Traveling

Jangling her awake, the telephone rang impatiently on the beside table. Olivia took it in a sleepy hand to stop the noise. Hitting the talk button with clumsy fingers, she climbed out of bed, careful not to wake her husband. She picked up Gregory's robe from the floor and pulled it over her nude body as she held the phone to her ear.

Whispering hello, she brought the phone to the balcony so Gregory could sleep uninterrupted.

"Well good morning love, didn't expect to get you on the line. Gregory said you weren't feeling well yesterday." Roger was obscenely awake and cheerful.

"I'm feeling much better today, thank you Roger." She replied, touched at his concern. She did feel almost entirely improved from yesterday. The heady sensation of heat that had taken over her body was gone. Her vision was blissfully clear once again. Stretching like a cat in the sunshine, Olivia smiled contentedly at the sun-kissed ocean.

"Glad to hear it love, glad to hear it." Roger paused, evaluating the situation. "So, Gregory must be still asleep."

Yawning behind her hand, Olivia replied that he was still sleeping. "How are you always so cheerful?"

"It's the devil in me, I've never been able to fight him."

Olivia giggled, picturing Roger's twinkling green eyes. "I think you're more then a little fond of your devil."

He sounded impressed. "I knew Gregory was after more then your looks. And I would have married you just for the pretty face, sure you don't want to reconsider?"

"No, but I appreciate the sentiment." Settling into a chair. she put her barefeet up on the balcony railing. "What can I do for you this morning?"

He sighed in mock disappointment. "Right down to business, all right, if you wish-" The teasing note faded away from his voice. "I'm headed stateside today. I have some things to take care of at St. Andrew's."

Olivia understood immediately, "Things that would be easier if Gregory came along."

"Exactly, " Roger agreed. "I do have the power of attorny, but I think Gregory should be the one to go through his things."

"Gregory needs closure." Olivia said for both of them.

"As brilliant as you are beautiful," Roger exclaimed lightly, "Some of his mother's things are there as well. I think he'd like to have them."

The morning sun was delightful on her bare legs. "Gregory never talks about his mother."

"Alice died when he was eighteen," Roger explained quietly. "After she was gone, he ran off to Law School and never looked back." The line was quiet as he thought for awhile. "I don't think he's even spoken to his father since the day she died."

Olivia's heartache for her husband returned, tightening her chest. "He cried last night."

"How did you managed that?" Roger asked, quietly impressed.

"It just happened," she replied softly. After another silence, Olivia made her descision. "We'll meet you in Wisconsin this afternoon."

"Lovely." Joviality returned to the man on the other end of the line. "I've another favor to ask, since you're in a giving mood."

"What now?" She wondered with a smile as she rearranged Gregory's robe to bare her shoulders to the warm sunshine.

"Can you send someone to meet my son Ethan at the airport? We were going to fly in together, but with all this business about Nicholas I had to send him alone."

"I'll send Sean and Caitlin. I'd love for them to meet your son."

"Ethan will be most grateful." She could hear his wink over the phone. "I've been filling his mind with stories of Caitlin's beauty."

Olivia cut him off with a giggle. "You've never even seen her!"

Now Roger chuckled, "All right, I've just been using my memories of you. The gentle twinkle in her eyes, the musical lilt of her voice, the kind of breasts that make you think you've died and gone to heaven."

Blushing, Olivia smiled slyly. "It's going to be wonderful to see you again, you scoundrel."

"I thought it would be. I took the liberty of getting you two a room at the resort I'm staying at. St. Andrew's is hours from civilization, but the resort is enchanting."

Thanking him again, Olivia hung up. Sneaking a look into her bedroom over one shoulder, she saw Gregory was still asleep. She dialed the airstrip, wheels would be up by 11am the pilot assured her.

Her next call was just as brief. Yes, Bette could be over in half an hour- Olivia sighed in relief. She needed someone to talk everything over with. Bette would see things she didn't.

Heading for the shower, Olivia stopped and watched Gregory sleeping. His face was peaceful, the lines of worry faded away beneath the faint stubble of morning. She left his robe on a hook by the bathroom door. She left the door open as well. Subtly inviting him to join her if he woke up.

Gregory smiled to himself as the water started in the shower. Olivia's feelings for himwere rushing back in full force. She was even expecting him in the shower.

Roger was brilliant, he again realized. Olivia wanted to feel needed. She wanted to know that he was lost without her. Gregory slipped out of bed and headed for the shower.

Startling her by slipping through the glass door to join her, Gregory started to wonder where his act ended and his feelings began. As Olivia pulled him down to kiss him, steam rising from the spray as it hit her in the back, he knew that he loved her. He had always loved her in the darkest part of his soul. She consumed him on a level he was loath to admit even to himself.

Olivia backed coyly to the cool tiles of the shower. Soapy fingers running slick lines down the muscles of his spine. The hot water was hitting him now and he reached down to turn the heat down a bit as she wrapped her leg around his thigh. Inviting him without a word, she bit her lip moaned in anticipation as he traced the lines of water running down the soft skin of her stomach.

They hadn't even spoken and already she wanted him. It was intoxicating. Gregory's tongue teased her nipple as he headed down. Kneeling on the floor of the shower, Olivia looked like a water goddess as her hair curled in wet tendrils around her neck. He found her inner thigh and grinned to himself wickedly as she trembled.

Last night she had owned him. Denying herself, Olivia had surprised him again with the depth of her feelings for him. How anyone could give so much to him nagged at him. Olivia's voice in his heart insisted that she loved him because she saw everything. She believed in him.

The rain started to hiss against the body of the plane when they were still an hour out of the Wisconsin airstrip. Their pilot, Joe Murray, assured them both that the storm was just an inconvenience, not a danger.

"I used to fly out of Chicago all the time. Up here it's always raining or snowing and the airports are just fine. The sunny days are the ones you worry about." Joe winked at Olivia patiently. He was one of the few subordinates who never seemed to worry what his boss thought of him. Joe Murray was just Joe Murray, former Air Force pilot, jazz musician and sole proprietor of the whitest smile Olivia had ever seen.

She had liked him instantly when Gregory hired him. Most of his pilots had been arrogant, stuffy young men who liked the pay but found Gregory far too demanding. Joe had enough of a sense of humor to learn to appreciate his sporadic scheduling.

"It's already 5 o'clock and Chicago's only a 6 hour flight." Olivia wondered curiously, "How much farther are we going?"

Joe leaned out of the pilot's chair lazily and smiled at her. "Another hour and a half. We're headed nearly to Canada today."

Raising an eyebrow at her husband, she sat down next to him. "That far north?"

Gregory nodded without looking up from his paperwork. "Roger says the shore of Lake Superior is really quite beautiful." After insisting that they stop at Liberty on the way to the airport, he had been engrossed in piles of financial documentation the entire flight.

This renewed obsession with work was just one of his ways of dealing with stress, Olivia thought to herself as she turned her attention back to the dreary gray sky outside her window. His spontaneous passion that had led them to make love on his desk a few hours ago was just another way to push his emotions away. She rubbed the sore sport on her lower back and tried not to blush as she thought about where the bruise was from.

The elegant brass nameplate had avoided the sweep of his arm as Gregory cleared the desk. Heavy enough to keep its position, the metal neatly engraved with "Gregory Richards" had been heavy enough to leave a deep impression when Gregory pushed her down to the desk. She would have to tell Bette when they got home. She would, without a doubt, find the symbolism amusing.

"What are you smiling about?" Gregory's voice surprised Olivia out of her thoughts with a start.

Turning to him coyly, she couldn't help being pleased that he was going to pay some attention to something other then his work. "I was just thinking about what Bette would say if I told her about the desk." Giggling rather youthfully, she snuggled into his shoulder.

"Something witty, I assume." He responded dryly, his arm going around her shoulders in a protective gesture. "Though I doubt she'll have as much respect for me next time I call her into my office."

"I'm sure she didn't have that much to lose." Olivia deadpanned, and garnered a raised eyebrow from her husband before he went back to his work. After another long pause broken only by the rustling of papers, she yawned. "Learning anything interesting?" She ventured sleepily as she looked across his lap at the unending numbers and charts.

Pointing to the first page, he directed her attention to some of the numbers. "It's a projection of the changing economic climate in China and what it will mean for Japan and California. It's really quite fascinating if you take into account the speed at which China is becoming a real player on the world market-"

Nodding seriously as if she knew exactly what he was saying made him laugh. Then Gregory surprised her by setting the entire stack back into his briefcase and closing it with a click. "I've been ignoring you."

Protesting, she sat up and pulled her knees up to her chest. "No, you're busy and I understand."

Leaning down, he kissed her forehead. Tilting up her chin to stare at her, as if trying to read something in her face that would explain everything, Gregory sighed and shook his head. "I have been ignoring you, and you've been very patient with me." He pulled her back into his arms and rested his chin on the top of her head.

"I apologize."

Squeezing his hand gently, she got comfortable with her head in his lap. "Apology accepted, just remember you'll owe me some understanding the next time I crawl home from a radio station meeting at an ungodly hour of the night."

Closing his eyes, Gregory chuckled as he leaned back into the soft seat on the plane. "That seems fair." Tracing slow circles with his hand, he toyed with her knee. She tried to ignore it, but eventually it tickled and Olivia squirmed. Amused, he opened one eye to peer down at her, "You haven't been ticklish for years."

Snatching his hand away from her knee, she pouted playfully. "Maybe you just stopped noticing." With her eyes still closed, she missed the pain flicker across his face, like a falling star flashing in the night. She was right, but that was only a symptom of the greater decay of their marriage. For years he stopped noticing everything about her. He lived with her like a stranger in their house. A stranger in her bed who took what he wanted in the dark when he didn't have to look at the pain in her eyes.

Maybe it was that her pain was too real. The way she felt things he denied himself made her a liability. Olivia was that one other person who could shatter his defenses as his father had and she did it with her eyes. His father tried to beat the will out of him and never really succeeded. All Olivia ever had to do was look at him and all his will melted away. It was disarming on the best days of their marriage. Most of the time it was simply terrifying.

The palms of his hands had grown damp with sweat. Thoroughly disgusted with himself for letting his father affect him again, he retrieved his handkerchief and wiped them off.

"We're going to make this work Olivia." Gregory promised firmly.

His only reply was the hum of the airplane engine. Looking down at her, he smiled softly. Of course she was asleep, who knew how long he had been lost in thought. Whispering so only he heard, Gregory rested a hand on her forehead. "I have to."