In the Weeds

Chapter 1-3

He hadn’t been ready for when she turned to salute the sergeant by the front stair. It was a profile he’d know anywhere. Moving closer didn’t change who it was. Their families were neighbors and her older brother was still his best friend. But when did Ivy Hanson start to look like this? She’d been overseas so much these last several years that he’d only seen her in passing.

Rex moved in to sniff her just as she did a military about-face and almost trompled him.

“Yipes!” Her cry of surprise as she stared down at the dog and fought for balance was pretty funny.

“Hey there, Saint Ives.”

She closed her eyes in a deeply pained expression.

When she’d turned to face him, it was like being hit by a taser blast. Little Saint Ives transformed into a Marine Corps officer in her dress blues was messing with his head. She carried a dark blue leather-encased tablet computer that managed to make her look even more official and impressive.

That’s when he noticed her shoulder insignia.

“Major? Whoo-hoo! When did you get them pretty little leaves on your collar?” He had to say something to distract himself from the conflicting thoughts she was firing into his brain. Little Ivy and sexy Marine Corps major was a very weird juxtaposition.

“Last week,” she heaved a sigh. Even the dress blues couldn’t conceal the very pleasant movement of her chest. Then she opened her eyes again, which were bluer than the DC springtime sky.

“Would you mind getting your dog out of my way?” Rex had sat after giving her a good sniff.

Colby looked down at her. He’d always remembered her as a little bit of a thing, three years younger besides. She’d always been cute as hell, but she was completely under the best-friend’s-little-sister rule: no touch, no look, no think. Hell, he’d practically helped raise her. It was a rule he’d always been fine with, mostly. He’d certainly never told Reggie about any stray thoughts to the contrary. Or Ivy. She’d have flattened him even if he could have picked her up one-handed.

But she didn’t look like anybody’s kid sister in her Marine Corps uniform. She was breathtaking.

“Colby,” she let a Marine growl into her voice, sounding almost as gruff as Rex, who c****d his head to listen to her. That was funny enough to give him back the power of speech.

“Afraid not, Ives. Rex is sitting for a reason. Want to explain it to me or should I frisk you?”

“You. Wouldn’t. Dare!” She shifted her weight to her back foot. The Secret Service had given him enough hand-to-hand combat training to recognize a fighter’s stance when he saw one. That’s when he remembered that one teased Saint Ives at their own risk. She’d been a taekwondo black belt by junior high and judo black belt in high school. Or was it jiu-jitsu? Dangerous as hell either way. More than once she’d taken him down despite the age and size difference. Even before she’d become a Marine, she’d always fought like a girl—to win.

“It was range work and you damn well know it. He’s looking right at my sidearm.” And Rex was staring at her holster. Detection dogs triggered to spent powder. Then she pulled out her White House ID, looped the band over her head, and held it out for Colby to see. She had full Proximity Clearance—which meant that not only could she stand beside the President unescorted, but she was also one of the select few outside the Secret Service who were authorized to be armed in his presence.

He should read her badge, but he couldn’t look away from her photo. Not even for a White House badge had Ivy been able to lock down that brilliant smile of hers. It was like she was looking right at him, as if he was a ray of sunshine on a winter’s day.

Then he managed to look up from her photo and into her face. Not so much with the smile—sunshiny or otherwise.

His leaning down had placed their faces entirely too close together. She didn’t get this close to anyone.

Typical jerk, leaning in so close. Colby knew he was a handsome SOB, but the emphasis was on being a son of a b***h—and not in the good, Marine Corps sense of the word. He looked really good and…she’d clearly lost her mind.

The last year that she’d spent with HMX-1 had been brutally hard, trying to live up to the impossible standards that challenged every single jarhead in the squadron. General Arnson drove his Marines just as hard as he drove himself. She’d never served with such an exceptional team before. But it had also meant she’d had no time for more personal liaisons.

And now Colby stood so close that she could smell—

McKinnon’s Law: Marine first, second, and third. Everything else comes fourth.

“Back off, Thompson.” He jolted away as if she’d slapped him, his eyes a little wild.

So much for her dignified arrival at the White House.

She glanced back and caught Sergeant Mathieson’s smile as he marched the six steps from closing the rear door of the White Top and returned to the forward stairs. He turned to climb the stairs himself and his smile was hidden from view. Then she spotted Captain Walters’ grin through the pilot’s side window. She really didn’t need this.

Ego don’t mean s**t in the Corps. And McKinnon’s wisdom wasn’t helping her ego at all.

“What are you doing here?” Colby said it as a whisper.

“I’m the new HMX-1 liaison to the White House Military Office.”

“The WHMO?” That earned her a whistle of surprise. “You know that those guys are a little freaky, right?”

Hard challenges are what Marines live for!

“Damn straight!” Ivy wasn’t sure if she was answering Colby or an imaginary McKinnon. Though Colby was right. The WHMO was one of those quiet agencies that almost no one had ever heard of. Yet Marine One, Air Force One, the ceremonial Marine sentries, the Nuclear Football with the President’s launch codes—all that was only part of what they did.

“What are you doing here?” She tried to step around Rex, but he shifted to keep giving his warning signal. Colby put on his best innocent look, which never fooled anybody.

“Any landing of the Marine helos on the South Lawn is part of Rex’s and my patrol. We secure the passage, the landing area, then act as backup on standby. If I’m right there,” he pointed off to the side as if she cared what he did, “then I’m not in any Press Corps photos either.”

Overhead, the helo’s engines began whining to life. The rotors swung through their first lazy turn. Then another. Burning kerosene replaced the smell of fresh-mown grass.

When Ivy again tried to step around Rex, the low growl that emanated from his chest was loud enough to be easily heard despite the escalating noise of the twin turbine engines. She froze in place. In fact, she was fairly certain that she stopped breathing entirely. He really was huge; his shoulders practically reached her waist.

Colby flickered a hand sign to Rex to ease off. But the dog was too busy pointing his nose at her sidearm. He tried again. Still nothing.

Ivy offered him a smirk. Still the same old Colby, never having his act together.

Ivy’s smile wasn’t all happy and friendly like the one on her ID—it was more, What a goon!

He signaled Rex one more time, but he was too busy looking at Ivy. Who could blame him? Somewhere over the last few years while he hadn’t been paying attention, she had tipped over from being a cute, feisty, pain-in-the-a*s to being a gorgeous Marine warrior. He finally had to call out, “Gute Hund.” Rex looked up at him but didn’t move until Colby remembered to fumble out a dog treat.

Once he had happily chomped it down, Rex sprang to his feet and let Ivy step past. She didn’t scowl at the dog, but she did scowl at him. Not his best day’s work.

Behind them, the helicopter’s rotors wound up to full speed. But he didn’t look. He was too busy trying to catch up to the striding Marine a head shorter than he was.

“Such,” he told Rex with the hard German ch. Seek. And they were alongside Ivy in a moment.

“Because of course a German shepherd speaks German,” Ivy didn’t ease up from her military perfect posture as she strode across the lawn. Her voice carried easily over the roar of the departing helo. She’d never been soft-spoken, but the Marine Major carried an authority that he wasn’t sure what to do with.

“Of course,” he agreed amiably. Actually, it was a very common practice among military and Secret Service dogs to train them in German. It avoided confusion in a crowd. The number of German words spoken by the Secret Service in general conversation were few and far between, so it also decreased the chances of a false signal to the dog.

But what Colby was wondering about was if Ivy’s perfect posture was a leftover from all the ballet she’d done as a kid or martial arts as a teen? Or was it pure Marine? Whichever it was, she was making it damn hard to remember the best-friend’s-little-sister rule at the moment. Major Ivy Hanson was a serious woman who looked amazing in her dress uniform.

“Don’t you have something else to do?”

“Nope, can’t think of a thing.” Rex was tugging ahead, sniffing the air that he’d just checked coming the other way before the helicopter had landed. Unlike the friendly, floppy-eared dogs who patrolled among the tourists on the outside of the White House fence line, Rex was eighty-seven pounds of hard-driven canine who had never learned to be easy on the leash when he was on the job. He’d dump someone as small as Ivy right on her face as he charged ahead.

Then Colby looked over at her again.

Marine tough. Not a button or hair out of place. Enough ribbons on her chest to tell him that she wasn’t good at what she did—she was exceptional. Of course he wouldn’t expect anything less from Saint Ives.

Maybe she’d be just fine handling Rex.

“Colby, I know how to walk to the damn White House alone.”

“You can try, but it’s not gonna happen.”

“And why not?”

“Because for roughly the next ten minutes, I’ve been assigned to be your liaison to the White House.”

“For reasons beyond understanding.”

“For reasons of security. You’ve entered the White House grounds without passing through Security. Just because they let you onto the Anacostia airbase and aboard a White Top helo doesn’t cut it with the United States Secret Service. That means that you have an escort until you’re registered as being on the grounds. Think you can put up with me for that long, Saint Ives?”

“I don’t know. It will be hard. But we Marines are used to shouldering heavy burdens.” She delivered it in a flat tone, but that smile of hers slipped out and lit up her face.

It was a good thing the White House kitchen was in the basement of the Residence. That’s where her brother, Reggie worked—so he wouldn’t be able to see what was going on.

What was going on?

Colby didn’t know. But he knew he wanted to see Saint Ives smile at him like that again—really soon.

Then Rex swung left as Colby stumbled off to the right. He was thinking of Saint Ives how? Reggie would kill him.

Off balance and looking the wrong way, Colby went down on the South Lawn—face first. Leftover grass clippings were plastered to his face and he brushed at them frantically.

Rex spun to look at him in surprise. He heard a sharp laugh from one of the Delta snipers on the roof of the West Wing.

Saint Ives didn’t even break her stride, but it was easy to imagine her eye roll. Easy money said she’d make a point of rubbing in his clumsiness as well.

The White House loomed. Ivy had been here dozens of times working with the White House Military Office as part of her training, but she’d never stood on the South Lawn before. She’d also never arrived by helicopter, but it was still the same White House. It was still the same WHMO.

Except it completely wasn’t.

It was as if she’d teleported down onto another planet and was caught in one of those Star Trek back-in-time episodes.

Here she was, walking across the South Lawn. The long arms of the East and West Wings wholly overshadowed by the towering white facade of the Residence. Fifty meters wide and twenty high, it looked as if the mass of sandstone was going to tumble down the gentle slope and crush her.