In the Weeds

Chapter 1-4

Overseas, she’d seen far too much of Libya and plenty of Iraq and Yemen from the air. Her Marine Expeditionary Unit—MEU—had gone on to Syria at the same time her requested transfer to HMX-1 had come through. She still felt bad about that. However, after the recent attack on the Presidential Motorcade, she was feeling less guilty. The President needed the best protection there was. That’s why the Marines were on the job.

But now she was a sole Marine—without the two thousand other Marines of her MEU—walking toward the most imposing facade in the nation’s capital. Perhaps in the world.

Walk like you own it!

Yeah right, Sergeant. It was an act of sheer will to remain upright despite her knees gone to liquid.

She held the line set by Colby. The South Portico with its twin sweep of stairs was off to her right. And to her left, the Oval Office dominated the South Lawn from its corner. It actually didn’t look like much, a curved wall with a lot of windows and several tactically placed trees that would mask the Oval Office from a distant shooter. But even though the President was at Camp David with the Australian Prime Minister, the Oval Office was there and she could feel the windowed eyes watching her every step.

Colby had been guiding her toward the Rose Garden. The entrance there led into the hall that ran between the Press Briefing and Cabinet Rooms. Past those lay the main floor of the West Wing, but there was a stairway around the first corner that would allow her to descend into the far less scary ground floor of the West Wing.

“Does it still spook you every time you walk here?” Ivy whispered her question to Colby as she crossed the paved circular driveway for the South Portico.

When he didn’t respond, she looked over at him, except he wasn’t there. He was behind her, trotting to catch up. Rex had a happy smile and lolling tongue as he had a chance to move with a springy lope rather than dragging at his leash.

“What happened to your knees?” His dark slacks were brightly grass-stained along with one of the elbows of his white shirt.

Colby just glared at her like he was some kind of pissed. About what, who knew? Or cared? Not her.

Ten minutes. That’s what he’d said. Fine! She was a Marine. She could cover a kilometer wearing a forty-pound rucksack in under ten minutes—she could certainly deal with Colby Thompson for that long. Thank goodness they didn’t have to work together.

She turned back just in time to plow into a small Shetland Sheepdog that yipped in surprise as a young voice called out, “Zackie!”

Colby managed to grab Ivy’s arm before she plummeted to the ground. As a result of his grasp, they performed a small whirling dance. He almost had their balance right—except Rex, as he’d been trained to do during the unexpected, firmly braced himself to act as a support if needed.

Instead of support, the sudden tightening of the leash in his hand tipped Colby’s own balance past recovery. If he’d let go of the leash or Ivy at that moment, she might have been fine. But some part of him hadn’t cooperated and he was dragging her down with him.

With a sharp twist, he managed to get his back to the lawn and take the brunt of the fall—squarely on his spare: the Glock handgun that he kept at the small of his back. Pain sliced up his back.

The rigid black brim of Ivy’s hat cracked him sharply enough across the bridge of his nose to bring tears to his eyes. And the impact of her fist, tightly clutched around her tablet computer, nailed him in the solar plexus.

“What the hell?” Ivy shouted at him from an inch away.

All he could answer with were small whoop noises as he desperately struggled to take a breath. That Ivy continued to lie full upon him made it even harder to recover.

He’d only ever let himself think about how goddamn cute Ivy was—and even that little bit only on rare occasions before he caught himself. He’d never thought of what it would be like to actually touch her or…

Lying full upon him, she didn’t feel like a best friend’s little sister under a no-touch-no-think interdiction. She was no longer the little girl he’d practically helped raise.

Colby inhaled through his nose to force his breathing to slow down. It was the fastest way to recover from a solar plexus hit. But it also filled his senses with her scent. She smelled of glory and gunmetal, of spring grass and not even a little bit of the teenage girl running down the beach in a hormone-busting sleek one-piece. As she struggled to free herself, she nearly cut off his nose with one of her collar-point insignias. She felt so light, except against his diaphragm, which was registering a weight somewhere between elephant and lying under one of the wheels of Air Force One. Whoop. Whoop.

“Let. Go. Of. Me.” Ivy ground out the syllables like a military command.

It took him a moment to identify that his hands were still firmly clenched about her upper arms. Serious biceps and triceps there for a woman. Rex was sitting off to the side holding his own leash, which Colby had finally dropped, between his teeth.

It took Colby several moments more to unclench his grasp without setting off more spasms in his chest.

In seconds, Ivy’s weight was gone. She now stood, brushing at her immaculate uniform. No grass stain would dare impinge on her perfection.

Perfection. That was Ivy Hanson’s specialty. That’s why he’d tagged her as Saint Ives when she was all of five. The nickname had worked on several other levels as well—particularly in that it had always irritated her.

Saint Ives lived to be in hot pursuit of the absolute perfect. Nothing less, in herself or others, was ever tolerated. As a kid he’d first thought it was ridiculous. Then later, a little terrifying.

By the time she’d hit high school and was entering state-wide martial arts competitions, he’d wondered what he’d been missing by not trying harder to achieve something—anything. He was smart enough that he’d been able to loaf through high school without much effort. With Ivy jarring his attitude, he managed to kick a little a*s in college with solid grades and a state swimming championship.

He’d always been a good swimmer. The Thompsons and the Hansons had side-by-side cabins near Ocean City on the Maryland barrier islands. They’d all been swimming through the breakers since the time they could walk. College had simply honed that natural ability until it felt as if he owned that skill.

By the time he made the Secret Service, it felt as if he was in control of his life. Dog handler at the White House totally rocked.

Then Saint Ives shows up. She’d driven him to become who he was, even if she didn’t know anything about that. But instead of living up to that standard, suddenly he was in high school not-living-up-to-his-potential mode again. It wasn’t fair.

He sat up once his gut muscles could tolerate a sit-up. A sit-up square into a giant face lick by Zackie.

“Dilya! Get your dog off me!” But he smiled and scrubbed the Sheltie on the head, making her wag her tail happily, to show there were no hard feelings. It wasn’t the First Dog’s fault that it was so excessively cheerful; just part of the breed.

“She’s not my dog.”

“As good as.”

He looked up at Dilya. The teen was the First Dog’s handler as well as the on-site babysitter for the former-President-turned-Secretary-of-State’s child. And now with the First and Second ladies both pregnant, she was soon going to have her hands full. It was a good thing she was finishing high school a year ahead next month.

“You hear from the schools yet?”

“Georgetown. Political science and international affairs double major. So, I still get to play part-time nanny and dog sitter here.”

“Wow! You go, girl. Too bad you weren’t born in the US. I’d vote for you for President.” Dilya was seventeen, brilliant, and—he had to blink a few times—fast becoming a gorgeous young woman. Her Uzbekistani medium-dark skin and long black ruffled hair were offset by brilliant green eyes. She was taller than Ivy, but gawky-teen slender rather than Ivy’s ever-so-nice, hyper-fit, Marine Corps trim. The guys were definitely going to be hounding her heels.

Though Dilya also mysteriously seemed to be at the center of everything that happened around the White House.

“President is too visible. Maybe I’ll run the CIA instead. Or maybe the Secret Service, then you could work for me.” Then she bit her lower lip, clearly something she hadn’t meant to say.

Dilya had that same driven enthusiasm that had always made Ivy such a standout.

She hurried on, “I was just walking Zackie when I spotted the helo. She wanted to say hi to Rex.”

Colby rose to his feet and gave Dilya the same treatment he’d just given the First Dog: a big head rub to mess up her hair. Though he wouldn’t be trying that on Major Ivy Hanson.

“Hey!”

“You heard the helo, knew the First Family wasn’t due back yet, and were in too much of a hurry to grab Zackie’s leash as you used her as an excuse to rush and see what was going on.”

Dilya just grinned at him and held out her empty palms.

“I shouldn’t even introduce you.”

“Oh, she’s Major Ivy Hanson, the new HMX-1 liaison to the WHMO,” Dilya did know everything. “Hi, I’m Dilya. Sorry about Zackie.”

Ivy scowled at him rather than the dog.

“Are you okay, Ives?”

“Little slow with that question, Colby. This is your idea of a welcoming committee?”

“No, Rex and I typically reserve this particular type of greeting for visiting heads of state. The Pope and I had a nice roll around the fountain one particularly sunny afternoon.” He pointed to where the big fountain splashed cheerfully farther down the South Lawn. With the helo gone, it was the loudest sound there was. The traffic on Constitution Ave beyond the Ellipse was muted by comparison.

“I’m thinking that my brother wouldn’t hold it against me if I killed you right now.”

“He still owes me fifty bucks from poker the other night, so he might offer to hold me down. Just saying, in case you need to take up a posthumous collection for my funeral expenses. Of course, then you’d have to put up with Rex. He’d whine pitifully if something happened to me.”

Ivy looked down at his German shepherd. “You sure about that?”

Rex sent him a questioning look, like: What are we standing around for? Or perhaps it was a doubtful look, like: Miss you? Maybe yes, maybe no.

Could she have found any less dignified approach to her first day? Thank God there hadn’t been a Press Corps photographer around. Ivy brushed at her uniform again, but couldn’t find any grass stains.

Rex didn’t look like a whiner. More like a furry, four-footed Zulu Cobra attack helo—lean and lethal.

She really needed to have a long talk with Reggie about his choice in best friends. Colby Thompson was definitely a lower life form, the kind a woman scraped off her boot after stepping in it accidentally. He’d always been a lazy, arrogant jerk wholly convinced of his own self-worth with little to no justification.

Then he leaned down to pet his dog and take the leash from the dog’s mouth.

But he didn’t look useless. Nor had he moved like some bumbler. Her martial arts training let her understand the move he’d done to take the hit of the fall himself. It wasn’t something he’d thought about, then done; there wasn’t time. It had been an instinctively trained act, trained to the point of reflex, to protect those around him. The fact that it was also a decent and selfless act must be strictly a coincidence.

And lying on him, he hadn’t felt useless. Instead he’d…

As he turned to chat with the teen, she could see the grass stains on his white Uniformed Division shirt: both elbows, one shoulder that must have dug in hard to get so green, and a clear imprint of the backup piece at the small of his back that had to really hurt to land on. But no complaints. Instead he’d asked if she was okay. This wasn’t any version of Colby Thompson that she recognized. This wasn’t the boy who’d taught her to read one moment and started a food fight that she’d been the one to get in all the trouble for the next moment.