A/N - I am super behind on reading/reviewing but promise to catch up soon! xoxo - tmtcltb

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Chapter 3

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"Where now?" Danny asked, standing up and stretching out a hand to help Kara to her feet. She glanced at him, clearly confused by the question. "You mentioned dinner. What sounds good?"

Kara shrugged, tossing her bag over her shoulder. "I have no idea. I just got here last night. You?"

"Same," Danny confirmed. As they cleared the potted plants, he debated whether to throw an arm over her shoulders or take a hand, but she seemed almost ... skittish suddenly. Sending him side glances that he couldn't read. As if she was second-guessing her suggestion that they pretend to hook up with each other to convince their friends to stop giving them shit about not hooking up, which was really the only reason to be here in the first place.

Honestly, just thinking about it threatened to give him a headache.

But, really, the details were pretty much irrelevant. What did matter, and the reason he agreed to her crazy plan in the first place, was that it was pretty much how he planned on spending the next nine days anyway. Step one, meet a girl he could tolerate. Step two, have some fun. Step three, sex. Ideally lots of it. And, unlike Frankie, Danny wasn't planning on repeating the process with a new woman every day.

When Kara first started talking, he had been caught by surprise. Why pretend to hook up when they could actually hook up? One he realized that she was serious, though, Danny had waited for the catch. As far as he could tell, though, the only place where their plans didn't line up perfectly was sex. And she hadn't said no sex, just hadn't included sex in the deal - which, frankly, would have been weird anyway.

For a minute Danny had wondered whether she was playing some game, using him as a cover for her affair with a married man or something equally nefarious. But her surprise at his demand for exclusivity seemed genuine, as though it were a given, and that scorcher of a kiss eliminated any possibility that she wasn't actually interested. After replaying the conversation in his head, Danny decided that Kara's odd approach was more likely due to being burned - probably badly - in the past. Hell, he even rather admired how direct she was about wanting to parade him around her friends rather than throwing him into the lion's den without warning.

Reminding himself that he was supposed to be thinking about food, Danny tried to recall Frankie's thirty minute discussion of the resort's amenities. Unfortunately, he hadn't been paying attention at the time. "This place is supposed to have a decent sushi bar. Since we both spent most of the day inside, how about we grab something to go and hit the beach. That work?"

"Sounds perfect," Kara replied, some of her tension disappeared.

Danny glanced around, trying to orient himself. The lobby of the resort was quickly filling but he had the advantage of being taller than three quarters of the guests. Locating their objective, he reached out, catching Kara's hand. "This way."

Twenty minutes later, food in hand, they made their way to the tents set up near the water for the express purpose of allowing guests to eat on the beach. Settling into his chair, Danny opened the wine as Kara began pulling out the different sushi rolls. "So, tell me about your friends."

"My friends?" Kara echoed, her voice doubtful.

"We're bound to run into them sooner or later. Probably better if I know something about them. Or at least why you're avoiding them," Danny replied, breaking out his chopsticks and realizing that he should have grabbed a fork. Despite Rebecca's best efforts, Danny's ability to use chopsticks ranged from bad to embarrassing. Kara, on the other hand, appeared to be a pro, picking up a California roll absently, dipping it in the sauce.

"I'm here with a group," Kara explained. "My best friend is Alisha. We're both Navy and we've served on the same ship for the last four years."

She popped the roll into her mouth with an ease that Danny admired as he nudged two tuna rolls onto his own plate. With the guys, he would have simply used his hands, but he didn't want to come across as a complete Neanderthal. "Navy, huh? I'm a Marine. Mountain Warfare Unit. We're part of the First Second out of Camp LeJeune."

"I was guessing Marine." Kara grinned, her chopsticks pointing at his shirt. "I can see your dog tags."

Danny made a point of glancing at her chest. "I see that you aren't wearing yours. Which ship?"

Kara chuckled, picking up another roll. "Not a habit, I guess. I'm assigned to the Nathan James. She's a DDG out of Norfolk."

"Wait, isn't that Javier Cruz's ship?" Danny interrupted.

Kara looked surprised. "Yes, do you know Javier?"

"Asshole is dating my sister," Danny muttered.

"Small world," she replied, voice amused. "I don't know him well but Cruz always struck me as a good guy."

"He is. Except for the part about dating my sister," Danny clarified grudgingly. "So tell me about how you ended up on the James."

"I started off on the Dewey, another DDG," Kara explained. "Captain Chandler was the XO. When he was promoted to the CO of the James, he invited me to move over. I'm an operations specialist in CIC. Alisha's our OOD."

Danny nodded for her to continue.

"Alisha's here with her girlfriend, Sarah. Sarah's a civilian. A social worker based out of the local hospital. My friend Maya is on the James as well, in engineering. She's here with her boyfriend Mickey, a teacher. They're all fine, if a little sicky sweet." Kara paused, fiddling with her drink. "And then there's Nina. She's our EWO. She has an on and off again thing going with our CMO. Since I have my medical certificate, I work a lot with Cisco. Nina .. doesn't like that. There can be tension."

While Kara was taking, Danny had managed to shove two rolls into his mouth and went back to nudging things onto his plate. "So she's jealous."

Kara was so quiet that he looked up, noticing the way her forehead crinkled when she frowned. "It's stupid. Cisco is crazy about her. She's the one who won't commit. We'll get back to the ship and she's going to tell him about every guy here that she hooked up with, but she gets mad if he so much as talks to another woman, even for work. It's ridiculous."

"Jealousy doesn't always make sense," Danny replied, focusing on the damn roll that he was trying to lift to his mouth without dropping it into his lap.

"Did I hit a sore spot?" Kara asked.

Danny's head popped up, only then realizing that she must have misinterpreted his irritation with the chopsticks as directed at her comment. "What? Oh, no. I think that jealousy is pointless. Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass what people do but you need to be on the same page for a relationship to work. Sounds like your friends aren't."

"Mmm." Kara gave him an odd look before setting down her chopsticks, chin on her hand. Damn it. Danny put down his own chopsticks, even though he was starving. "Anyway, Nina's here with two single friends who are here solely to hook up with as many guys as possible. Which is fine, but I don't want to waste my vacation chasing guys for the sole purpose of putting a notch in my bedpost."

Oh yeah, she had definitely been burned.

"Well, problem solved," Danny replied, taking a sip of the wine he picked simply because Kara mentioned preferring wine with dinner. "Point her out and I'll make sure to turn on the charm."

Silence fell, and Danny was searching for another topic, when Kara spoke, her tone amused. "So are you going to admit that you can't use chopsticks or just not eat? Because I'm happy to eat this entire spread but I can hear your stomach rumbling from here."

Danny scowled, and then snorted as he realized how ridiculous he was being. "I hate chopsticks."

A moment later they were both laughing, Kara wiping tears from her eyes as she explained. "The way you were scowling at your plate I was starting to wonder if you had multiple personalities or something and then you snatched that falling California roll out of the air like a shark. Would an elastic help?"

"Unfortunately no," Danny admitted. "Rebecca tried that trick a dozen times. We'd go out to eat with her bigwig doctor friends and I would be the jarhead at the end using a fork. I forgot to sneak one into my pocket."

"Just use your hands," Kara said, waiting until he relented and picked up a rainbow roll, popping it into his mouth. "Rebecca. Is that your ex?"

He ate another roll while considering how to answer. "Yeah. We grew up in the same town, have known each other forever. We did the off-and-on thing during college but then I left for Iraq and she left for medical school. We met back up a couple of years ago and decided to give it another go."

"So what happened?" Kara asked softly.

Danny shrugged. "We both slipped back into old roles and took me too damn long to realize that we were on completely different pages about where we were going."

"You don't want to settle down?" Kara asked, surprising Danny with the question.

"It's not that," Danny hedged, trying to explain something that he wasn't sure he understood himself. "I know that I want to get married and have kids. Rebecca does too. Which I guess is why we were both able to ignore our obvious problems for so long. We both wanted the same thing, but for Rebecca that meant a house in the suburbs and mom and dad both home for dinner every night."

Kara ate another roll. "She wanted you to leave the Marines."

"She never came right out and said it but..." Danny paused. "Hardest conversation of my life, telling her that things were over. She accused me of picking the guys over her. She wasn't wrong."

Silence fell. "I'm sorry, Danny. I've never dated a civilian, not seriously. But I've seen how much Sarah struggles with Alisha being gone on long deployments. It's not a life to enter lightly."

"I'm here with my team. Frankie, Steve and Jason," Danny explained. "They all hate Rebecca because they think she was pressuring me to get out. I'm barred from even saying her name. But it wasn't like that. I always knew that I would have to move on someday. You can't stay in the field forever. Eventually you get out or move to a desk job and I've never wanted a desk job. I see the same future as Rebecca, our timelines were just off."

"So the guys brought you here to cheer you up," Kara concluded.

Danny finished off the sushi, splitting the last of the wine between their glasses, noticing that Kara's glass was only half empty. He recalled her words from earlier and wondered if the key word was drunken rather than subpar. Plus, there had been that comment about not letting his friends feel her up. Danny knew that plenty of women in the military were on the receiving end of inappropriate groping - or worse - once the alcohol was flowing. He set down the now-empty bottle.

"We ended things about six months ago, just before the team left for Afghanistan." He shrugged. "I don't think it entirely hit me until we got back to the states and it hit me that I didn't have to rush anywhere. I could do whatever I wanted. It's kind of weird, honestly."

"I got dumped around then," Kara said, swirling her wine and then taking a large swallow. "My friends hate Jeremy too but, honestly, they have good reason. It took me a long time to see how selfish he was."

"What tipped the scales?" Danny asked, curious.

"He put in for a transfer to San Diego without telling me and then I found out..." Kara stopped abruptly. "Anyway, I would have preferred that he was upfront. We weren't going to work. Why drag it out longer than it needed to be?"

As much as Danny wanted to know whatever it was that Kara wasn't saying, he decided that pressing wasn't a good idea. He lifted his glass. "To honesty."

"Cheers." Kara took a sip, her eyes moving towards the ocean. "It's still pretty early. How about a walk?"

"I think I saw an ice cream stand if we head northeast," Danny replied, dropping everything into the trash can that stood nearby before grabbing Kara's hand again.

Kara shook her head, chuckling. "I don't know how you can think about food when we just ate but I'm game."

Two hours later, they were back to the resort, Danny trailing Kara to her room. An awkwardness had fallen and Danny almost offered to just drop Kara at her door. Would have, if he had any confidence that Frankie wasn't entertaining, in which case he was likely to be locked out for the night. Throwing open the door, Kara snapped on the light. She waved at the couch. "Your accommodations for the evening."

Before dinner, Danny planned on sneaking at least one more kiss, even contemplating using the excuse of making them more comfortable with each other. But Kara's comments about her ex-boyfriend, in combination with her obvious irritation with her friends' plan to push her into bed with someone, had given him pause. Her ex had clearly been a douche and Danny wanted a little time to think before deciding on his next step. He shot Kara a grin. "Beats a lounger by the pool. Definitely quieter."

"What did you do to get kicked out until breakfast again?" Kara asked again, her voice teasing.

"Nope, not telling," Danny replied, repeating a refrain he had been using for the past several hours. He plopped down on the couch, determining that it was far too soft and rather lumpy, but he had slept on worse. "I'm planning to read for a bit and then crash. Will the light bother you?"

"The bedroom wall folds the rest of the way out so I won't even notice," Kara replied, her tone perfectly neutral. Danny fought to hide a smile. Well, that did explain why she was letting him crash in her room. Danny bet the contraption even locked. "Let me get you a blanket and pillow. There's extra stuff in the bathroom, including a toothbrush."

"Thanks." Danny hadn't even considered his lack of toiletries, too used to spartan field conditions to have given it any thought.

Kara disappeared into the bedroom space, returning a moment later with a sheet, blanket, pillow, and Atomic City. She set everything down before pulling the wall most of the way closed. When only a foot remained, she paused. "Thank you for a lovely evening, Danny. Sleep well."

With Kara gone, Danny threw himself down the couch, hands behind head. Feeling a grin slide across his face. Today might be one of the weirdest days of his life, but he had a feeling that it was also the beginning of a fantastic vacation.