While he started the laundry, she changed the sheets on the bed, a little amused and turned on because they definitely needed changing. The dirty sheets went over the balcony too; he’d know what to do with them. Delighted by the game of throwing things over the balcony, Tricks began running and barking, then grabbed a stuffed animal and slung it around to kill it. Everyone else was having fun, so why shouldn’t she?
Morgan grabbed one leg of the toy and began playing tug of war with her; while they were occupied, Bo wandered to her desk and stood looking down at it.
She had a tech-writing project she could work on. She studied it, thought about it, but couldn’t make herself plant her butt in the chair. For the first time in forever she had absolutely no interest in work. As traumatic as the day before had been, and as eventful as the night before had been, she thought she needed a day to do nothing but relax and enjoy the life she had… somehow. Doing something. The question was: what?
She was saved by Tricks, who abruptly abandoned the game with Morgan, went to the door and gave Bo her “Well?” look. The first trip outside in the mornings was for necessity, not walking, and now it was past time for her first walk of the day.
Morgan armed himself, she got the house keys and cell phone, and out they went.
The day seemed to call for a long, rambling walk, much longer than usual. At first they didn’t talk; the morning was warm but not yet uncomfortably so, the greenery was still fresh and damp from last night’s dew, and the sky overhead was a clear blue except for cotton-ball clouds drifting by. It always amazed her how noisy nature was; the birds were singing so wildly they sounded drunk, the bushes rustled with what she hoped wasn’t a rabbit because she didn’t want Tricks to give chase, the trees swayed in a light breeze. Bees droned, insects buzzed, arguments broke out between birds.
Morgan took her hand and they walked side by side when they could; when they couldn’t, he kept hold of her hand but walked in front, his head swiveling back and forth as he looked for trouble in any form, reptile, rodent, whatever might take Tricks’s attention. Though she’d been walking this path without incident for years, he used his grip on her hand to steady her as she stepped over logs and rocks.
She felt vaguely guilty, as if she was playing hooky.
“I don’t know how to relax,” she confessed after thinking about it for a minute. “I feel as if I should be doing something.”
He laced his fingers with hers. Having him hold her hand felt new and exciting as well as… comfortable. She was comfortable with him. That struck her as sexy, which told her she had it bad when she could equate even comfortable with sexy. She suspected that if he had knock-knees, she’d find that sexy too.
He brushed aside a bush branch for her to pass. “You’ve worked hard since you moved here, digging yourself out of a hole. That takes guts. But I’ve noticed you aren’t a sit-down-and-veg-in-front-of-the-TV kind of woman.”
“Vegging in front of the TV drove you nuts in no time, so you can’t say anything.”
“I’m not much for staying indoors. When I did get some down time, I’d try to go fishing, but that’s not on the table for now.”
Tricks darted out of sight behind a mossy boulder, and Bo pulled her hand free to run forward to keep her in sight, make sure she hadn’t found a snake or a skunk. Instead Tricks was standing in front of a weed with a yellow bloom on top, staring at a bumblebee as it droned from one flowering weed to another. “Come here,” Bo said. “Don’t eat the bee.” Tricks ignored her and continued to watch the bee until Bo said sternly, “Young lady!” That warning was the second tier leading to getting into serious trouble, and with a wag of her tail that said she’d seen enough, Tricks trotted back to the trail.
“Did you know bumblebees can’t fly if their muscles are colder than eighty-six degrees?” Morgan said; he too was watching the bee. He folded her hand in his again as soon as she rejoined him.
Bo blinked. “I’ve seen them fly when the weather is colder than that.”
“They warm up their thoracic muscles by shivering. Can take up to five minutes.”
“Supposedly they shouldn’t be able to fly at all.”
“That was an error in calculation. Bumblebees go into dynamic stall-they create a little vortex-plus their short wings displace a disproportionate amount of air.”
That was interesting, but the subject matter made her squint up at him. “And you know about the aerodynamics of bumblebees because-?”
“Just something interesting that was covered in flight school.”
She was silent a moment as she digested this new insight into him. Going to flight school logically meant he was a pilot. “What do you fly?”
“Helicopter and small fixed-wing. Flying’s okay. I don’t like it as much as I do the water.” He answered as casually as if it were no big deal, as if flying helicopters and small airplanes were commonplace. Maybe it was in his world; it wasn’t in hers. In her world, people drove. She knew only one other person who could fly small planes. But she wasn’t surprised by this facet of him, or the scope of his experience; she’d known from the beginning that he navigated very deep waters. Was this how a military wife felt? Or the wife of a firefighter, or a cop? As if his experiences were so dramatic and diametrically opposed to hers? How did people find common ground?
She could drive herself crazy trying to find the answer-because there wasn’t one-or she could just let things be. She opted for her new zen attitude. They had slept together; that was the extent of their relationship. For now, that was enough. She might not feel the same way tomorrow, but she’d find that out tomorrow. In the meantime, she wanted to know more about something he seemed enthusiastic about.
“Where do you fish?”
“The Potomac, when I’m home from a mission. I try to get back to Florida a couple of times a year, do some deep-sea fishing, hit some bass lakes. Not that I get that much down time, because even when we aren’t on missions, we’re training our asses off, but I still hang on to my boat.”
“What kind of boat do you have?”
“Just an old fishing boat I named the Shark. When I get released to go back out in public, we’ll take her out if you like fishing.” He tilted his head back, eyed the pieces of sky visible through the tree limbs. The woods weren’t so thick that walking was difficult, but the shade was nice.
“I don’t know about fishing, I’ve never tried it, but I love the water.” She kept her tone casual despite the leap her heart rate made at his reference to the future. She wouldn’t bet on it-but she liked that he’d offered.
“That’s right, you’re a swimmer. You don’t get much swimming around here, do you?”
“More than you’d think,” she replied, thinking about the secluded lake where she took Tricks in the summer.
“Yeah? Where?”
“I’ll show you later.” The lake would be a nice surprise for later in the day, maybe with a picnic lunch. It was a pretty place, and the lake was big enough for some serious swimming, though the water was so cold she could stand it only during the hottest weather. Tricks didn’t care, she just loved to swim. The cold water was probably what kept snakes away, because she’d never seen a snake around or in the lake. If she had, likely she’d have enrolled Tricks in the nearest Y-or tried. Given Tricks’s track record, she was betting on her girl getting people to bypass rules and regulations.
“Do you own all this land?” he asked at one point. They were at least a mile from the house, probably more, though they’d walked at least twice that because their route hadn’t been a straight line.
“No, I own ten acres. I think this belongs to someone who lives in Charleston, but I’m not sure. Mayor Buddy owns a chunk of land close to here, and to the east the land belongs to Kenny Michaels’s folks. You’ve met him; he’s Daina’s boyfriend.”