Chapter 6
Jack looked up from arranging the champagne into an ice bucket to see Cassie and Janet walking downstairs together. "What the hell do you think you're wearing?" he asked sternly.
Cassie gave him a dirty look. "I'm not a little kid, Jack," she said glaringly.
He looked back over to Janet. "You mean you're letting her wear that?"
Janet did a once-over of Cassie. "I'd rather have her wear this than the one Sam has," she said pointedly.
Jack settled for shooting Janet a dirty look and turning towards the counter to get the champagne glasses washed before opening the bottle. He busied himself with the task until he heard Cassie shout, "I told you!"
Turning around, Jack O'Neill found himself speechless for the second time in thirty minutes. Luckily, he had until Carter made it down the stairs to recover. For probably the first time in his entire life, he cursed the fact that his 2IC was an incredibly attractive woman. On top of that, since she was a frickin' genius, she had to know what this was doing to him and that made her evil.
Yeah, who was he kidding? Even trying to convince himself that Carter was a complete witch was not helping him recover his speech one bit.
Carter was completely stunning in her black bikini with the silvery… um, thing wrapped around her waist. She stood at the middle of the stairs with one hand on the banister, her cheeks flushed completely pink. Although harassing Carter was one of his favorite past times, Jack simply could not get any sort of comment out of his mouth whatsoever. So instead, he turned his attention back to washing the champagne glasses in the hopes that no one would notice that his mouth had been hanging open for much longer than he would like to acknowledge.
He had just gotten the glasses cleaned and grabbed the champagne bottle to open it when someone suddenly touched his shoulder.
"Gaaaahhh!" he shouted as the champagne corked popped and the fizzy drink started spilling out onto his shirt. He whirled around to see Carter standing behind him with her face scrunched up into a giant wince from his yell.
"Uh, sir, I was just going to ask you if you wanted my help with err… that," she said. To avoid looking at her, he looked down at his soaked shirt and held it away from him.
"Oh!" Carter said suddenly and sprung into action, grabbing a cloth that was sitting on the counter and dabbing at his shirt. Now she was standing a lot closer to him than he wanted. In that suit. In that teensy-weensy…
"Carter!" he yelled. She jumped back from him to a much safer distance.
"Sorry, sir, just trying to help," she said meekly.
He was sorry for yelling at her, but he really could not handle her being that close to him wearing that. "Why don't you, uh, take care of the champagne while I go change?"
"Sure, sir," she replied. Always the good soldier.
He walked past her and towards the stairs. He saw Cassie smirking at him as he brushed past her to get upstairs. He was starting to get a pretty good idea why Cassie had switched the suits. Not wanting her to get one up on him, he stopped at the top of the stairs.
"Hey Carter," he said. "Nice suit."
He would have paid money for a photo of the look on his 2IC's face. He did not even have to turn around to know that her complete silence meant that her face was approaching that lovely shade of red he enjoyed so much.