going to be late.” Maggie grabbed her bookbag and her jacket and bounded out the apartment door.

Leaving Arlene alone for the first time since Maggie and Will had met her plane at Logan, yesterday morning.

Will and the perfect Dolphina were having dinner out tonight. That had been Dolphina’s idea—arranged to give Maggie some alone time with her mom. Yeah, didn’t
it figure? The betch was as nice as she was beautiful and smart.

She also had the extremely glamorous job of personal assistant to a movie star. Well, TV star now. Actor Robin Chadwick Cassidy and his FBI agent husband Jules lived in a chichi part of Boston. Maggie and Will both had visited them at their town house. Many times.

Arlene paced Will’s little living room, pretending to look at the photos and artwork on her older brother’s walls, but in truth restless—and not quite sure what to do with herself. In Iraq, she was either working or sleeping. Mostly working. If she ever found herself with two full hours on her hands, she’d immediately retreat to her quarters and fall unconscious on her bunk.

After first hitting the computer tent, waiting on line to connect to the Internet, to send her daily, cheerful “everything’s all right” email to Maggie and Will. Even if—as was so often the case—she wasn’t feeling cheerful or as if anything there in the sandbox was good or right.

She circled the room one more time before deciding to go out for a walk—something she’d never been able to do in besieged Baghdad—when the doorbell buzzed.

She glanced through the door’s peephole, certain it was one of the neighbors, or maybe the FedEx delivery person. Will was writing a book, collaborating with a former special forces soldier who lived in Florida, who preferred working with hard copies. As a result, Will now knew all of the various delivery people by their first names.

But the man standing in the hall wasn’t wearing a delivery uniform. And he certainly wasn’t old Mrs. D’Oretti from next door.

It was Jack Lloyd—but it was a Jack Lloyd the likes of which Arlene hadn’t seen very often.

Instead of his usual sneakers and jeans, shabby
button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up, tie loose around his neck, this alternate-universe Jack Lloyd was wearing a suit.

A very nice suit that fit his tall, lean frame very, very well.

Last time she’d seen the man in a suit had been that night that …

Arlene opened the door. “Will’s not here,” she said in lieu of proper greeting.
Hey, Jack, how are you? It’s been a long time. Two years, three months, and nineteen days, in fact. You never did return my phone call—and I really was only calling to find out if you’d found my favorite pair of panties in the mess we’d made of your bedroom, that night you rocked my world three different times
.

“Yeah, I know,” Jack said, in his familiar whiskey-flavored voice. “I’m not here to see Will.”

She’d always thought that that was stupid—voices couldn’t have flavors. But then she’d met Jack.