Chapter 36
1386 Words
Chapter 36
“Dinner’s in an hour.” Emily Beale announced as they managed to close the heavy weathered-pine front door against the roaring night.
“I’ll help.” Alice felt disoriented as she looked about the house and needed something familiar to anchor her in place.
“Make that forty-five,” Beale called out then dropped her voice. “Let’s go see what we can rustle up.”
Daniel, back on his feet after sleeping like a baby throughout the flight, was making sure that their guests were guided toward their rooms. She left him to it.
The fact that he had never doubted her strategic assessment still floored her. That she’d actually been right, shocked her. That he’d slept with his ankles wrapped around hers for the whole flight on the Gulfstream jet had touched her heart and she’d rather not think about that.
Alice moved to follow Emily to the kitchen. She’d toured the house during their initial daytime survey with Captain Smith, but it looked far different at night. During the day, the light and the outdoor world had dominated. A grand vista of the islands and the waves far below. Wide windows invited those inside to notice the surrounding conifers and lawn.
Now, under the warm glow of tastefully recessed lighting, dark tile and lush wood floors invited her to linger in the nearly opulent warmth. The heavy furniture proffered a welcome, an invitation to settle in with a good book and never move again. The walls between the windows wrapped cozily about the room. They were covered with a mix of Native American art with its shocking red and black and white contrasts, and tall bookcases almost spilling over with a wide variety of novels and histories revealing the owners’ eclectic tastes.
The kitchen continued the theme. The cookbooks on a nicely recessed shelf covered a half dozen cuisines. Yet the size and efficient layout of the kitchen revealed that the family cooked here, rather than some servants.
Emily had already pulled out a big tray of steaks.
“You had this place stocked.” Alice couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it.
Emily nodded, “I was the First Lady’s chef for three weeks after all.”
Alice slapped her forehead eliciting Emily’s rare laugh, then reached for an apron. Beale’s flying had made national news and her cooking shone front and center in the country’s gossip pages. It had all been while the Major performed some secret security assignment that Alice had never uncovered. Alice typically felt disjointed around women like Emily Beale. Alice knew how to handle men. Well, men other than Daniel. But women often eluded her.
Emily Beale felt like the sister she’d never had.
“So what am I making?”
“Steaks for entrée. Can you tackle a garlic pasta for a side? I premade cookie dough, so we can hack some off and make a batch of chocolate chip while everything else cooks.”
Alice dug out a large pot and set water to heat on the stove. She scrounged around and came up with garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, a small bundle of basil, and some broccoli. They worked together in companionable silence for a while. Emily rubbed a pepper and sage combination into the meat. Alice floreted the broccoli and started to sliver the basil.
“He’s quite in love with you.”
Alice would have cut off her finger if she’d been using anything more dangerous than a garlic press at the moment. Instead, it merely slipped from her nerveless fingers to clatter down on the counter spreading tiny splatters of garlic across the broad granite surface.
Gripping the counter edge she managed to turn herself enough to face Beale. Emily was leaning comfortably back against the opposite counter and holding out a large glass of red wine. Alice rarely drank. She grabbed the glass and knocked half of it back, leaving her hard pressed to catch her breath.
“What,” she tried to ignore the amount of effort entailed to speak the word. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
Emily smiled. That slow, calm, self-assured smile of a woman who has faced down, well, the President and her husband among others.
“It isn’t an idea. It’s a fact. I’d have to be blind to not see it. Why don’t you?”
Alice took another deep swallow of the wine that did nothing to slake a throat long gone dry.
The door to Alice’s right opened, but she couldn’t turn away from Emily Beale’s brilliant blue gaze.
“Go away,” Beale said without looking around.
“Uh…” Alice heard Daniel and did her best not to cringe.
“Come, my friend.” Major Henderson cut him off with a fake Texas accent thick enough to deep-fry in hot oil. “We’all better be walkin’ in places safe for mere men to tread. Which does not include our continued existence if we should remain in this here kitchen.”
The door swung closed and silence once again reigned in the kitchen other than the soft sizzle of steaks on iron and the bubbling of the pasta water nearing a boil.
“Just asking.” Emily turned back to preparing a bowl of salad with wild greens, hazelnuts, and dried cranberries.
Even as she struggled against the idea of love in her life, Alice’s analyst mode kicked in.
Emily Beale, she knew, ranked as an exceptionally acute observer, just one of many areas in which her file stated she ranked far above the norm. She had known Daniel when they were both working for the First Lady. Beale had a frame of reference that spanned the year following as well.
Alice had… What? Her own clear sense that she was not capable of falling in love. And the certainty that no one could ever love her. Not the firmest logic. It was like saying, if A equals B and X is not equal to forty-two, then L must be false. Logic simply didn’t work that way.
She tried flipping her thoughts to a more intuitive framework, one that served her well enough to identify Kim Jong-un’s desire to speak with the President in private. One that observed Daniel grabbing her hand when panicked in flight, or protecting her during the simulated helicopter attack, of his hand frozen above the first small door of an exquisite Advent calendar. Three weeks and she still hadn’t been able to forget that moment.
Never in her life had she imagined that Dr. Alice Thompson had the ability to freeze a man in his place. Her parents had made it clear that her place in the world would never include a relationship. That love was a façade.
Every one of her friends loved Alice’s parents. They were perfect hosts. Intelligent, funny, friendly. Everyone always told her that she was lucky to have such parents. For a father who retreated into impenetrable silence the instant the guest left. Or the harpy with a martini in one hand and a list of Alice’s on-going faults in the other.
Not for her. Never that trap.
Once again Emily was facing her. A glass of wine in her own hand.
“I don’t like where my thoughts are going.”
Emily nodded, “Probably means they are on the right track at last.”
“How do I know?” Alice turned the question about. “How did you know?”
Emily’s face shifted, a gentle smile revealing a softness difficult to equate with the SOAR Major; a smile that shifted her eyes from bright blue to misty summer sky.
“I didn’t. I had to beat the s**t out of Mark before he convinced me.”
If that was a dreamy memory, Alice wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the rest of the story. But she couldn’t help but be cheered by Emily’s obvious good mood.
“So, that’s how Majors choose a mate?”
“A lifemate. Oh yeah. Absolutely. How about brilliant and beautiful CIA analysts? How do they do it?”
“Carefully.” Alice replied even as she fought against the echo of Beale’s correction. “A lifemate,” she tried the word out. A strange and foreign word. Her parents were married for life, that had become clear years before, but it was more of a life-inmate arrangement, locked in a mutual prison that neither knew how to break.
Emily moved around her to drop the pasta into the rolling water.
Alice finished the garlic, set it beside the diced tomatoes and basil. She grated a couple cups of Parmesan cheese. She felt better, more stable. This time she was able to sip her wine. Which was a good thing, as she could definitely feel that initial slug loosening her brain.
“I don’t want to be in love with him.”
“Why not?” Beale flipped the steaks.
“You’re b****y relentless, aren’t you?”
“Special Operations pilot. Who knew I’d be like that?”
Emily left Alice with the relentless silence of her own thoughts. Really unfair.
She knew she wasn’t in love. She knew she couldn’t be.
She also couldn’t shake the sneaking suspicion that she was wrong on both counts.
- Writer
