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The smell of bacon frying woke Hale up. It wasn't quite enough to make up for the disappointment of finding himself alone in bed. It did, however, tell him where he could find Joanna. He stepped into her shower briefly, then retrieved some of his clothes as he walked down the hall to the kitchen. He found her standing in front of the stove with a cutting board loaded with grated potato, diced onions and chopped bell peppers. Bacon sat on paper towel on the counter at the side of the range and she was dribbling grated potato into the hot bacon fat. A pot of hot water steamed gently on another burner, and an open tin of tea sat next to a teapot. She had not put any clothes on, he noticed with approval.
"Good morning," she said,quirking an eyebrow as she noticed he had his jeans on.
"I figured if I put some clothes on, I could eat breakfast without further interruptions, then we can both go back to my place." He could see she was confused, so he added, "I have to be at least near the office in about an hour."
"Ah. Forgot about that."
"Do you have any plans for the day?" Hale asked.
"I've got a couple of things to work on, but nothing urgent." She wondered if she should say she had other errands to run. She thought she might be making this way too easy for him, but she just couldn't bring herself to play any games. She'd had far too much fun last night, and was still hoping for more.
"All right then," he said quietly, smiling at her as he leaned in for a long, slow kiss. She felt his arms wrap around her.
She collected her scattered thoughts a moment later when he walked around to the other side of the counter and sat down. "Over easy for your eggs?" she asked.
"That's fine."
After flipping the potatoes and scooting the scattered bits of onion and bell pepper back on top, she cracked three eggs into a pan that had been warming on another burner. She pulled ketchup, hot sauce and an orange out of the fridge. She set silverware and mugs on the counter, along with the condiments and salt and pepper. She quartered the orange and distributed it on two plates along with the strips of bacon. The eggs came next, followed by the hash browns.
She turned off the burners, set the teapot next to the mugs along with a strainer, then walked around to join him. They ate in silence for a few minutes.
"This is really good," he said.
"Thanks. My dad taught me how to make breakfast. Took me forever to learn how to get the potatoes right. My mom usually used the frozen kind."
"Not the same."
"You speak the truth."
"My eggs aren't quite right, yet. I still break the yolk a lot."
"These are fine."
"Not too runny?"
"I like them runny."
Halfway through her breakfast, Joanna came out of the hyper focus that hunger caused enough to realize she was completely naked, carrying on a completely mundane conversation with someone she had just had sex with. A lot of sex. Who had, for that matter, woken her up not too many hours before for still more sex. She could feel herself blush, the warmth creeping down to cover her breasts.
"Did you finally wake up?" Hale asked with a smile as he drank the tea.
"Uh, yeah," she mumbled. "What gave it away?"
"You have to ask?" he inquired, incredulous. He reached out to trace the line of pink, pausing over a nipple he found along the way. He noticed she was done eating and had left part of a strip of bacon. "Are you going to eat that?"
"I'm full."
"You should put some clothes on. Or I should take some off."
She stood up fast. "I'll put something on. I think you're supposed to open the office in, uh, about five minutes."
What had happened to make her look so unhappy, wondered Hale? He grabbed her wrist as she turned to leave the room, pulling her into his arms. "What did I say wrong?" he asked as he nuzzled her neck. He felt her shake her head no, but some of the stiffness left her body.
"I feel like an idiot," he thought he heard her say, her voice muffled.
"Will you let me try that part of the conversation again? I'm a big believer in do-overs." He felt her nod. He pulled her head back up from his shoulder and looked her in the eye. "Will you come with me? Bring a book or something if you like, because I'll have to spend some time in the office, but I can keep it locked most of the day and put a note up to buzz me upstairs and we can spend the day together. I only have to work half a day anyway."
She blinked and thought fast. She probably should say not. Bad enough that she'd slept with him before they'd even been out on one date. Worse to follow him around like a lost puppy. Then again, she'd had a lot of fun, and no one ever needed to know, right? "Sure. I've got some work to do, but I'll grab my laptop. If you've got a phone line I can use part of the time it doesn't matter where I am really."
"That's much better. There are two lines into my apartment so I don't think that'll be a problem."
While he waited for her to reappear, he found the rest of his clothes and put them on. It had been a companionable breakfast. He was surprised she had everything on hand for a real breakfast. He'd gotten the impression that women in the States ate nothing but bran cereal with skim milk, or maybe a yogurt for breakfast. Dry toast with an egg on it was living on the edge. And here was a woman who kept bacon in her fridge as a regular thing. How had she escaped the health police for so long?
She was carrying a briefcase, which was at odds with her comfortably loose pants, t-shirt and leather jacket. He checked his watch. He was a few minutes late, but it probably wouldn't matter. People never showed up right when the office opened anyway.
Joanna started to put her briefcase down to lock the door behind her, but Hale smoothly took it from her hand before she could. She glanced at Kelly's door as she turned the dead bolt. The blinds were down in the window beside the door. Hopefully, none of the kids were peering out to see what was going on. She didn't particularly want to explain to Kelly what had happened last night. Although knowing Kelly, she'd probably already guessed.
Her worries receded to the background as Hale showed her where she could set up her laptop. He went downstairs to put a note on the office door. No one had been waiting when they arrived. Once she had successfully logged in, she started browsing some of the bigger job search web sites. She was surprised to find fewer listings than she had expected. She remembered that she'd been hearing about layoffs, but had thought they were mostly out of state in the Bay Area. Kathryn had mentioned that Abracadabra had laid off people. Joanna thought perhaps there had been two separate rounds of layoffs, but neither one was that large. It was hard to imagine an economy as strong and diverse as Seattle's taking a dive, but she knew it had happened before and someday it would happen again. She reminded herself not to burn any bridges following Kathryn to Abracadabra. Then, for the first time, it occurred to her that Kathryn's departure would create an opportunity for her, a promotion that might otherwise have been years away.
She spent a productive two hours collecting job leads before drafting her first cover letter. It was a struggle. She hadn't written a cover letter for a job since starting work at Taille. The recruiters hadn't asked for one, and she hadn't thought to send one. As she typed, she made notes to herself where the paragraphs would need to be customized for the various kinds jobs she was applying for. She was nearly done with the draft when Hale poked his head into the apartment to see how she was doing.
"Are you doing okay? It's been busier than I thought it would be. There's a leak over in A building that we thought was a tub overflow, but now looks like it might be more serious. I'm having trouble finding a plumber to come take a look at it. Do you need anything?" Hale asked.
Joanna looked up and shook her head. "I'm fine."
"I should be able to wrap this up about when the office closes anyway, but if you do need anything, don't hesitate to come downstairs, or buzz, or raid the fridge or whatever. You sure you're okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. If you're too busy, and I can go back to my place. . ." she suggested.
"No, no, no. That's exactly what I don't want." They both heard someone call, "Hello? Is there a manager here?" from downstairs. "Got to go. See you in a bit!"
Joanna wondered for a minute if she should have left. The time had passed more quickly than she had realized. But he didn't seem to mind, and she didn't really need anything that she didn't have with her. And it was nice not to have to worry about someone dropping in, or having to answer the phone. There was a lot to be said for hiding out in someone else's apartment. Shrugging, she decided not to worry about it. She got a glass of water and went back to work on the cover letter.
About an hour later, she was wrapping up the second of the cover letters, when Hale came upstairs. "Office is closed, but the plumber is still over in A building, so we probably shouldn't go out for food. Are you hungry? I've got some stuff here."
"A little. What do you have?"
"You would be amazed," he answered, opening the freezer door with a flourish and gesturing her to look.
The entire freezer was full of orderly stacks of plastic containers, the kind you can reuse, but are so cheap it doesn't matter if you never see them again. Labels taped to the side were dated, and named the contents. "Your chef friend makes you dumplings?"
"Yes. And the wrappers are amazing. You don't even have to fry them, because they are so thin they don't get tough when you steam them. There's even a sauce to go with them. Want to try some?"
"Sure. I've never had homemade dumplings. I've bought them frozen before. They were okay, but you're right, the wrappers are usually too thick. Does he make his own?"
"I saw him do it once," Hale said, as he opened the plastic container. He scrutinized the typed label on top, removed the plastic baggie of sauce inside, then popped the container into the microwave to thaw. "It looked like one of those insanely time-consuming things that is not hard, technically, but is a lot of work. The pin he used to roll them out was heavy, and he leaned on it a lot." While waiting for the food to thaw, Hale pulled out a pasta pot. He removed the pasta basket and put it back on the shelf. After running some water into the pot, he put the steamer basket and lid back on and put it on the stove. The microwave dinged, and he dumped the now-thawed contents into the steamer basket.
"Sounds like making bread, or pie crust."
"I guess. I never have. Give me a minute to take care of these." Hale picked up the stack of rent checks that had been dropped off, and left the kitchen to put them away in the safe. "You cook, right?"
"I do, but it isn't easy for just one person. I wind up eating a lot of stir-fry and pasta. It's hard to go to the bother of anything much more complicated. I hate to eat the same thing for every meal for days at a time, the way some of my friends do."
"You learned from your mom?"
"My mom, mostly, but my dad. He taught me how to make hash browns. Lots of other stuff, too, but most of those things involve way more meat than I'm going to eat by myself. I should have friends over more often, but," she shrugged, "I don't know why I don't."
"Are all your friends coupled up?"
Joanna thought about that for a moment. "I guess they are. They're friendly, but they spend a lot of time by themselves together, which sounds odd when I say it out loud. And couples do seem to spend time with other couples, more than, people like me."
Hale looked at her with sympathy. "I know what you mean. They all get together one some weeknight, every week, and have dinner at someone's house and discuss who's getting married and who just had a baby and agonize over how they're going to stay friends with both sides of a recent breakup when everyone knows they're going to lose both, but keep the woman around a little longer than the man."
"Ouch. Is that what they do? I'd wondered."
"When I've been over at Brad's that's the distinct impression I got from him, at least that's what he remembers from conversations he wasn't watching a game during."
"Brad's the one we have to thank for this, right?" Joanna asked, gesturing at the pot, which was now steaming vigorously.
"Yup," Hale replied, opening the top to flip over the pot stickers with a pair of chopsticks.
Joanna considered prompting him for more stories about Brad, and their careers, but remembering how reluctant Hale had been to talk on that subject before, she maintained her silence, instead. After a long pause, Hale said, "I'm going to a barbecue next Saturday. Want to come along? I think you'd like Elaine. You met their kids on Saturday."
She tried not to let her surprise show on her face. What kind of guy wouldn't tell you a thing about his job, but would invite you after a first not-really-a-date to a barbecue at a close friend's house? Then again, if all his friends were coupled up, he might make a point of bringing someone along, in order to fit in. It might not mean anything. "Sure, that sounds like fun. Will it be a big crowd?"
"Not huge, probably less than a dozen adults. I never know how many kids will show up."
"Will you know everyone?"
"Probably not. I haven't been in the area that long. Some will be old friends of Elaine's from school, and some will be neighbors, parents whose kids Audrey and Kate go to school with." Hale extracted the frozen sauce from the baggie, dropped it into a bowl and thawed it in the microwave. When it was done, he turned the burner off and transferred the steaming dumplings to a pair of plates. "Chopsticks or a fork?"
"Fork for me. Those things always seem to get away from me."
"My table and chairs won't show up until next week," Hale apologized as they moved around the counter to sit down at the bar, where Joanna had worked through the afternoon on her laptop. The silence that started initially in appreciation of the food, extended awkwardly. Joanna was determined not to break it, to let Hale pick a topic, rather than to risk feeling him close off to her again as he had in the hot tub. Eventually, he continued where he had left off. "It was odd trying to get furniture for here. I've never bought any before."
Joanna raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Never?"
"Never. Unless you count little things, like that rug," he gestured to a small prayer rug. "I've always lived in furnished housing, and moved around a lot."
"A portable life."
"That's a good description. One of my friends, John, still doesn't have hardly anything, but Brad's got a normal, three-bedroom house kind of life. I don't think being in the service, any branch of the service, changes what you want from life. I think it's more what you knew before you joined up. But being in the service can make it hard to learn anything different from what you knew before you joined."
That was more than Joanna had heard him offer before. She decided to risk saying something on the subject herself. "I thought a lot of people lived off-base after boot camp, but I suppose those must just be reservists. But it seemed like even active-duty people I've met had a wife or husband and kids with a regular place to live."
"A lot of it depends on what branch you are in, and what you do. I am, was, I guess I should say, not only active duty, but I saw a lot of," he paused here for a moment, "action." He paused again, and she waited, wondering if he would say anything more. "It isn't that none of the people I worked with were married or had kids or anything. Some of them were. But the stuff we do, did, I should say, well, you know they say how hard it is to be married to a cop or a surgeon. They talk shop and people around them want to throw up. It's like that, except we aren't even allowed to talk about what we do. A lot of the time we can't tell where we're posted, and sometimes we can't even tell after we're done."
"Ever?"
"Sometimes."
Joanna wasn't sure she believed that, but she decided to take a different approach. "Are most of your friends still in?"
"No, they've almost all quit."
"Not career types?" she risked.
"They stuck around for their fifteen years, but that's about as long as anybody lasts." That matched what little Joanna knew about the Special Forces. Maybe Hale wasn't making all of this up.
"You're thinking of leaving?"
"I am. One of my friends started a school after he left. I was thinking I might try working for him for a while, then maybe opening one of my own."
Joanna felt she was on more familiar ground here. Both of her parents, her father at the police department, and her mother in her own business, had worked with owners of self-defense schools and martial arts academies. "That's a hard business. The failure rate is worse than restaurants, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it is," Hale responded slowly. "John tries to run an adults-only school, mostly grappling, and I think that is virtually impossible. He's always trying to start some kind of women's self-defense program and they never quite work out."
"Grappling and self-defense don't sound all that compatible to me," Joanna remarked. "My mom always said the best personal self-defense techniques were about running away, shooting, and creating opportunities to do one or the other or both. Dad always felt it was more important to avoid the need for self-defense. He was huge on verbal de-escalation."
For a brief moment, Hale wondered what kind of looking-glass universe he had stepped into. "What did you say? No, I heard you. I'm just stunned. That's the most sensible thing I've ever heard anyone say on the subject."
"Which, my mom or my dad?"
"What you said. What do your parents do for a living?"
Joanna considered refusing to answer for a moment, and pointing out that he wouldn't even give a straight answer to the question of what he did for a living. That seemed petty, however, and she'd never been reluctant to describe at least part of her parents work when other friends had asked. "My dad works for a police department. My mom has her own business. I think her current preferred description is Security Consultant, but she changes it every few years and it's a little hard to keep up sometimes."
"Your dad is a cop and your mom's a bodyguard?"
"Oh, no. I mean, my dad's not a beat cop or detective or anything like that. He's sort of an in-house version of what mom does. He designs training programs and comes up with policies and procedures and things like that."
"Policies and procedures?"
"Well, he studies incident outcomes and then does statistical assessments of what works and what doesn't. Some of it is verbal. You know there was a lawsuit not too long ago about police officers who give traffic tickets saying, 'Have a nice day' when they wrap up? That had nothing to do with my dad directly, but he might put together a program and policy that would teach traffic cops what they should say in the course of delivering a ticket to minimize the risk of some idiot pulling a gun on them. Some of it is physical, so he'll go over what the safest way to get cuffs on someone is, and put together training techniques so everyone learns the best way to do it."
"Really? And your mom does this kind of thing, too?"
"She has her own business doing something similar. She doesn't provide security. People bring her in to improve the way their security team is doing things."
"Somehow, this does not sound like she's training night watchmen, or even armored car drivers."
"Not really, but I think Brinks hired her once a long time ago."
Hale eyed her admiringly for a moment. "Want the last dumpling?"
"I've had enough, thanks."
He popped the last one in his mouth. "Have I mentioned lately how truly wonderful and amazingly and completely, spectacularly unique you are?"
"Why, no, you haven't, and it's always good to hear," she replied with a smile.
"I haven't met a woman at all like you, ever before."
"It doesn't sound like you've given yourself much opportunity."
"True. But what are the odds of us finding each other?"
Joanna quirked one eyebrow and debated what to say. What the hell. "My parents agree on one thing very strongly. They think when we choose friends and other kinds of relationships out of crowds of strangers, we choose very accurately and almost completely unconsciously some pattern from our past, some desire or need we may not even know about. A lot of their work involves training people to use that innate ability on demand for other purposes. But I can just hear them saying in the back of my head, 'Joanna, you are tired of hanging out with people who would be shocked by your parents. Congratulations on deciding to grow up.' I don't know what they'd say to you, but I'm becoming more curious by the minute."
"Am I the first person to hear about your parents and not be appalled?"
"Pretty much."
"That's very sad. I'm not just not appalled you know."
"Oh, really?"
"Really. In fact, I'm quite aroused. Come here."
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Copyright 2013 by Rebecca Allen Updated July 17, 2013