Anna Marie Sorenson's Secret Affair (23 page)

Her eyes widened as she watched him break open the flour and measure some out on a

cutting board. “You’re going to make the raviolis fresh? With fresh pasta?”

Dallas made a well on top of the pile of flour and broke an egg in it. “It’s the only way to eat pasta.”

After mixing the ingredients, he used a mixer to turn it into the dough, and then smoothed the dough into a large sheet on wooden cutting board.

“Where did you learn to cook?” Anna Marie asked as she watched him throw the scallops in a frying pan with sizzling butter and chopped garlic to sear them.

“In the Navy,” he said as he deftly peeled a pomelo, which looked a lot like a yellow grapefruit. “I had a two month crash course in cordon bleu cooking for an assignment I had in Hong Kong. After the assignment ended, the cooking lessons kind of stuck. Whenever I’m at my apartment in D.C., which isn’t a lot, I like to cook. I find it relaxing.”

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Anna Marie shook her head. “Relaxing is not what comes to mind when being around my

sister. I guess that’s why it’s not very fun to be around Pepper whenever she’s cooking or doing one of her cooking shows. She approaches cooking like it’s a battle.”

After popping the poor live lobsters in boiling water and let them cook for a few minutes, Dallas roughly chopped them up and filled up the past sheet with dots of lobster meat, then cut the pasta into several small squares.

“Wow,” Anna Marie said, very much impressed as she took a bite of the ravioli. “You’re really good. Just as good as Pepper.” Then a guilty expression came over her face. “She’d kill me if she heard me say that.”

After dinner, Dallas shocked her again with more of his skills. She had been lounging on the couch, completely surfeit of the rich food she had eaten and the rich wine she had drunk. The cottage had no television, so she contented herself by enjoying the undemanding silence. Dallas picked up the peach-coral dress that had been discarded the night before and sat down on the couch at Anna Marie’s feet. He then opened up a drawer that sat atop the stand next to the couch and took out a small sewing kit. She watched with shock as he threaded a needle with a pale pink thread.

“What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes goggling.

“I’m mending your dress. It’s the least I could do after I tore it from your body.”

“You know how to sew.” She herself was a complete failure with needle and thread.

Dallas gave her a brief smile before concentrating on the task as he delicately pushed the needle through the inside of the dress.

Anna Marie shook her head. “Let me guess. The Navy taught that to you, as well. Was it also for another secret mission where you had to play a tailor?”

“No. It was in basic training. When you’re way out of nowhere with no modern

amenities, especially with no malls nearby, you find some basic skills, such as sewing, come in quite handy. One time I had to sew up a parachute and my fatigues that had torn when I dropped in the forest in the Andes.”

For several minutes with fascinated eyes Anna Marie watched Dallas’s fingers deftly

move the needle in and out of the delicate silk material as skillfully and gracefully as any couture seamstress.

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He knotted the string inside the dress, cut it, and handed it to her. When she held it up, she was very impressed. Dallas’s mending had been so consummate that the front of the dress barely looked as if it had a tear.

On Sunday night, when Dallas was supposed to be back at the Alameda Naval Base,

preparing with his men to fly to the Philippine Islands, he was still ensconced in his family cottage in Sausalito, lying in bed with Anna Marie. They had just finished an exhausting round of sex and both were ready to drift off to sleep. After a weekend of marathon sex, both were inclined to spend rest of the night sleeping off their excess.

Dallas raised himself on his elbow and stared down at her. He idly drew a pattern on her flat stomach with his finger. “Why this unrequited urge to work in the Library of Congress?”

“I don’t know. It was something I’ve wanted since I was a kid.”

“Do you even know anything about the Library of Congress and what the employees do

there?”

Anna Marie recited like a well-trained parrot. “The Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the world’s largest library, with more than 130 million items in its physical collections, including books, manuscripts, prints, photos, film, video, and sound recordings, and more than 8 million items online at its award-winning Web site. Located on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., the Library is also the home of the U.S. Copyright Office, the Congressional Research Service, and the Law Library of Congress and is leading the worldwide effort to preserve digital material through the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program.” She smiled. “That’s verbatim from the job description on their website. I don’t imagine it’s anything like the people working in the intelligence department, where they have access at their fingertips any information, no matter how obscure it is, from anywhere around the world, and all top secret.”

“The library isn’t far removed from that from my understanding.”

She then glanced at the clock. “Aren’t you supposed to be back at the base by now?’

“Yes.” That was all Dallas offered.

She yawned hugely, and said sleepily, “Aren’t you going to get in trouble with the

Admiral?”

Dallas pulled her closer to him, his hand smoothing down her body. “I’ll catch up with them in Hawaii. By the way, I forgot to tell you, I got your package and the letter you wrote me.” Secret Affair 145

“What package…Oh, your military tags.”

He kissed her on the tip of her nose. “Thank you for returning them to me. The package finally reached me in Germany four months later. I enjoyed your letter.”

“I’m surprised. I sounded like a blithering idiot in it. I must have bored you to tears.”

“No, it was good. I liked reading about all the little domestic squabbles and tidbits of your life. Now I can see why all the other guys look forward to getting letters from home. It takes away some of the boredom and strangeness of being in a foreign land.” He paused for a moment. “I like the way you write. I’d like you to write me again while I’m away. I won’t be able to write to you, but it doesn’t prevent me from receiving letters.”

Anna Marie stared up at him in the dark, surprised. She didn’t think a loner like Dallas would want to receive something as humdrum as a letter from home, especially while he was on a mission in some exotic land.

“Alright. I will, if you want,” she said shyly.

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Chapter 12

The next morning, Anna Marie drove Dallas to Oakland Airport where he made an

impromptu reservation for a flight to Hawaii, from where he would fly to the Philippine Islands.

Despite her protest, Dallas convinced her to park her car in the garage so that she could see him off at the gate.

“When is your flight?” she asked, turning off the engine.

“At eleven fifteen.”

She looked at her watch. “Oh, my god! That’s only fifteen minutes.”

Dallas stepped out with his gear and pulled her out of the car with him. He forced her to trot alongside him all the way to the gate, which in any airport was not a quick walk. They reached the gate when the attendant was closing off the ramp door.

“You’re late,” the attendant scolded, petulantly re-opening the door. Then she looked up and some of her annoyance vanished when she took in Dallas’s striking looks in his Navy whites. Then her eyes went to Anna Marie and dismissed her instantly. She was no more than a plain Jane trying too hard in a tawdry get-up that had her boobs hanging out. She took the ticket Secret Affair 147

that Dallas held out to her and smiled up at him warmly, totally ignoring Anna Marie. “So, you’re going to Hawaii? Is this for R and R or are you meeting someone special there?”

“It’s business,” he said politely.

The woman’s smile turned up another one thousand watts. “Then I hope you come back

through here on your return flight, General Trenton,” she said, batting her lashes up at him Anna Marie raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything, pressing her lips together to prevent herself from bursting out laughing.

“That’s Major Trenton. I’m only a major. –If you’ll excuse me, mam.”

He reached for Anna Marie’s arm and pulled her aside. He took her in his arms and

kissed her roughly. In the kiss there was passion and, much to her surprise, longing.

He let her go as suddenly as he had grabbed her. Then he plucked a pen from the

attendant stall, earning him another irritated look. He wrote on the back of his ticket jacket, tore it off and stuffed it into Anna Marie’s hand. “Write me,” he said, then turned and walked swiftly down the tunnel. He turned once, looked back at her, and then disappeared into the plane.

Anna Marie lifted her hand and waived. As she did, a sudden pain hit her right in the heart. She gasped, because the impact of it robbed her of breath and she felt herself go pale. She pressed the heel of her hand against her chest. The pain told her she was going to miss Dallas dreadfully.

Oh, this was not good, she thought. Not good at all. Having sex was one thing. Having very good sex was another. But love was a complete no-no.

The attendant frowned at her, not at all liking the fact that this badly dressed Plain Jane might collapse on her. “Are you alright, miss?”

Anna Marie nodded. She turned and slowly walked down the terminal.

At first, Anna Marie thought that she would not write to Dallas. To her way of thinking, to prevent any attachment on her part that might be lurking beneath the surface, she would be better off if she did not start any correspondence with Dallas, albeit one-sided. She didn’t even know if he would want to see her if he came back into town again. But her sense of guilt, which was always ready to spring up whether or not it was warranted, overrode her better judgment.

She had told Dallas that she would write, and it was only right that she should keep her word.

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So, she sat down and began a letter to Dallas. After nearly thirty minutes of figuring out how she should start the letter and struggling over a precarious beginning, she wrote the following letter:

Dear Dallas

I am writing to you because you requested me to. Well, that doesn’t

sound like a very promising start of a letter, does it? I’m not quite sure that this is a good idea, that is, writing a letter to you. I’m not even sure that this letter will even reach you. Of course, you wouldn’t have asked me to write you if you knew

that the letter wouldn’t get to you, now would you? So, I don’t know why I’m

worrying about that.

I hope you’re doing okay. I hope you’re safe. I’m not quite sure I should

be saying that, so I crossed it out.

I hope you’re having a good time… I keep forgetting that you’re not on

vacation. But, since you go on all these exotic places, even though you’re there

on an assignment, or a job, do you sometimes think that if you weren’t there for

your work, that you might go there for a vacation? I guess that’s a silly question,

too. I suppose that wouldn’t be something you’d think about, because the kind of

job you have, you can’t let your mind wander. It’s a good thing I’m not a…Well,

it’s a good I don’t have your job.

I’m sorry I seem to be running on without a purpose in this letter.

I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’ve not had a lot of practice in writing letters to

anyone. After all, why would I, since hardly anyone really writes letters, now that

we have telephones, internet, cell phones. I’m sure you don’t want to hear that,

either.

The new addition to the library is almost finished. The library would

have been nearly finished by now, except that, suddenly, the county supervisors

decided that it was not good enough just to add an addition to the library, because

the new addition would have made the rest of the library look quite shabby and

out of date. The supervisors decided that this would put the library to shame in

the eyes of the residents, something that they could not hold their heads up high

for. So, they decided that the library needed to be renovated.

However, when they researched into possible renovations, they realized

that the cost would be almost as much as building a whole new library. So, it was

decided last Tuesday that a whole new library would be built. So, now, a budget

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to improve the library that had been five hundred thousand dollars is now over

fifteen million dollars. And this was all started because the library had asked the

county to okay one million dollars for improvement from the county budget.

I did have one interesting incident, with my cat, Stuart (that’s his name,

by the way, as I don’t think I ever introduced you two properly, but, then, there

was never really an opportunity, was there?). It was right after I came back from

San Francisco. I guess he was so angry with me for leaving him alone for so

long. I’ve never been away from home for more than eight hours. Although, if

you remember, I did call my neighbor to check on him, to give him food and

water, and to clean out the litter box.

That Monday, when I came home, I opened the door, and Stuart yowled

at me for rest of the day, stalking me everywhere I went around the house,

howling at the top of his lungs. A couple of times, he even attacked my legs with

his claws. I thought it might be good for him if I let him out for fresh air. You

know, let him blow off steam outside. As soon as I opened the door, Stuart ran

outside and disappeared.

I didn’t think anything of it, until I got a call from one of my neighbors,