TOUCHED

Chapter 10

Rating: K+

Author: AlyshebaFan2

(If you're interested, you can check out Alysheba's 1987 Kentucky Derby on YouTube. A great horse. He nearly fell down in the stretch. Seriously. He almost fell down!)

Note: The town of Tow ('as in cow'), Texas actually does exist. My great-grandmother was a Tow. So now, the town is mentioned in fiction! Yay! Otherwise, you'll miss it if you drive through and sneeze)

Alexandra woke up and briefly wondered where she was. She sat up and looked around the dark room, and finally she realized she was back at home, in the mansion in Beverly Hills. Someone had put her to bed, taken her shoes off and tucked her in, but had otherwise left her fully dressed.

When she tried to get out bed, the full force of a headache hit her, and she sat still for several moments as the world tilted and whirled around her. Had she actually tossed down four glasses of wine? Or had it been five? Either way, she felt like a herd of very angry and determined cattle had stampeded across her cerebellum and were now camped out in her stomach.

This was why she didn't drink – aside from another reason she would never get into with anyone. She knew she had used the alcohol to dull her nerves, and to a certain extend it had helped. When her grandfather had come back with Nick and B.A., flush with triumph, the old man had actually seemed rather pleased with the whole situation. He had even signed a check for two-hundred fifty thousand dollars to each member of the A-Team, which had left them all kind of stumped. Face had looked like he might wet his pants with glee, while B.A. and Hannibal had stared down at their checks with amazed expressions.

Only Murdock had seemed reluctant to take it. Alexandra had urged him to accept it and cash it as soon as possible, and vaguely recalled telling him that he could buy a car that looked a little more 'shtylish' than a PT Cruiser. Apparently, some time after that, she had been wrestled into the car by someone who smelled extremely nice and who seemed very amused and was driven home, sleeping all the way through Santa Barbara and late afternoon traffic.

"Oh, dear God," she whispered, and rubbed her throbbing forehead. She managed to get to her feet and stepped gingerly across the enormous room – with its high vaulted ceilings and huge window that afforded her a view of Beverly Hills and all its vapidity – and felt like the world was rattling under her feet. It took her a few moments to remember how to turn a doorknob, but she finally made it out into the hall. She paused and listened, and was a little surprised to hear voices downstairs – apparently, they were all in the kitchen, shooting the breeze and bickering, just like always. She heard Face's barking laughter, and B.A.'s high-pitched giggle, and finally her husband's strangely comforting voice, telling them to be quiet.

After checking Nick, and seeing that he was safely tucked into bed, sleeping with his legs tucked under and his butt in the air, just like always, she went back to her bathroom and splashed cool water on her face, washing away her makeup. After bringing her wild hair back under control and changing into her favorite two-piece pajamas, she put on her robe – Chinese silk, with red and gold hand-painted dragons, bought as a personal indulgence in Hong Kong – and went downstairs.

"Well, I have to admit, I did kinda lose count, after a while," Face was saying.

James laughed. "You remember that song? Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias? To All the Girls I've Loved Before? I always thought it would be better titled something like 'To All the Girls I've Loved Before…Would You All Meet Me At the Center for Disease Control? We Need to Talk'"

Hannibal snickered. Alexandra peeked around the corner and could see they were all seated at the table in the huge kitchen, playing cards. The French doors onto the patio were open, and the Colonel was smoking a cigar. B.A. was sitting directly across from him, his back to Alexandra, and holding a losing hand. Lieutenant Peck was to Smith's left, studying his cards and smoking his own cigar. James was directly across from Peck, and so she couldn't see what he was holding. She stepped back out of her husband's line of vision and listened, fascinated.

"Snap!" James said, putting his cards down and clapping his hands. She covered her mouth with her hand, muffling a giggle.

"Murdock, we're playing pok-…oh, dammit. Why do you do that? It's cruel." Face said, sounding only mildly irritated. She heard her husband cackling happily as he dragged his winnings toward him. "I was gonna use that to pay off that suit."

"Aw, hell, forget the suit, will ya? After all, you still have li'l ol' cotton pickin' me…and a quarter of a million buckarumbas – you can buy dozens of Armani suits and maybe a racehorse or two. Wanna lose some more of it?" She heard him shuffle the cards and tap them on the table.

"No way," Face sat back in his seat, yawning and stretching. "I'm beat. I'm going to go home and roll around naked in all this money. I mean…seriously, I've never even seen this much money before. It's just…I mean, seriously. I'm trying to think of all the stuff I can buy. I'll probably blow it all in a week."

"I'm going to invest mine in something useful," B.A. said. "Like…I dunno…an auto repair shop or real estate, or a gym…"

"Or several good-lookin' women," Hannibal said.

"I think one'd do," B.A. muttered.

"Aw, B.A. wants his own girl," James said, snickering gleefully.

"Shuddup, ya crazy fool!" B.A. growled. "C'mon, Hannibal, I'll drive this time."

Alexandra's eyes narrowed. How dare he call her husband a crazy fool!

"What, you think I can't drive?" Hannibal yawned. "What time is it?"

"Three o'clock."

"You're right – I can't drive. You take the wheel."

"Good God – we've been playin' cards that long?" Face asked, sounding aghast.

"Two-hundred K'll do that to a fella, I think. Makes ya jittery and sleepless. Better peace with dry bread and herbs than feasting with strife, as the Good Book says," James pointed out. "I still don't know what I'll do with all that cash. Put it all in an account, I guess. I never had no use for money. Or…maybe it didn't have no use for me. Never had any, either way. I had my caps and my amazin' flyin' machines. And Billy, of course."

Who is Billy, Alexandra wondered.

"Well, I'm sure you'll find something to do with it. Wine, women and song," Face laughed. "Or at least, one woman and song."

"Wine, women and song…which results in becoming a diseased alcoholic," B.A. said. "I ain't into that, man. A little wine sometimes, but never much, and one good woman is all I'd need."

"What kinda woman?" Face asked. "Aside from, you know, good?"

"She'd better know how to cook," James said gravely, and Alexandra had to cover her mouth to cover her laughter. She had never seen a man eat as much as Sergeant Baracus. "Coconut tampanade, with toast corners, in particular."

"Yeah, she'd better," B.A. agreed. "But she'd better be into kids. I want a buncha kids someday."

"Then she had better be a regular cup of fecundity," Murdock said. "And broad-hipped, like a linebacker. From what I hear, childbirth hurts a bit. It, like, stings or something."

"What the hell does that mean?" B.A. snapped. "Fecundity. I ain't ever heard that word before."

"It means…fertile," James informed him kindly. "Fecund. From the Middle English, first heard in the late fourteenth century. Meaning productive, fertile, capable of producing offspring, vegetation…"

"I think we get it, Murdock," Hannibal said with a laugh. "I remember you carrying around that dictionary all the time. That old leather-bound one? You and your 'Word of the Day'. Or worse, Language of the Day. Hard to give orders to a guy who insists on only speaking Hindi on Thursdays. I never did know what to expect. Hell, I still don't. I remember you trying out Tagalog on me that time we were in Venezuela. Ended up with a migraine, but you sure did scare that little bootlegger, and they never could figure out our codes. Like having our own Wind Talker."

"I guess it would have been more appropriate to speak Danish or Norwegian on Thursdays – Thor's Day. The Scandinavian god of thund-…yes, yes, shut up, ya crazy fool."

Face scooted his chair back and relaxed, not quite ready to stagger to his 'vette and drive home. "Tell me, Murdock…er…about women."

"They're the opposite of men, with one less appendage but with two extra that more than make up the difference. Higher-pitched voices, usually, unless they're Hillary Clinton, and less hairy…unless they're Janet Reno. They like jewelry of the expensive type, don't appreciate being placed next to better-looking specimens, and have been known to bring down empires with one flutter of the eyelashes. And yet men continue to chase them like rabid bull terriers."

The other three men cackled with laughter, but Face managed to gather himself back together. "I meant, your women. You've had…a few…er…tussles and or tumbles with 'em, eh?"

Alexandra's ears perked up and strained to hear, in spite of her lingering headache. She could smell Hannibal's and Face's cigars and made a mental note to berate them both about that later. But right now, she wanted to know about her husband's past.

"Er…well, I don't really like to kiss and tell," James finally said. She could almost picture him blushing and refusing to meet anybody's eye.

"Ah, come on, Murdock. The stories are the best part!" Face said with a laugh.

"I don't have a lot of stories. And as for talking about sex, I've always figured that the more a guy talks about sex, the less he's actually doing it."

There was a heavy silence around the table, and Alexandra couldn't keep from peeking around the corner again, and she was gratified to catch Hannibal and B.A. looking at Face with barely concealed smirks, while James looked away, toward the ovens, but she caught his mouth twitching. Finally, Peck stood, scraping his chair back. "Well…anybody want some coffee?"

Hannibal and B.A. burst into laughter, with James trying to shush them, until the Colonel wound down. "I remember a Major Garrity. Colleen Garrity, in particular."

Alexandra pulled back out of sight and wished she had something to write the name on, for future reference. She looked around the room and spied a pen on a table, next to a swanky computerized telephone that neither she nor James had been able to figure out and had finally decided to never touch, in case it was linked to the Pentagon or the Church of Scientology or something. She snatched up the pen and wrote 'Colleen' on her palm.

"Right!" Face said, sounding a little too triumphant. "I remember her, too! She was always comin' around your grill back in Iraq. Askin' for somethin' hot and spicy, but I don't think she was talkin' 'bout food!"

James was silent, and she could sense, even with a wall between them, that her husband was uncomfortable. She looked down at the name on her hand and imagined Colleen Garrity – probably tall, red-headed, in Navy whites. And then not in Navy whites, kissing her husband. Finally, she heard him shuffle the cards again. "I really don't want to talk about that."

Hannibal wasn't deterred. "What was she doin' in Iraq, anyway? Wasn't she…Navy? Why was she that far in country? I think she mentioned having met you in…where was it? Mannheim or something? What were you doing in Mannheim, anyway?"

"Flyin' some good-for-nothin' General there, from France. He had the worse flatus I've encountered since I helped cleanse a cow back in Tow, Texas. Stank up my chopper somethin' awful, and then he had the nerve to complain that the ride hadn't been very smooth – never mind that it was pourin' rain and there was Doctor-Frankenstein-the-laboratory-is-on-line-one lightnin' flashin' everywhere, but he had to get to Mannheim so he could visit his girlfriend overnight and not have his wife notice he was missing. I was still just a second looie then, so I had to follow orders, but I told him and his excessive gas to go to hell and never come near one of my girls again."

"He's trying to change the subject. Lighting and Frankenstein and flatus. Clever, bud, but not good enough," Face said with a snicker. "I don't recall seeing you with her much, but I know she had the hots for you. Serious hots."

Alexandra frowned. She hadn't exactly expected her husband to be as pure as the driven snow, but the thought of him with another woman made her stomach sour.

"Well, it was over a long time ago, and I still don't want to talk about it," James finally said, sounding annoyed. "You know, that general was killed in a chopper crash near…Manila, I think. Gas prob'ly hit a spark and kaboom…"

The other men were silent for several moments, and Hannibal finally cleared his throat. "She liked you a lot, James. Far more than you probably realized. And she was pretty nice, even if she was Navy."

"She never said she liked me," James finally said quietly. "Listen, I'm pretty tired m'self. Bar's closed. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. So all of ya…git! Kitchen smells like Cuba exploded, Hannibal. How'm I gonna explain that to Alexandra?"

"Well, that's a subject for pillow talk, I guess," Face told him. She heard the chairs being pushed under the table, and poker chips being gathered up. "I'm sure she'll be eager to hear all about it." She didn't hear James's reply.

Alexandra looked around for a place to hide, and finally rushed out the doors from the living room that led out to the patio and hid behind the wall. She stood there, gasping for breath. She looked down at her hand and noted that 'Colleen' now looked more like 'College'. It had been a felt-tip pen, she realized, and sighed.

She stayed put until she was sure that everyone had left. She started toward the doors when she heard James come into the living room. He was turning off lights, and before she could decide on what to do – reveal herself and the fact that she had been listening to them talk, like some silly teenager, or perhaps climb the trumpet vine to the upstairs balcony overlooking the pool and set off alarms and end up with police and EMT's everywhere and be a comical human interest bit on the local news – he was closing the doors and locking them. Alexandra yelped and rushed around to the other doors that led into the kitchen. They were already locked.

"Uh-oh," she said to her silk bathrobe. "I'm hung-over, and I'm locked out of my house. Isn't that a cunun-…condunun…condomum…quite a pickle?"

Murdock cleaned up the kitchen, knowing it had better not show any signs of the night's debauchery. If you could all it debauchery – smoking cigars, playing poker for a pot of about fifty dollars and talking about sex and flatulence. He washed the dishes in his usual thorough manner, having been trained by the Army to police the area properly, so that even a picky mom or a sadistic sergeant could be satisfied. Scrubbing latrine floors with toothbrushes had beaten any degree of untidiness out of Murdock, years ago. His only remaining form of rebellion against Army reg had been his cargo pants and T-shirts.

He looked up at the digital clock above the beehive oven and frowned. Three thirty in the morning, and he was wide awake. Maybe he'd go take a swim – he felt pretty overheated anyway, and maybe it would make him tired enough to zonk out for a while. He went to the downstairs powder room and dug in the closet for a towel, and after finding one that looked big enough, he opened the French doors and stepped out into the darkness. He kicked his shoes off, not caring where they landed – they had been hurting his feet and deserved ignominious exile. He sat down in one of the chairs, tore his socks off, and then pulled his dress shirt off, muttering that it had felt like he was wearing chain mail all day. He stood up, and was just starting to take his pants off when he heard a sound and turned to confront whatever was there.

She was standing against the wall, wide-eyed. For a moment, they stared at each other.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I…I heard something out here and…and came out to…investig-..check…and…" She gulped and licked her lips nervously. He walked to her, and saw that she was clutching the front of her bathrobe closed. With one hand, he removed her hand, pulling it forward until her palm rested against his chest. She gasped, and her fingers constricted slightly, brushing his skin. With his other hand, he pushed her gently against the wall. She started to whisper something, but his mouth was on hers before she could say it.

Her lips were so soft, so sweet. When he requested entry, she tried to keep her mouth shut, but he wasn't going to be denied this. Not now. He demanded again, more firmly this time, and applied a little more pressure. She finally surrendered, her lips parting. He tasted, and was instantly addicted. She moved her hand up, to his neck and then to his shoulder and finally to the back of his neck. She slipped her other arm around his neck, and her fingers stroked his hair. He directed his attention to the line of her jaw, and to her neck. She made a soft, helpless mewling sound as he pushed her robe apart and undid a button on her pajama top. Her skin was softer than the silk she was wearing, and he tested her with his hand, stroking the inside of her breast as he returned to her mouth, drawing her in, gratified when she tasted him in return. His fingers finally teased the hard crest of her breast, and she pulled at his hair, whispering his name.

He would never know why. He couldn't understand it. But something – some strange, unnamable instinct that would make him curse himself for days and weeks after – made him suddenly jerk away from her. He stared down at her, watching as she breathed soft little gasps, her eyes still closed. He had molded his body to hers, and had lifted her hips up so that she was nearly astride him, in an age-old position, as his mouth had made love to hers. She finally opened her eyes and looked at him. He ran an agitated hand through his hair, gently set her back away from him, and without a word turned and left her.

Alexandra lay curled up in her bed, running last night through her mind again and again, trying to figure out what had happened, and why, and why other things hadn't happened and trying to convince herself that she was glad other things hadn't happened but unable to stop thinking about how things might have been if they had.

So that's what it's like, to have your mind run around in circles, she thought, a little amused at herself. You start thinking in run-on sentences.

When he had left her, she had nearly collapsed, bereft at the loss of his warmth…his heat. She had regained her balance, but certainly not her composure, and stood there for a long time, trying to get flyaway thoughts and emotions gathered and under her own control, but it had been like trying to herd cats. She told herself she should be angry for him kissing her at all, but she wasn't. She decided then that she ought to have been frightened – wasn't she always frightened when any man had so much as looked at her? But that wasn't the case – she hadn't felt even slightly afraid. Alarmed, maybe. But when the alarms go off, the lights turn on. And her lights had been turned on, bright and shining and she couldn't seem to turn them off now.

So maybe she was insulted. He had kissed her as though he thought she knew what she was doing. He certainly had known what he was doing, she thought as she finally forced herself to push the sheet off her face and blink against the sunlight, still tasting him on her lips. That…that…what was her name again? Colleen McGillicutty or whatever her name was had probably known quite well, and if she hadn't been his first, then others had probably taught him before, but Alexandra certainly didn't know and wouldn't be able to offer instruction on anything of the sort.

If it hadn't been for Nick, she would have thought her blip of a marriage hadn't even happened, but the last Virgin Birth had been two thousand years ago and wasn't going to happen again, if she remembered Sunday school lessons correctly. So she had been a virgin on her wedding night – hardly unusual, and certainly nothing to be ashamed of, particularly in this day and age. But she had been educated about that in a manner best forgotten. Only she wasn't going to forget, and so she was bewildered as to why all the feelings she was supposed to be experiencing now hadn't manifested themselves at all last night. No fear, no anger, no humiliation.

Just…oh dear.

She clutched the sheet to her chest, and blushed to remember his hand on her breast, and how she had whispered his name, practically begging him to touch her some more. To never stop touching her.

So why hadn't last night been frightening? She flopped onto her back, staring at the ceiling. She had read various theories about sexually threatening men, and why young girls between the age of twelve and sixteen went crazy for the Beatles, Donny Osmond and the Backstreet Boys and lately, Justin Beiber. They were 'Cute Non-Threatening Boys'. Nothing dangerous about them – her brother John would say that guys like that hadn't dropped their balls yet, and so they would never present any threat to a young girl. The phrasing was a little vulgar, but the theory was fairly sound, as she thought about it.

James Murdock was nothing like those guys. He was no boy. He had kissed her like a man kisses a woman, and had touched her as though he desired her.

Of course, she remembered from one psychology course, once a girl loses interest in the cute boys whose voices hadn't changed yet, they either grew up and sought mature men, or they went completely bonkers and started dating Hell's Angels. She hadn't done either, aside from hanging about with punk rockers and going to coffee houses to listen to ludicrously bad poetry everyone called 'deep' but only hadn't rhymed and was written and read by skinny, bitter men wearing berets. She had grown out of that, though. Went to Cambridge, got her useless degree in art history, and let her grandfather continue spoiling her rotten and direct her toward the 'right' sort of man. She had stopped listening to her grandmother, wore cashmere and pearls and hobnobbed with fellow aristocrats, bought the white dress and married Simon Hewitt, scion of a positively ancient and prominent but not terribly rich family from Warwick.

She straightened her bed, put away her clothes and dressed for the day, selecting a pair of faded jeans and a T-shirt displaying characters from the Simpsons, and put on a pair of running shoes. She checked her hair, applied a little pink lipstick, and nodded at herself in the mirror.

Alexandra decided that she needed to talk to her husband. Tell him everything, get it all out in the open, and see how he reacted. If he wanted to stay, she would be…amenable to the idea. Yes, she nodded again. That was a proper term. If he wanted to go, she would accept that, too. It was too soon, after all, to be broken-hearted if his answer was no. She decided she wouldn't even cry.

Murdock paced in the kitchen, struggling with his stress. What the hell had he been thinking?

You weren't thinking, dumbass. Something south of the border was thinking, and not well, and that never thinks at all anyway. What were you gonna do? Ravish her, right there by the pool, with her kid upstairs asleep, dreaming about sugarplums and Mort from Penguins of Madagasar? Jesus, you're such a damned idiot!

He figured he should call Face. Ask him about this. 'Hey, I nearly gave my wife a wallbanger last night, and I don't think that was quite the right tack to take. Whattaya think I oughta do?' He would know what to do, and what to say, and how to say it. He tried to put himself in 'Face mode'. He had pulled dozens of scams with Peck over the years, after all. He knew he was actually an even better actor than the conman, but this wasn't something he could bluff his way through. He had some serious explaining to do, and had no clue how to make things right.

He turned to start toward the stairs and almost collided with Alexandra. She stepped back, and brushed her hair back, trying to look casual. She even smiled at him. Great. She was so angry she had decided to take the sweet route – they'd treat each other like customers, instead of like they were married. 'Want some more coffee? More sugar? Cream? Bacon too crispy? How're your pancakes? Oh, dear, I'm sorry! Let me do that again. I'll add rat poison to the batter this time!'

"Uh…hi," he said at last, licking his lips nervously. She looked glorious in those jeans and that rather tight T-shirt that made parts of Bart and Lisa Simpson a little closer to him than others. He swallowed and tried not to look at that. A couple of parts that make up the difference, he thought. Definitely.

"Hi," she answered him, and shuffled her feet a little. "Listen…James, I…uh…I think we need to…"

"I should apologize," he said in a rush, cutting her off. "I don't know what came over me last night. I swear, I'll…I'll never do that again. It was horrible of me…I'm sorry."

Her mouth tightened into a thin, pink line and Murdock sensed something wasn't quite right. He took a step back, his instincts telling him that the rockets were coming for him, and no amount of climbing high and shutting off the engines was going to help. Danger! Danger! Run!

"You're apologizing to me?" she said, her voice deceptively soft.

Am I? Yes. Of course, stupid. Get on with it! "Yes. I am. I'm sorry. I…my behavior last night was…was…vulgar. Disgusting, actually, and…"

"You're apologizing to me?" she repeated, her voice sharper this time. "You're apologizing to me?"

She crossed her arms and her eyes narrowed, and he vaguely remembered the last time someone had been this angry at him, and that guy had had a taser. He paused and licked his lips again, ready to grovel for her forgiveness if necessary. He looked down at the Mexican tile floors and thought that it was going to hurt, dropping to his knees, but…

"You…you…oh, you…you ridicu-…oh! You bloody bastard!" She then did something that he never, ever would have expected: she kicked him in the shin. Hard.

He let out a shout of pain, said a really, really dirty word in Finnish and dropped like a sack of wheat. He lay there for a minute, watching her walk away, wondering if all marriages eventually result in cracked shinbones. Suddenly, he shot back to his feet and limped out into the living room, trailing her like an enraged panther. "Wait just a minute!" he shouted at her. "Come back here!"

She whirled around, her hand on the graceful, hand-carved mahogany statue of Eros that topped the end of the stair railing. Her eyes were blazing with rage. "Yes, Captain?" she said with acid sweetness.

"What the hell was that?" he raged at her. "I was doing exactly what you want! Surely you wanted an apology!"

"Did I? You want to know what I want?" she yelled back. "You want to know what I want?"

"Yeah, go ahead. Tell me."

She went to slap him then, but he caught her arm and pulled her roughly against him. When their bodies made contact, they both froze, their eyes locking, their gazes dropping to each others' mouths. But she suddenly reactivated, and started struggling again, kicking and snarling even as he got her into a fairly firm but gentle hold, holding her arms behind her and doing his best to not think about how her breasts felt against his own chest.

"You let go of me right now!" she shouted, and tried to jerk her arms loose. "You big jerk! I can't believe you would do that to me! How dare you! How dare you!"

Murdock was ready to start shaking her, to at least get her to stop yelling and listen to him – no matter what she did, he wasn't going to strike her. He let go of her, and that only got him the slap she was originally aiming for.

The doorbell rang. He threw his hands in the air, frustrated and infuriated, and she stormed up the stairs. He heard her door slam shut, and two pictures fell from the wall beside him, making him jump. Running a hand through his hair, he limped to the door and flung it open, expecting Face or possibly Hannibal. He would tell either of them to get hence to the Devil and then go upstairs to finish this fight with his wife.

Instead, Sir Henry Collingwood stood at the door, leaning on his cane. When he saw the reddening handprint on Murdock's cheek, a smile slowly spread across his face.

"So. I see the honeymoon's over."