Chapter 6

“O, a kiss
Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!”
~ William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, Act V, sc. iii, L. 44-5 ~

“How about that one?” But even as I said it, the little restaurant went past us into the night. I watched it go, and turned to Jethro. “You do want to stop and eat, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, as though I’d just asked a stupid question. But he just kept driving.

“Are you taking me somewhere specific, or are we just going to hit a drive-through eventually?”

“I’ll know a good spot when I see it.”

I sighed and leaned back in the seat. The trunk was filled with books and groceries. Jethro had asked me to buy my books with my credit card, in case Rushfeldt was somehow watching my transactions. Using it in DC would keep him here, he explained, and keeping him here would make him easier to catch. I hadn’t been completely comfortable with that, but I decided to follow his lead. If I could help out the investigation in my own small way, then I would. After all, the sooner Rushfeldt was back in custody, the sooner I could get out of the safe house, and that was incentive enough to make me put my discomfort aside. After I’d bought twenty books, we’d decided that forty degrees was cool enough to keep fresh food fresh, and had stopped at a supermarket to get enough groceries for several days. Jethro had paid for them, saying he’d submit the bill to the company. Now we were driving around, and had been for about half an hour. I had spotted at least ten interesting-looking restaurants, but so far Jethro had ignored my suggestions.

“What kind of place are you looking for?” I asked after a while. “Maybe I can help you find it.”

“I don’t know,” he said. That was a lie. I was sure of it. “Don’t worry,” he continued. “I’m sure we’ll find someplace soon.”

I grumbled a few choice words under my breath and turned to look at Lane, lying on the backseat. He raised his head, but otherwise didn’t move. We’d managed to bully the bookstore and the supermarket into letting me take him inside. His good behaviour had quickly won out over cursory protests. I smiled at him, and turned back to the front just in time for Jethro to wildly spin the wheel, cut across two lanes of traffic, and jostle the lot of us as he entered a parking lot. He stopped the car and turned it off. I stared.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Nope.”

“I’ve never eaten at a place like this in my life!”

“Neither have I. That’s the point. He knows you, and he might be watching me. Gotta be out of character.”

“This is definitely out of character. Jethro, this is a biker bar.”

He opened his door. “And they probably won’t mind if we take Lane in with us,” he said, ignoring my protest as he got out. He started to close his door, but when I didn’t move, he stopped and leaned in. “What, you’re not hungry?”

It was the note of challenge in his voice that did me in. Damn. He’d figured out how to manipulate me. Grumbling a little, I undid my seatbelt and got out, opening the back door for Lane. When all the doors were closed and locked, Jethro joined me on the sidewalk. “They’d better have good food,” I warned him as we started for the entrance.

He shrugged. “No promises.”

The place was more truck stop than biker bar, really. The clientele was mostly male, half in baseball caps, half in leather. There was a definite road weariness to the place, but our entrance still caused a pause in the muted conversations. I looked around cautiously, but didn’t see any immediate threats, so I went over to the bar. “Hi,” I said to the bartender. “Do you serve food?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking at me a little strangely.

“Excellent. We’ll take two menus. Oh, is it all right to have my dog here? He’s very well behaved. I promise he won’t be any trouble.” I shrugged and told a white lie. “He doesn’t like being left alone. You should have seen the car last time I was gone longer than fifteen minutes.”

The bartender was obviously a dog owner. He smiled knowingly. “Should be all right. I’ll let you know if it isn’t.” He handed me two stained menus from under the counter. “Here you go.”

I smiled disarmingly, but I saw his eyes keep flickering to the scar on my face. “Thanks,” I said. “Lane, come.” He would have anyway, but it was always good to make a show. If people didn’t know how well trained he was, they underestimated him. He plodded next to me as I crossed the restaurant to join Jethro at a booth. I tossed the menus on the table and sat down across from him, commanding Lane to lie down. He did, halfway under the table. I also whispered, “Easy,” to him, and though he stayed alert, he didn’t so much as twitch when the waitress came over to us.

“Somethin’ to drink?” she asked.

“What you’ve got on tap,” I said.

“Coffee,” said Jethro. I looked at him curiously. “Gotta stay alert.”

“Good point. Better make mine a ginger ale,” I told the waitress.

I had a feeling we were going to get a lot of strange looks in this establishment, because she also turned one on me. “Right,” she said. “Coffee and ginger ale. Be right back.”

I watched her go, and then raised my eyebrows at Jethro. He grinned. I blinked. “Wow. You need to do that more often,” I told him.

Still grinning, he opened his menu. “If I did it more often, I’d’ve been married more than three times.”

To tease him, I put on a dreamy expression and leaned on one hand. “I’ll bet you have to fight them all off with sticks.”

He didn’t look up, but his eyebrow twitched mischievously. “I’ll settle for fighting one off, right now.”

“So you’re going to try it on the waitress?”

“I had someone else in mind. But if you think I should–”

I kicked him lightly under the table and turned to my menu. But I couldn’t keep a smile from my face. The waitress came back with our drinks, and we ordered. I figured their hamburgers were a pretty safe bet. Jethro obviously thought the same. When she’d gone, we sat there, looking at each other.

“Were you going to kiss me out there?” I asked. “In the park?”

“You’re very direct.”

“You don’t get anywhere in good time by being subtle. So?”

“Yes, Jen, I was. Why did you stop me?”

“Because I couldn’t let it happen like that.”

“Like what?”

“The fight,” I said. “It wouldn’t have been right. It would have just been another try for dominance.”

He reached out and took my hand. He’d locked me into those eyes of his again. “Would it?”

The world narrowed around me. “Maybe not. But it might have been.”

“So are you going to let me kiss you sometime?”

I smiled at him. “Ask me when you want to,” I said.

“I usually don’t ask for things I want.”

“Yes, I got that feeling. Not with me you won’t. I can’t let it happen.”

His expression softened perceptibly. “Were you always this way?”

I knew what he was asking. “No,” I said. “I was always strong, Jethro. But Rushfeldt tempered me. I’m sorry.”

I tried to pull my hand back, but he kept it tight in his. “Don’t ever be sorry,” he said. “Not for that.”

I looked at him curiously. “Some men are put off.”

“I’m not some man.”

“No, you most definitely are not.” Silence descended on the table, and the air grew heavy with unspoken words. Finally, I swallowed. Damn, he had presence. “Let’s talk about other things, Jethro,” I said, slightly hoarse. “For now, at least.”

He nodded, and from the downward cast of his eyes, I sensed a slight discomfort in him. But it was gone in the next second, and he was talking about something else. A boat. I focused on only his words until I felt the tension over us ease. Only then could I allow myself to open up again.

When I wasn’t allowing myself to be overcome by my attraction to him, Jethro was a very easy man to talk to. We debated how he was going to get his boat out of his basement (he was convinced that that wasn’t the point, damnit, but of course, I knew better) until the waitress returned with our burgers. We then rejoiced in hand tools and paper and pen, inventing new and interesting uses for random bits of technology. It was all in good fun; we both knew at least on some level how it all worked, but we shared technology’s animosity for us. “It doesn’t matter how nice I am to them, or what kind of good things I say,” I told him. “They just don’t like me.” He agreed, admitting with a little embarrassment that he had a tendency to physically destroy his beepers and cell phones when he somehow messed them up too much, rather than admit that he needed some help debugging them. I talked about the changes the University was forcing on us, to start using PowerPoint and online utilities to teach our classes, and how difficult I was finding some of it. From there, the conversation turned to the books I’d bought, which one I was going to read first. He was not a great reader, but he listened and expressed some interest in a few of them. I promised to leave them with Anthony when I went back to Baltimore. He paused at that a little, but let it go.

I watched him finish off the fries on my plate (I was full, so I’d pushed it across to him), following his fingers as they scooped an exact amount of ketchup onto a single French fry and lifted it to his mouth, then returned to the plate for another. The motion was very meticulous, decisive. Very Jethro. Finally, he clued into the fact that I was watching him. He said nothing, but his head tipped slightly, and his eyebrow went up a minute amount. “You don’t often lose, do you?” I said.

He looked away, and the bitter grimace that suddenly creased his face was a surprise. “Not often,” he said.

“What is it, Jethro?” He glanced at me, then back down at the plate. Unfortunately, there were no more fries to hold his attention. He wiped his fingers on his napkin and threw it down on the plate, avoiding my question as long as possible. “You don’t have to answer,” I offered.

“When I lose,” he said instead, “I lose.” He shook his head. “Not here, okay?”

“Okay,” I echoed. Then I reached across the table and put my hand on his arm. He looked down at it, then up at me again. I moved my thumb against his blazer sleeve.

“You look softer,” he said.

I smiled. “You didn’t think I was all metal and corners all the time, did you?”

“No.” He covered my hand with his. The pressure he put on it was telling.

“Sometimes it’s hard being solitary, isn’t it, Jethro?” I said softly.

I saw the automatic denial on his lips. Lord knows I’d said it myself often enough. I had friends. I spent time with people. What was the other person talking about, being a loner? I saw it all, ready to come out of his mouth. And he must have seen that I knew, because he swallowed it. He looked at me a moment longer. “Yes,” he said finally. “It is.”

I tried to smile, but it wouldn’t stick to my face. “Sometimes, it’s enough to know that there’s someone else out there who understands what it’s like.”

The waitress came back to clear our plates before he could reply. Jethro held her there and gave her his credit card. When she’d walked away, the moment had been broken. I avoided his eyes as I tidied up a little, getting my purse and jacket ready. “Where to now?” I asked.

“Ready to go home?”

“God yes. I’m getting tired of the safe house.”

He chuckled, and I looked back up at him. “You know what I mean,” he said.

“I do. No, I’m not ready to go back.”

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll drive a bit.”

“All night,” I said. “How about all of tomorrow too?”

He tipped his head at me. “I may be a caffeine addict, but I need to sleep sometimes. Can’t catch Rushfeldt if I’m snoozing at my desk.”

“Good point,” I admitted. “All right. But for a while longer, okay?”

He nodded, and his eyes warmed. “A while,” he agreed.

Payment, use of the facilities by both of us, and exiting happened in short order. The bartender wished us a good night as we left, and I waved to him over my shoulder, thanking him again for letting me bring Lane inside. The door closed behind us, and as we walked the short distance to the car, Jethro found my hand and held it in his own. The grip was tighter, but I pretended not to notice. I got Lane into the back seat, and turned to find Jethro opening the passenger door for me. I smiled my thanks at him and got in.

Somehow, we kept up a stream of light chatter as we pulled out of the parking lot and drove. I really don’t know how we managed it, and if you asked me now what we talked about, I couldn’t tell you. We both felt the heaviness on us, the elephant in the back seat with Lane, just waiting for the opportune moment to force us to acknowledge it. But we both needed time to prepare for it. We both knew what we’d be letting out of the closet.

Finally, we pulled into a parking lot overlooking the Mall. Jethro turned off the car, slowly and decisively, then leaned back in the driver’s seat with a heavy exhalation. I looked at him for a moment, then turned my attention out onto the tastefully lit national monument. I would wait.

Finally, he began to speak, in a quieter tone than I was used to. “If I don’t win, if I don’t catch them, or make them run, or force them to make a mistake, then I lose people. And not just innocent bystanders, people who are just random names and faces that I don’t know anything about, but real people. People on the team.”

“Semper fidelis?” I asked.

I could see his reflection in the windshield, barely. He shook his head. “Not just then. More now, I think.”

“Why?”

He wasn’t sure about that question. I felt him turning it over in his mind, and the hairs on my arms rose up. “I… care more,” he finally said.

Now the elephant was up front with us, and I wanted to roll down the window to get some air, but I didn’t. I looked away from the view and down to my hands. No sense in beating around the bush. “I already told you where to stand, Jethro.”

“I know you did. But no one tells me to do anything.”

“Then choose to stand in front of him. He’s on your team; you care too much.”

“It’s not that simple anymore.”

Damnit, damnit, damnit. “I didn’t mean to complicate the issue.”

“I know. I didn’t mean to let you.”

Silence fell for a moment as I tried to figure out what to say. In my peripheral, Jethro turned to face me. “Jen.”

“Yes?”

“Look at me.”

I made him wait a moment before I did. He was still Jethro, still guarded and held close to the vest, but I could read him. He was letting me. “How about now? May I now?”

“Will it make it better or worse?”

“Probably worse.”

“Then maybe you really shouldn’t.”

“Maybe not. I still want to.”

“Good God, why?” It was a desperate attempt to distract him. I should have known it wouldn’t work.

“Maybe because I understand you. Maybe because you understand me.”

And I should have known he’d have the perfect answer. As one of my more memorable students would have said, Fuckin’ hell on a tricycle. I leaned over the centre console and touched my lips to his.

It should have been gentle, but it wasn’t. A need I hadn’t known existed rose up and consumed me in a bare second, and I pressed forward, just as he did the same. His hand threaded up into the hair at the back of my head and held me, though I didn’t need to be. It was lips and mouths and (oh God) tongues, and he smelled so good, and tasted so good, and so help me I needed to get out of this seatbelt and into the backseat with him and damn these bucket seats anyway, worst invention in the history of the automobile–

I flung myself back, cracking my head on the window. The force made my eyes water a little, but the moisture quickly dissipated. I panted, eyes locked with Jethro’s. “Oh, God,” I whispered. “That was such a mistake.”

He was flushed, and breathing heavily as well, and, amazingly, looked flustered. He ran his hand though his hair in a choppy gesture. “Yeah,” he breathed. With what looked like a great amount of effort, he pulled back and leaned against his own door. “Yeah,” he repeated.

The need hadn’t disappeared; I still wanted to get as close to him as I could without actually getting under his skin. “We just made things a whole lot worse, didn’t we?”

He didn’t answer verbally, though his mouth worked on something. He nodded curtly. His eyes still burned into mine, but I had a feeling it wasn’t by choice. I was holding him there. I was holding him back.

“I should go.”

“What?”

“Go. I should go. I should leave D.C.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t argue with me.”

“Don’t argue with me.”

“I can be professional.”

“That’s not the point, Jethro, and you know it.”

He shrugged. “You’re not going. Just live with it.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” The fire in my tone shocked him a little. He’d forgotten, I could see, in the maelstrom of his emotions. He was remembering now. “Never tell me what to do,” I said.

“Jen–”

“Comprende?”

“Yes.” The answer was immediate and unhesitating. It satisfied me.

“All right. Your argument?”

“For?”

“Me staying.”

“Ah.” He smiled at me. “How did you know?”

The need rose again, but I harnessed it before I moved. “I understand you.”

Oh, Lord, he burned. I knew why he kept himself so hidden now. He burned so very, very brightly. “Jen, you…” But he stopped himself, and with some great effort, he closed his eyes and turned his head slightly away from me. He took a short breath. Then his eyes opened, and he was familiarly under control again. “Do you play chess?”

“On occasion. I’m not terribly good.”

He flicked his fingers slightly in dismissal. “You can spend hours setting up the board for that one, decisive, crushing assault that will guarantee you victory. But if one piece, just one, is out of place, the whole thing falls apart.” I nodded. He pointed to me. “White Queen.”

I sighed. “Damn you,” I said. He shrugged. “So what happens, o White King, when suddenly you’re more concerned about protecting the White Queen than actually defeating your opponent? You’ve set up your board in a certain way; you can’t change tactics now.”

“Don’t have to. The board’s already set up to protect the White Knight that’s assigned to you.”

“So then by removing the Queen, nothing will change.”

“Yes it will. Tony will go haring off after you, and he’ll be outside the defenses.” He smiled a little. “Besides, the Queen is the most powerful and dangerous piece on the board. I wouldn’t remove her; she’s too useful an offensive tool.”

“Jethro, you make far too much sense.”

“Of course I do. Have to frame arguments logically when you’re talking to a university professor.”

I stuck my tongue out at him. He grinned, and I grinned back, but only for a moment. “I don’t think you should come by the safe house again,” I said.

He looked about to object, but he paused thoughtfully, and then his shoulders slumped slightly. “You’re right.” His voice was taut with frustration. That was okay; my stomach was tied in knots, and I hated myself for saying it. “But maybe–”

“After,” I finished for him. “Maybe after.”

He nodded, and our eyes locked again for a moment. There were no secrets, nothing hidden. Oh, there was a mountain of unknown, things neither of us could read or understand, but in that second, we hid nothing. I felt it in my skin, my guts. It was the ultimate intimacy.

Of course, it wasn’t comfortable for either of us, as independent and protected as we kept ourselves. And so, we turned our eyes away from each other and settled into our seats properly again.

“I’ll take you back now,” he said.

“All right,” I answered.

It was a silent, long, circuitous drive back to the safe house, much as the drive away from it had been. But this time, it wasn’t anger that caused the tension in the air. Honestly, I wasn’t sure which was worse. But after too long a time (or too short, depending on which half of my brain was talking), we pulled up in front of the safe house.

Jethro turned off the ignition, and we sat in the car, looking at the darkened house. “Think Kate’s still here?” he asked.

“Umm…” He looked over at me. I sighed. “How much do you want to know?”

“Better question is how much do I know,” he said. He gave me a wry smile. “And that’s a hell of a lot more than they think I do.”

“All right. I sort of told Anthony to spend the evening in bed with Kate.”

He stared at me. “You did what?”

I shrugged. “You know Anthony, Jethro. How does he deal best with stress? Besides, would there be any better way to forget about his argument with you?”

He continued to stare at me incredulously for another half moment. Then he laughed. When he didn’t show any signs of stopping, I started to smile, then began to laugh myself.

“You… You had to tell Tony to have sex? With Kate?” he managed to ask me. “That’s… That’s…”

I had a feeling he never really let go, because he didn’t seem to be able to stop at all. It was hilarious.

By the time we’d both managed to bring ourselves down to occasional bursts of chuckles, the porch light was on, and Anthony was standing on the front step, his arms crossed.

“Oh, looks like we woke Daddy up,” I said cheerfully. Jethro shook his head, but didn’t deign to comment. I reached for the door handle.

“Wait,” he said. I turned back. He looked at me seriously, and I could feel that he was trying to say something. But he was having trouble. I didn’t think he had trouble very often. “Jen…”

I smiled at him. “I understand.”

“No–”

“Jethro. I understand.”

He looked at me. His eyes said, Thank you. His mouth said, “I’ll help you carry your things in.”

I nodded. “All right,” I said. “Okay.”