27

Julia handed her credit card to the young receptionist and watched as he swiped it through his computer terminal.

"Thank you, Ms Martinez, that's fine…" He handed her a slim, card folder printed with the hotel's name above the print on the front of the hotel, "Your card key and a room service breakfast card, if you should want it. You are in room two zero four, that is on the second floor, overlooking the stable yard." He grinned at the slightly startled expression on Julia's face, "No, we don't have horses anymore, but the name stuck." His soft Wiltshire accent making it seem as if he was laughing at himself and at the hotel's conceit in keeping a name that was nearly 100 years out of date.

Julia couldn't help herself from smiling back, although she'd only stayed here once before she had enjoyed her stay, there was something quintessentially English about it, so… relaxed, laid-back. She tucked the folder into her jacket pocket and bent to pick up her sea-bag.

"I'll take that, Miss," a smiling and very familiar voice said from behind her.

Julia spun around, "Johnny!" she squealed, and that was all she had time to say before her hands were grasped in his and she stepped into his arms, raising her face to his.

It must have been nearly a full minute later that, still holding hands they broke apart for want of air, "Wow," Julia said quietly, "did you miss me, soldier?"

"Well… Just a little," Johnny confessed, and then both he and Julia burst out laughing at his obvious falsehood. And they were still grinning at each other when they remembered where they were and looked around to see the receptionist grinning even more broadly, but indulgently, than they were.

Johnny shook his head," I reckon this is just about the time when somebody starts yelling, 'get a room', but since we've both already got one, I say we should beat a hasty, but dignified retreat."

Julia looked at him gravely, but with her eyes dancing, "I agree!"

With a chuckle Johnny bent and retrieved Julia's sea-bag, and with that over one shoulder and their arms around each other's waist, they strolled off towards the stairs.

xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx

Gill stayed on the couch while Harm levered himself to his feet and went into the kitchen, returning a couple of minutes the fresh, newly opened bottle of wine. He re-took his seat and sloshed a generous measure of the wine into his glass, and then in response to Gill's nod, topped up her glass too.

Gill didn't really want any more wine, and was slightly worried at how fast Harm was drinking his, but she figured that a show of complacence might encourage him to be more open with her that he had been before.

Once he finished settling himself back into his corner of the couch, Harm mused, "Now, where was I…?"

"I think you were just about to tell me how you became a Navy lawyer," Gill said, picking up her glass of wine.

"Yeah… Well, it's a little… Well, complicated," Harm said with furrowed brow. "I don't know how the Royal Navy, or even the British Army handle these sort of things, but after any mishap involving an aircraft, there is a flight mishap investigation board, especially when the mishap involves a fatality and the loss of a forty million dollar jet. It seems that as far as the board is concerned the first thing they look at is pilot error, so once they told me that the board was being convened, I applied for legal assistance to JAG, and the JAG officer assigned to my case pulled out all the stops, had my eyes checked by an independent ophthalmologist, and presented my case to the board that my night vision had been affected by a virus I'd picked up on shore leave in Italy. It was the end of my flying career, and I needed to re-qualify in another field; the JAG had helped me so much I figured that I'd like to help other people in the same way. So… In return for signing my soul over to the Navy, they sent me to law school and NJS – that's the Navy Justice School, and I changed my designator and spent the next few years trying and defending courts martial, before I picked up a PCS to JAG HQ in DC."

Harm fell silent, and reached for his wine glass, but to Gill's silent surprise he barely seemed to wet his lips with its contents before he put it back on the table. "My first year at JAG was a learning curve. Sure, I had litigation experience, and a pretty good track record otherwise I wouldn't have been tapped for JAG, but attorneys at JAG are investigative attorneys, a bit like assistant and deputy DA's in civilian life, with much more responsibility for investigating as well as prosecuting and defending crimes. So I was assigned a partner, and off we set investigating and prosecuting and defending. Then as is the nature of life in the military, my partner was processed out and replaced, and then in the fullness of time so was her successor."

Again Harm reached for his wine but this time he did take a sip before replacing it on the coffee table. "But our last case before my second partner left… Yeah, that… that was... difficult..." He took another sip of wine. "We were detailed off to investigate the murder of a female officer at Norfolk, that's about a three-hour drive from DC, given clear roads. Anyway, we got there just as the crime scene guys were cleaning up, the body had been bagged and was on a gurney waiting for transport. I… I… uh… as part of getting a full picture, unzipped the bag." He swallowed, "it was Diane."

Gill gasped, "Oh, Harm… Not Diane from the Academy, the... the one who..."

Harm looked up for the first time in many minutes, and even now, years after the events he was narrating, Gill could see the bleakness in his eyes. "Yes, that Diane. If I'd had any sense, I would have excused myself from the investigation, and I should have, but as it was, I got all fired up and it didn't help that the NCIS agent in charge of the case was probably the biggest jerk I've ever met. I guess we both took one look at each other and decided we just didn't like each other. It was a peculiar case, there were false leads everywhere, I ended up losing control while I followed up one lead and very nearly scuppered my career by punching out a suspect, in a dockside diner crowded with Navy personnel, both commissioned and enlisted. It didn't help that the officer I hit was later found in his cabin with a nine millimetre by his hand and a hole in his head, and a suicide note saying that he was the one who had killed Diane. Turned out that couldn't have been him, and then the NCIS agent claimed to have found the murder weapon with my prints on it. I was arrested. Fortunately my partner alibied me out, but by the time the dust has settled the trail had gone cold, the agent had been disciplined, but the case was marked unsolved and put with other cold cases."

Harm took another barely tasted sip of his wine, and flashed a sardonic grin across to Gill. "That's when I began to get a reputation for letting my emotions take charge."

Gill took a sip from her own glass, and managed a sympathetic smile at Harm even while she was mentally shaking her head, wondering how anybody could believe the rigidly controlled man sharing the couch with her was over-emotional. Becoming conscious that he was looking at with a question in his eyes she said, "Please go on."

Harm looked at her dubiously, "Are you sure you want to hear the rest, because this is where I start to make a real mess of my life, and although I never meant to, I hurt other people too."

Gill looked at him consideringly, and darted a glance at his glass, where she saw to her surprise that the level of wine in it had hardly changed since he had poured for them both. "Yes, I want to hear."

'It may not make pleasant listening for me,' she thought, 'but I'm getting the feeling that he's never told this much to anyone before; it might just be doing him some good.'

xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx

Jen cast a satisfied eye over the apartment. She and Victor had worked well together, they had also worked hard. True, she didn't have much in the way of possessions, not like even her last apartment in DC, and certainly not even half the amount of what she had later termed clutter from her days in the loft apartment next door to the commander – no, now the captain. Although she had toyed with the idea of getting someone to share, the thought of having her own private space after so many years of sharing was appealing and besides, if all went well, in a couple of months she could always invite Mattie to come and spend the odd weekend with her.

But now… A huge grin spread over her face, now, she was about to try that fantastic shower! Stepping into the bathroom she swiftly undressed and stepped into the shower stall, revelling in the sheer force of the water as it pounded her head and back. She'd made the decision to wash her hair this evening, in order to save time in the morning, so that she would be ready to go the second Victor knocked on the door. Another smile across the face, he'd been so good, so helpful, he'd saved her almost a full weekend of traipsing backwards and forwards between Northolt and Stanmore. And he had such wonderful eyes, and he was really sweet. From the age of fourteen, Jennifer Coates had been no stranger to the way some men looked at her, nor to their expectations of her just because she had a generous figure. But Victor Galindez had looked her in the eye, and had shown no sign of expecting anything from her other than her company… And, for the moment, despite the fact that she had nearly surrendered to an urge to kiss him goodnight, that was just the way she wanted it.

xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx

"No, no thanks, I've had enough for this evening," Julia smiled as Johnny offered to return to the bar and get her another drink. Johnny nodded and drained the last mouthful of beer from his glass.

It had been a quiet evening, after dinner in the hotel restaurant the young couple had chosen the quiet and comfort of the saloon bar over the livelier atmosphere of the public bar, and had spent the evening in quiet conversation after Julia had shown Johnny the results of their last weekend's excursions to Richmond Park and Longleat, including a shot of Johnny, showing him in half profile, a shot Julia declared was her favourite one of the weekend and a photograph that Johnny hadn't even been aware she had taken. Now, gathering up the photograph envelopes Julia and Johnny by mutual, tacit consent left their empty glasses on the corner table in the bar, and slipping their arms around each other's waist crossed the bar room towards the door and the stairs that led up to the hotel rooms. As they reached the top of the stairs Julia leaned her cheek against Johnny's upper arm, only raising her head and then slipping her arm from around his waist when he guided her to a gentle halt at her bedroom door

"Good night, sweetheart," he murmured, once she had unlocked the room, lowering his face to hers as she raised her face his.

Julia laced her fingers together at the back of Johnny's neck as they kissed in front of her open door, but then they broke the kiss she let her hands slide down the length of his arms and two she held both of his hands in hers. "Not good night, Johnny," she said as she stepped backwards into the room tugging him with her.

Johnny's mouth when suddenly dry, and he became conscious of his heart pounding in his chest. He looked straight into Julia's eyes,"Are you quite, quite sure about this…?" He asked.

Julia swallowed and returned his look steadily, "Yes, Johnny, yes, I'm sure." She stepped back into his arms, wondering at the sensations he evoked in her as her hands sculpted the planes of muscle on his back, even as he deepened their kiss

xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx

"About six months after Diane's death, I got a new partner." Harm had fallen silent for so long that Gill was beginning to think that he wasn't going to continue with his history, but then he had taken a huge breath taken a huge breath.

"It was another female officer, but this time, she was a Major in the Marines. I was introduced to her by our CO in the White House Rose Garden – we'd been attending a medal ceremony there. But that wasn't the important thing... She was the spitting image of Diane, could have been her sister, her twin sister. I was totally stunned, and just stood staring, must have been for ages before I finally gathered my wits and managed to say something coherent."

Harm gave a little self-deprecating shrug. "We didn't have much time to adjust to each other, to get used to each other as we were handed our first case on the spot, and the next thing I knew we were in working dress in the middle of Arizona, clear across the country."

"That must have been hard for you," Gill said softly.

"Oh yeah, looking back now, well, I was so conflicted. I was just about getting over Diane's death and then I was partnered with her doppelgänger. Of course I was attracted to her, physically. with maybe a slight difference in the shade of hair and in the timbre of the voice the two women were identical. Maybe for as long as six months I couldn't look at Mac without seeing Diane."

'Mac!' Gill thought, 'I've heard that name before!'

"Yeah, for a while I was pretty conflicted, I couldn't tell if I was attracted to her because she was Mac or because she looked like Diane. As I got to know her better, so she became less Diane-like, she could be funny, compassionate, understanding. Of course she was beautiful, Diane was, so she had to be, but in so many ways she was so totally different to Diane." Harm gave a chuckle, that Gill couldn't help feeling was rueful somehow.

"She had the most incredible metabolism, the crap she used to eat – probably still does – and never seem to put on an ounce… She seemed to have this internal body clock thing going for her, always let her know when it was time to eat… At times her constant mantra seemed to be 'I'm hungry'…"

"Ah! Is she the reason you keep asking me if I'm a Marine?" Gill asked with a smile.

Harm gave a sheepish grin in return, "Yeah, I guess so. Sometimes when you say that, there's a certain inflection in your voice that makes it almost sound as if Mac was saying it."

"How long were you two together?"

"We were partners for about nine years, on and off." Harm replied.

Gill gave an impatient shake of her head, "No, that's not what I meant. Not how long did you work together, but how long were you together, as a couple."

"We never were," Harm said regretfully.

Gill was astonished, "You weren't? Why ever not? The... the... the... the way you talk about her, the way that almost everything in your life seems to be referenced by her. You said she was attractive, and that you were attracted to her, and you're not so bad looking, even now."

Harm grimaced, "This is where it gets ugly, and I come off looking like an asshole at times. First off, I told myself that Navy regulations would crucify us. We worked together, in the same chain of command and that at the first hint of an 'improper' relationship between us would see one or both of us transferred out of DC so fast it would be unbelievable, one of us probably to Adak and the other to Garcia Hernandez. But that was bullshit; I don't know who I was lying to, mostly myself I guess. Tell the truth by the time I realised just how much Mac meant to me, I was so scared that telling her how I really felt would risk losing her friendship and by that time her friendship was really important, so important that I wasn't willing to risk it, not even for the chance of love. So much for the bold aviator, eh?" This time Harm's grin was bitter and twisted.

Gill shook her head emphatically, "No, that's not cowardice, but self-preservation. You've just told me that you felt battered by Diane's death. Why would you risk getting hurt all over again? You wouldn't!"

It was Harm's turn to shake his head, "Nope, that kite won't fly. By this time I'd figured out that although they may have looked like each other Diane and Mac were two totally different people. I doubt that Mac would have reserved her commission to help me get literally back on my feet after my ramp strike; but then again Diane would never have risked her own career trying to prevent me from sinking mine, nor would she have followed me to Russia – twice."

"You've been to Russia?" Gill gasped.

"Harm nodded, "But just the two times."

"But, how… when… why?" Gill stammered.

"Well… I told you about my dad getting shot down…" Gill nodded and Harm grinned mirthlessly before he continued "Okay... During the course of an investigation we stumbled across a book, a notebook which seemed to contain a list of US POWs who had been shipped to Russia by the North Vietnamese…"

Harm's voice took on that dull, monotone note as he recounted in as much detail as he could remember of his search for further clues to his father's fate, his arrest and court-martial for murder and his subsequent trip to Russia as part of his search for his father, only briefly becoming animated as he described Mac's unexpected joining of him in the airplane, and then becoming almost choked with remembered grief as he recounted hearing of his father's death and subsequent burial in an unmarked grave deep in the Russian Taiga.

Gill heard him out with growing amazement. She believed every word he said, but what she found difficult to grasp was that Harm thought at that time, and after all that she had done, that Mac was still just a 'friend'.

"After all that, all she did for you throughout the trial, and then following you to Russia you thought she was still a friend? I'm surprised she didn't give up on you permanently on the spot!"

"It wasn't that easy… She was involved with this other guy at the time… And for some time afterwards."

Harm debated whether or not he should tell Gill, but he had decided that honesty was the only policy. "Mac was, and still is, a recovering alcoholic. She dried out when she was about nineteen, so the time I'm talking about she'd been sober for about twelve, maybe thirteen years. And when we came back from Russia she was as far as I was concerned still off-limits, she was still seeing Dalton, and shortly afterwards it seemed that I was right in my judgement, that her feelings for him ran deep. He was shot and killed in an apparent car-jacking gone wrong, and for the only time I knew Mac she fell off the wagon. How was I supposed to compete with that?"

Gill groaned silently. Even in the short time she had known Harm, she had come to understand that actions spoke louder than words to him, and for Mac to abandon so many years of sobriety… Harm must have felt that was proof enough of Mac's love for the hitherto unmentioned Dalton. "But afterwards?"

"I figured I'd give her time, time to get over Dalton, time to get over the heartbreak… And there was something else…" Harm took a further deep breath and glanced at his wine glass, and for a second it looked as if he was about to reach for it, but then changed his mind. "Dalton wasn't killed by a car-jacker, but by a cop who was stalking Mac, completely freaked her out and ended up kidnapping her. It took a while for her to get her balance back… I just figured she needed the extra time…"

"Anyway," Harm resumed, "although she was free in that one sense, we were still both bound by Navy regs, and by my fears… And of course we then became ridiculously busy, investigating incidents in Japan and Italy as well as the USA. Then just as it seemed that Providence was finally on our side, and life was beginning to settle down, somebody, somewhere threw us a curveball. Turned out, way out in left field, that Mac was married, although separated, but not legally. Her husband turned up out of the blue, demanding money to keep his mouth shut and sign the divorce papers. Mac turned to her old CO for help, and the two of them went to pay off the husband. He drew a gun there was a scuffle the gun went off in the husband was killed Mac and her former CO were arrested and charged with murder. I defended her in her court-martial and the discovery of a previously unknown witness proved her innocent. But it came out during testimony that years before Mac had had an affair with her former CO, and that was one of the things that her husband threatened to go public with...!"

"That must have been against regulations!" Gill exclaimed.

"Yeah, it was, but the statute of limitations had run out on that, but Mac perjured herself during the trial, trying to protect her old CO. I tried not to be judgemental, but the whole experience hit me like a slap in the face. I'd worked with the woman for three years by then, believing she was single, and all the time it turned out that she was a liar, a serial adulterer, and now a perjurer. I had to step back, and re-evaluate my feelings towards her. I was some kind of fool I guess; despite all I still fancied myself in love with her. But even so, even after all that I still couldn't say anything to her.

"I had my eyes checked, by a new ophthalmologist, and the results were that all those years ago I had been mis-diagnosed, my so-called night blindness was due to retinal scarring, and could be reversed by some simple, painless, laser surgery. I won't say I jumped at the chance; I had a lot of thinking to do, I had to weigh the loss of my legal career against the chance of resuming my aviator's career, but the extra thumb on the scales was that if I was no longer in the same chain of command as Mac, I could then make my feelings known to her without having to worry about running afoul of the fraternisation regulations. But when I broached the subject, she kinda brushed me off with a 'you must do what you think best'. Admittedly, she was mired down in her own personal problems, a disciplinary hearing over the perjury, news of her father's dying; I could have picked a better time, but I remember feeling hurt at that time that she couldn't summon up even a scrap of interest in something that was so important to me. So I had my eyes fixed, and against advice from my CO I applied to have my designator changed back to that of an aviator, and went back to sea, back to flying."

"But, you're back as an attorney now, and I've a feeling you're flying career didn't last very long." Gill said softly.

"No, it didn't."

"What happened?" Gill asked quietly.

Harm gave a snort of wry amusement, "Mac happened, of course. One of the pilots in my squadron got himself court-martialed for negligent homicide, and asked for me to defend him. JAG sent out Mac to prosecute a shipboard court-martial. Naturally, I was delighted to see her again, until she stripped off her flight vest, to show that her bronze Major's oak leaves had been replaced by silver ones, she'd been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, and outranked me. And she let me know. The first name terms, and vanished, was all Commander and Colonel, ma'am. Anyway, I won the case and my client was acquitted, although the judge directed that he face a fleet aviation investigation board to determine his future career. I declined to represent him on that one. The next day, Mac headed back for DC, and the CAG – that's the Commander Air Wing – advised me to return to the law, I'd missed too many years in the air, and didn't have enough hours, hadn't got enough traps. In his words I was running out of sky. It took some time, but the paperwork went through, my designator was changed back to JAG, and I headed back to DC, but at least this time when I stopped flying it was my decision."

Gill frowned, "But you just said that the commander had advised you to give up your flying."

"Yeah, he did. He advised me, he didn't order me. I decided that he was right. I was in a career dead-end and would be competing for the same jobs, with pilots ten years younger than myself, and naval aviation is a young man's game, and I discovered that by this time I loved the law as much as I loved flying So this time, I got out of my own free will."

"And I'm guessing that even when you went back to Washington, it still wasn't all plain sailing between you and Mac?"

"Not even!" Harm said bitterly, "it was the same issue that it had been on the Patrick Henry, Commander this, Colonel that, it seemed that Harm and Mac had disappeared forever. Even when I got my third ring, she seemed to delight in reminding me that she had some three months seniority over me, and then the Admiral made her his chief of staff. Don't get me wrong, I didn't begrudge her promotions, either of them. I was happy for her, I just wish that she could have been bothered to tell me about her step in rank it… it is a major promotion – no pun intended – and it's the sort of good news that I would have wanted to share with my friends, especially one I considered my best friend, so on top of the court-martial and all that came out of it, it felt like betrayal heaped on betrayal."

This time Harm did take a sip of his wine before he continued, "Not that it was all Mac's fault, I didn't handle it well either, I pokered up. I became stiff, and… yeah… I pulled back. Hey, I might be as dumb as a bag of rocks but I soon figured out that banging my head against a brick wall just hurt my head."

'And your heart,' Gill thought, but just asked,"But that was all some time ago, wasn't it, Harm?" as she too took a sip of wine.

"Oh yeah, that wasn't the end of it. No, that just about brings us up to the five-year mark, about halfway through the sad sorry saga of the non-existent Harm and Mac, the 'us' that would never be!" Harm said bitterly.

"To make sense of what happened next, I'm going to have to go back to before Mac's court-martial, and introduce the one man who really screwed us up. Well, that's if you don't include me, because I managed pretty well even without Bugme!"

Gill couldn't help herself, she giggled, "Bugme? Oh, Harm, I'm sorry, I know this isn't supposed to be funny, but honestly some of your American names…"

Harm managed to respond with a genuine grin of his own, "I know exactly what you mean, but in this case you missed the target by a good country mile. Bugme isn't his real name, it was Brumby, but, and I don't know why, I took an instant disliking to him the second I set my eyes on him. And, he wasn't American, he was a Lieutenant Commander in the Australian Navy's equivalent of the JAG Corps. I disliked him personally and I disliked him professionally. During Mac's court-martial – a joint court-martial with her former CO – Brumby was detailed to act as his defence attorney. In a case like that defence attorneys are supposed to be operating in tandem, but then halfway through the trial, he resorted to a tactic that resulted in him getting his ass chewed off by the JAG, he tried to switch all the blame on to Mac, and trotted out in open court all her dirty laundry, accusing her of deliberately murdering her husband so that her adultery with John Farrell, her old commander, and Dalton wouldn't come to light."

Gill shook her head, "But all he was trying to do was to defend his own client. How can that be unethical?"

Harm shook his head, "Firstly because he didn't discuss it with co-counsel, in other words me, neither did he discuss it with his client, who had a sense of humour failure with his attorney in open court. But that wasn't the worst of it, from my point of view. Maybe I should have seen it as a warning, that something… I dunno… Dark? Was buried somewhere in Mac's psyche. First, she slapped his face in the middle of the parking lot at JAG HQ after he tried to excuse himself by saying that he hadn't meant anything personal was just trying to do his job. But then after the trial was over, and in front of me, he invited her out to dinner."

Harm paused to barely wetting his lips with his wine before he added in a tone of remembered bemusement, "And she accepted. I remember staring at her, totally stunned, and saying, 'The men you pick'!"

Gill gaped at him open-mouthed, "You cannot be serious! The man paraded all her sexual indiscretions in open court, basically branded her a slut, tried to get her convicted of murder, and then invited her out for dinner? And she accepted? And you didn't read any warning signs in that?"

Harm grinned as Gill's voice took on an edge of indignation mingled with disbelief. "Like I said, I was as dumb as a bag of rocks! And once again, she was showing interest in another man I stepped back. They dated for a while I think, then he was called back to Australia, this was about the time of the Australian intervention in East Timor. So off he went, and I watched him go and I thought good riddance."

"But what happened next led me to the conclusion that the gods are a bunch of senile ancients get their kicks from making human lives miserable. A cold case surfaced, a fight that had ended in a stabbing and a death in Australia… Another, more junior, attorney, Bud Roberts and myself were sent to defend the American sailor accused of murdering an Australian sailor, and our liaison with the Australian naval justice service was, yes you guessed, Lieutenant Commander Michael Brumby."

Harm frowned at his wine glass, and then at the clock, "It's getting late, what say we continue this tomorrow?"

Gill bit her bottom lip, "This all sounds terribly gloomy and angst ridden, so unless it's too difficult for you, I'd rather hear about it all tonight so you can put it all behind you and we can have the rest of the weekend."

Harm nodded, "Probably a good call, but I seem to have talked myself out of the mood for wine, coffee?"

Gill smiled, "Yes, thanks. That would be good."

She relaxed back into the embrace of the couch as Harm stood and walked towards the kitchen. She was finding it hard to understand how a woman, any woman, could not or would not see and respond to the devotion and… and yes, the dogged fidelity of the man who had taken so many slaps in the face and yet still remained there for her. Okay, she was only hearing one side of the story, but it seemed to her that Harm was still finding mental excuses for Mac, and although he was trying to carry off an air of insouciance, there were flashes of bitterness showing through, revealing how much he had been hurt.