Chapter 9 – What a Day for a Daydream

Mary gazed out the window of the FTF office feeling disgruntled and adrift. The gunmetal gray sky outside matched her mood, the low scudding clouds promising more snow. She grimaced. She really didn't like winter. An image of a crystal clear blue sky came unbidden to her mind, the mountains in the distance, the air clean and fresh. It may get cold there, but at least New Mexico wasn't subject to the dreariness of a New Jersey winter.

She turned away from her view of the Newark skyline and shuffled back to her desk. She was restless and unsettled. Sitting down, Mary reached for the sweater she kept on the back of her chair and pulled it on, idly picking up her pen and staring at the form in front of her. Her eyes closed, too many images vying for her attention. Willington. Locked up in federal prison. Pelman. Soon to join Willington. She cringed as the interrogation session started another rerun in her mind, the depth of his betrayal mind boggling. Evan. Looking at her with sharp eyes, concern seeping through like oil through sand. Jinx. Pleading with her daughter to get her off the hook one more time. Brandi. Getting in far too deep with that loser Chuck and his drug dealing friends. Marshall. Oh god, Marshall.

Her head was starting to throb, the beginnings of a headache making itself an unwelcome visitor behind her eyes. She slowly focused on the form again. "Application for Transfer". She didn't know if she could sign it. She didn't know if she could not.

Marshall had come up for the weekend. Her lips curved up in a soft smile as she thought about their time together. They had talked for endless hours, they went bowling, they ate pizza. Mary mocked his bowling form, gaped in amazement at the amount of food the string bean could put way and told him some of her darker secrets. Marshall found an art gallery and dragged her resisting form through the door and started spouting art trivia at her. He told her about one of his dreams involving an art gallery. She had smiled, although she wasn't sure about the part with her in a little black dress. They watched movies, Marshall cooked for her, tut-tutting over the poorly equipped kitchen in her small apartment. They necked like teenagers.

Mary had quickly grown to appreciate his slender fingers, the mobile fluidity of his mouth, the way he touched her. There was a hint of awe, of surprise in his face, as if he couldn't believe she would let him trace her skin with trembling fingers. There was respect in the feather light strokes on her skin. She had not made another blatant offer, and he had not pushed for anything. Waking up to the credits rolling at the end of some Star Trek movie, she had looked over at his slack jawed face, head resting against the back of the couch. Reaching for his hand, she had tugged gently, startling him awake and led him wordlessly back to her bedroom.

Pulling back the covers, she kicked off her shoes and crawled in fully clothed in the sweats she had donned earlier in the evening, and Marshall followed suit. He reached for her, surrounding her body with his and buried his face in her shoulder. Mary was asleep within minutes.

Pale winter sunlight had woken her at seven. She stretched and turned to look at Marshall, disconcerted to find his intense blue eyes on her. A boyish grin split his face and he leaned over to place a soft kiss on her cheek, languorous lips slowly moving down to capture her cool ones. They didn't stay cool for long. Heat rose and a white hot flame ignited within her. His arm circled her waist, pulling her in against him, before his palm spread across her ass and squeezed. Tongues dueled and fingers explored . As those inquisitive warm fingers worked their way under her sweatshirt and up along her torso, Mary sighed with contentment. She stilled as he gently closed his large palm around her breast and stroked her, handling her like she was a delicate piece of blown glass. Fragile and beautiful and capable of bending and growing in incredible ways he had whispered in her ear. His fingers ceased their hypnotic movements and he simply held the heavy weight of her in his hand.

"I'm not going to be a one night stand to you." The soft words penetrated her addled brain. "Come to Albuquerque."

Mary stared at the form, pen poised above it. "Come to Albuquerque." Words full of longing, desire, promise. So much promise in three words. Promise of self, of soul, of happiness. Happiness. Something she had never really had. And that tall cowboy was begging her to let him make her happy. His fingers had traced back down her ribs and come to rest on her hip, lingering on the dip of her waist.

"What did you dream of last night?" He had asked the question with a devilish grin.

"What did you?" She had countered, suddenly breathless.

"You," he'd said simply. " I dreamed of you."

Mary dropped her pen and pushed the form aside. Much of the weekend had been spent comparing notes on dreams. She didn't know what to make of the fact that they had both had the same dream the previous night. Maybe their brain waves were coming into synch. Marshall had been spouting off about some kind of neurological nonsense. She ceased to listen to the words and just listened to his voice, the deep timbre pleasing to her. He had started to relay his dream to her and Mary had finished it up for him, taking a measure of pleasure in the shocked look on his face.

"So we talk to classmates, co-workers, try to get a line on where she is. Let's just hope she can lead us to Billy." Frustration bubbled up through his words.

"Listen, I like your dad. Call it a soft spot for guys who don't bail on their families, rob banks and start new families, but I will admit to find Amber, he's got the wrong style." Mary glanced back at the older man under discussion.

"If by style you mean all the subtlety of an armor piercing shell, then yes, agreed." Tautly uttered words out of a tautly held mouth.

"You gotta look for her without him." She cut to the chase, as always.

"If we peel off, he'll know we're ditching him and he'll be hunting us and trust me, even as a kid, hide and seek with that man gave me stomach cramps." Mary thought she would need to redefine her vision of Marshall's childhood. Her phone buzzed.

"Hey, PD's tagged a van belonging to Liam. I could stake it out with your dad, tell him you had a WitSec emergency. Good enough?" She looked at him expectantly, as she gathered her things.

"I wish I'd had you in high school." Longing echoed in his voice, shone through his eyes, as he tracked her movements around him.

"High school me would have eaten high school you alive." Affection laced through the ironic words. He smiled, understanding the subtext. 'High school me was an idiot.'

Well. They were dreaming in tandem now. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe they should be doing other things together as well. She jumped as Evan stopped by her desk and had to snap his fingers to get her attention. She glanced up guiltily. He jerked his head towards his office and Mary got up to follow him with a heavy heart.

Evan closed his door and waved her towards a seat. "I've spoken with Stan McQueen," he began without preamble. "I know he has offered you a job. I need to know what you are thinking. Have you made any decisions yet?" Evan watched her squirm, then shrug her shoulders.

"I haven't decided anything, Evan. I wanted to get through all the Pelman and Willington stuff first." Mary grimaced. When they finally got to the bottom of things, it turned out Pelman and Willington were second cousins, had grown up together. Pelman was the weaker of the two and had always done what he had been instructed to do by Willington. And Willington needed inside information after the bank job he had pulled in Elizabeth. Errors had been made and he could feel the FTF breathing down his neck. So Pelman had been instructed to get himself transferred to the New York/ New Jersey office. Through sheer happenstance he got assigned to Mary, the marshal on Willington's case. No wonder that crapweasel always wore that slightly smug smile.

"And now," Evan prompted, keenly aware more was going on than just a job offer.

"And now, I don't know. I'm thinking about it. I haven't decided."

Evan moved to his chair and sat down, taking a sip of cold coffee and grimacing. He pulled a file from his inbox and opened it.

"Is there a man involved?" The question alarmed her. Where did he get that from? She looked at the file he was perusing, suddenly suspicions.

Evan handed her the file and she flipped it open, her heart in her throat as she saw it was the personnel file on Marshall. Evan took it back from her before she could read anything beyond the identifying information. Mary looked up speechless.

"I had an informal inquiry from Marshal Marshall Mann. Wanted to know if there would be an open position here should his current plans fall through. I gather his current plans involve you." Evan's slate gray eyes held hers. "He'd be an asset to this department and I'd be glad to get him. What's going on, Mary?"

Mary was still trying to grasp the fact that Marshall had contacted Evan, that he was willing to come to New Jersey if need be. To be with her.

"Please, come to Albuquerque." A soft kiss distracted her from the wind cutting through her wool coat.

"Marshall, I don't know. I'm thinking about it." Her gloved hand snuck inside his coat and grasped his waist.

"Please." She had never seen eyes with such pleading in them. "Come to Albuquerque, Sunshine." Another kiss, more forceful. She shook her head miserably.

"Okay," he sighed. "I'll wait. I'll call when I get home." Mary had nodded and watched forlornly as he got back in his rental and drove away. She felt a ridiculous urge to chase after the car and throw herself on the hood to make him stop.

"Mary?" She drug her thoughts away from her early morning good-bye with Marshall.

"Yes," she admitted reluctantly, "there's a man involved."

Marshall gazed out the window as the flat desert landscape rushed up to meet the landing gear of the plane. He waited patiently as the other passengers jostled to get overstuffed bags out of the overhead bins and held the same conversation on their cell phones. 'Yes, I've just landed and am waiting to get off the plane.' He didn't have anyone with whom he could have that conversation. But he was going to do his best to change that. He would move to Jersey if he had to, in order to get her. He was prepared for a long pursuit.

The lanky lawman reviewed his weekend as he drove home from the airport. He smiled as the thought about waking up that morning, in Mary's bed, with Mary in his arms. He had laid quietly waiting for her to wake up and had drawn in a startled breath when he saw the painting hanging on her bedroom wall. The same painting he had in his bedroom. The first thing he saw every morning. The cacti, the wide open vistas, the blue sky. He took it as a sign. That was the first thing Mary would see every morning also.

Their conversations, their tentative early explorations of each other, their camaraderie. Everything just fit: their personalities complemented each other, their bodies molded soft curves to lean muscles, their minds were reasoned intellectual processes vs instinctive hard life experience.

Marshall drove home, hitting little traffic, and wearily opened his front door, flipping on the hallway lights and depositing his bag in the living room. He shrugged out of his coat and hung it on the coat tree in the hallway, then ambled to the kitchen and snagged a soda pop from the fridge. Flopping down on the sofa, he listened to the crackling of ice cubes as he poured the pop into his glass. Taking a long drink, he set the glass down carefully on the coaster on his coffee table before laying his head back and contemplating Mary's unhappy face when he said good-bye. When he asked her to join him. Begged her. She wanted to, he felt, but she was scared.

She was the filling to the yawning hole he felt in his life. He needed to be with her. He would do whatever was necessary to make that happen. In New Jersey, if need be. But he felt in his gut, that the place for them to be together was here in Albuquerque.

His phone rang and he snatched it up, a little thrill of hope trailing through his stomach. Marshall grinned at the caller ID.

"Mann's House of Pie." Startled silence, then a low throated chuckle that made parts of him strain to stand to attention under the heavy denim of his jeans.

"Another talent you haven't told me about yet?" The humor in her tone was delightful to hear, the implication about his talents...well, that was delightful too. Marshall stretched out on the couch, relaxing now that she was on the phone.

"Oh, I have many talents. And pie makes everything better. Didn't you know that?" He was deliriously happy to be talking to her again. Even though it had only been, what, twelve hours? He caught the faint tinkle of his wind chime from outside his back door. The wind was picking up. There might be a storm later in the night.

"Yes, well I guess it can't hurt anything, except my waistline." She sobered a bit and Marshall felt the difference over the airwaves.

"There is absolutely nothing wrong with your waistline," he murmured, "I can span it with my hands." Marshall closed his eyes, his palms warm with the memory of her lithe waist encircled by his hands.

"You have freakishly large hands," she shot back, but he could hear the pleasure in her voice. "So you got back okay?"

He nodded, then realized she couldn't see him. "Yes, uneventful flight. Just tired now." He shifted, trying to get more comfortable.

"You didn't get a lot of sleep over the weekend. Neither did I." Silence fell between them. "I miss you." The softly uttered phrase caught him by surprise.

"You do?" He was now saluting. And grinning like an idiot. He closed his eyes, calling the picture of her face up on his mind's screen. Picturing her with eyes downcast as she made that admission.

"I want to come down, have a look around. I didn't get to see much of the city. See if I like it." Marshall's heart leapt.

"Of course," he said eagerly, "I'll show you all around. I think you may be surprised by what you see." He was pacing now, excitement and hope surging through him, his weariness tossed off. She really was thinking about it! "I'll have a pie for you, any kind you like."

Mary laughed and said good night, leaving Marshall in a euphoria he hadn't experienced in a very long time. He unpacked and went to bed, wondering what his dreams would hold for him tonight.

They were sitting in an SUV, he having just pulled in to the curb. Mary turned to open the door as she unbuckled her seat belt.

"Okay, what?" He shifted towards her, a look of curiosity on his face. She turned back to him in confusion.

"What, what?"

"There's something else." He was watching her intently.

"No there's not." Her face crinkled up in scornful denial. He recognized the expression as one she frequently used when denying something that was true. It was a tell he found very useful with her.

"There is," he said with conviction, a knowing tone to the words he knew would irritate her.

"Like what?" Defensive.

"I don't know. I just know there's something you're not telling me." He wasn't backing down.

"Stop, it's like you rent a room in my head." Irritation percolated up through her words. He knew she didn't like it when he knew what she was thinking.

"And somewhere in mine, you occupy a small pied-a-terre." Offered as a small appeasement. Mary would never know him as well as he knew her, but she did still know him fairly well.

"Don't say pied-a-terre." Irritation backing off and resignation taking over.

"And we're all allowed to close the doors now and then, so to speak, but it can't last. You won't be able to hold out. You're just going to blurt it out at some point. I'm giving you the chance now to blurt." His hands were gesticulating, emphasizing his point. Encouraging her to blurt.

"No, no there's no news, nothing happened, there's no blurting. Okay?" He could feel her desire to shut down the line of inquiry, which strengthened his belief there was something.

"Okay." Small sigh of resignation. Whatever it was, and he felt he had a fair idea, she wasn't ready to tell him yet.

Marshall woke feeling happy. It was a nice feeling. And his dream told him to go with his instincts in matters regarding Mary. He knew her, she knew him. It was going to be okay.