Author's note: Heat level-cute as a bucket of puppies.

Chapter 10

In the end, Logan got his way.

Veronica let him take her out on a date, though it took them four tries before they managed one with the no-sex part of the requirement, and that was only because he kept her in public all night long. Holding hands and talking while they walked down an open beach until the wee hours, with Logan staunchly refusing all of her offers to pick the lock on a lifeguard shack for the greater good.

More importantly, she brought him home to meet Keith. It took longer than Logan thought it would before the question came up.

They'd made it through introductions, beers, and sitting down to spaghetti dinner and then there it was.

"So where did you two meet?"

"Orgy," Veronica said.

Logan went very still.

"Another orgy?" Keith groaned. "What's wrong with a nice life insurance salesman?"

"Oh, Logan's close. He's in escrow."

"I hope not that one downtown. That one's a front for an underground sex club, you know." Keith reached for his water and then stopped. "Oh! Was that where the orgy was?"

Logan set down his fork. "Actually, I gave most of my misspent youth to escrow. Now I'm a pilot. US Navy."

"Are you really? Isn't that something." Keith actually looked impressed. "You based out of San Diego?"

"Yes, and we fly off an aircraft carrier. The USS Truman."

"Don't those deploy for a terribly long time? Like a year or something?" He passed Veronica the parmesan without her having to ask.

"Six months."

Veronica's hand froze over her spaghetti, a bit more grated parmesan falling from the plastic bag.

"When's your next one coming up?" Keith asked. "Not too soon, I hope."

Logan folded his napkin once. "Next week, actually."

The room went very quiet.

He turned to Veronica. "I wanted to tell you. It seemed too soon. You didn't seem like you were ready to get serious and I was trying to take it slow for you. I didn't want to—"

"I brought you home to meet my dad!" She slammed the parmesan down on the table, bag crumpling and shreds of cheese popping out the top.

"You didn't tell me he was your dad!" Logan protested. "You said he was the genius who taught you everything you knew about P.I. work. I thought he was your work mentor or something."

Her dad patted him on the shoulder. "It's okay, son, you did the right thing. My daughter's a commitment-phobe. It's why she meets all her boyfriends at orgies. She mistakenly thinks the group sex is a way to meet other commitment-phobes, but I always tell her, sweetheart, where do you think I met your mother?"

"Stop. Dad, just stop the orgy jokes right there. I just found out that I finally bothered to bring a boy home and he's going to expire before the milk does. I think we've all had enough trauma for one night."

Logan caught her hand. "Veronica."

"No, no, it's fine." She slipped his grip. "It's not like it was serious anyway. Pie anyone?"

She disappeared into the kitchen. Where Logan had definitely not seen a pie.

"I did try to raise her with a good male role model," her dad said. "But then there was just me, and her mother was a girl so…"

"You did fine, sir. She gets her sense of humor from you, I can see that much."

"Better that than her looks." He grinned, light glinting off his bald head. Keith patted Logan on the shoulder again as Logan stared past him to the empty kitchen door. "It's not you, it's her. Really."

"There's nothing wrong with her," Logan said a little sharply. "I should be so lucky as to get a few weeks with a woman like that." He meant it. Even if it was looking like that was all he would ever get.

#

Veronica said she wasn't going to, but she went with him to the base to see him off. Even held his hand in the car on the way there. Didn't cry, because goddamn it.

When she pulled up, they both got out of the car, and she let go of his hand. "Well, that's it. It's been swell. Try not to get shot."

"Right, yeah." Logan looked out to sea.

He started to say something, then stopped. Started again. Sighed.

"Listen, if you got a taste for something you can't get at home, you can get into the club on my membership. Ask for Alejandro. He'll take good care of you. Please don't—" He took a breath. "It's none of my business, of course. Just…not any of the other guys. Maybe Ben. But not Landon." He gave her a black card with just a phone number on it.

She looked at it once, flipped it into the gutter. "I get that you'll be gone a long time, and we haven't known each other that long. But—"

His head came up, and he looked the least miserable he had since that bomb-drop dinner at her dad's house a week ago. "Yeah?"

"When you get back, if you're brave enough to go steady with a girl who carries handcuffs for a living, give me a call."

She tucked one of her cards into his pocket, even though he already had her number. Because goddamn it. She wanted something of hers to go on that ship with him, even if it was just a dumb piece of paper.

His smile started to brighten until it took over his whole face, and his fingers brushed her elbows. Tugged her a little closer. "You know? I just might do that."

"You better." She grabbed him by the collar and hauled him down into a kiss so hot, it lasted her the whole 180 days.

Author's Note: Well, THAT was a whole hell of a lot of fun. Here's the problem, my dears. I keep having ideas for chapters for this fic, but it wrapped itself up in too nice of an arc to disturb. In the future, I might update to add more chapters to the middle of this OR I might start a separate epilogue story as part of a series. Haven't decided yet. If you don't want to miss those, the safest thing to do is subscribe to this story and to me as an author on here, that way you'll get the update no matter what.

Considering it was almost a year between when I wrote the first four chapters and then the next six, clearly this story can't be trusted to stay finished and be quiet already.