- Chapter Seventy-Four -

Lay Your Weary Head On Mine

Sunshine brighter than crystallized mustard and hotter than a habanero, the scorching rays danced lazily over the lapping turquoise water. Heatwaves weighing heavy after a fantastic lunch, while the wind began to pick up it wasn't anything that had the national weather association worried. If it had, both Lisa's and Mary-Elizabeth's phones would have pinged, and the trip would have been canceled, no two ways about it.

Rocks providing a curtain wall that obscured the children from view as they filed after June on the way to a prime snorkeling site, the sandy strip seemed almost lonesome as the remaining party packed up. Lacing her fingers through her husband's as they watched their daughter lagging in the back to speak with Kimmy and Milo, Elena sighed almost dreamily. Belly full, bladder empty, and everything else aligned in paradise, the woman was at peace.

Resting his head on top of the blonde's as they were left behind with the other miscreants, Nathan knew with absolute certainty that he had made all the right choices in life. Path paved with as much good as there had been bad, it was easy to see that any other call might have left him impaled on booby-trap, gunned down by some douchebag's private army, or divorced and childless. This... this right here was his best possible life.

"Hey, are you happy?" Recalling a conversation that had come just before his final shot to get everything right, the retired adventurer glanced down at the remarkable soul that had given him the best treasure of all. Sappy as it may have sounded to the others. Flipping the tables on her this time, Nate was genuinely curious.

Reliving that same conversation in her head, the journalist bumped playfully into her partner, "I am. I regret eating so much, but yeah, today was pretty perfect." It was a word she didn't brandy about lightly. "What about you, Cowboy?"

Kissing the top of her head, the ex-explorer could live a thousand and one years even half as good as today, and he would never be bored. "You know I am - look at all the leftovers we're gonna have!"

Hazel eyes alight with a pure, unconditional love that could never be adequately captured on film, the woman chuckled, "Just so long as your brother doesn't steal it first." It was more a go at his stomach than the likelihood of him ending up with the brunt of the premium cuts, but really the statement worked any which way you wanted to spin it.

"What am I stealing?" Coming up from the picnic area with clean toothpicks for the twosome, Sam strolled up alone and unarmed. Done with the slender splinter before he had even approached the couple on the shore, in part he was testing out if the dental hygiene tool could make a sufficient substitute for his smokes.

So far... not so much, but it wasn't like fate was going to allow him to try quitting again anytime soon. Assuming that fate was about 5'6" with inviting marble eyes that were somehow the opposite of cold, an inherently nice ass, decent tits, and a whole host of severe anxiety issues. Although to be fair, that last one was fairly warranted.

"The food." Taking one of the toothpicks, the blonde thanked her brother-in-law and set about doing something about that little string of meat that she couldn't quite reach with her tongue. It was fine for now, but by the end of the afternoon, it would have driven her crazy if it had stayed stuck in her gums.

Head bobbing in understanding, he passed the last remaining toothpick to his little brother. Nathan also thanked his sibling for looking out for them, turning away from the sea to watch everyone throwing away the trash, sealing all the containers for transport, and finally loading the respective vehicles. Eager to be done with the job so that they could make the most of their free time, it looked as if Mary-Elizabeth and Lisa were racing one another. At the other end of the spectrum, Ella there was struggling with the plastic lids.

Getting quite the kick out of observing the heiress fight with the cheaply-made storage containers that Kimmy bought in bulk last year for Christmas, Nate couldn't help but wonder aloud, "You think she ever saw one of those before today?"

Elena had to wonder exactly what her upbringing had been like, mind going straight to an image of the young heiress sitting alone at a large empty table, the staff serving her rare delicacies out of golden chalices. Bai predictably was nowhere to be seen, but the blonde couldn't make up her mind if any of the staff sat with the girl or not. Daniella had to pick up civility from somewhere, yet the woman couldn't shake the sense of isolation, that the heiress was starved for attention.

For affection. Bitter and sparkling white as her mother's smile, that narrative at least explained why it was that things were the way that they were. Why the young woman had latched onto the people that she did.

"We should just be thankful she's even trying." Prepared to make an argument about how it was good for everyone to know how to take care of themselves, that being shuttered inside her ivory was all the more reason to learn, Elena could see the hypocrisy of the statement.

[J'accuse!]

Grunting beneath the weight of the ice chest, Chloe and Nadine muscled their way through the pain, lugging not one but three separate coolers in succession. Ready to bugger off with the Drakes by the time they were on the last one, the onyx-eyed locksmith was also of the mind that she would very much like to kill Nadine for volunteering them both for the job. Either that or let her aggression out in another, equally as creative fashion...

Tired from a tasty meal and an even longer morning, there was a loud yawn coming from one of the picnic tables. Productive bees as usual, Lisa and Mary-Elizabeth had made short work of most all the cleaning, leaving only a small portion for the youngest of them to deal with. At odds with Kimmy's sorry no-name brand from the very beginning, the phantom blonde was only on her second or third package, a tub of barely-touched cauliflower.

"Come on, you little...!" Mutter transforming somewhere along the lines into a swear, the heiress mumbled under her breath as the lid snapped off beneath her fingers. Glancing over at the others to see if she was doing something wrong, Dells frowned at the mocking vegetable. "Fuck me, I just want to be done with this!" Throwing a tantrum, the teen slammed the platter down on the wooden surface.

Mother-mode always active, Lisa was on the verge of reprimanding one of the children as she power-scrubbed the wooden table clean of crumbs, "Little girl," she scoffed at the teen when she realized who was speaking, "oh, you." Writing the young woman off in disinterest, Lisa's stance was that if the stranger was old enough to make the kind of mistakes she assumed she had made, the teen tragedy was old enough to curse. Provided it was nowhere near the impressionable youths.

Of a similar mindset on one thing, Mary-Elizabeth was not for mouthing off like a drunken sailor, no matter what age you were. Chiding Ella for her language, the born Brit snatched the container out of the teen's fumbling clutches and finished it. "I can only imagine the sorts of things that man lets you get away with, but some of us have standards, young lady." Plopping herself down across from the phantom blonde, she set about handling the rest herself, "Now if you're really that tired," high-and-mighty as her beady gaze fell upon the girl's neck, Mary-Elizabeth jabbed the tabletop with a soft click that reminded the heiress too much of her own mother, "you can rest here. No one is making you help."

Much as the others would have fought against it out of spite for the speaker, Mary-Elizabeth was telling the truth: Dells had merely taken it upon herself to help clear everything up. Largely, it was the only way she knew how to repay everyone, but a tiny part of it was her just wanting to keep herself busy. The heiress fulled agreed with Sam when he said they should talk later, but the day had started well before the sun had risen, and mentally, she was drained. Emotionally too. There was just too much going on in her head and in her life, and it was time for the day to be over.

Cranky to say the least, the faux-blonde heeded the condescending advice and slouched against the table in hope of taking a small nap. Tough to say what had left her the most sore physically, every etiquette lesson she had ever had forbade such poor posture, but she didn't care in the slightest; in fact, the only thing that mildly concerned her was the way her weary bones had creaked in protest. Hopefully that was only temporary...

"'Ello, lovely." Coming up behind the girl with all the stealth of a cat, Chloe rubbed the girl's head like it was a magic lamp and she was on the hunt for three wishes.

Brushing out some of the flyaway hairs as she moved her hand down the length of platinum coil, the woman was intrigued to know how the braid had gotten so messy. It hadn't exactly started out clean, but it had definitely fallen into disrepair even before the game. Naughty, naughty.

"Should be saying 'goodnight'." Much less graceful than cat-like Chloe but possessing an eerie quietness herself, Nadine parked her rump next to the heiress. Watching the young woman gravitating ever closer to the table, the mercenary caught the run-down look in the girl's dimming eyes.

Seriously examining the heiress and noting just how tired she looked on the surface, it wasn't hard at all to picture how sorry Drake must be looking. How long had they been awake today? Based on all the evidence, it was long enough for the girl to fall into a hole. Tripping over the crosswalk and having to stop on the way to remove a pebble from her sandal, it seemed that it would take something important to distract her that much, such as him breaking down the history of how he knew her family. Whatever it was, it had been long enough for things between them to go to a place where they might never be able to crawl back out of.

Not that it was anyone's business but their own. Really Nadine was merely observing that it just might have been a feat that they had stayed up as long as they had.

Drained or not, Daniella couldn't really argue with the muscled beauty's logic, trying and failing to stifle another creeping yawn. "When you're right, you're right."

Willing to call Sam over to bring her back to the room, she was still cognizant enough to remember where things stood between them. Maybe she could ask one of them to pass the message along... Although, that still meant that they would have to see one another at some point, as they shared a small room together. At least the last one had had a couch...

Finished with making the public's property as presentable as it was going to get for the next folks that came along, Lisa came sniffling around the other four. Occupying a seat opposite the three, the brunette curled her hair around her finger before tucking it behind her ear. Initially she would have used this time to gossip with Mary-Elizabeth, in the hopes that they could coax something juicy out of Chloe, however there was something more pressing on her mind. It was on Mary-Elizabeth's mind too.

Ignoring how low to the table the teen had slunk, the woman just got straight to it, "How far along are you?" Tilting her head this way and that to get a better glimpse of the moper's modest midriff, Lisa pressed on with barely any breathing room, "You aren't showing yet, so you must have only just discovered it, right? You're lucky if you're one of those that can stay skinny."

At first, it had taken the heiress a minute to register that someone was speaking at her, earning a drowsy blink and the slightest raise of the head. Realizing who it was that was talking, with the more that Lisa blabbered on and on, the lower and lower Ella's jaw dropped. "Excuse me?!" Vaguely aware that Chloe and Nadine were right beside her, Dells ogled the woman as if she had suddenly sprouted a pair of boobs from the top of her head, mouth hanging agape. Signs adding up in her head, she supposed that she could see why someone on the outside might jump to conclusions, but... "Excuse you! That's not even..."

Backing up her fellow whisperer, Mary-Elizabeth echoed the same exact sentiment, "Then why did you only take that one swig of beer? When I learned I was pregnant with Joey, I quit drinking. There were... lapses. I'm not perfect." Sensing the lack of surprise that straight-laced Mary-Elizabeth had been clean as a whistle, the woman confessed, "I had some vices back in the day. I know you might not believe it looking at me now, but I was kinda a bit of a party girl when I was about your age. I actually met his father when I was coming from an AA meeting."

While that was the very last thing that the heiress had expected to hear, none of that had a damn thing to do with her or her situation. As for why she had only taken a sip or two of her beer, there was an legitimate explanation, "If you must know, I've had some tough times lately. Liquor wasn't helping, so I was trying to abstain." Then some things were said, and she wasn't strong enough to say no to the only medicine that had been proven to work. One of the two.

Defending the daughter of her former associate for a reason that she couldn't quite place, Nadine put a stabilizing hand on the girl's shoulder, conveying that she would support her as much as she could. She and Chloe had pressured Drake to fill her in on the blanks, and now that she had been caught up to speed, well, it seemed it was going to take some time before she was ready to cope. "It's not like that. He's her bodyguard."

"Like the movie?" That had certainly caught Lisa's attention.

Everything starting to go fuzzy at the edges, Dells dipped her head in affirmation, "Just like the movie." Despite growing up watching old movies that her father would have approved of, the film in question was actually one of her mother's favorites. Back when that actually mattered. According to the shrew in lipstick and glasses, it had been a similar situation to her courtship with Daniella's father. If that was true remained to be seen.

"Oh?" Mischievous as ever, the professional pickpocket brushed some imaginary dirt off the younger's shoulder, "So you two are shagging then?"

"Wait, no! Not like the movie at all!" Remembering too late that the film was also a romance, the heiress shook her head with a fervor that made her dizzy more than anything else. "Only the part where Kevin Costner was hired to protect Whitney Houston. Sam was hired to protect me, that's all."

Disappointment convincing enough, Chloe continued to earn her comparison to the devil, "Then you two haven't slept together? Not even once?" Not a hidden nugget that she had once been a thing with the little brother, the pickpocket used this history to her advantage, "Can't say I know the older one that well, but I can confirm that Elena's one lucky lady."

Bonus points for the look on Nadine's face.

"Thank you, Chloe." Sam had heard enough of the conversation to guess where the sable-haired woman was trying to dig at, the heated and prying voices just as loud as the defensive one carried on the wind. Technically speaking, his job was to guard the girl from tangible threats like bullets and knives; protecting her from words was something he just found himself automatically doing. "That's enough."

Elena was a big enough girl to acknowledge that her husband had had a past, that a part of that past was still a good friend and always would be. Maybe some women might have been jealous about that, but the reporter knew that she didn't have to be. So instead of worry about things that weren't even an issue, she turned her attention back to Ella.

Still attempting to figure out a way to deny everything, the heiress was deeply frazzled, tongue getting tied every time she tried to open her mouth and cheeks flushed. Eventually giving up, Daniella mumbled something that sounded a lot like, "What he said. I'm too tired for this shit."

Mind already made up about the truth she was going to believe, Lisa found that the first response someone gave was usually the closest to the real story. Sam Drake himself had only supported that theory, lending credence to the idea of a secret romance from the way that he had continued to jump to the teen's aid. The Sam that the group knew would be the first in line to make jokes, exactly like he had with Kimmy and Milo, and yet when it came to this girl...

Wrong or not about the baby thing, it was rather unusual that the grifter was so attentive, so gentle. Normally he was only that way to his younger brother or niece, and yet here was this girl from out of nowhere, immediately welcomed into the family and proactively watched over by them all. Granted, Nathan and Elan both were the 'with open arms' sort, but even Chloe and Nadine could be caught keeping an extra eye on the young woman. There was definitely more to the story than they were being told.

"Yeah, thanks Chloe." And Nathan's.

[Spoiler Alert: Stuff's Going Down Next Time]

Sending off the trio that had once recovered a long-lost Indian artifact for the Ministry of Culture, Nathan and Elena had bid the three farewell with hugs, hugs, and one last warm embrace for the road. Saying how it was a downright shame that they would be missing out on the slumber party, the couple reminded them that there would still be a movie marathon running in the morning, probably stretching until about lunch. Mary-Elizabeth and Lisa were far more stingy with their goodbye, merely saying the word as they finished what the teen could not. Speaking of...

Technically there had been a fourth party that had departed with the trio, but the heiress was so dead on her feet that she may has well have been sleepwalking. Managing to stay up just long enough to amble straight into someone's car in the parking lot, Ella was carried the rest of the way to prevent worse. Like hitting the pavement and reopening all the wounds that were in various stages of recovery.

Lumped together in the lobby before going their separate ways, Chloe just had to get one last word in for the night, "Can you do yourselves a favor and keep your hands off each other for one night? Were that Rafael chap here, I'm fairly certain he'd call it doctor's orders."

Only half questioning why they had returned to the hotel with Drake and the Adler girl, Nadine nodded in agreement, "She could definitely use the sleep. You both could."

"Why? Can't sleep over the noise?" Almost absently, the historian scratched the side of his nose, ruminating on time not so long ago when his biggest aggravation was raucous neighbors. "Or are you insinuating I'm not at my most handsome?"

And there was the cocky asshole that they knew and... liked well enough. Love was too strong a word for how they felt towards the thief, but tolerated didn't quite cut how far they had come in their respective partnerships. Liked well enough was a great middle ground, perfectly adequate to define a friendship that was reluctant to exist on two of the three corners at any given time.

Stirring enough to make out two hazy figures that rang a bell and one silhouette that would take years to forget - with effort - the heiress dipped her head in agreement, woozily banging it against a sturdy chest. Such a nice chest, it would make for an excellent pillow. "Hmm, hm. Thaz y I'mma wit u two."

"One night." Nadine felt that was fair, and in exchange the twosome could work their stuff out tomorrow with a fresh perspective.

Having been the guest that invited herself along on many, many occasions, Chloe found that she did not much care for being on the other end. She had a plan for her oh-so-generous partner, punishment to dish out for being volunteered for a job with no payout. A third party in the room was... Not a deal-breaker, necessarily, but it did not make for a very happy camper.

By now, Sam was no stranger to getting ditched, especially by Dells. Gathering that perhaps this once Nadine was on to something, he agreed that taking this breather might be best for the heiress. In hindsight, maybe they shouldn't have gone out at all - maybe he should have sequestered her to their room while she sorted through everything that had happened. Rafe, Jian, all of that would have been a lot to take in for a person, and that was without them almost bumping uglies again. Is that why you can't stand the sight of me all of a sudden?

Despite being on the cusp of delirium, she did a great impression of looking up at him, lips twitching as he brushed the strands that had abandoned the braid completely out of her face. "I'll leave the door unlocked for ya, just in case you start to miss me." Pivoting around to face Chloe, he held the young blonde woman tight in his arms as he studied the shape of her, committing every detail to memory before handing her over. "Just try and return her in the same condition, will ya?"

Transferring the heiress over to the more capable of the twosome, the girl glanced back in his general direction when he passed her over, her eyes too unfocused to see anything straight and mouth slack enough to catch a fly or two. It might have just been his imagination, but Sam could have sworn that she looked up at him like he was handing her over permanently. Relax baby girl, mirroring that same twitching, the man shook his head, wouldn't dream of it.

AC cranked on full blast to ward off the afternoon spike, the hotel lobby was packed with people that didn't have anywhere better to be. Cool air a godsend when the thermometer was ticking up, as the artificial breeze pushed against the hollow spaces, the adventurer came to the conclusion that his arms felt empty without having to hold on to Sleeping Beauty. Nickname once more given meaning, the woman being borne up the stairs had more than earned the moniker.

Realizing that he was staring at the center figure, it would seem that the sooner they were apart from one another, the better off they would both be.