Uncommon Pleasure (26 page)

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.”

“That’s fine,” John said easily. “Did I mention that in the last week I’ve gotten three calls from three different individuals asking for drastically different services? You want challenges and strategically significant jobs all over the world? They’re all coming down the pike.”

John could sell ice in the middle of a snowstorm, but Ty’d clearly told him Sean’s weak spot. “I’ll make a decision by the end of the week,” Sean said.

Ty was watching him, his gaze slightly narrowed, a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth, and Sean remembered the way he studied the men in his platoon, understood them. Maybe Ty understood and maybe he didn’t. Either way, Sean’s decision just got a lot more complicated.

“I gotta go,” he said. “I rotate on for Chase at 1600, right?”

John nodded.

“Lunch plans?” Ty asked easily.

“Yeah.”

“Girlfriend?”

“Not exactly.”

*   *   *

It was just like last year, if not quite as warm. The high was
supposed to be around sixty-five, but the cloud cover made it feel cooler, almost fall-like. As a result the park was nearly empty. Sean
parked the Mustang in the far corner of the lot. As they walked to a spot near the tree line along one edge of the park, Abby shivered in her khaki skirt and short-sleeved blouse, and wished she’d brought a sweater.

“Here,” Sean said, and handed her edges of the blanket. Together they spread it out on the ground, anchoring one corner with the cooler containing the wild rice salad she’d made and the sandwiches, potato salad, chips, sodas, and cupcakes that were his contribution.

“This isn’t the same blanket,” Sean commented as he flipped it open and spread it on the ground.