This is the final chapter of Synergize. I hope you've enjoyed the new characters and story so far. I have quite a bit drafted for the next segment (which features a new romance, a prison break, and a few surprise appearances) but I'm not ready to roll that out quite yet. Thanks for reading and thanks for all the lovely comments and words of encouragement.
**Ain't Misbehavin', Billie Holliday**
Danny held the door while Kara led Debbie and Vince into the hotel dining room. "We're using this as a general mess area for everyone, civilians and military." Kara explained. "I already got you on the lists. We're not able to serve anything fancy but it's hot and there's clean water so there can be a line at certain times of day." Between the work that needed to be done to unpack the cars and the debriefings it was already 2100 so the room wasn't too crowded. Vince, you can use your CAC for ID. Mom, I got you an ID." She pulled one out of her pocket and handed it over as they waited for the enlisted woman at the podium to scan her own card.
Debbie held the card at arm's length so she could see it without her glasses. "It's a good picture of me."
"I used a picture from the bowling alley." Kara explained.
The woman scanned Vince's card and then looked up sharply at the grizzled man. "Welcome Commander Gurtowski! In case you don't know, we have a wardroom set up in the Raddison next door as well."
He squinted at her nametag as she handed the card back. "Thank you Carson but it's Mr. Gurtowski now, no titles. I gave that up when I retired. I'm just a contractor now."
"Very well. But I believe Commander Foster-Green can confirm that you would still be welcome in the wardroom."
"Foster-Green? Really Kara." Debbie handed her card to the greeter. "Is my grandchild going to be saddled with a ridiculous hyphen?"
That hadn't talked about it yet but he was relieved when Kara shook her head. "No, it just helps people not get the two of us mixed up. The baby will be just Green." She led them all to gather trays.
Vince hung back a little. "Do you want me to distract Debbie a little that you and your wife can have some privacy?"
Danny was touched by the gesture. "Of course not. I want you to get to know Kara more. She is pretty amazing."
Vince raised his brows. "I already know that! But I admit, I do want to get to know the woman that convinced you to break so many rules."
"What makes you think she convinced me and not the other way around?"
Vince's gray curls shook as he laughed. "You forget that I've known you since you were knee high to a grasshopper." They accepted bowls of fried rice and some kind of mystery meat from one of the kitchen staff and Kara led them to a table. Danny noticed that her gait had more sway than three weeks ago. He had a million things he wanted to ask her about her time her in St. Louis, the baby, and her plans. But that would have to wait.
Danny sat beside her and began arranging the items on his tray. As Kara leaned forward to set Halsey's dish on the floor, her free hand grabbed the edge of the table. He knew Vince was right, he had never been a rule breaker before, but he hardly cared what the rules were as he slipped his left hand over hers to help haul her back upright. The zing of recognition was instant and she paused her meal routine to bestow a bright smile on him. "Hey, glad you're home." She said low, half under her breath.
"Me too." He squeezed her hand before releasing her fingers and focusing on the meal. The sooner they finished and got Vince and Debbie squared away in their rooms, the sooner he could be alone with her.
"So I've got you two set up in rooms in the Hyatt. That's where most of the civilian employees at the Whitehouse and associated offices are staying.
Debbie paused, fork half way to her mouth. "Kara, I don't want to be taking away space from someone who has a legitimate job here for the government."
Kara set down her fork and Danny could see that she was gearing up for a serious discussion. "Well," her eyes flicked to his momentarily. "I do need to talk to you about that. Vince, you have a 10 AM meeting with Slattery tomorrow. He wants to discuss your interest in coming out of retirement. We've got some young recruits who could really benefit from your experience."
Vince sat back with a heavy sigh. "I suppose I knew it was coming from the second I agreed to take Debbie and Peter here. I knew both of them, Chandler and Slattery, before I retired, and I don't doubt that I have skills that could be useful, but I am not sure I want any kind of official assignments. I retired because I thought I was getting too old to do my job well and that feeling hasn't changed."
She took a sip of her drink before responding. "I understand that. Just please, take the meeting, and keep an open mind."
Vince turned toward Danny and gestured toward Kara's collar. "She wears them well!" To Kara he smiled. "I will. I do want to be of use, I'm just not up for the intense missions anymore."
Debbie snorted. "Could have fooled me. You just spent three weeks racing across the country with two old people in tow."
One corner of Vince's mouth quirked up. "Old people my ass. Kara, your mother was relentless. Every single time we met a roadblock she just pushed on, insisting you needed her."
Debbie ducked her head, a slight red blush staining her cheeks. "I am sorry honey. I know you have your own life and you don't need me, but I just felt strongly, so strongly in fact that I couldn't put it off, that you needed me."
"I do need you." Kara reached across the table and took her mother's hand. "And I think that Danny and his team needed you too. I am so grateful to you both for bringing him home." She reached across and squeezed Vince's hand too. "I've got a job in mind for you too mom, if you are willing." She returned to her dinner. "Danny and I need a house, a home really." He looked up from his rice, surprised. When he'd broached the subject before leaving for Chicago she had insisted that temporary quarters were fine. "There's nothing official yet, but Chandler and Michener are both planning to stay in St Louis for the time being so that's where I will be too. There's going to be a home and auto auction soon." She glanced shyly at Danny. "I know it would be fun to pick a home together, but I don't know how we'll have time. Will you help us?" her knuckles were nearly white on the fork.
"Of course honey. I would be happy to help you any way I can."
They finished the meal by talking about what they needed in a house. Kara wanted a small house with a fenced yard. Danny wanted a house with lots of bedrooms for visitors and future kids. "How many kids do you think we're having?" Kara giggled. "How about next time you spend months on the sidelines and I'll go out adventuring!" She poked him in the side.
"Well I can see that you two have plenty to talk about." Debbie gave Vince a meaningful glance. "It's been a long day. Let's find our quarters and hit the sack." Although Danny really did want to catch up with his friend and get to know Debbie, now that he was sitting here next to Kara, nothing sounded better than curling up in bed with his wife.
Half an hour later he finally shut the door to their apartment behind him. He'd taken Halsey outside for a few minutes while she'd come straight up. There was a sloshing sound from the bathroom. "That better be my husband because I warn you, I'm armed, and I don't take prisoners."
"You gonna shoot me pretty lady?" He grinned despite his exhaustion. He'd missed her humor more than he realized. "I thought you had something a little more fun in mind when you invited me in here."
"No, but I am going to wash you from head to toe before I let you in my bed. When was the last time you had a shower?"
He thought back "Uh, Tuesday? No Monday. It was in Bloomington so I guess Monday." He began stripping off his clothes, not even bothering to lay them over a chair or something. There was no way he was putting that uniform back on without washing it. "But the last time we were able to wash clothes was Toledo. So yeah, I'm feeling filthy."
Her laugh was pure joy. This was why he'd come home. "Oh you are, are you? Then you better get in here because while I might want to take advantage of that later, I also might pass out due to pure exhaustion."
The hotel had been remodeled sometime in the 80's and featured a funny triangular bathtub/hot tub instead of a shower. Kara was sitting in one corner of the triangle, her back to him. She had undone her working bun and instead piled her hair on top of her head in a loose pouf. Danny stepped over Halsey to enter the small bathroom and was hit with the scent of her soap. It always made him think of a tropical beach at night, floral and fruity but also dark and mysterious. "Am I going to smell like you tomorrow?" he asked as he shut the dog out. Halsey whined through the door.
"Oh shush you big baby." He heard the tag on the dog's collar hit the floor. Somehow the idea of her talking to his dog like it was hers always made him inordinately pleased.
Bubbles slipped over one pale shoulder as she glanced behind her with an impish grin. "You can shower in the morning. We are expected to report at 10 AM. You might be good and sweaty by then anyway."
"I don't think I've ever known you to take a bath before."
She lifted one pale leg and ran a bright purple wash cloth from her ankle to her knee. "I've been taking a lot of baths. Not really to feel clean, just to get off my feet." The sight of her slippery smooth skin made him hurry to throw off his remaining clothes. "I have a lot on my mind and it helps me relax and sleep better.
"Like how you knew we were coming in today?" She stopped dead still for a second.
"Like who other than you knew it too." The water rippled as she shivered. I've been over it a hundred times in my head. You, Michener, and Tex were the only ones that knew last night, right? How could we have been so wrong about him?"
He stepped in and found the water a little tepid but not uncomfortable. That would be good. Because after three weeks away, the cool water might help slow him down from jumping his pregnant wife in the first five minutes he had her alone. "Well, think about how we found him and some of the other things he's done since then. There is certainly room for suspicion."
He slid down into the water in the corner by her feet. "But enough of that for now. The President is safe for the time being and I'm home with you. Did you miss me?"
She sighed and closed her eyes, sinking a little deeper into the water as he lifted her feet onto his thighs. "Of course I did, although I had little time to dwell on it. I've been working…" He used his thumbs to stroke the balls of her feet. "..Oh my God that is wonderful."
"Well, just sit back and enjoy it." He did it again and was rewarded with a dreamy smile from her perfect raspberry lips. "So you worked a lot. Anything come up that I should know about?"
She wobbled her head back and forth on the rim of the tub. "Not really. Val and I haven't made any new progress on the traitor. Tomorrow Chandler is going to form a team of you and Alisha to come up with an offensive plan for dealing with the MCF. The ultimate goal being to get stocks of the precursor solution for the vaccine from the manufacturer in Albuquerque. Burk and I are going to work on rounding up some kind of Congress by June."
"Same old same old, huh? Anything less end-of-the-world-ish going on?"
"Michener asked me tonight to pick a neighborhood for federal executives. He's still set on moving the Whitehouse to St. Louis permanently. I think he doesn't want to face going back to his former home in Washington."
"Ah, that explains the house then." He'd been a bit taken aback when she started discussing it at dinner. No matter how much he told himself that making major life decisions together was one couples thing that they weren't going to be able to count on, it still hurt a little.
Gone were her soft and pliant limbs. "We don't have to move, if you want to stay here, we can. Well not exactly. Once Flutter is born we would have to move anyway. This area is designated as a barracks only. So, I want to move, before he or she is born. But we can stay a little longer." She rubbed her free foot up and down one of his thighs and he caught it in his hand lest she stir up more than she bargined for.
He kneaded the arches of her feet with his thumbs, half contemplating, half reveling in the feel of the soft skin of her instep. "We've never talked about the money stuff, but I have plenty. Well, I had plenty, assuming the banks still have the records. I have been working for 15 years and I've always shared apartments. And I've been traveling most of my time so right from the start I put a lot away in savings."
Kara sighed. "I have next to nothing. Pretty much all my savings got spent in moving my mom out to Norfolk. I'm sorry I don't have much to contribute." He could see that she meant it too. She'd spent her adult life as the responsible one, putting herself through school by joining the Navy. Then supporting her mother, rather than the other way around. "I suppose normal couples talk about all this before they get married." She pulled her feet back and began to sit up.
"One way or another, it will work out. I certainly didn't marry you for your money." He leaned forward with a slosh to catch her hand and she turned back toward him, captivating his attention as a little raft of bubbles slipped from her collarbone to the waterline just above her nipples. "Don't go yet."
"Oh, I'm not. I'm not done with you yet." She turned on the warm water and then settled back down into the water. The soap from the bubbles allowed her to slide along his skin and he was instantly rock hard but she sat across his thighs, maddeningly close but not quite touching. "You know I'm a practical woman. I don't really care if we have money or a big house. But I was getting cold."
It was a challenge to leave his arms outstretched along the fiberglass lip of the tub. He wanted nothing more than to close the gap between them and remind her why he'd really married her. "Oh, you have plans for me?" He played innocent, even though he knew she could feel the evidence of his arousal pressing against her.
"Mmhum." She was soaped up the washcloth to a thick lather and began to rub small circles over his chest. "You need a through inspection to make sure you are fit enough to keep up with me."
"Is that so?" she stopped soaping at the water line and began to work down one arm. As she leaned forward to reach his wrist the tips of her nipples grazed him and he heard her sharp intake of breath.
"Are they still bothering you?"
Kara leaned back on her haunches a little, reaching for the soap again. Her eyes twinkled. "No, not anymore." She sat up just enough that the foamy bubbles slid all the way off her and into the water and he feasted on the vision before him. Her breasts were still fairly small and firm, but they seemed rounder than ever and her nipples were much deeper in color against her pale skin. His mouth watered for her. "I believe you have made it home for the best part of pregnancy."
"Oh yeah, what's that?"
"The good side of crazy hormones." She shut off the water behind them and then began working on his other arm. But this time, when she reached his wrist she turned and captured his lips. Her mouth was hot and urgent. Her tongue swept into his mouth and he groaned at the contact. He couldn't keep his hands to himself any longer but wrapped them around the warm and soft skin of her back, pulling her against his arousal. God it was everything he'd been fantasizing about these last three weeks and more. She willingly spread her knees and scooted even closer so that he was all but inside her. Even though the tub was warm, her center felt even hotter.
She didn't even give him a chance to catch up, just canted her hips and took him deep inside her. The heat of her seared the length of him but it was the gasp of pleasure that escaped her lips that spurred him into action. He slouched down a little so she could lean forward, her hands on his shoulders while he slid his soapy hands down the smooth contours of her back to grasp each toned buttock. Somehow he had the presence of mind to look up and was rewarded with their reflection in the mirror on the back of the bathroom door. He watched her in amazement as she rose and fell over him. Slippery with soap, their bodies glided together smoothly. He could see her lashes flutter on her cheeks and at the same time the damp tendrils of loose hair swirling down the delicate curve of her back, his tan fingers dark against her milky skin. It was overwhelming but he couldn't tear his eyes away. Her muscles flexed under his fingers as she rode him. "I guess you missed me then?"
Her head was tipped back and when she laughed lightly, reaching for his hands and moving them to cover her breasts she answered. "I need this too much to talk about that now." God he had missed her, her voice, her scent, the feel of her skin, the way she challenged him. He slid a hand between them and cupped her slippery mound. He was not going to be able to hang on much longer. Need was coursing through him, causing him to lift his hips to meet hers with each shuddering thrust. Her breath was catching in her throat in a way that usually meant she was close so he slid one finger on each side of her swollen clit.
"Yes, yes I need that." She increased her pace, their bodies coming together so rapidly now that water was splashing about her hips. But he payed it no mind. This had to happen now. His focus narrowed. In the mirror, a rosy blush was stealing it's way down her shoulder blades. The same blush was making it's way over her neck and chest. Fascinated, he leaned in and took one rosy peak in his mouth. "I…am…so..glad..you're..here!" She gasped out as she ground her hips into his. He drew hard and knew the exact moment she flew apart. Whatever he had been about to say was mangled as she keened her approval. He felt the force of her completion and stopped holding back himself. With a few long thrusts he exploded in pleasure.
He wasn't sure if he closed his eyes or passed out but when he came aware he could feel the goosebumps all over her body and every few seconds, a soft pulse of her around his rapidly diminishing erection. She had fallen forward over him, her harsh breathing echoing in one ear. The hard round belly holding their child nestled between them. He was gliding his hands up and down her back but the water felt a little chill and he suddenly wanted to be in bed, holding her close and warm.
"Come on, lets get out of here." He helped her stand up, holding her hands so she wouldn't slip in the soapy tub.
She pulled down two seafoam green towels off the rack outside the shower curtain and handed one to him. "I hope you like the color. I got them at the market. Everything in the hotel was so impersonal and white."
He glanced around as he rubbed his skin dry and realized that she had personalized more than the towels. There was a scented candle on the counter, a decorative box of hairpins and elastics too.
Kara wrapped her towel around her slim body but when she lifted her arms to fix her hair the ends split open over the baby. Her body really had changed quite a bit while he was gone, but he liked her new softer profile.
She huffed and grabbed at the ends of the towel. "Here." He sat at the edge of the tub and drew her over. "You do your hair and I'll seize this chance to talk with my growing progeny.
He placed his lips against her warm and taut skin and she giggled lightly as she combed her hair and then swept it back into a bun high on her crown. "Thanks kiddo." He whispered, placing a kiss on the crown of her belly.
She set the comb in the edge of the sink with a click. "Did you get a head injury out there that you aren't telling me about? What are you thanking Flutter for?"
"The crazy hormones, of course!"
She laughed and tugged him to his feet. He could hardly feel them touch the floor. For however long he could be here with her, he would be glad to be home. They stepped out into the bedroom and for the first time he realized that there was a new purple and brown quilt on the bed and beyond that, some orange pillows on the couch. "You've been busy!"
"I just wanted something that felt like it was rooted. Something that made this room ours. But the stuff I bought, didn't even make a dent in the feeling of living in a borrowed space." Suddenly the idea of a house made perfect sense. Sure, they might not be in St. Louis forever, but when they were here, they could have a place of their own.
"If Michener already has a plan for auctioning houses and cars. Let's volunteer to be in the first group."
She turned down the quilt and let her towel drop to the floor. "Are you sure?"
He lifted her and sat down with her legs across his lap. "Yep, it's time for us to make a space for our family, don't you think?"
"Mhum. Yes, I do think so."
