Her long hair is a fan across his pectorals and her left cheek is against his heart. She can hear his heart’s steady, comforting drumbeat. She slides her palm down to his waist and keeps it there. They are nestled against each other, like real lovers after a sexual interlude. His warmth seeps into every part of her body in contact with his skin.
She likes this. She wonders if his penis is erect, but she doesn’t want to spoil this wonderful newfound intimacy they are having. So she keeps mum about the hundred and one questions that spring to her lips about his twin brother and ‘Desert Rose’. But she’s not supposed to know about ‘Desert Rose’, so she’ll have to keep on having nightmares about it.
Or are they premonitions?
He says, his deep voice vibrating against her cheek, “I think we’re safe now.”
The mood in the room is still in limbo – magical and warm and so tenuous you can cut it with a knife. She’s so afraid to shake it, but she knows her curiosity will win out.
“You mean . . . you found him?”
“No. We can’t find him.” He sighs. He absently strokes her arm. Lover-style. “But the house is fortified more than ever before and we’ve got Fred and his mercs in and around it.”
“Mercs?”
“Mercenaries.”
Yes, of course. What else would Fred and his team be? She feels as though everything around her is surreal and she’s the hapless heroine in some espionage movie.
She whispers, “Why is he so angry with you?”
Silence. Dread pools in her chest. She’s ruined everything now and he’ll be angry with her for asking. He’ll leave her bed now and go back to his own bedroom, wherever it is.
Damn.
He finally says, “It’s a long story.” His voice is tired beyond measure.
She doesn’t say anything. She waits.
“Hugh was always extremely competitive. He wanted to be the best in everything. When he was a child, he wanted to be President. The first astronaut to go to Mars. The scientist who discovers the cure to cancer. And he had the brains to do it too.”
He pauses.
“Unfortunately, there was always something a little off about him. When he was a baby, he was dropped by our mother and he hit his head on the floor. He was always fretful after that. Crying all the time. He couldn’t sleep for long periods of time and he would keep her awake at nights. She swore she wouldn’t have a baby again after us.”
She is speechless. He has never shared anything about himself with her, and this is a catharsis. She is almost afraid to breathe – afraid of upsetting this delicate moment with something as reality-based as breathing.
He continues, still stroking her arm, “As a result of his fall, our parents were always fretting and worrying about him. He got the lion’s share of attention when we were growing up. He was a sickly kid, prone to seizures and blackout spells. The doctors blamed it on that fall.”
He lapses into silence. The rise and fall of his chest is palpable against her cheek. She badly wants to kiss him, but she’s afraid of dissipating the mood. So she settles for running her palm over his chest instead, feeling the smooth planes of his well-defined pectoral muscles and the contours of his nipples. Oh maybe touching his nipples is a bad idea, because that would arouse him. Not that she doesn’t want to arouse him, but the way he is right now is so mellow and contemplative that she wants to remain in this microcosm of time forever.
He shifts beneath her and settles again in a slightly altered position. It’s a sweet, wonderfully unconscious movement. It means nothing to him but everything to her, because he’s finally getting truly comfortable with her.
He says, “He blames me for something I didn’t do. But then he always did blame me. He was always resentful of me and I have no idea why.”
“What did he blame you for?”
“We were in Iraq. There was chaos everywhere. Looting. Killing in the streets. We kept order. That was our job. Then we heard about what was happening someplace east of Bagdad. About women being raped en masse and drowned in swimming pools by a local warlord gone berserk in the last days of power. Peterson, Fulham and I went to investigate with ten men from our squadron. Hugh flew in for the ride as a civilian. What we found there – ”
He pulls in a deep breath. She tenses, her mind running over with horrific images.
He says, “Anyhow, I will spare you the details. There was a shootout at the end of it, but it’s nothing glamorous. We lost eight of our men. The citadel went up in flames. Hugh was trapped inside. I tried to find him, but the fire was too horrific, too hellish. We had to run for our lives. So I left him in there and mourned him for dead.”
His body stills. He falls silent, and she senses that this is all he will tell her about the subject. For now.
She notes that he has not mentioned any particular woman. But she very distinctly heard Hugh say, “My brother always had good taste in women. Notwithstanding what he did to her.”
Her.
There was a woman involved somehow between them . . . in Iraq. The Channing she knows today has an origin. The way he is today – distant and emotionally unavailable – may have had its genesis in Iraq.
Why he won’t kiss her, for instance.
Why he isn’t attached, despite being one of the most eligible heterosexual males on the planet.
“Go to sleep, Susan,” he says in the dark, still absently stroking her arm and her hair.
She doesn’t think she can go to sleep. There’s a lot he didn’t mention. What is he hiding? What does he have to hide?
She hears his breathing even out and he stops stroking her. His hand falls limply upon her head. He has fallen asleep. There would be no sex tonight, only her wild speculations and the vast power of her would-be dreams.
She has little idea then – wrapped up in his arms in a foreign bed – she would be completely in over her head in the worst way possible.
3
When she wakes up, he is not at her side. Alarmed, she sits up, only to see his handwriting on a notepaper upon his rumpled pillow:
GONE SWIMMING TO RELAX. MEET ME AT POOL DOWNSTAIRS.
She smiles. Then her mood dampens when she realizes she has nothing to wear. Would the closet downstairs be worth raiding? But Fred and his mercenaries are around. What would they think?
She decides she is not going to swim but watch him from the side of the pool instead. Yes, that would be a sight worth feasting her eyes on.
She pads downstairs in her shift, feeling a little scraggly despite brushing her hair and applying just a touch of makeup. She makes a beeline for where she thinks the pool is. The grounds are so vast. She is rewarded by a vision of blue in an area beyond a huge terracotta tiled patio.
Channing is doing laps in the thirty meter long pool. He is completely absorbed in his task, free-styling from one end to the other without stopping. She wonders how long he has been doing this because he appears very fit, tireless. She seats herself upon a striped deckchair. She can watch him forever – the silvery sprinkles of water slide off his skin as he surfaces, his silhouette as he dives in each time, the way he turns a hundred-and-eighty degrees at each end, kicking his long legs against the walls to propel himself forward.
She remembers their newfound intimacy last night. In many ways, what they shared is more physically profound than sex. Channing is now cleaving through the water at an incredible speed, as though he’s trying to drive last night’s events out of his system.
She doesn’t blame him. She thinks he’s not telling her everything, and whatever he’s not telling her is eating him inside, and he has to power it out in the only way he knows how – with sheer physical force.
He does a final lap. He stops at the edge of the pool, panting slightly. He looks up and sees her.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey,” she replies.
“You aren’t swimming.”
“Don’t have a swimsuit.” She really has to talk to him about sending her back to her apartment to get her clothes.
“You don’t need a swimsuit.” Droplets fall from his brow and chin. He’s devastatingly handsome. Almost unrealistically so.
She raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Yeah.” He upends himself to stand on the floor of the pool. Then he reaches beneath the surface and strips off his speedos.
A lump bolts to her throat.
“Where is Fred?” she asks.
“Outside the house.” He crumples his wet swimming pants into a ball and tosses it onto the side. “This part is considered inside the house. We’re all alone.”
There’s a difference in their relationship. He’s not ordering her around like a piece of his property anymore.
For now.
“Do you want me to come in?” she says hesitantly.
He is lounging by the side of the pool, his well-muscled arms hanging out of the water. His blue, blue eyes arrest hers. Her gut does a flip. She’s unable to look away.
“Yes, I want you to come in.”
“Without my clothes on?”
He has seen her totally naked. What is she so shy about anyway? Then she realizes it’s their environment. The pool may be ‘inside’ the inner grounds, as he suggests, but they are still starkly outside, under the blue sky. A brick wall surrounds the pool, bordered by trees, but she still has the prickly sensation of being watched.