When they exit onto the concourse in Eau Claire, James looks around to
see if he can spot his twin brother. Cadence groans. "There's more
than one of you? Or am I seeing things?" she asks him, nudging him
and pointing to a guy who appears to be looking around for someone.
"Ah, there he is. Yes, Widget, there's two of us- twins." He whistles at his brother and is rewarded when his brother turns around and his four year old rushes out of nowhere and flies over to the couple. James swings the toddler into his arms and relishes the hug he gets from his nephew. He is surprised when the little boy swings from him into Cadence's arms, and nearly strangles her with a hug, accepting the scarred young woman instantly with the innocence of childhood.
Suddenly, the jerk from earlier grabs Cadence and the boy, using them for a shield as he brandishes a gun, then shoving it hard into Cadence's ribs. She gasps with the pain of the gun barrel in her ribs. He threatens the guys that if they try to take the girl from him, he'd kill the whole group of them.
"One way or another, I'm going to get a piece of that pussy you keep showing around, slut," he snarls. Cadence looks at the others in puzzlement.
"What the heck is he talking about," she mouths to James, who shakes his head. He doesn't know.
"Who knows how this type of guy thinks?" he answers her.
The man allows Cadence to give the child back to James, and then he begins to drag her away. That was his final mistake in dealing with Cadence.
Cadence was beyond pissed! She had finally hit her limit when it came to being harassed and dealing with problems. She dug her heels in and refused to move. The guy had to literally split his attention between her and James and his brother and use a lot of his strength to pick up her slight form, slinging her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. As he passes by the food court, Cadence gets an idea. She knows that James is right behind them and gets ready to make her move, knowing that he would back her up, no matter what she did, or how she did it. She was going to rely on the psychic link that they appeared to have at times; the one they were discussing earlier when James had kissed her for the first time. And as much as she really didn't want to admit it, she had liked it. She liked it a lot.
As they pass a Mexican style buffet, Cadence snags a tub of a greenish, cream like substance. She slams it into the guy's face and then uses all the tricks she'd learned on the streets to take him down. As soon as she hits him in the face with it, the man drops her to the floor, where she lands on her feet like a cat. He claws at his eyes, trying to get the cream out of them.
She plants an elbow in his ribs, and follows it up with a looping roundhouse kick when the guy doubled over, hitting him squarely on the jaw and knocking him to the floor, unconscious. She slips in the cream and falls, landing flat on her butt. James hurries up to the pair and looks down at them. He helps Cadence to her feet and checks her over for injuries. When he is finished, he hugs her tightly to him.
"Holy Guacamole, Widget! Are you okay?" was all he could say, laughing. There was no way she could have helped it, she cracked up laughing as well.
'You got that right. Yeah, I'm fine. Nothing bruised but my pride. Well, maybe my ribs and my butt, too."
"What the heck did you use?" asked his brother, John, in awe, rushing up to the couple.
"What he just said I used. Holy Guacamole." Cadence looked at James and neither could help it; both of them have hysterics again, laughing so hard they both have a hard time catching their breath.
By the time the airport police got there, James and Cadence had things well in hand. John is watching the guy, whose hands are tied with the ribbon that Cadence had used for tying back her hair, sitting against the wall. James is sitting down on the floor and leaning against the wall a few feet away and has pulled her into his lap, holding her close and whispering to her. She is seemingly nowhere near hysterics, but James knows how close she actually is to a breakdown.
There had been two bombings just before they had left- the first one destroyed the girls' locker room in the gym, and originated in her locker, going off early, and not incurring any human casualties; the second one completely destroyed her lab and her office, where a lot of her meager belongings had been stored. That one had wounded a couple of greenshirts and also a couple of fellow armorers in addition to her. She had almost gotten down the hall to her office when the bomb went off. As it was, he feared that she was still feeling the effects of the slight concussion she had gotten when she was thrown back by the blast. It didn't help his composure that her face and body were a mass of bruises, and her left arm was in a sling more for pain relief than support.
No matter what, she was still beautiful to him. He just didn't know how to tell her without setting her off. Any talk of romance or beauty was off limits when she was in the room. The Joes had learned that the hard way, when she had gone off on Clutch for daring to proposition her. He didn't want to think about what she had done to Shipwreck. That was too painful just to think about.
She turns her head into his chest and just allows herself to do the one thing she had never done before in her life- relax.
He smiles as he feels her small body suddenly relax against his. He is grateful that she felt safe enough with him to let herself do that. Suddenly, she tenses up again as they are both bombarded with a small body as John's son, Toby, throws himself into their laps.
"Daddy said call Grandma," he tells James.
"That's a good idea, Toby. You want to talk to her?" James asks him. Toby nods and jumps up and down in their laps. James gets out his cell phone and calls his parent's house. He coaches Toby about what to tell to his mom.
Understandably, James's mother is very concerned. James soothes her with the news that they are down and in Wisconsin.
"We've been unavoidably detained because of a stunningly beautiful woman and a really obnoxious jerk, but we'll be there in just a little while. A couple of hours at the most. And yes, Mom, I did bring my friend with me."
Cadence turns just a little in his arms and frowns at him, arching her eyebrow.
"What? I was just telling the truth," he defends himself. "Wasn't I, Toby?" He looks at his nephew with a conspiratorial look on his face.
"You are really pretty, miss," Toby says as he looks up into Cadence's eyes. Tears well up in her eyes as he tells her that. Toby sees them and immediately throws his arms around her neck in a hug. "Please don't cry. I'm sorry."
She hugs him back. "There's nothing to be sorry for, Toby. You two were right, and I wasn't able to see that before. Thank you."
"James, you better keep an eye out for your nephew. He's been known to steal quite a few hearts around here, the little rascal," John tells his brother, teasingly.
"He's got good taste, John." James replied.
"Just like his uncle," Cadence mumbled, under her breath. "He can't steal mine because it already belongs to someone else," she replied to John. "He's had it since I first joined the unit." James at least has the courtesy to blush when he realizes what she had said.
"And just who might this thief of hearts be?" he asked with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. Cadence just looked at him with the smug look of the cat that ate the cream on her face.
"Don't you wish you knew?" she purred.
"Excuse me, sir, ma'am, but I need to get a statement from each of you about what happened here today," states one of the fresh-faced officers from airline security.
"No problem, occifer." Cadence tells him, sliding out of James' lap and getting up onto her feet, swaying slightly as she battles the grip of a severe case of vertigo. They walk to a spot about fifteen feet away and he begins to question her.
James is standing where they were sitting and going through a questioning of his own. When Cadence raises her shirttail to show the officer the bruise on her ribcage, everyone notices that the gun barrel dug so deep into her ribs that it actually broke the skin. There was a small trail of blood on her side, staining her shirt on the inside.
"Huh, imagine that. I didn't even feel it cut through the skin," Cadence deadpanned.
"That rat bastard!" James swears, leaping towards the guy before he stops himself in mid-lunge.
When James sees the blood, he gets angry. The only thing keeping him from going over to the guy and beating the heck out of him is the fact that Cadence would beat the heck out of him if he did, and he had no desire to give her the chance. "Reason number one why not to piss her off," he thinks, remembering the last incident when someone had sent her into a rage. At least he wasn't the target, not that time at least.
She had punched her way through the concrete block wall of the machine shop barehanded about four months ago. She had broken every finger in her right hand in three places and both of her hands and wrists in two places apiece. He had seen her when she did it, knowing that the cause was the letter that she had just received, completely cutting her out of her family with no contact and no acknowledgement whatsoever and telling her that she would never be good enough to be a member of that family, and it was he that had helped her to the infirmary. Lifeline, Doc, Bree and Stretcher had teased her mercilessly for a little while after that particular incident. Steeler, Tollbooth and the rest of the "grease monkeys", not to mention three-quarters of the rest of the base, were still walking quietly around her and trying to figure out what had set her off.
After the questioning is over and James had turned over the videotape to the authorities, they get ready to leave the airport and head to James's parents' house. As they cram into James's mom's car, they decide to stop by Burger King on the way because none of them had eaten. James and Cadence are curled up in the back seat of the car, with Toby in his car seat between them.
Toby reaches down and grabs James's left hand, and then grabs Cadence's right, and links them together so that the pair is holding hands. Both of them look down at their linked hands and then back at each other. Both of them have a look of shock on their faces. John looks in the mirror and begins to laugh.
"It seems as though Toby has his grandmother's matchmaking sense, James. What do you think?"
"I think you're right, John, but Widget and I were a couple a long time before I could talk her off the base for this trip."
John looks in the mirror at Cadence, who is looking at James with a questioning look on her face. "Widget, huh? Where'd you get a name like that?" "One of my hobbies is weaponsmithing, and I have a lot of widgets and gadgets lying around on my desk, and James started calling me Widget, and it just kinda stuck. He's the only one that will call me that."
"Heck," stated James, "I'm the only one with the balls to call her that."
Cadence laughs. "That's the truth."
The conversation soon slacks off as Cadence watches the scenery go past and zones out on the brothers. Soon the rhythm of the ride gets to her, and she falls asleep. James reaches over and wraps his jacket around her as he sees her shiver, thinking that it's more from the cold air outside than it is fear.
"Ah, there he is. Yes, Widget, there's two of us- twins." He whistles at his brother and is rewarded when his brother turns around and his four year old rushes out of nowhere and flies over to the couple. James swings the toddler into his arms and relishes the hug he gets from his nephew. He is surprised when the little boy swings from him into Cadence's arms, and nearly strangles her with a hug, accepting the scarred young woman instantly with the innocence of childhood.
Suddenly, the jerk from earlier grabs Cadence and the boy, using them for a shield as he brandishes a gun, then shoving it hard into Cadence's ribs. She gasps with the pain of the gun barrel in her ribs. He threatens the guys that if they try to take the girl from him, he'd kill the whole group of them.
"One way or another, I'm going to get a piece of that pussy you keep showing around, slut," he snarls. Cadence looks at the others in puzzlement.
"What the heck is he talking about," she mouths to James, who shakes his head. He doesn't know.
"Who knows how this type of guy thinks?" he answers her.
The man allows Cadence to give the child back to James, and then he begins to drag her away. That was his final mistake in dealing with Cadence.
Cadence was beyond pissed! She had finally hit her limit when it came to being harassed and dealing with problems. She dug her heels in and refused to move. The guy had to literally split his attention between her and James and his brother and use a lot of his strength to pick up her slight form, slinging her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. As he passes by the food court, Cadence gets an idea. She knows that James is right behind them and gets ready to make her move, knowing that he would back her up, no matter what she did, or how she did it. She was going to rely on the psychic link that they appeared to have at times; the one they were discussing earlier when James had kissed her for the first time. And as much as she really didn't want to admit it, she had liked it. She liked it a lot.
As they pass a Mexican style buffet, Cadence snags a tub of a greenish, cream like substance. She slams it into the guy's face and then uses all the tricks she'd learned on the streets to take him down. As soon as she hits him in the face with it, the man drops her to the floor, where she lands on her feet like a cat. He claws at his eyes, trying to get the cream out of them.
She plants an elbow in his ribs, and follows it up with a looping roundhouse kick when the guy doubled over, hitting him squarely on the jaw and knocking him to the floor, unconscious. She slips in the cream and falls, landing flat on her butt. James hurries up to the pair and looks down at them. He helps Cadence to her feet and checks her over for injuries. When he is finished, he hugs her tightly to him.
"Holy Guacamole, Widget! Are you okay?" was all he could say, laughing. There was no way she could have helped it, she cracked up laughing as well.
'You got that right. Yeah, I'm fine. Nothing bruised but my pride. Well, maybe my ribs and my butt, too."
"What the heck did you use?" asked his brother, John, in awe, rushing up to the couple.
"What he just said I used. Holy Guacamole." Cadence looked at James and neither could help it; both of them have hysterics again, laughing so hard they both have a hard time catching their breath.
By the time the airport police got there, James and Cadence had things well in hand. John is watching the guy, whose hands are tied with the ribbon that Cadence had used for tying back her hair, sitting against the wall. James is sitting down on the floor and leaning against the wall a few feet away and has pulled her into his lap, holding her close and whispering to her. She is seemingly nowhere near hysterics, but James knows how close she actually is to a breakdown.
There had been two bombings just before they had left- the first one destroyed the girls' locker room in the gym, and originated in her locker, going off early, and not incurring any human casualties; the second one completely destroyed her lab and her office, where a lot of her meager belongings had been stored. That one had wounded a couple of greenshirts and also a couple of fellow armorers in addition to her. She had almost gotten down the hall to her office when the bomb went off. As it was, he feared that she was still feeling the effects of the slight concussion she had gotten when she was thrown back by the blast. It didn't help his composure that her face and body were a mass of bruises, and her left arm was in a sling more for pain relief than support.
No matter what, she was still beautiful to him. He just didn't know how to tell her without setting her off. Any talk of romance or beauty was off limits when she was in the room. The Joes had learned that the hard way, when she had gone off on Clutch for daring to proposition her. He didn't want to think about what she had done to Shipwreck. That was too painful just to think about.
She turns her head into his chest and just allows herself to do the one thing she had never done before in her life- relax.
He smiles as he feels her small body suddenly relax against his. He is grateful that she felt safe enough with him to let herself do that. Suddenly, she tenses up again as they are both bombarded with a small body as John's son, Toby, throws himself into their laps.
"Daddy said call Grandma," he tells James.
"That's a good idea, Toby. You want to talk to her?" James asks him. Toby nods and jumps up and down in their laps. James gets out his cell phone and calls his parent's house. He coaches Toby about what to tell to his mom.
Understandably, James's mother is very concerned. James soothes her with the news that they are down and in Wisconsin.
"We've been unavoidably detained because of a stunningly beautiful woman and a really obnoxious jerk, but we'll be there in just a little while. A couple of hours at the most. And yes, Mom, I did bring my friend with me."
Cadence turns just a little in his arms and frowns at him, arching her eyebrow.
"What? I was just telling the truth," he defends himself. "Wasn't I, Toby?" He looks at his nephew with a conspiratorial look on his face.
"You are really pretty, miss," Toby says as he looks up into Cadence's eyes. Tears well up in her eyes as he tells her that. Toby sees them and immediately throws his arms around her neck in a hug. "Please don't cry. I'm sorry."
She hugs him back. "There's nothing to be sorry for, Toby. You two were right, and I wasn't able to see that before. Thank you."
"James, you better keep an eye out for your nephew. He's been known to steal quite a few hearts around here, the little rascal," John tells his brother, teasingly.
"He's got good taste, John." James replied.
"Just like his uncle," Cadence mumbled, under her breath. "He can't steal mine because it already belongs to someone else," she replied to John. "He's had it since I first joined the unit." James at least has the courtesy to blush when he realizes what she had said.
"And just who might this thief of hearts be?" he asked with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. Cadence just looked at him with the smug look of the cat that ate the cream on her face.
"Don't you wish you knew?" she purred.
"Excuse me, sir, ma'am, but I need to get a statement from each of you about what happened here today," states one of the fresh-faced officers from airline security.
"No problem, occifer." Cadence tells him, sliding out of James' lap and getting up onto her feet, swaying slightly as she battles the grip of a severe case of vertigo. They walk to a spot about fifteen feet away and he begins to question her.
James is standing where they were sitting and going through a questioning of his own. When Cadence raises her shirttail to show the officer the bruise on her ribcage, everyone notices that the gun barrel dug so deep into her ribs that it actually broke the skin. There was a small trail of blood on her side, staining her shirt on the inside.
"Huh, imagine that. I didn't even feel it cut through the skin," Cadence deadpanned.
"That rat bastard!" James swears, leaping towards the guy before he stops himself in mid-lunge.
When James sees the blood, he gets angry. The only thing keeping him from going over to the guy and beating the heck out of him is the fact that Cadence would beat the heck out of him if he did, and he had no desire to give her the chance. "Reason number one why not to piss her off," he thinks, remembering the last incident when someone had sent her into a rage. At least he wasn't the target, not that time at least.
She had punched her way through the concrete block wall of the machine shop barehanded about four months ago. She had broken every finger in her right hand in three places and both of her hands and wrists in two places apiece. He had seen her when she did it, knowing that the cause was the letter that she had just received, completely cutting her out of her family with no contact and no acknowledgement whatsoever and telling her that she would never be good enough to be a member of that family, and it was he that had helped her to the infirmary. Lifeline, Doc, Bree and Stretcher had teased her mercilessly for a little while after that particular incident. Steeler, Tollbooth and the rest of the "grease monkeys", not to mention three-quarters of the rest of the base, were still walking quietly around her and trying to figure out what had set her off.
After the questioning is over and James had turned over the videotape to the authorities, they get ready to leave the airport and head to James's parents' house. As they cram into James's mom's car, they decide to stop by Burger King on the way because none of them had eaten. James and Cadence are curled up in the back seat of the car, with Toby in his car seat between them.
Toby reaches down and grabs James's left hand, and then grabs Cadence's right, and links them together so that the pair is holding hands. Both of them look down at their linked hands and then back at each other. Both of them have a look of shock on their faces. John looks in the mirror and begins to laugh.
"It seems as though Toby has his grandmother's matchmaking sense, James. What do you think?"
"I think you're right, John, but Widget and I were a couple a long time before I could talk her off the base for this trip."
John looks in the mirror at Cadence, who is looking at James with a questioning look on her face. "Widget, huh? Where'd you get a name like that?" "One of my hobbies is weaponsmithing, and I have a lot of widgets and gadgets lying around on my desk, and James started calling me Widget, and it just kinda stuck. He's the only one that will call me that."
"Heck," stated James, "I'm the only one with the balls to call her that."
Cadence laughs. "That's the truth."
The conversation soon slacks off as Cadence watches the scenery go past and zones out on the brothers. Soon the rhythm of the ride gets to her, and she falls asleep. James reaches over and wraps his jacket around her as he sees her shiver, thinking that it's more from the cold air outside than it is fear.