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CHAPTER 17 – EYE OPENING REVELATIONS

An hour after Elizabeth had borrowed a kiss from Jack, Carl walked into their living quarters and stopped short, causing Seth, who was walking behind him, to bump into his back.

"Oops. Sorry", the microbiologist apologized when he saw the two intertwined bodies on one of the bottom berths.

Jack, taken by surprise by the voice, scrambled off of Elizabeth who had been lying underneath his body. Trying to act like he and Elizabeth had not just been passionately kissing each other, he stood up from the berth – bumping his head in his haste, tucked his tee-shirt back into his pants, and pushed his tousled hair out of his face.

Carl averted his eyes from the disheveled couple and began nonchalantly whistling a tune while Seth moved over to his locker and put away his laptop. "I hope you two are using protection or you're going to have little alien babies," he warned as he closed the metal door.

Jack rubbed his head where he had bumped it, and looked at Seth in disgust. "We were not having sex and we are not going to have little alien babies."

"Sorry for you about the first part. Happy about the second part." Seth replied with a laugh.

"I don't know," Carl replied. "Who knows what happens to our reproductive organs when we're out here hurtling through space? It might be kind of cute if we were the godparents to little alien babies. We would be the godparents, right? I mean we are your roommates."

"We are not having alien babies!" Elizabeth exclaimed as she sat up and straightened her shirt. She and Jack had spent ten minutes in the security office kissing, and then had made their way back to the empty living quarters to continue getting physically reacquainted after five days apart.

"Not yet at least. First you have to have sex", Seth knowingly informed her with a chuckle.

"Shut up, you guys."

Carl ignored Elizabeth's order and turned to Seth. "I thought we had ground rules here. Roommates couldn't be more than friends inside the living quarters. And no one has over-night guests. Wasn't that the rule?"

"That's the only reason we're not hooking up. That and I have a beautiful wife and daughter. And I'm not attracted to you," Seth replied.

"Nah, it's because I had my eye on Jack. He's cuter than you. But Elizabeth got to him first."

"Shut up, guys", Jack ordered the teasing men.

"Maybe they want us to watch them. You know, like that S and M talent show act that Elizabeth was working on," Carl suggested to Seth.

"SHUT UP!" Jack and Elizabeth said in unison.

Jack turned to Elizabeth, who was now actually trying to stifle a giggle.

"Come on," he said as he reached out a hand to her. "We need to talk."

"Nope", she said with a shake of her head. I don't like when you talk. Last time you broke up with me."

Jack chuckled. "I am never going to make the same mistake again. But we do need to talk."

Despite having been alone together for the past hour, the couple had done little in the way of talking and Jack had yet to explain his relationship concerns to Elizabeth. Her borrowed kiss had had its intended effect in that all reason had temporarily left his mind.

Carl stepped in front of Jack and blocked him and Elizabeth from leaving the room. "Sorry, can't let you do that, Jack."

"What are you talking about?"

"You made me and Seth promise that we would stop you from getting involved again with Elizabeth."

Elizabeth, who had slipped on her shoes, sat back on the berth and looked at the three men in surprise. "You what?"

"Now Elizabeth, it's not how it sounds," a somewhat embarrassed Jack began to explain but he was cut off by Seth.

"You said we shouldn't leave you two alone too much or you'd fall under her spell again," Seth reminded Jack, who gave him a stern look in return.

"Under my spell? Like I'm a witch?!"

"Try to think of yourself as more of an enchantress," Seth suggested helpfully as he pretended that he didn't notice Jack glaring at him.

"Well, that is much better," Elizabeth readily admitted as she pondered the interesting idea of being an enchantress. "What else did he say?"

"Nothing. I didn't say anything else." Jack moved to take Elizabeth's hand but she remained sitting on the berth in no hurry to leave as she had started to find this conversation intriguing.

"Yes, you did", Carl corrected Jack. "You said that it would never work out between you two because she has too much money." Now it was Carl's turn to ignore Jack's steely glare.

"Do you?" Carl looked to Elizabeth for confirmation of her finances.

"I do have quite a bit."

"More than five million?"

"In North American dollars, Euros, or Shekels?" Elizabeth pleasantly inquired in the manner of someone responding to an ordinary question about their day.

"Does it matter?"

"Not really, I suppose," she replied after quickly doing some calculations in her head. "I have a lot but I'll give it all up," she offered with a smile. "What else did Jack say about me?"

"That you were distracting him," Seth remarked before Jack could shut him up.

"l certainly can't help that," a clearly flattered Elizabeth responded as she sat on the bed and flirtatiously tossed her hair over her shoulder.

It seemed that Carl, Seth, and Elizabeth all found the conversation quite enjoyable while Jack became more and more irritated with the turn of events. He had gone from the pleasurable position of lying on top of Elizabeth to suddenly feeling like he was under unwanted scrutiny.

"And that he wasn't sure that you really knew what you wanted in life," Carl piped in, causing Jack to practically growl at him.

"Now that's not true. I know exactly what I want. I want happiness in whatever shape or job or person which fulfills me."

Jack reached for Elizabeth's arm. "Great. Okay, enough of this conversation. Let's go."

Seth crossed his arms and stood in front of the door blocking it along with Carl. "He also said that he's in law enforcement which carries risks. Apparently, a lowly rock lover like me or a scientist who looks at tiny microbes like Carl couldn't possibly understand how such a job would affect a relationship. Never-mind the fact that we're all on the same damn spaceship facing the same risks. He seems to think he's the only one with a dangerous job or one that requires being gone from a family at times. In case he's forgotten, I'm away from my wife and daughter for four months with no way to get to them if they need me."

"Jack's in law enforcement?" Elizabeth feigned surprise. "I had no idea!. And Seth, we all know that you are missing your family. You mention it every day", she said with a poor attempt at sympathy. "But we're not talking about you. We're talking about Jack and how he needs two of his roommates to keep him away from the third."

"Enough!" Jack declared.

"No need to get upset, Jack. We're just having a nice conversation among friends and roommates," a smiling Elizabeth said as she finally stood up to go have a private talk with him. "Apparently, you think I am a rich clueless woman who keeps you from concentrating. How attractive. I must be quite the catch."

"It's not like that!" Jack exclaimed as Elizabeth took his hand in hers, and with her other hand motioned for Seth and Carl to move out of the way.

"Well I guess you can explain to me what it really was like."

Jack and Elizabeth were almost out the door when Carl's voice stopped Jack in his tracks. "It's not like you didn't do anything to get him back. You were mighty determined."

Elizabeth pretended not to hear as she tugged on Jack's hand when he turned back into the living quarters.

"What is he talking about? You took the whole break up really well. You didn't do anything to get me back. . . . Did you?" Jack asked when he noticed Elizabeth's guilty look.

She shrugged as she casually responded. "I may have innocently made you think about me."

"Innocently made me think about you? How do you innocently make someone think about you?" An intrigued Jack moved from the doorway and took a seat on the berth.

"Innocent. It means not guilty of a crime. You're the one in law enforcement. You should know that." Elizabeth pulled on his arm to get him to leave but Jack remained firmly seated.

"I know what innocent means. Usually. I want to know what it means in this case," a curious and now smiling Jack remarked.

"It simply means that I may have done some things to make you think of me in a non-platonic way."

"Give me an example."

"I can't think of one. Let's go." She pulled on his arm again.

"I can think of one," Seth volunteered.

"I can think of a dozen," Carl added dryly.

Elizabeth threw him a dirty look.

"How about when she woke up the other night and you were all worried that she had had another nightmare. You practically catapulted into her berth," Seth offered.

"She had a nightmare. She can't help that. I was comforting her. Like a good roommate," Jack explained with a perplexed look.

"She let you rub her back," a scornful Carl remarked.

"You guys comforted her when she had a nightmare weeks ago. So, this time I did it. What's the big deal?" Jack asked as he defended his reaction to the incident two nights earlier. He remembered how glad he had been that he had been the one to comfort her in the night.

"We talked to her. That's all. You rubbed her back like a love-sick teenager. And she didn't even have a nightmare the other night, but she let you sit there and rub her back and tell her everything was okay," Seth replied.

"You didn't?"

"I did let you rub my back", Elizabeth eagerly answered when Jack looked at her in disbelief.

"No. no. I mean the nightmare. You didn't have a nightmare?"

Elizabeth scrunched her face up as if rethinking the moment. "I had a scary thought that you weren't going to kiss me again. Does that count?"

"That's it?!"

"It was scary! I like your kisses."

An incredulous Jack looked at Seth and Carl. "How did you know it wasn't a real nightmare?"

Carl shook his head at Jack's gullibility. "Because when she had a nightmare before she didn't daintily sit up in bed and say 'oh my, that was scary'."

Elizabeth put her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle at Carl's imitation of her voice.

"What else did she do?"

"Jack, it's really not important. Let's not bother our roommates anymore," Elizabeth said as she tugged on Jack's arm to get him to leave their living quarters.

"How about when she hurt her knee and you jumped to the rescue?"

Jack remained firmly on the berth but his eyebrows crinkled in confusion when Carl used his fingers to make quotation marks when he said the word 'hurt'.

"She was injured. Naturally I went to help her. I'm trained in basic first aid", Jack explained, but his voice sounded hesitant as he remembered the incident and noticed the expressions now on the faces of all three of the other people in the room.

"She wasn't injured!" Seth and Carl both exclaimed at the same time.

A confused Jack looked at Elizabeth and then back at the men. "She bumped her knee climbing out of the berth."

Carl scoffed. "Please. She barely even tapped the metal side of the bed. And you just had to feel her knee. Putting your hands on it."

"Weren't you hurt?" a bewildered Jack looked to Elizabeth.

"Define hurt."

"Hurt! Bruised. Wounded. In pain!"

Elizabeth pursed her lips in concentration for a second before responding. "No, I wasn't hurt. Not by that definition."

"Is there another definition?! "

"I'm not a thesaurus but I'm sure there is", she responded airily.

Jack shook his head in disbelief. "And you guys knew about this? That she was tempting me?"

"It was kind of hard to miss. For a man in law enforcement, you can be kind of clueless, Jack."

"Is this true? That you've been tempting me for days?" He turned to Elizabeth who was casually twirling a long curl around her finger. Suddenly Jack remembered the incident with the swimsuit and he silently questioned if she had purposely tangled her hair that day. Impossible. It was too knotted. She wouldn't have done that on purpose. . . Or would she? he wondered for the first time.

Elizabeth smiled broadly. "All's fair in love and war."

"This isn't war", he said with a stern look as if reprimanding a small child.

Elizabeth bit her bottom lip to suppress a smile and simply shrugged.

"Then it must be the other one", Carl muttered causing Elizabeth to smile even broader and Jack to blush.

"Come on. We need to go." A pink-cheeked Jack avoided looking at Seth and Carl as he stood up and pulled Elizabeth to her feet.

The couple moved down the corridor without saying a word. Jack, who seemed preoccupied, kept his hand on Elizabeth's arm and she hurried to keep pace with him.

As they turned a corner, a nearby door slid open and crew members poured into the hallway as a training session let out. The men and women were chattering loudly as they moved past Jack and Elizabeth in the narrow hallway.

Elizabeth was grateful when one of the engineers asked Jack a question because it caused him to stop and allowed her a brief chance to catch her breath.

"You're not angry, are you?" she asked after Jack quickly had answered the engineer and they had begun their fast-pace walk again.

"No, I'm not angry."

"Are you going to arrest me?"

Jack stopped walking and looked at her in bewilderment. "Why in the world would I arrest you?"

"I don't know. You have that authoritative professional look about you."

"I am not going to arrest you, you goose."

"Then why are we hurrying to your office?"

"We need privacy. That's why."

A moment later, they reached the security office and Jack buzzed open the door. They entered the small room which was filled with monitors displaying scenes of the transporter. The door had barely closed behind them when Jack gently pushed Elizabeth up against the wall and leaned into her.

"What are you doing?" she asked as he moved his mouth towards hers.

"Kissing you", he said simply even though an explanation wasn't actually needed.

"I know that much, but I thought we needed to talk," she reminded him.

Although, if she had been asked about her preference, she would have readily admitted that she preferred kissing him to a serious conversation about the potential pitfalls of their relationship. Especially right now when his body was dangerously close to making her forget how to speak.

"We do need to talk."

"Then why are you going to kiss me?"

"Because you are so darn tempting", he murmured in her ear.

"So no talking?"

"We're going to talk but I'm just getting some of my loan back before we do. If you remember correctly, you borrowed a kiss."

Elizabeth laughed and tried to focus but it was getting hard to do as Jack's warm lips found her neck. "You've had plenty of kisses since then."

"For a Thatcher, you're not a very good business woman."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You borrowed a kiss and never bothered to ask what I'd charge in interest."

Elizabeth laughed again, then pushed Jack away slightly and looked him in the eye. "What's the interest rate?"

"Three thousand percent."

"Three thousand percent?!"

"Yep."

"Three thousand percent?" she asked again with raised eyebrows.

"You should have asked before you borrowed a kiss."

"Does everyone get the same interest rate?"

"Nope. Just you. And it's too late to change it now. Unless you refinance. And I'd have to agree to those terms," he explained as he moved in closer. His tongue traveled up to her earlobe causing her to sigh while the movement of his hand caused her to gasp.

"You know there are laws against high interest rates," she managed to say as she closed her eyes in pleasure. "Usury laws."

"You can use me all you want", he replied huskily just before his mouth took possession of hers.

The kiss was longer than a peck. But still too short. If she had to guess, Elizabeth would have estimated it as having lasted ten seconds. A glorious ten seconds. But still only ten seconds.

She heard herself give an involuntary whimper when Jack pulled his mouth away.

"How much more do I owe you?" she asked breathlessly.

"At least another two thousand five hundred. But first we'll talk."

"We don't have to talk", she offered hopefully as she touched her finger to her lips and tried to savor the feeling of his kisses.

Jack moved away from her, opened his laptop, gestured for her to take a seat, and declared firmly, "First we talk."

UP NEXT: The Talk