Chapter 8
They were met just inside the front door by Selena. She greeted them, panning her dazzling smile across both lawyers impartially.
"So, it is now Mr. Rabb and Ms. MacKenzie, correct?" she asked.
Harm and Mac exchanged glances. "That's correct," Harm answered warily.
Selena's smile deepened. "Don't worry, I am being well paid not to ask questions. We'll simply go on from here as if it has always been this way." She gestured toward the bank of elevators behind her. "Mr. Steiner has reserved the penthouse for the evening. If you'll follow me…"
Harm and Mac did so. They emerged from the elevator to a fairyland of twinkling lights and soft music. Having been to a few functions where the President himself was in attendance, neither officer was awestruck, but Steiner sure had pulled out all the stops, Harm thought. The suite took up a full quarter of the Marriott's top floor. The two external walls were made entirely of floor-to-ceiling panes of glass, giving a spectacular view of the capitol. The last rays of sunset turned the sky a burnished orange, brushed with red, and covered the monuments in shadow. Inside the room, the lights had been dimmed. A buffet lined one wall, complete with liveried attendants. White leather furniture dotted the open floor. A jazz trio played in one corner, next to the baby grand piano. People stood or sat in uncomfortable pairs, trying to make light conversation while also sizing each other up. A few struck Harm as looking more like tourists than anything else. And in the middle of it all stood Daniel Steiner, talking animatedly to the knot of people who surrounded him, their attention rapt.
"I feel like I'm walking into the wolf's den." Mac said out of the corner of her mouth.
In response, Harm pulled her closer and started humming, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" in her ear. Mac giggled, as he'd hoped she would.
Selena led them through the group toward Steiner. He interrupted the story he was telling when he spied her.
"Ah! Selena, dear, you look as lovely as ever." They greeted each other with airy kisses, then Steiner turned to Harm and Mac. "And you two must be Mr. Rabb and Ms. MacKenzie. It's a please to meet you at last, and to officially welcome you to Temptation Cruise II."
As they made the requisite pleasantries, Harm felt the other couples taking their measure. The stares were surprisingly hostile. Or perhaps not so surprisingly. Unlike Harm and his partner, all the others were there in pursuit of a million-dollar prize, and were either greedy enough, stupid enough, or both, to risk their marriages on it.
"Please, help yourselves to some food and whatever you'd like from the bar. We'll be getting underway in a few minutes." Steiner waved toward the buffet, then went back to whatever speech he'd interrupted to greet them. Harm and Mac gratefully moved away.
"Hungry?" Harm asked as they approached the buffet.
Mac picked up a plate and looked over the choices. "Starving, though I doubt there's much here worth eating." She made a show of looking over the caviar, crab puffs and aged cheeses with distaste.
Harm chuckled. "I think burgers are a little too plebian for this crowd. There's sushi, though." He moved to take some of the California rolls for himself.
Mac grimaced. "You and your health food."
At the end of the buffet, they ran into another couple. They can't possibly be old enough to get married, can they? Harm wondered as he looked them over. To him, the girl looked like she might be sixteen, which probably meant she was somewhere around twenty-- that age range was beginning to blur for him. She was cute, though. Her blond hair was piled on top of her head with little ringlets framing her face. Freckles dusted her nose and her cornflower-blue eyes were both sweet and a little shy. Her fiancée was more of the same. Probably All-American on his high school football team. He had those kind of clean-cut good looks.
The young man held out his hand to Harm. "Hi, I'm Jeb Anderson." His voice held a mild southern twang. Kentucky, maybe, or Tennessee. Harm took the proffered handshake, which was surprisingly strong.
"Harmon Rabb," he returned. "Call me Harm."
Jeb indicated his fiancée. "This is Stacy." The look he gave her was gently possessive and bordered on adoration. Harm tried not to laugh as he shook her hand. I was that young once, wasn't I? It seemed like it must have been a lifetime ago. He turned to Mac.
"Jeb, Stacy, this is… my fiancée, Sarah MacKenzie." He managed not to stumble too badly on the words.
"Call me Mac." At their surprised looks, she added, "It's short for MacKenzie."
"Oh." Trying to look nonchalant-- and failing miserably-- Stacy nodded, making her ringlets bounce. Harm stifled a chuckle, contenting himself with a grin instead. He wasn't quite old enough to be this girl's father, but close enough, and for a moment he caught a glimpse of what he was missing out on by not having kids.
Harm turned to Jeb. "So what do you do?" he asked conversationally.
"I'm in the Engineering program at Kansas State University." Jeb took a sip from the beer he held, and Harm mentally revised his age estimate up to twenty-one. "I was supposed to graduate this coming May, but I'm taking a semester off to be on the show."
Harm nodded. "What field?" The more questions he asked, he figured, the fewer he'd have to answer.
"Aerospace. K-State has a great program."
Harm's interest sharpened. "Do you fly?"
Jeb grinned hugely. "Just got my license this summer. I'm working on my instrument rating now. You?"
Harm nodded, unable to contain a smile. "Yep. I've got a Stearman I take up whenever I get the chance."
Behind him, Mac groaned. "Oh no, there he goes talking about airplanes again."
Harm glanced over his shoulder to see Stacy laughing and Mac frowning playfully.
"I'm glad I'm not the only one who has to live with it," Stacy said.
Mac's gaze jumped to Harm's. He caught a hint of defensiveness, quickly buried. She didn't understand his passion with flying. In fact, she sometimes seemed to resent it. In the Navy it was a common joke that a pilot never got lonely during the longs months at sea, for he always had his mistress to go to and the solitude of Angels Twenty and beyond in which to enjoy her. Harm couldn't legitimately argue the point. Flying Tomcats burned in his blood more than any woman ever had.
It made him wonder, then, why he'd returned to JAG when he could have flown. Sure, it was a young man's game, something he no longer was, but he was good enough to have stayed and taught the kids a thing or two. It was a career path that could easily have led him to command of an air wing and possibly, at its pinnacle, command of an entire carrier group.
And at JAG? Harm knew the Admiral was grooming him to take his place, that in ten years or so he would be JAG, provided he didn't do anything stupid-- well, stupider, anyway-- between now and then. Most likely, being a lawyer would earn him Admiral's bars long before being a pilot would.
Rank had never been Harm's driving ambition, though.
Take a deep breath and just admit it, he admonished himself. It's Mac. Everything comes down to Mac. It always had.
Steiner called for the room's attention then, saving Harm from his thoughts. They and the soon-to-be Andersons moved toward the producer, mingling with the rear of the crowd now gathered around him.
Mac gave Harm a curious look. "You o.k.?" Concern tinged her voice.
Harm turned on his trademark grin. "Just feeling my age."
Mac glanced ruefully over at Jeb and Stacy, then back to him. "I know how you feel."
Dan Steiner raised his voice once again, ending the conversation. "Once again, let me officially welcome you all to Temptation Cruise II, the hottest show on television!" There was a smattering of applause. Harm and Mac rolled their eyes at each other.
"Each of you has been chosen from the thousands of applications because we--" He gestured to the men standing to either side of him, one of which, Harm noted in surprise, was Tony Ariel. "--believe each of you has the faith, the strength, and the determination necessary to win the million-dollar grand prize."
"Not to mention the greed and arrogance," Mac added in an undertone.
Harm was too distracted to respond to her comment. "Did you see Ariel come in?" he asked in a voice pitched for her ears only. "He's over there next to Steiner."
Mac craned her head a fraction to see, then shook it lightly. "No. I must have been looking the wrong way. He sure doesn't fit in, does he?" Unlike anyone else in the room, Ariel was badly overweight, and was dressed in a shabby T-shirt and jeans. Amidst the tailored outfits and assumed glamour, he stood out like a warning buoy on a dark ocean.
Steiner beamed at the crowd. "Let me first go over the rules of the competition. There are a few minor changes from the first Cruise, which I will explain. After that I'll answer any questions you may have, and the rest of the evening you'll have to mingle and get to know each other."
Mac crossed her arms. "Oh, joy."
Harm grinned at her sarcasm.
"On June 19th-- a day you will each remember with great fondness, I hope-- you will board our cruise ship, the Radiant Heart, after exchanging vows with your betrothed on the shore. Each of our nine newlywed couples will be assigned a luxurious cabin and will be treated like kings and queens for the duration of the six-week cruise. Scattered among the other cabins on the ship will be those housing our delectable singles-- a total of twenty-four for this cruise: twelve men and twelve women. The first night of the cruise-- the wedding night-- all of the singles will be confined to their quarters until sunrise. After that, however, you will all be free to mingle as you choose.
"Twice each week, at our various ports of call, each of the newlyweds will be required to go on an outing alone with one of the singles of the opposite sex. The activities will be things like snorkeling, boating, hiking, and horseback riding. Spouses will be able to win the opportunity to block their mates from going on an outing with a specific single during the various competitions that will be held. In some instances, spouses will also be able to pick the single their mate will go outing with.
"Everything will be recorded on video, and spouses will have the option to view the other's outing once everyone has returned to the ship. They can turn down the opportunity, but if one spouse chooses to watch, the other then must watch as well.
"Every inch of the ship is covered by video cameras. The cameras in the newlyweds' staterooms operate differently than the rest. Between dawn and dusk, the cameras in your rooms will always be on. After dark, you can shut them down by turning off the cabin lights." Steiner grinned wickedly. "We're not in the business of shooting revealing film of our happily married couples.
"Elsewhere on the ship, however, there is no mercy. The cameras are always on, including in the empty cabins-- each of which is done in a different theme, and with a few very pleasant surprises for those who find them." The grin reappeared.
"There will be a number of independent cameramen roaming the ship as well. They are to be ignored. They are under strict instruction never to speak to you or interact with you in any way.
"Grounds for elimination from the competition are the same as last time, and are quite simple. Any voluntary sexual act with someone other than your spouse will result in elimination from the competition and removal from the ship at the next port of call. This does not necessarily mean intercourse, though that is, of course, included." Steiner then went on to describe in great detail the distinction between activities that would and would not constitute grounds for disqualification.
Harm had never considered himself particularly shy when it came to discussing sex, but found himself staring at his shoes while Steiner talked. In truth, it was no more explicit than some of the testimony he'd taken witnesses through in various cases involving sexual harassment, rape, or fraternization, but it somehow seemed much more embarrassing.
"Are we sure we want to do this?" Mac whispered to him when Steiner finished.
Harm bent down to whisper back, "Heck no. At the moment, I'm all for making a break for it. How about you?"
A smile crept into her voice. "Are you blushing, Harm?"
"Now, I think that covers all the basics," Steiner said before he could respond. "Are there any questions?"
There were a few. Harm and Mac learned that the heads aboard ship would not have surveillance since that was against Federal law.
"Thank goodness for small favors," was Mac's sour comment.
They also learned that couples could voluntarily opt out of the competition if they decided the risk to their relationship was no longer worth the million dollars. That, strangely enough, made Harm feel much better. Punching out was never fun, but it beat going down with the airplane any day.
"Nice to know there's an escape," Mac said as the music picked up and the crowd began to disperse.
Beside her, Stacy was looking a little pale. "Yeah."
"What made you two decide to do something like this?" Mac asked the young couple.
Jeb shrugged, but smiled. "It was kind of a dare. I was braggin' to Stacy once while we were watching the original Cruise that I loved her so much we could go on the show and win, easy."
Stacy flushed at that. "So when I heard about the sequel, I went online and applied," she said. "And here we are."
"What about you two?" Jeb asked.
Harm looked at Mac, who shrugged, leaving it in his lap. "Believe it or not, our boss got us into it," Harm said, thinking quickly. In a twisted sense, it was true.
"His idea of a practical joke," Mac added. "But, hey, who could turn down a six-week cruise?"
Stacy gave her a skeptical look. "Do you really think you can win?"
Harm was a little surprised by the challenging grin that lit his partner's face. "We certainly intend to." She leaned into Harm, her body language as suggestive as anything she'd ever done in his presence.
"Do you want something to drink?" he asked quickly, wondering why he wanted an excuse to get out of the conversation. Having Mac hanging on him was hardly something to be avoided.
She merely nodded and let him lead her away. When they'd gained some distance, her demeanor returned to normal. She shook her head. "These people are completely out of their minds-- and so are we for going through with this. You know what I'm dreading most?"
"What?"
"Going back to work after this. I'm going to walk into court and the judge will say, 'Hey, aren't you one of those bimbos from Temptation Cruise?'".
Harm chuckled. "Mac, I pity any man who calls you a bimbo."
The comment won him a laugh. "And with good reason."
