“Excuse me, ma’am.”
At the instant of contact she knew who it was. Even that simple gesture riveted her attention on him. And it was a very nice view, other than his bloodshot eyes. His shoulders weren’t particularly broad, but they were very strong. And the plain black t-shirt followed the taper of his waist down. His eyes, blue with distance, were a powerful statement in a strong face up close. Again she was struck by the strength of his rugged face, but she wasn’t about to give ground just because he was so good-looking. Not handsome exactly, just extremely…male.
“Aren’t you supposed to be watching the little children?”
“The museum is used to me being unreliable.” He said it as if he was bragging.
“Oh, like that’s a good thi—”
Her father nodded back toward the simulators. Another docent was there helping the children. She wasn’t letting him off that easily.
“Won’t the little girls miss you?”
“It’s not the little girls who I’m interested in.”
He was either forthright, brash, or a jerk and Sienna couldn’t tell which.
“I’m sorry for intruding, ma’am...sir,” he nodded to her and her father in turn.
At least he had manners, and a soft New England accent. It wasn’t Massachusetts or Maine but might have been New Hampshire or Vermont.
“But I just have to know who you are.” And he aimed his powerful smile at her as if it would melt her knees. Well, Sienna was made of stronger metal than that.
“The Goddess Aphrodite,” she snapped at him.
“No arguments from me. Then you, sir, must be the Lord God Zeus to have such a daughter.”
“Been called worse in my day.” Her father’s smile was not helping. Wasn’t he supposed to be on her side?
Sienna glanced about the main hall. Though it was early, the museum was getting busier by the minute, yet they appeared to be in their own little bubble despite their proximity to a main staircase. It was as if the chattering families somehow sensed they shouldn’t interfere with their small group. Above them hung the Gossamer Condor, the first human-powered airplane to fly a mile-long figure-eight course and to eventually cross the English Channel. It looked so frail, yet had achieved so much.
Frail had never been one of her choices.
“Sienna—” She turned and scowled at her father who stopped talking with a half cough-half harrumph before trying again. “My daughter finds your condition less than…impressive.”
# # #
Roy smiled back at the man. Ramrod straight and clearly a soldier, Roy could feel him watching the crowd behind Roy out of habit just as Roy was watching the other direction. It made him feel a little safer. He also saw Julie was growing impatient with having to cover his simulator when she’d been headed on break—specifically a bathroom break.
“Well, sir, I find my condition less than impressive as well. It was a lesson hard learned about one of my…” he almost said ‘fellow snipers,’ but something told him that would open a whole different discussion than the one he wanted to have with the lovely Sienna. “Work buddies who I’ve already sworn on a bottle of aspirin that I will never listen to again.”
Even her attempt at a sneer of disbelief looked amazing on her face. Her every thought was painted there, clear as day. And Sienna Whoever in a light blouse tucked into her pleasantly tight jeans had a body even more serious close up. Her combination of slender and curve was perfect in the way Jennifer Aniston’s was—a bit of knowledge he could only blame on his big sister’s crush on Chandler while they were growing up.
“I’m sorry, but I’ll have to get back to my station. I simply wanted to ask if you,” he turned fully to face her. He could smell her soap and shampoo and the gentlest hint of honey—too light to be a perfume so must be her. She was a hundred times more powerful up close than through his rifle scope.
She arched her eyebrows, naturally strong rather than studiously plucked, which he liked.
“If you would please have lunch with me today?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her father—for there was no mistaking their having the same eyes and even the same manner of movement—watching his daughter. So, he too didn’t know how to predict her next action. Independent thinker. Another plus. So many women didn’t stand their own ground and left it to him to make decisions for both of them—which could get irritating as hell every time he made the wrong choice as if he had misread some secret code book. The lovely Sienna would speak her own mind when she was good and ready.
“Fine!” Then her smile turned wicked. She tucked a hand in her father’s arm and started off. “Fourteen hundred hours in the White House commissary,” she called back over her shoulder, assuming that would shut him down.
He waited the beat so that she would think him stymied by White House security. Then he called after her, “I work here until then. Fourteen-thirty?”
She actually stumbled in surprise and barely resisted looking back toward him.
Her father’s laugh told him he’d won that round.
Without a further glance at her fine walk—which he’d observed was very fine when she’d first walked away from him—he returned to Julie who was now mincing foot to foot.
“You owe me, Beaumont.”
“I do, name your price.”
“Lunch!”
“Sorry, I’ve got a date.”
“Might have known,” then she rushed off, leaving him surrounded by a milling hoard of happy, eager, short people bouncing up and down as they awaited their turn on the ride.
He and Julie had had some fun, but it had never gone much past some heavy flirting except for one night that had never been regretted, but also hadn’t been repeated. Fun, but no spark.
He took a moment to watch Sienna the redhead and her powerfully built gray-haired father as they faded back into the crowd. Any fears he’d had about his abilities at target acquisition were gone. He’d be able to track her through New York streets at night if he could see a single lock of her lush, thick hair that must feel like—
A sharp tug on his jeans had him reaching down to lift the next boy aloft. His hangover was no longer as brain-piercing as it had been; the aspirin was finally kicking in.
Progress on many fronts.
# # #
Fourteen hundred hours slipped by as she delved into the implications of the latest reports on North Korean missile production.
Fourteen-thirty should have slipped quietly by while considering the completely different views of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense regarding US force requirements in South Korea. The Chiefs wanted to push some of those forces into the South China Sea’s piracy situation, also sending a message to the Chinese military buildup in the region. Defense, as far as Sienna could tell, wanted to take the fight to North Korea and turn the DMZ into the next Afghanistan.
But by fourteen-thirty-five she gave up all hope of concentrating. There was no way she was going to go out and see if there was some bleary-eyed docent hanging out at the White House gate. Besides, he was probably off having a three-beer lunch at his favorite watering hole. But her blood sugar had crashed a good hour ago and she wouldn’t be getting any more work done until she’d eaten.
The commissary was quiet on a Saturday afternoon. The normal mayhem of weekday staff crowding the halls was gone; only a hundred or so hard-cores were scattered about the building. A cluster of Secret Service agents identifiable by their dark suits and coiled earpieces sat at a corner table to the back.
Several secretaries, looking no less harried than on weekdays but at least more comfortable in slacks and sneakers rather than dresses and heels, had gathered at a table in the middle of the room and were chatting happily.
She could envy them that simple circle of women. Her world had always been defined by men. Among her father’s
cronies—the pilots she’d hung out with at the HMX hangars where the Marine One helicraft were kept, and within the military she had come to know so intimately—women at high command levels were still the very rare exception.
She needed comfort food today and selected lasagna, a big hunk of bread with butter, a tiny plate of salad, and a bottle of juice.
It was only when she turned that she spotted him. Impossibly, the docent from the museum was sitting in the front of the room, close by the entry door but not where he’d be noticed if you weren’t looking for him. His back was to the corner, setting him up to survey the entire room, but all he was watching was her.
His gaze was so steady that it drew her toward him until she ground to a stop just feet from the table. So steady that…
“Oh no! It’s you.”
He nodded happily, “It is. Nothing wrong with your powers of observation.”
“The sniper on the roof,” she wasn’t in the habit of restating the obvious, but it just came out of her.
Again, his pleasant nod as if it was the most normal thing in the world for him to be here. His dark eyes were now clear and sharp, he’d shaken off the results of whatever excesses he’d imbibed last night.
“How…” No, that was a dumb question: sniper, who’d recognized her at the museum.
“Who…” Almost as meaningless: he was a Secret Service counter sniper. One of the most elite gunmen in or out of the USSS.
“Why?”
He kicked out a seat across from him with his foot. “Why don’t you sit down before your knees let go and I’ll tell you.”
“Not the most courteous of men.”
He shrugged, “Vermont born and bred. Don’t see much point in doing the standing and bowing thing when it isn’t called for. As Ma always said, I never was long on formal.”
Somehow trapped by his unflinching gaze—if he’d looked aside for even a second she might have broken whatever spell he had cast over her, but he didn’t—she settled into the chair and placed her lunch on the table.
“The way you walk, Ms.—huh, still don’t have a last name for you—Ms. Sienna Aphrodite Goddess-of-Beauty, is an amazing thing.”
If the next thing he said was what a fine ass she had, she was out of here. And as the NSA, she’d make sure he was reassigned somewhere far away and never came near her again.
“You walk as if you were more alive than any dozen other people put together.”
“That’s…not what I was expecting.”
“Oh, I could remark on any number of other aspects to your walk that I expect would give you an excuse to ship me out—”
She definitely did not like being read so easily.
“But I rather like this posting, even before I saw how you could light up a day.” And with no more ceremony than that, he bit into a monstrous ham sandwich that had been untouched as he awaited her, despite her late arrival. No matter how casual he wished to appear, he’d been sitting and waiting, too wound up to eat. Or perhaps too polite, despite his protests to the contrary, to start without her. Either way it was an unexpected and nicely flattering compliment.
“Vermont?” Sienna prompted him and took a bite of her lasagna making it clear she wasn’t going to be the one talking.
“The Northeast Kingdom.”
“Vermont is the size of half a postage stamp, how can it have something called the Northeast Kingdom?” She spoke with her mouth still mostly full, a habit she’d learned while standing too many watches beside the military she’d been studying.
“Clearly the lady doesn’t know the true definition of a Yankee. Air Force brat?” he asked her.
“Marine Corps,” she admitted. And all of the moving around that implied.
“Huh. Don’t get a lot of Marines at the Air and Space Museum.”
“Dad flew recovery helos on Apollo 11 and others,” and she was giving out more information than he was. She didn’t like it.
“So, you grew up mostly south of the Mason-Dixon Line, I suppose.” He made it sound as if he pitied her poor lost soul for such a burden.
She took a bite of salad so that she had an excuse to restrict herself to a nod or she’d tell him a thing or two about Southern women.
“Well,” and he settled back as if he had all the time in the world to tell a story and she didn’t have a mound of reports already deep enough to hide most of her desk. “To anyone outside the US, a Yankee is someone inside. Inside our country, a Yankee would stake his claim north of the Mason-Dixon Line. North of there New England and in New England, a Yankee means Vermont. Oh, Maine might try, but they’d be wrong as could be.”
“And inside Vermont?” He was obviously waiting for the prompt.
“Why someone from The Northeast Kingdom, of course.” He said it as if it was a complete given.
“And inside the TNK?”
He snorted a laugh at her acronym. “Someone who eats Ma’s apple pie.”
“Which you do.”
“Best in the world,” he sounded ready to defend it to the death.
“That still doesn’t tell me what the TNK is except a bunch of arrogant boys who can’t cook for themselves.”
Rather than protesting, he leaned back in. “It is the most beautiful place on earth. Green hills that roll all the way from sunrise to sunset. Trout in the streams just begging to be roasted over the fire. The woods smell of oak and pine and are deep enough that nothing but the birds or the deer will ever find a man.”
“A poet,” she teased him, but could picture it so easily.
“Spoken like a city girl,” he teased her right back.
And he was right. Marine bases were big, busy places. And Marine Corps generals were not posted far afield. Suddenly she wished she could see his great Northeast Kingdom. Instead, she could picture the pile of work on her desk. It was—
“Do you shoot?”
The question was such a non sequitur that she could only blink at him in surprise.
“I see you drifting back to work and I see it worrying at you. Daughter of a Marine. Do you shoot?”
“Daughter of a Marine Corps general. Yes, I shoot.”
“Christ. Your father is a Marine general? Surprised he didn’t have me shot for hitting on his daughter.”
“He…” No. She wasn’t going to tell him that her father was the one who’d pointed this man out. “He knew I could take care of myself if I wanted to.”
“Excellent. Let’s go.”
She looked down at her lunch, which she’d finished without noticing, and then back up at him. Whimsically, despite the fact that she was never ever motivated by whim, Sienna decided it really had been a crazy week and she could do with a break.
“There’s no way I’m going to outshoot a sniper.”
“I didn’t say a competition. I was thinking more about unleashing some of those nerves hunching up your shoulders. They’re awfully nice shoulders—one of those things I’m probably not supposed to be commenting on,” and his tone told her there were many other implied compliments waiting their turns.
She wondered if they’d all be delivered so nicely. He’d skipped over the typical “nice ass” comment, only occasionally disguised as “you’ve got a great walk, babe.” And if he’d looked at her chest, she hadn’t caught him at it.
“You’ve got to relax if you want to shoot well,” he slipped effortlessly back into the earlier conversation.
“I know that.”
“Then let’s go. We have a range just down the street a piece.” He shoved back his chair and stood. When he turned to reach for his jacket was when she saw the big USSS across the back of his t-shirt, and the Glock tucked in a holster at the small of his back. Only the most trusted were allowed to carry a firearm inside the White House. Initially hungover or not, it said a great deal about this man and his integrity.
# # #
Roy spent the four block walk to the Secret Service building trying to figure out if this was real or not. Out in the July sunshine, she was even prettier than when sitting across from him. It was like she was powered by the open air even though they were walking through the heart of the city. It was so easy to picture her walking through the deep woods. Tipping her head back to breathe in the pine sap-scented air brushed as clean as could be by a fresh running stream nearby.
The more they talked, the less certain of himself he became.
Her White House security badge had annoyingly small print of her name. It wouldn’t have been any problem pinned on a guy, but he didn’t want to be accused of staring at her breasts while he was just trying to read her tag. And the woman never looked away to give him a chance to peek down at those nice curves, or the badge. While they’d been talking, he’d had a hundred percent of her attention which was so unusual that he could instantly tell when her attention had drifted back to work.
He’d blurted out the first thing he could think of to keep her attention, “Do you shoot?” How lame was he? Yet it seemed to have worked when he followed it through, making it up as he went.
The one thing he could tell about her badge was that it was the same as his: the rare “all pass.” It gave her permission to enter both wings and the Residence of the White House. They were very rare outside the Secret Service and meant she was probably very high-level staff. Even cabinet members had to have a Secret Service escort when moving beyond the West Wing.
It irked him to know that if he’d been assigned to internal security, he’d have known who she was a week sooner, but he’d been on overwatch rotation and not included in briefings about staff changes inside the building. Then he’d been dumped into route planning with Frank Adams or some other high-end agent constantly hovering beside him. He learned more about route planning this week than in the entire year prior. He’d torn apart prior plans and reviewed future ones until he could see at a glance where the gaps were and how best to fill them.
But he still hadn’t been briefed on senior level knock-out redheads.
Roy's Independence Day Page 4